Galactic Vigilante (Vigilante Series 3) (11 page)

Suzanne
sensed the deep darkness of interstellar space as the many sensors of
Lorelei
spoke to her in numbers that computed how close to absolute zero the outer vacuum was, how many cosmic rays now passed through the ship, the local sources of neutrinos such as the fusion power plants of her ship and the 507 other T’Chak Dreadnoughts that shared deep space with her, and where the starships of the ten Cohort Commander AIs were located. With a shiver she left the UV, infrared, radio and x-ray images that she could “see” using ship sensors and focused on the large holosphere in front of her. It showed a normal yellow light image of her T’Chak fellows, lying against the stellar necklace of nearby stars, but it felt . . . incomplete somehow.

A
blue cloud chuckled in one corner of her mind. “Incomplete?” queried the mindvoice of Lorelei, the T’Chak AI who had woken from a millennia long sleep to discover her old organic masters were long dead, with new masters like her, Matt, Eliana and George replacing them in the prime Task of overthrowing the Anarchate rule of the Milky Way. “We are a light year distant from Component C star of the Alkalurops trinary system. There is nothing around us other than near-vacuum, specks of interstellar dust, a few molecules of hydrogen and helium wafted here on stellar winds and gravity waves from the giant black hole at the center of your galaxy that holds onto every piece of matter and energy ever emitted in this assemblage of 400 billion stars. How can such a space ever be incomplete?”

Suzanne smiled to herself.
As someone who’d grown up on old Earth, in the Swedish town of Skelleftea, which overlooked the salty waters of the Gulf of Bothnia, she was used to going fishing all by herself. Early on she’d learned to read the clouds, waves and winds as signs of changing weather. She had always returned with a catch of mackerel that fed her parents and two younger brothers. Then had come the worldwide exams to enter the Anarchate’s regional software and programming school that orbited the star 51 Pegasi. She had earned her place among the hundred people of Earth who chose a life among the stars and work for one of the sixteen interstellar conglomerates that dominated commerce and trade among the stars. She had spent the last ten years at Omega Casino, working with a few humans and many aliens. Until Matthew Dragoneaux arrived to teach the casino’s fifteen owners the negative side of ‘owning’ people in bondServant contracts. She PET mind-spoke to Lorelei.

“Of course this deep space region is not empty. But see my memory of fishing in the coastal waters near Skelleftea? I loved deciphering the rules of weather as I spent long hours fishing,” she said, sitting back in the glass chair of her Interlock Pit.

The female persona AI who had long ago chosen the name Lorelei from an obscure dialect of T’Chak, now changed from a blue mind cloud into a blond-haired, tall and slim copy of herself. “Is that why you attended the Software Academy at 51 Pegasi?”

Was it? Was her need to know the exact rules of weather the factor that had led her to study the binary language of expert software systems, terabyte-per-second computers and the quirks of self-aware AI systems?
“Perhaps so, Lorelei. And regarding the deep space that surrounds us, is every T’Chak ship now present?”

“Yes,” Lorelei said, then PET image-thought to her a complex three dimensional map of every neutrino-emitting starship within five light minutes of their location. “We are here. George is there.” Two white light dots began blinking slowly. “Matt is
there. And your friend Eliana is here.”

“I
already know where Eliana is, dear Lorelei.”

Suzanne and Eliana had been in telepathic communion when their two ships left Translation and appeared in the deep space region that lay between Alkalurops A and the outer binary group of two Sol-type stars that lay 4,000 AU from A. Matt had said this location was near the spot where the annual convention of genome slaver starships would arrive within a few hours. Thus, while the appearance of 507 gravity wave pulses would be immediately detected by the Anarchate naval base
on the moon of the planet Megil, they would be ignored since the naval base commandant had been bribed handsomely to tolerate the genome slaver get-together. Besides, the Anarchate would be looking for a single starship gravity wave pulse that suddenly appeared near a naval shipyard, admin HQ or land troop training base. Such a single ship signal might mean Matt coming to call. She smiled to herself. Little did the Anarchate know that today Matt would come calling with eight T’Chak Dreadnoughts!

“Hi there Suzanne,” spoke Eliana in her mind as her ship-sister completed her own checkout of the hundreds of systems that actually operated a two-kilometer long starship. “You ready for this?”

Was she? Suzanne had not done violence since she had demolished the two young men who’d tried to rape her, years ago. It made for a civilized life. But now that she had shared Eliana’s memory of Matt’s time when he worked as a cloneslave decanter in the Flesh Markets of Alkalurops on Megil, well, intentional violence seemed the only way to end an evil practice protected by an evil system that was two million years old. “Yes, ship-sister, I am ready. Have you had Altuna produce backup charges of antimatter for your six AM cannons?”

The
mind image of Eliana laughed. Long black hair framed a chalk-white face filled with iridescent green eyes. “Of course. Just as you have had Lorelei produce similar backups. I’ve even popped out a hundred directed energy domes on my ship’s back and sides. Makes me feel . . . itchy.”

Suzanne smiled broadly. “I know! I feel the same! And when the flat Alcubierre screens wrap me up on the sides, top, bottom, front and rear, well, I feel cut off from everything. Except for your mind, which cannot help thinking about that hot kiss Matt gave you before we left the Bogean Harmony space!”

Eliana’s mood changed from light-hearted to more serious, as if she were adjusting the wavelength of an electron beam microscope. “Well, I
had
to see him in person. To make sure that Mata Hari had properly prepared the retroviral truck for the antiviral that would kill the slow virus. Right?”

“Right, my sister.”
Suzanne knew Eliana missed her Matthew just as much as she missed her own George. He of the weight-lifter body that surrounded a mind focused on honor, duty and an outdoor playfulness that she cherished, having spent so much time surrounded by vacuum. “Shall we journey to Matt’s location and prepare to take our fight to the heart of the genome slavers?”

“Yes,” said Eliana in her mind, the fullness of her personality feeling as if she sat beside Suzanne in the Interlock Pit. She suspected Eliana felt similarly comforted by the company of
Suzanne’s mind.

The two of them moved their ships in perfect harmony across the intervening light seconds, ready to become part of the
Hexagon Prime fleet that would shortly Translate again to the central point around which the genome slaver starships would arrive. She looked forward to the shocked reaction when their eight ships dropped their perfect stealth camouflage. Then sadness overtook her as she realized that if they destroyed three hundred genome slaver starships, it meant several thousand beings would die. Biting her lip and telling herself that those beings were responsible for the enslavement of tens of thousands of cloneslaves, she became one with her ship, with Lorelei the AI and with the mission to free the galaxy of the twin evils of cloneslavery and bondservitude.

Matt entered the rendezvous space for the genome slavers in
ocean-time
, his mind and senses operating in millisecond intervals or faster, depending on the action to be taken. With a PET image-thought to Mata Hari his ship dispersed thousands of tiny Seek-Identify sensors, tachRemotes, nanoRemotes, holo decoys, Spy Eye remotes, nanoBit sensors and limpet complinks for taking over any shipboard CPU that could be reached before, during and after battle. The tachRemotes were essential for warning him of lightspeed weaponry shot at him so he maneuver out of the way
before
the beam arrived. They had proven essential in prior fights with Anarchate battleglobes. And while he did not expect many slaver ships would carry antimatter cannons, still, well-aimed proton beams and hydrogen-fluorine lasers could damage his ship. If they found a seam between the overlap of the Alcubierre shields.

“They will not penetrate our shields, Matthew,” said Mata Hari in his mind, her voice patient, feminine and slightly bemused by his worry. “That is one reason why the
Hexagon Prime fleet is aimed outward, with each ship nose facing the outside of our ring. Sideways shots against us will be difficult. In addition, my T’Chak AI brothers and sisters will use Repulsor blocks to lift and drop each ship in a carefully timed synchrony that will resemble a flexible carrier wave. Except there will be four carrier waves cycling through our eight ships, thereby presenting always mobile targets for any slaver ship that is trying to fight versus trying to escape.”

Matt had
thought about that. He did not wish for any slaver ship to escape. “Is the range of our neutron antimatter cannons good enough to catch a ship trying to flee?”

“Yes,
it is,” Matt Hari said patiently. “Plus our neutral particle beam lasers cannot be deflected by any electromagnetic field. And their range is a half light second, or 93,000 miles. The records we took from the slaver ship in Morrigan system indicate the genome slaver starships arrive in this general area, then congregate within 20,000 miles of the rendezvous beacon that lies at the center of our hexagon ring. Reassured now?”

“Matthew, it will all work out,” said the smiling face of Eliana in his mind by way of their shared tachlink.

George joined them, his burly persona providing a sense of group protection that exceeded the considerable weaponry carried by each T’Chak Dreadnought. “Matt, will you be using the Stasis Beam projector in this fight?”

He PET image-thought his response. “Not unless we need to capture a whole ship for a limpet complink to search its onboard CPU
Core for slaver base locations. There should be enough ship debris to provide that data.” He recalled his feelings as he decanted tiny alien infants at the cloneslavery factory on Megil, for later sale in the Flesh Markets. It was a memory he’d shared with his battlemates. They had not liked experiencing it. But all agreed it was a powerful motivator to decimate the oncoming genome slaver starships.

Suzanne’s blond curls and freckled face glowed in his mind
even as Eliana and George occupied mental seats. “Matthew, could there be living captives onboard these ships? Should we try to rescue them, as you did at Morrigan?”

Mentally he bit his lip as an onboard cyberclock said
One minute, 420 milliseconds, 119 nanoseconds, 43 picoseconds and seven femtoseconds since ocean-time entry
.

“There will be no survivors. Living at least,” he told his three human battlemates. “You saw the condition of the people who’d been kidnapped during the Morrigan raid. They were barely living. The slavers, especially alien ones, will simply snip off pieces of flesh, hard freeze them, then forget to feed the captives. Selling captives for slave labor is a minor income source.”

Eliana’s albino white face grimaced. “Then in destroying these ships we will simply be sending dead or dying bodies off to their eternal rest?”

“Yes,” Matt said, trying not to think of his mother
Kristen, father Benoit and oldest sister Charlotte sitting half-naked in the dark of a cargohold, yearning for a sip of water, feeling their energy die bit by bit.

“Matthew, it’s alright,” murmured Mata Hari in his mind, her persona image now that of Summer Girl who bent down to hug him.

“Yes, Matthew,” whispered Eliana in his mind. “These ships will not hurt any more people like your family.”

A group of four AI minds took shape in his mind, joining the
mind images of his three battlemates. “We too will fight to end this Anarchate practice,” said the mindvoices of
Flowering
,
Ocean
,
BattleMate
and
Gondu
from their ships as they assumed their position in the hexagon ring.

Another group of four T’Chak AI minds now joined the seven minds already present in Matt’s mental landscape. They were Eliana’s
Altuna
, Suzanne’s
Lorelei
, George’s
Inevitable
and his own
BattleMind
. The tough AI dragon who’d created Mata Hari to interact with ‘weak’ organics flapped his massive black wings, the white teeth of his crocodile snout gleaming in the mindlight. “Human Matthew Dragoneaux, I am not given to complimenting imperfect lifeforms. But this coming battle does . . . does serve the prime Task of my Masters, gone though most of them may be. Let us finish this. Now. Raise your Alcubierre shields!”

In his mind’s eye, the space around Matt’s ship and the seven other ships of the
Hexagon Prime fleet shuddered with dozens of gravity wave pulses as genome slaver starships arrived for their annual rendezvous. A meeting that Matt sincerely hoped would be the last time any of these ships ever saw each other.

Then the gravity waves and the dots of matter disappeared as BattleMind and Mata Hari worked together to deploy the perfect stealth camouflage of Alcubierre space-time fields. Thanks to their ability to Translate any incoming matter or energy beams to Elsewhere-Elsewhen, their eigh
t ships could not be detected by any sensor. Nor was there any lidar or radar reflection back to a ship. Any scan beams that swept through the space around the rendezvous beacon would show only the beacon.