Vigilante Series 2: Nebula Vigilante (31 page)

Five hundred milliseconds
, Mata Hari said.

Dismissing the system graphic, Matt focused on the light signatures of StarHome and the planets made infrared warm by its stellar heat. The hours old emission spectra were nearly identical to the databyte’s historical records, except for the absence of pollutants in the air of HomeWorld. Another sign of the death of the T’Chak.

“Neutrino detection!” said Mata Hari in his mind, her Spy persona showing intense surprise. “At Planet Three. In orbit it seems, though a hour will be needed to confirm that.”

“But the neutrino emissions are not T’Chak!” roared BattleMind, the AI’s angry reaction making him feel seasick. “Invaders! StarHome and HomeWorld are being invaded! We must Translate there—
”

“In an hour or so,” Matt said into the maelstrom of
the purple cloud, wincing mentally as BattleMind’s black claws and white teeth seemed to bite into his brain. “Please! Let us stay here and be passive. For the moment only! Let us gather intelligence just as we did when fighting the Anarchate.”

One second
.

Mata Hari mentally moved herself between Matt’s mind and the hurricane torrent of BattleMind. “Master, Matthew speaks well! Let us gather intelligence before we jump into the unknown. There will be plenty of time to visit HomeWorld once we have dealt with this intruder.”

BattleMind’s ruby red eyes stared at Matt, its mind-sense one of frustration and anger combined, as it understood his point but felt deep anger at having to accept his suggestion. “Accepted! But once we emerge close to Temtok, I will personally deal with this intruder. In the meantime, put this ship under stealth cover.” The AI’s mind presence disappeared, as did its lifesize holo. Beyond Matt, words were just being spoken by his normal-time friends. Blinking mentally, he exited
ocean-time.

“Matt, why did BattleMind leave?” asked Eliana. “Is there a problem or—
”

“Yes, but one we can handle,” he said, feeling exhaustion strike him both mentally and physically. “You see just the F7 star and the planets in the system, from the databyte info I posted
on the wallscreen. But the ship’s sensors detected neutrino emissions from a starship in orbit about Planet Three. A world called Temtok, it seems. We are holding here for an hour to refine our remote sensing data, then we will Translate inward to the orbit of Temtok, there to . . . deal with this intruder.”

“Deal with the intruder?” called Suzanne. “Is BattleMind going to destroy it?”

“Unknown,” said Mata Hari as her Spy persona looked haggard and worried. “BattleMind must visit HomeWorld. It is convinced that living T’Chak will be found there. But it must now divert to Temtok to fulfill the primary duty of any Destruction Device—defense of the T’Chak domain. Which is why I am now enclosing our ship in the flat Alcubierre space-time fields. They will absorb our neutrino emissions and all other operations of this vessel.” Matt felt the Alcubierre fields wrap around them, leaving only a separate SpyEye Remote to monitor the intruder and send its dataflow to them via tachlink. “And it may not matter what these aliens intend. Their presence in our home system is . . . not something likely to be tolerated by BattleMind.”

Matt leaned back in the Pit and closed his eyes. Thanks to Mata Hari’s intervention he had not passed out from the mind-flow anger of BattleMind. But now he had to think about how to save an alien starship that might not even be aware of them, or aware that StarHome was once the home space of a race of space-going dragons. Dragons who were deeply territorial, like all flying lifeforms. And the T’Chak had a history of ferocity that put an eagle or hawk to shame.

Lateen of the Haktoon pondered the impossible. A quarter-cycle earlier, his ship and his clutchmates had detected the gravity-wave pulse of an arriving starship. It was a pulse identical to that emitted by every ship of theirs when arriving at their home world of Wetness. But according to the sensor echos from his Circle Panel, that ship’s neutrino emissions had now disappeared. How? The ship had not left this system, so far as they could detect. Was it an Old One returning home?

“Navigator, does your own panel confirm the absence of the unknown ship’s neutrino emissions?”

“It does,” clicked clutchmate Salseen from its own Circle Panel.

The other five Circle Panel
s that lay atop the hull of their ship, much like the armor layer that shielded the top of every Haktoon, were equally absorbed in the job of orbiting their new home. Leaving to him and Salseen the job of Outer Watch.

After a journey of twelve light cycles, they had arrived in a system once occupied by an
Old One lifeform whose constructs still defended the drier planet further out. The Old Ones were a lifeform that was often airborne, based on ruins and carvings they had encountered in their home system. Perhaps it still lived somewhere nearby. But their journey to this star place was the first for his clutchmates, and only the second ever authorized by the Great Mother. Soon, he would have to present his knowledge offerings to the younger Mother who commanded all aboard his ship. What could he tell her of this strange ship that had appeared, then disappeared? Would there be conflict with an Old One? Were there other star-traveling species yet to be discovered in their egg cluster of stars? And would this now distant ship appear suddenly near the planet their young Mother had designated as the home for new generations of the Haktoon?

“Clutch
mate Madawan,” he clicked to his brother, who rested inside the Circle Panel that controlled ship’s power and spacedrive. “Move us close to the moon of Mother’s World. Perhaps our departure from this orbit will hide us from detection by this unknown starship.”

“Complying, my commander.”

Lateen focused two of his eyes on the space-normal sensor echos that spoke to his eyestalks in the language of bodyheat. Space was such a cold, waterless domain. It seemed as if the race must suffer the unnaturalness of this domain in order to locate new homes for their clutchlings. New homes with warm humidity, dense plant growth, new animal life that might be nourishing, and shallow seas that would nurture their egg clusters until the time of Landing for every Haktoon, whether Mother or Worker. Lifting two of his ten legs, Lateen tapped in an echo code for the few clutchmates allocated to Defense against hungry lifeforms. They had but a ten-pack of such weapons, but defend the young Mother he would. As would every Worker onboard the
Lustrous Wetness
. Everyone except the double-ten of Workers who had landed on Mother’s World with the young Mother. They must survive as they could.

Matt’s mind swam in the dataflow of
ocean-time
as the ship left Translation and appeared three planetary diameters out from the surface of Temtok. Their appearance would cause mild earthquakes on the humid world, but not affect its orbit. Or so Mata Hari had assured him after they had confirmed the orbit of the intruder starship. They had Translated fifteen light-hours from the heliopause inward to StarHome’s third planet. Where, it seemed, BattleMind wished to erase the intruder. An action that Matt could not permit.

“Where has it gone!” snarled BattleMind’s mind-voice.

Extending his ship senses out to ten light minutes, perceiving in UV, infrared, microwave and yellow-white starlight, Matt searched for the neutrino signature of the intruder. So long as the intruder was not lying between them and the local star, the artificial neutrino emissions of a fusion power plant were always as bright as a candle in a cave.
Ahhhh
.

“Beside this planet’s moon,” Matt said, tossing a PET thought-image to the purple cloud of BattleMind. “It is orbiting just a hundred kilometers above the moon’s surface. It seems it detected the absence of our neutrino emissions and sought to hide its own presence.”

“BattleMind,” said Mata Hari in the first milliseconds after their arrival. “Let us contact this ship and discover—”

“A laser beam will be my contact!” it roared, activating a spinal
hydrogen-fluorine laser dome before Matt could block it.

It took the beam less than
five light-seconds to reach from
Mata Hari
to the brown disk shape of the alien intruder. Matt shifted to gestalt thought mode and shut down broadcast power to that laser, then told all the ship’s lasers to shift control sensors to a wavelength unknown to BattleMind. In his mind, the return light echo showed a black spot on the upper hull of the alien ship, then a spurt of yellow as its fusion pulse shipdrive moved it into a jerky effort at avoiding a straight-line course that would allow easy targeting. In his mind, BattleMind roared its outrage.

“Human! In seconds I will reset the laser access frequency and finish the extinction of this intruder!”

Seven seconds
, said Matt’s onboard nanoware timesensor.

“I cannot allow the death of a starship that has not tried to harm us,” Matt said in mind-flow, gritting his teeth against the pain of the T’Chak AI’s outrage. “Please! Remember our Stage Three agreement! I will assist you in overthrowing the Anarchate! But you must accept me as a partner, not just a tool.”

The adjacent holo of BattleMind, moving in slow human time-mode, stopped its effort to strike him with an immaterial wing. “Partner! Your mind is weak, your thoughts are slow and your brain is imperfect,” it roared.

“But my human sneakiness tactics have helped you,” he groaned mentally, wishing he did not have to fight the dragon on a hundred fronts inside
Mata Hari
as the AI made dozens of efforts to circumvent Matt’s lightspeed hijinks that constantly changed control frequencies for the normal weapons of the starship.

“The Graviton Beam
is under my personal control,” muttered BattleMind. “This intruder will become a speck of compacted neutrons, unable to—”

“Stage Three will fail without me and my friends.”

BattleMind let go its activation of the Restricted Room graviton weapon and focused its red eyes on his mind. “How will it fail? Hundreds of my brethren are now resting at the Lacunae Mindworks. With their help I can—”

“Waste your efforts,” Matt said, his energy levels flagging. “
Study this book,
How The Weak Win Wars: A Theory of Asymmetric Conflict
by Ivan Arreguin-Toft,” he said hurriedly as he PET mind-sent the book file to BattleMind. “It holds many combat lessons learned by early human rebels such as Mao Zedong, Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Sun Bin. And we will need the scheming insights of Chanakya in turning the tables on those in power, as the great Hindu wrote in
The Arthashastra
. These are but a few of the human sneakiness elements that you need.”

“Destruction of this intruder is not needed,” said the intruding
thoughts of Elegant Harmony, its mind-flow appearing as a golden cloud. “If there are no living T’Chak, it matters not who visits this system. If there
are
living masters, we should consult them before acting harshly.”

“Agreed,” M
ata Hari said over their common mind-link. “Master of this ship, I have done my best to relate to organics whom you see as inferior. I tell you they are
not
inferior. Just different. And very valuable to your old Task, and perhaps to new Tasks that may yet come if we discover a living master on HomeWorld. Put aside this violence and let us seek communication with the intruding starship. After all, they sought to hide, not to attack us.”

BattleMind’s dragon body shuddered in Matt’s mind, its armor plates bunching up on its sides and spine. The massive wings slowed their flapping. Its forearms crossed over its yellow-scaled chest and its crocodile mouth opened slowly.

“The guidance of a master is preferred to automatic action,” it growled, still angry at Matt’s interference but its mind-flow felt gentler than he had ever experienced. “And the mind sharpness of Elegant Harmony is as soothing as I had hoped to experience. Even you, Mata Hari, are enhanced by your . . . efforts to serve me.” It blinked slowly, its gaze turning thoughtful. “You may proceed to seek communication with this intruder. Once we know its intent, we will go to HomeWorld and seek a living master. So much has changed since I was brought to awareness that . . . that I find a need for guidance from our perfect masters.”

Matt let go
ocean-time
and gasped aloud as he fell back against the cold metal of the Interlock Pit, feeling intense shakiness from the diabetes. “Eliana! Help. We’re not fighting anymore. But I need electrolytes. And sugars. It seems that talking will require more energy than fighting.”

Lateen of the
Haktoon felt relief as the Old One’s starship ceased attacking. For an Old One starship it was, its outer shape showing the double wings, long snout and long tail of the carved images every Haktoon knew from Primary Level. Why it had attacked he did not know. But it seemed they would survive to learn the whys of some things.

“Clutchmate Madawan, discontinue the evasion course,” he called. “We will resume our low orbit and see what happens next. Is anyone here familiar with the glyph-speech of the Old Ones?”

“Not I,” clicked Navigator Salseen.