“Sarah, did anyone ever tell you that you are one hell of a manager?”
She grinned big, glancing aside at Ben’s half-smile of approval, then to all of them. “Well, after all, this is the kind of planning I did at Omega Casino.”
Eliana split her mental attention, part to public approval of Sarah’s plan. And part to talk to him. “Matthew, let me help you with weapons deployment from a Bridge accel-couch. It will allow you to focus more on maneuvering and dealing with any surprises.”
“You are welcome to join me on the Bridge.” He split a private part of his mind attention to her. “I love you. I’m sorry you got hurt. And I will ask Immovable to send an unmanned T’Chak ship to Morrigan so you and Altuna can once again command a Dreadnought.”
Eliana’s gaze turned soft. “Thank you. Thank you so much. But now, we have to prepare for whatever surprises this Dolmat ship captain has in store for us. It arrived here before we did. Which means it picked up our gravity wave pulses. It’s had time to prepare for us.”
“Yes it has,” Matt said. “But we never give up. And as young Ben said, we endure.”
Running Leader rested on his Command Bench, his fourteen battleglobes gathered in the spike-tail formation with their Alcubierre Bubbles activated and aimed outward to intersect any incoming antimatter beams. It had proven useful during the battle at the Hootnai colony in NGC 6397 star cluster. But the flyby of a single T’Chak ship, its shape that of a fire-breathing reptile, had hit six battleglobes with a pink beam that caused each ship to explode short milliseconds later. The rest of his fleet had Translated out ten light years to escape this new weapon. Ever since then, during their return to the shipyard and their deployment into a defense of the five factories and habitat globe, his combat scientists had sought an answer to what had so harmed them. A holo took shape before him. It was his Chief Combat Engineer, one Flying Death of the Mican species.
“Sector Captain,” growled the being who mixed a four-legged carnivore form with two dirty brown wings. It fixed three mobile eyes on him with a feral intensity that he, Defender of the Herd, did not care for. The purple eyes blinked slowly. “My work group has analyzed the sensorBead and vidcast records of the attack by the single T’Chak ship. We conclude the pink beam was not the usual proton laser beam, but a stasis beam. It penetrated our bubble shields and put every crew member into suspended animation. Their life signs disappeared to normal ship sensors.”
“The ships blew themselves up!” Running Leader croaked angrily.
“Yes,” growled Flying Death, its needle-tipped tail whipping from one side to the other. “We are working on an algorithm that will reverse the Command Core’s programming to auto-destruct upon loss of life signs.” One of the Mican’s fleshy eye cones looked sideways. “I am motivating my programmers with a neurowhip but we do not have a finished algorithm. Yet.”
Running Leader noticed how the Mican’s two small flexhands curled into fists, their digits claw-tipped. Red blood appeared at the point where claws touched palms. The feather ruff that ran down its back and between the two wings flared up in some body language sign. “Thank you for your efforts, Chief Combat Engineer Flying Death. Please expedite this algorithm. We are easily destroyed if attacked again by this stasis-wielding warship.”
“Understood,” growled the Mican in guttural Belizel.
The engineer’s wings flared up then smashed back against its muscled body, conveying an anger at its staff that Running Leader did not care for. “You are excused.” The holo vanished. He looked around the Bridge.
Executive Officer Malel stood to his right, his brown-armored body encircled by a ring of datapanels and WorkPads. Tactical Chief Lark’s hairy form stood before his Tactical Cluster, his focus on the thousands of tachRemotes they had seeded throughout the protoplanetary disk of CC32415. The ship’s front holosphere showed the bright stars of the Trapezium and the billowing clouds of charged particles that were collapsing into brown dwarfs on their way to becoming true stars. The center of the shipyard’s system had no star yet, just the massive brown dwarf that awaited enough matter infall to ignite a self-sustaining fusion reaction.
“Sector Captain,” called Chief Lark. “The amount of dispersed munitions, magnetic mines, X-ray Picket Globes, sensorRemotes, Offense sleds, Thermonuke sleds, plasma torps, and Fire-and-Forget missiles has reached a total of forty thousand devices.” The Tactical officer’s stance suggested worry combined with hope.
“Understood,” Running Leader said as he looked to the WorkPads and datapanels that bordered his Command Bench. “Any gravity pulse signals?”
“Yes, but only the ones we detected just moments ago,” Lark said, activating a holo pedestal that showed the system’s disk. “One came from a small craft that appears to be a shuttle. One of our Corvettes is chasing after it, but the craft is hiding behind asteroids.”
“And the other pulses?”
“Seven that appeared one light cycle out.” Lark’s claw-hand gestured at the multi-spectral holo. “Without doubt they are the enemy fleet that fought us in the Hootnai system.”
“Without a doubt. Alert the factories to activate their mining lasers for defense. And have the habitat move to emergency pressurization procedures,” he ordered.
Turning to his own WorkPads, Running Leader made sure the x-ray Picket Globes were set on autofire to blast x-rays at the vector line of a gravity wave pulse. Many would miss the Human’s warships, but some would impact. Hopefully before the Human fleet raised its Alcubierre shields. Lying in stealth mode were dozens of 30 megaton bomb Thermonuke sleds that could achieve one-quarter lightspeed on their own. The sleds were also set on autofire mode to accelerate toward the incoming vector line. Finally, his outlying x-ray Picket Globes were set on autofire since they would have only femtoseconds in which to sense the gravity wave of the Human fleet’s emergence into normal space-time, then fire at the gravity wave vector. Again, most would miss. But a few might impact before the shields went up.
“Captain!” cried Yanakutt from NavCore. “A gravity wave pulse just above us!”
Matt exited the greyness of Alcubierre space-time with his ship’s nose pointed down at the hollow shell of fourteen battleglobes, his speed just one-fourth light and his vector aimed to cross the ecliptic of the protoplanetary disk. Just as Sarah had proposed. His real-time image of the dusty brown disk lasted just seven femtoseconds, then went grey as Mata Hari raised their shields. The image returned as ejected sensorBeads, tachRemotes and plasma torps gave him an FTL image of what lay ahead. That was supplemented by the tachVid images from Remotes shot at the shipyard by Ariadne when the shuttle had Translated into the construction zone just minutes earlier.
Swimming in ocean-time linkage with Mata Hari, BattleMind, Eliana and every other pilot and AI of his fleet, Matt saw they would pass within a quarter light second of the battleglobe shell. The shell resembled a bunch of grey balls arranged in a round shell. With bubble walls touching each other, there were no open spaces through which his ship could insert an antimatter beam. Well, his job was opening a hole in that bubble wall. And he would not fail!
“Eject Black Holes!” Running Leader croaked. “Have the nearby Supply Tubes emit antimatter! Fire proton beams continuously at the incoming enemy!”
A holo of the Mican Flying Death took form before him. “The Defense algorithm is finished! To which—”
“Every ship!” cried Running Leader.
“Ten seconds will suffice!” roared Flying Death.
“In ten seconds we may all—”
Matt’s ship Mata Hari projected multiple pressor beams ahead of the ship’s crocodile snout, aiming for a cone that would shunt aside any antimatter and black holes that might lie in their path. He had agreed with Eliana that a repeat of his unshielded attack was not smart this time. Not when the Dolmat fleet captain had had time to prepare a defense.
Blue-white explosions filled nearby space as Picket Globes sent coherent x-rays against Mata Hari, hoping
for a break in the Alcubierre shielding.
Pink proton laser beams shot at him from the upper battleglobes of the Anarchate shell, seeking entry.
Assault Asteroids left stealth and went to one-quarter lightspeed, aiming to impact him along his vector course.
Supply Tubes did the same, their unmanned Command Cores seeking their own immolation in an antimatter cloud that included Matt’s ship.
A Thermonuke sled blew its 30 megaton warhead against the nose of his ship. The shield stayed up.
Dispersed Remotes, tachlinks, Spy Eyes, sensorBeads and hundreds of similar Fire-and-Forget Remotes fell into Mata Hari’s Alcubierre shields, their signals dying as they were Translated to Elsewhere-Elsewhen.
Matt’s mind splintered into thousands of compartments, each mind parcel dealing with a specific input, option, result and alert.
Nothing could keep up with Matt’s mind. Not the hurried beat of his heart. Not the surge of adrenaline hormones. Not the instinctive muscle reactions as his visual cortex told his body that something was rushing at Matt. They were all too slow.
Two milliseconds, 76 nanoseconds, 23 picoseconds, and 15 femtoseconds, said his onboard cyberclock as it kept track of time from the instant of their normal-space materialization.
At a distance of a quarter light second, Matt fired the Stasis Beam at the grey bubbles of the fleet shell. It swept over seven battleglobes thanks to his one-fourth lightspeed vector that made the pink beam brush against multiple targets.
Three battleglobes blew up. Four did not. Why?
“Matthew, there is a hole for the rest of the fleet!” cried Mata Hari in his mind even as BattleMind projected the Sun Glow tube, ready to blast away once they were inside the shell. “We Translate now!”
Running Leader’s mind felt the neurolink with three of his fourteen ships die as the Command Cores of those ships failed to receive the Defense algorithm in time. Four ships touched by the pink beam stayed intact even though the crew would be senseless and unable to defend their ship. Perhaps the AutoDefense programs of those ships would fire weapons.
His own ship fired black antimatter beams at the oncoming grey cloud of the enemy ship. They had no effect.
“The enemy is pressing aside the black holes and antimatter clouds!” cried Chief Lark as his tail thumped the Bridge floor in frustration.
His ship Defiant II rocked to the explosion of several Thermonuke sleds as they died under proton beam assault from the incoming ship.
Which disappeared.
# # #
Matt’s splintered mind felt the change from Translation to real-time emergence as if he had blinked. The distance was so short that Mata Hari had barely to switch their drive module on, then off in order to move his ship inside the shell of battleglobes, his exit vector aimed the hole he’d created. A hole that would shortly be the vector for incoming antimatter beams as the other six ships of his fleet materialized a quarter light second out and began to fire into the shell.
“Fire everything everywhere!” he cried.
In mind linkage with a ship whose weapons can operate in picosecond and nanosecond intervals is a wonder. It is so, so very deadly to one’s enemies.
The Sun Glow tube shot a white neutrino beam sideways, impacting three unshielded battleglobes. They became yellow stellar plasma.
The Graviton Beamer shot an orange spear of coherent quarks at the opposite side of the shell, reducing three battleglobes to tiny black holes.
Both wings shot all six antimatter cannons at three northerly battleglobes, allocating two beams per ship. Two of the three ships blew up into expanding shells of ionized particles, while the third battleglobe lost half of its mass. But its antimatter reservoirs were not touched, so it survived.
The directed energy domes on his ship’s spine shot coherent beams of neutral particles, free electron, carbon dioxide, hydrogen-fluorine, and excimer particles forward at the battleglobes that bordered the hole he’d created with his Stasis Beam attack.
Two hundred thirty milliseconds, 76 nanoseconds, 49 picoseconds, and 11 femtoseconds, said his onboard cyberclock as it tried to keep up with near lightspeed thinking.
Ahead six grey clouds materialized as his fleet comrades took aim at the three surviving battleglobes that had changed orientation to a triangle of three clustered Alcubierre Bubbles.
“Forget the antimatter attack!” he cried over their mental tachlink. “Translate to the factories and take them out! I will finish up here.”
Matt fired a second antimatter barrage at the wounded battleglobe that sought to join its two surviving fellows.
Running Leader’s mind nearly collapsed under the weight of the simultaneous destruction of eleven battleglobes. The neurolinked minds of his fellow captains just vanished. As did the comlinks between their Command Cores as ships lost the ability to coordinate their offense and defense efforts.
“Noooo!” he croaked, unable to understand how the enemy could avoid death from his new Black Hole and Antimatter Cloud weapons.
Yanakutt slapped his ship’s Translation pedestal. “Translating!” it clicked harshly.
Running Leader told his remaining herd to disperse, to run for their lives as these deadly predators sought to eat them all. One ship vanished into Alcubierre space-time. The other ship blew up under the impact of six black beams. His ship’s passage away from normal space-time left him with a single mind-image.
A fire-breathing reptile with black wings pursued him as if all the predators in the universe hungered for him and his.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Mindstorm floated before the Council of Sixteen as each sector leader gathered for that rarity of rarities—an emergency council meeting. He inhaled the water basin’s scented liquid. His ingestion cilia did not touch the datapads and holo emitters that floated within his gravity field. His mouth palps moved.
“So pleasant to see your colors, Sooteen of the Loglan,” he rasped, preferring to begin the confrontation rather than just react.
The soft-shelled amphibian fixed all four eyestalks on Mindstorm. Her chromatophore skin showed traceries of red, yellow, black, purple and the blazing white of intense anger. “Your naval shipyard at CC32415 in the Orion Nebula is destroyed, with the loss of twelve battleglobes. Leaving only two operational battleglobes as the remnant of your naval force,” she chirped in ancient high-tone Belizel. “The operatives of High Commander Sytoon of your new Intelligence Base in Sagittarius-Carina Arm have failed to locate the Human world that is supporting this Human renegade. There are no naval shipyards remaining intact in your sector!” She paused to dip her gills into her own water basin. “And this soft-skinned biped’s dispersed fleet has destroyed an additional 412 battleglobes, bringing our galactic fleet level down to just 10,102 warships.” Her mouth palps squirted exhaled water into the open space around which each sector leader was gathered. “Disgusting! Do you accept personal responsibility for this series of sector disasters?”
Mindstorm felt shock at the impolite challenge to his hereditary position as leader of Sector 14. The attacks by the dispersed T’Chak fleet in other sectors must have greatly unsettled the leader of the council. Which guided his reply. “No, my excellent mentor on proper council behavior.” There. His ally Noktoren from Sector 13 would surely perceive his reminder to Sooteen that council members did not make personal accusations against each other. “No more than you accept personal liability for the scattered attacks on bases and naval shipyards in your Sector 16. As I recall, you lost a Commerce Station in Omega Centauri cluster more than a Belizel cycle ago. But none of us even thought to question your fitness to be chief of this council!”
The white of Sooteen’s chromatophore skin increased to cover nearly half of her oval shell. “Upstart! Impertinent being who fails to appreciate the antiquity of senior amphibian species! How dare you—”
“Sector leaders!” squealed the Hootnai quadruped Rolette am-tok. Its brain bulge tilted down to fix a single eye on Sooteen, Mindstorm an
d the other members of the council. “My Sector 15 has also suffered minor losses from attacks by up to fifty alien warships. Observer Globes have documented their post-Translation shape as matching the T’Chak flying reptile images of prior battles with this Human renegade. But I accuse no one. Instead, I offer assistance.”
Mindstorm felt surprise, a feeling almost as foreign to him as was amusement. His Sector 15 neighbor had long ignored him at seasonal celebration events in Central Nexus, when sector leaders pretended to welcome contacts from lesser staff. Now this offer. Why?
“Your offer of assistance is highly valued, my esteemed neighbor,” he clacked in middle-tone Belizel. “What might compose your assistance?”
The high-necked carnivore blinked slowly, its single white eye focusing on Mindstorm. “Sector 14 leader, I offer you two hundred of the six hundred battleglobes remaining in my sector.” Their neighbors in the council hooted, growled, clicked, chittered or light-blinked. “We ask only for the secret of the Black Hole ejectors and the Alcubierre Bubbles which our colonists at star CC9342 observed during the recent combat between eight T’Chak warships and 32 battleglobes led by your Sector Captain Running Leader. So that we may refit our own battleglobes in a manner that increases their chances of surviving future attacks by this unstable biped.”
“Done,” Mindstorm clacked abruptly, feeling an anxiety to please other council members, a feeling that had long been foreign to him. “How soon before they arrive at my new Intelligence Base at star CC3478, in Sagittarius Arm?”
“A Belizel month.” The Hootnai turned its brain bulge and single eye to Sooteen. “Council Chief Sooteen, my sector could perhaps lend a few battleglobes to your sector if needed.”
Sooteen squirted a water jet into the middle of their hovering platforms. Its four eyestalks split to focus two on Mindstorm and two on the Hootnai. “Not needed. Other sectors may assist each other as agreed by their leaders. Mindstorm, do you have any revised plans for capturing this soft-skinned Human? Our civilian populations have begun to pay attention to the galactic tachnet broadcasts of this biped. The issue of cloneslavery and bondServant contracts is being discussed by billions of tech-level civilians.”
Anarchate Vigilante (Vigilante Series 4) Page 26
