Anarchate Vigilante (Vigilante Series 4) (19 page)

Three
pink proton beams slashed across space at lightspeed, impacting on the Commerce Station’s central globe and the fusion plants within. A series of yellow-orange explosions began to rip apart the orbital station.

His left dragon wing’s antimatter cannons spat out three coherent neutron antimatter beams toward the incoming battleglobe, which now lay just 80,000 kilometers from them. The blue-white incandescence of pure matter-to-energy conversion glared
more brightly than any O-class star.

Mata Hari’s
spinal domes fired dozens of neutral particle, free electron, carbon dioxide, hydrogen-fluoride and excimer laser beams at the scores of small sensor bots that shared the same orbit as the Commerce Station and visiting starships. The loss to the battleglobes of local tachRemotes would be a bother, but not a problem since all combat ships were close enough for lightspeed lag time to not affect targeting by either side.

“Incoming,” said Mata Hari even as she moved them outward toward the second battleglobe
.

The purple of incoming X-rays from Picket Globes struck against the Alcubierre shields erected long ago by Mata Hari. The x-rays were Translated to Elsewhere-Elsewhen by the same field that moved starships across the galaxy. It was a unique defense shield that only the ancient T’Chak possessed. It had been vital to their fleet battles against the Anarchate. Still, it was not perfect, as Matt knew from their ship losses to 30 mega
ton Thermonuke sleds, antimatter-filled Supply Tubes and Assault Asteroids that Translated directly into the normal space-time occupied by his ships as they sheltered behind the Alcubierre shield. The Anarchate had become creative in seeking ways to hurt him and his ships. Even though his total fleet amounted to 502 ships scattered across the Milky Way, that was small compared to the 11,000 plus battleglobes possessed by the Anarchate.

One second, 607 milliseconds, 23 nanoseconds, 14 picoseconds and 22
femtoseconds
.

“Fire at the second battleglobe!” ordered Matt, glad that for once he could destroy an enemy without fearing for his mother and sister.

Running Leader shivered with the mental impact of the blue-white
total matter-to-energy conversion explosions that his neurolink with the local tachRemotes showed him. The two security battleglobes had died from triple antimatter beams emitted from a spot on the night side of planet Working. Various laser beams slashed sideways to destroy the orbiting Commerce Station, while on the daylight side of Working, three KKVs attacked the two guardian battleglobes at the L1 Lagrange spot. Two of the KKVs impacted on one battleglobe, their small thermonuclear explosions biting holes in the 300 meter thick armor of the battleglobe. Simultaneous with the neurolink images came a time-delayed radio broadcast from the Halicene skyrise claiming an attack by an Offense Sled belonging to someone unknown. His herd protection instinct flared high.

“Hostiles infest this system!” he bellowed to the Bridge crew who now saw in the forward holospheres what he had mind-sensed thanks to being in combat neurolink.
The neurolink disks attached to his brain bulge were not as fast as having his nerves connected to the lightspeed photons of the image, but they were fast enough for him.

Malel
, his heavy world compatriot, hooted his anger. “Sector Captain! Translation inward, yes?”

Running L
eader thought quickly. As a herd leader should do when faced with surprise predator attacks. “Send two of our fleet inward on Translation. The rest of us will stay on vector for the planet. We must be prepared for attacks elsewhere in this system! Patience!”

The station posts of his Bridge crew became busy as tachlink signals were sent to each battleglobe captain. Malel, like a good executive officer, selected the two battleglobes to Translate inward
. He liked that about Malel. The armor-hide Orko understood about herd protection while also preserving the force of stampeding in order to smash down any new group of predators.

Chief Lark called from his Tactical
Cluster post. “The sleds and Remotes we have ejected. Should we reclaim them so they are not lost if we Translate out?”

“Reclaim them!” Running Leader said, knowing that shuttles from each battleglobe, aided by tractor beams, would take long minutes to recover the complex Remotes his fleet had seeded about them. But the probability of action somewhere else had now become a near certainty. They could spare some moments to recover weaponry that would be needed in the near future.

Matt felt starship
Mata Hari
rise up, away from the system’s ecliptic plane, so he would be in firing position before the daylight battleglobes rounded the planet’s bulge to the night side. He smiled, enjoying how well Mata Hari saw his intentions and translated them into ship action without him having to say a mental command. This was true neurolinking! Two minds thinking and acting as one!

“Thank you, Matthew,” she said as her sword slash
ed ruby red laser beams through a few Offense sleds tossed out by the nightside battleglobes. Just before they became incandescent blue-white vapor.

BattleMind sent Matt a sense of the dragon’s yearning to use the Graviton Beam
er on the planet below. “If I shrank yonder planet to a black hole, we could fire on these approaching battleglobes without the interference of planetary matter.”

Matt felt briefly tempted. But the surprise Rafael would shortly unleash required the presence of a planet with living beings on it. “No, not this time, my ally.
But in the future, when we attack any system without a living planet, we shall use either your Sun Glow or Graviton Beamer against the Anarchate base. Then we will Translate out long before the Anarchate tries to counter-attack!”

BattleMind’s rumble of tolerance for Matt’s decision did not sound happy, but it did feel accepting. He smiled at the slow, slow conversion of the T’Chak AI from an organic hating cybermind to someone who saw the value of organic impulsiveness and creativity. The AI had even flash-read Sun Tzu’s
The Art Of War
during their return from the Small Magellanic Cloud, long months ago. For it to show interest in something written by an organic was a major step forward in their joint enterprise.

One second, 903 milliseconds, 324 nanoseconds,
212 picoseconds and 922 femtoseconds
.

Eliana
nodded at him from the opposite side of the red supergiant star. “Matthew, we are ready to head for Antares B. When?”

“In a few more seconds. Gotta take out or damage these battleglobes before we head out. Is every ship ready to emit Remotes, sleds, sensorBeads and tachRemotes upon our arrival there?”

“Yesss,” she said, her drawl suggesting a slight impatience with him stating the obvious. “Our good Toktaleen has put his three brain lobes into overdrive, thinking up the best tactical positioning we could adopt in anticipation of a fleet arriving that outnumbers us five to one.”

“Oh?” Part of his mind took in the tactical deployment mind image from Toktaleen, as did each of them thanks to their joint
mindlink. “Looks fine to me. Let’s do it on arrival!”

“Firing!”
called Mata Hari into their group mind, showing them a three dee holo of the two battleglobes as they rounded the curve of planet Working.

“Right wing cannons aim for the northerly
battleglobe!” Matt said mentally.

Mata Hari’s mindsense gave him a verbal snort. “Did you once say something about not teaching ‘your mother to suck
eggs’ my Matthew?”

Matt grinned. She was right. His
mental words had lagged behind her doing exactly that action by a hundred milliseconds.

Out in space, two battleglobes exploded in
double blue-white stars of total matter-to-energy conversion as three AM beams hit each battleglobe, their impact deep enough to unbalance fusion power plants and the magfield storage bins of onboard antimatter. It all made for a beautiful globe of shell after shell after shell of MTE radiation byproducts.

“Everyo
ne, Translate now for Antares B! And Rafael, have fun dropping our surprise near Working.”

Running Leader felt the second group of ant
imatter explosions from the daylight battleglobes with less shock this time. His neurolink with his giant ship quivered with the impatience of his directed energy weapons crews to ‘do something’ to the enemy. He must make a decision shortly. Translate inward or elsewhere?

“Sector Captain!”
hooted Malel. “Look starward! At Antares A! A ship dropped out of Translation briefly and sent this white object hurtling toward planet Working!”

White object? “NavCore, identify white object.”

The Brokeet arthropod at that station, a stiff-legged older being whose name sigil was Yanakutt, flared his two antennae toward Running Leader. “Sector Captain, the tachRemotes near the planet do not have telescopic ability. But my spectroscope readings of the light wavelengths say the object is mostly water. It is a . . . a comet!”

A comet? And on a collision course with the planet. Well, this surprise from the Human renegade was new, but his two battleglobes had just arrived within five planetary diameters. They could handle this emergency.

“Malel, order our two in-system battleglobes to destroy this object before it can hit the planet.”

“Orders being sent!”

“And Chief Lark, how is the ingathering of our Remotes and sleds coming? Quickly?”

The Spelidon waved its right hand through a holo pedestal, then turned
to him. His Whiskers of Distinction showed the emotion of Determination Assured. “We have half the heavy Remotes we offloaded, my Sector Captain. Five minutes more and they will all be recovered. Including the Assault Asteroids and AM-loaded Supply Tubes.”

Running Leader hoped they did not have to Translate elsewhere before the full recovery of his dispersed
heavy munitions. The devices had been an inspired creation of his predecessor, Yorkel the Brokeet. They had motivated him to press the science researchers at Orion Nebula naval base to provide him with his three new surprise weapons. He hoped the Human’s combat fleet would show up somewhere. He did not wish to waste any surprise on the actions of a single starship. Like the one that had hidden in Alcubierre invisibility just above Working. Running Leader was sure that ship contained the renegade Human Matthew Raven’s-Wing Dragoneaux. Based on the radio screams of outrage from the Council spy Medun and the Halicene owner of the Human’s progenitor, it was clear this Human had arrived and rescued his progenitor before his fleet could arrive.

“Chief Lark, keep me apprised of progress on the munitions recovery. And please compliment your directed energy weapons crews for their time on station. Tell them we will soon enter combat.”

“Yes, Sector Captain!”

Matt
shuddered as his ship left Translation and arrived just 20 AU out from the blue giant star Antares B. A hellishly bright companion to Antares A that orbited just 574 AU from the red supergiant, it possessed no planets. Perhaps due to a stellar wind that was stronger than many star winds. Well, its stellar wind would help disperse the tachRemotes and sensorBeads that his fleet were even now putting out as they moved into an eight-sided bubble focused on their arrival point. The gravity waves emitted by their Translation emergence would guide the Anarchate fleet to that spot. Matt hoped each ship of the fleet would have time to move outward to a distance of 50,000 kilometers from their arrival point. With tachRemotes filling a 100,000 kilometer wide globe, their eight ships would be able to shoot antimatter beams to any point within the globe, while also engaging nearby battleglobes. They were setting the table for this new combat. It was now up to the Anarchate fleet captain to bring his battleglobes to the meal.

“My meal,” growled BattleMind in their
ocean-time
mind communion. “I claim half the incoming battleglobes!”

Matt showed the black-winged dragon his smile. “Battle ally, I suspect your fellow AIs on the other ships have an equal interest in tasting a battleglobe meal!”

Toktaleen the Brokeet took form in Matt’s mind. His hard-skinned ally tilted its two antennae toward him. “Vigilante leader, our englobement effort will be complete within a half second. Our arrival here with little inertial vector speed has allowed us to spread out in all directions. We are speeding out at just one-fourth lightspeed, with reversal of thrust once we are halfway to the outer globe boundary. Orders?”

Matt viewed the three dee mind image of how his eight ships were dispersing outward from their arrival point. “Good deployment, my friend.
However, I suggest that each ship fire off three KKVs toward our arrival point, and three KKVs outward toward our englobement boundary. That way we can use the EMP pulses of their explosions to destroy any tachRemotes emitted by the Anarchate fleet, no matter where the fleet ships emerge!”

Suzanne’s
golden curls and brown freckles filled their mindlink. While her Nordic face looked serious, her green eyes showed a hint of amusement. “Feel superior, my battle friends. But this Anarchate commander is coming toward us, and he has a ‘surprise’ that will hurt one of us. You, Matt, I think. Be ready to go into Stepwise Translation!”