Anarchate Vigilante (Vigilante Series 4) (20 page)

Matt nodded mentally to all seven of his pilot allies, then sent them and their AI partners a sense of his determination. “Thank you, Suzanne. But with my mother on board this ship, I will not do anything stupid. I think. Anyway, if something deadly begins happening here, let us all agree to rende
zvous back on the far side of Antares A. We can take stock there and then head for Megil.”

“Agreed!” said multiple voices.

Running Leader’s neurolink with the gravity wave pulse sensors of
Defiant II
made him the first to sense his fleet’s new target.

“Eight gravity wave pulses at Antares B star!” he
croaked to his Bridge crew. “Chief Lark! Are all our heavy munitions recovered?”

The Spelidon biped’s black fur stiffened with excitement. “Yes!”

Running Leader waved his right hand over the AllCall sensor pad. “Chief Engineer Herd Defense, take us into Translation! Malel, signal the same to the fleet!”

“Complying Sector Captain,” hooted his
Orko ally. “Time in Translation to that point will be just five seconds!”

Run
ning Leader sent his neurolink perceptions out to every combat station of his giant globeship, as eager as his 412 crew members to become part of the stampede that beat this upstart biped into the dust clouds of the galaxy. Soon!

Matt
’s
ocean-time
senses felt like his body was being beaten by the thirty-eight gravity wave pulses emitted by the arrival of the Anarchate fleet of battleglobes. They all arrived within Toktaleen’s englobement field, just four thousand kilometers off the exact spot of Hexagon Prime’s emergence moments ago. His mind, already split into dozens of segments, now jumped to hundreds of segments as the newly arrived battleglobes fired black antimatter beams outward, a few of them hitting the invisible Alcubierre fields of his ships. How?

“Mata Hari, how did they know where to aim?”

His Lady of the Sword pointed toward the battleglobe that lay in the center of the Anarchate battleglobe swarm. “That is the ship of the Dolmat fleet commander! Your Eliana and Suzanne have confirmed it via their precog psychic senses. As for the AM aiming, perhaps the ship sensors looked for occultation of background stars by our Alcubierre shields.”

Matt thought quickly of how he’d seen his Dad at night, crossing between the light glow of their homestead and Matt, who was tending to his pet animal in the grain silo. The homestead light had blinked with his Dad’s passage.
Damn!

“All ships, fire on
that cluster of battleglobes! Three AM beams per ship. Mata Hari, coordinate our 48 beams so we do not waste any on overkill!”

“Firing!” cried Mata Hari, BattleMind and the AIs of the seven other ships in his fleet.

Running Leader felt intense mind shock as incoming antimatter beams destroyed eight of his ships in less than a second. The beams came from all around them. Only his prior orders to each globeship to move off vector as soon as they exited Alcubierre space-time had prevented more losses. As it was, three ships had been wounded by glancing antimatter beams. And the beams had struck at the spots where ships were actually moving to! That meant this space was filled with tachRemotes and sensorBots seeded by this Human!

“ Herd
, move sideways in Translation! Now!”

Matt blinked as the surviving thirty battleglobes blinked out of sight even as his fleet’s incoming antimatter beams spread across their englobement field.
Shit!

“Everyone, this new
captain is copying our Stepwise Translation maneuver! Be ready to do the same when the Anarchate ships reappear.”

Starship
Mata Hari
shuddered as dozens of gravity wave pulses penetrated his ship’s Alcubierre fields. Incoherent gravity waves did them no harm. But they told him that this Dolmat Sector Captain knew every inch of Yorkel’s combat playbook.

“Stepwise now!”

Running Leader blinked as he perceived normal space-time. Remaining in neurolink as a ship enters, then exits Alcubierre stardrive is not an approved Anarchate fleet maneuver. But with this slippery Human, it had become apparent he as Sector Captain must be as unpredictable as the Human if he were to preserve the last remnant of Sector 14’s fleet of battleglobes.

“Fire at the occultation of stars we recorded on arrival!”
Running Leader told his crew and his fleet via tachlink. “Chief Lark, fire our gravity surprise at the nearest confirmed occultation target. Ships
Stupendous, Indomitable, Unexpected
and
Dominant
, do the same at your confirmed target points!”

Running Leader watched local space-time closely, hoping to see the unshielded form of a T’Chak warship. If his surprise made contact with one of those incredible shields, the shield would die. Leaving the physical body of the enemy ship open to lightspeed attack. Shaking himself mentally, he sought the studied patience of a great herd leader.

# # #

Matt’s
ocean-time
mindsense detected Mata Hari’s warning just after they exited the Stepwise Translation that moved every ship away from where they had been waiting for the enemy fleet.

“Matthew! Five enemy battleglobes have emitted small gravitational concentrations toward our former positions.
Two such concentrations are headed for Eliana’s new position! They are moving too fast for her to move away on deut-li thrust!”

“Translate and put us between her ship and those gravity things!”

Matt’s mind reeled from the multiple entries and exits from Alcubierre space-time. Exhaustion slapped him in the face. Fatigue clawed at him. But determination is stronger than a person’s body. He focused on the incoming gravity things.

“Mata Hari, what
are
those things!”

“Tiny black holes Matthew,” she said, slashing her sword at them to no effect. “They absorb all matter and energy and—
”

Pain slashed against Matt’s
left side ship skin as the left Alcubierre node burned out upon the touch of the invisible black hole that was detectable only due to its gravity wave emissions, thanks to a black hole’s great mass.

“
Move upward on Repulsor! Get us off the vector of that incoming black hole!” Mind spinning, his left hip feeling deep pain from the burn out of the Alcubierre node, he realized other things like this might be heading for his fellow pilots. “Fleet! Translate to Antares A now! We will follow when possible.”

Running Herd saw something he had longed for as the new herd leader for Sector 14’s battleglobe fleet. Through neurolink vision he saw a black reptile wing with three antimatter cannons affixed to
it, while just behind them smoked a node dome on the two
nipad
-long body of the flying reptile ship.

“Fire AM beams! Fire lasers! Fire everything we have at that enemy ship!”

It would take less than a half second for his lightspeed beams to reach this wounded starship. Would it be there when they struck? Would the enemy ship go into Translation before strike time? Would it—

“Strike!” cried Chief Lark.

Matt winced, then mentally cried out as two proton beams and several carbon dioxide lasers hit the belly of his ship, just before the spinal Alcubierre shield extended downward to cover up that exposure of his ship’s flexhull to normal space-time. And to weaponry carried by a Nova-class battleglobe. Elsewhere, the nuke-armed KKVs exploded, pushing out dozens of EMP pulses that should disturb battleglobe targeting.

“Matt!” cried Eliana across time and space as her mind touched his both telepathically and via his implanted tachlink node. “We’re safe! We’re all safe. Come to us!”

Matthew Raven’s-Wing Dragoneaux fell downward into the fiery pain that made him feel half incinerated. It was too much.
Ocean-time
exhaustion took him into unconsciousness even as he heard Mata Hari yell out to Eliana and the rest of the fleet.

“Translating now! We will be with you shortly!”

Running Leader sighed as the exposed hull of the enemy ship moved upward, away from the incoming antimatter beams. But a few proton and carbon dioxide beams burned into the black flexskin of the ship’s hull. He watched as, in real-time view, the alien ship skin writhed away from the laser impact, then moved inward to enclose the wound spot. The new skin sparkled with some kind of light reflective coating. Then the T’Chak ship hull vanished from sight as it entered Alcubierre space-time, presumably translating to somewhere else. As had the seven other T’Chak starships.

“ We beat them!” cried Chief Lark.

“Hardly,” grunted Running Leader. “We lost eight battleglobes. They suffered one ship wounded. And now they are aware of our second surprise weapon. I expect them to have a tactic to deal with it the next time we encounter them.”

Malel hooted an encouraging tone. “They departed this battlefield, Sector Captain.
We
did not. That is better than any prior fleet engagement with this Human biped. Even my former leader, Sector Captain Yorkel, did not accomplish what we did today.”

All around the Bridge the Brokeets on duty watch rasped agreement, while Chief Lark slapped the deck’s gravplates with his tail. He suspected the pheromones circulating among his Brokeet crew members were infested with the scent of success.

“Malel, you speak accurately. But premature celebration invites new danger. And a wounded predator is always more dangerous to the herd than a dead predator.”

Yanakutt the elder Brokeet waved an upper arm his way. “Sector Captain, where do we go now?”

That was an easy decision. “Back to our naval base at Orion Nebula. We have three ships to repair. And I would hope to increase our black hole launcher ships to more than the five presently outfitted with this weapon.”

About them, the black of normal space-time became the greyness of Alcubierre stardrive space-time.

CHAPTER
EIGHT

Matt felt softness under his body and a soft touch to his forehead. Restraining his ‘strike out’ combat reaction from years as a Protector to Aliens, remembering he was on his own starship, he opened his eyes. His Mom’s face loomed above him, her expression of deep concern obvious. She smiled with relief.

“Matthew! We were so worried about you, Eliana and I. But your Mata Hari told us about these exhaustion collapses from being in computer speed link with people and AIs. How do you feel?”

He flexed his hands, shifted his arms under the silken coverlet of his platform bed, noticed that the fiery burning to his left side had vanished, then half-grinned at her. “Hey, Mom, remember the time I felt off the silo roof? Well, it’s better now than that time. No broken bones. Love you.”

Matt’s mother Kristen took hold of his face with both hands, her touch warm and tender. She blinked away tears. “Ohhhhh, my Matthew. My young man. How you have grown. And I am so happy to be here with you. And with your Eliana!”

The tall, white-skinned woman who was his lifemate, his battlemate, the woman who had helped heal his memory pain from the death of Helen Trinh
, she moved from behind Kristen to stand beside the platform bed. The bed they had both shared in love-making. Before Eliana took control of her own T’Chak Dreadnought as a combat pilot. And as a precog mind partner with her mind-sister Suzanne. “Hey there, battlemate. Good to see you awake,” she said softly in her soft musical voice.

Matt reached out to Eliana
with his left hand, then touched his Mom’s face with his other hand. “Mom, if you don’t mind, I need to hug Eliana. She . . . has become as vital to me as . . . as life itself. As important to me as you and Charlotte. Okay?”

Kristen Dragoneaux smiled like a grown up woman who knew what being married to a life partner was like. Letting go of him, she stood up and moved aside a bit. “Of course Matthew. It has helped me, talking with your Eliana, while we waited for you to recover from your . . .
ocean-time
exhaustion.”

Eliana bent down to embrace him, her long black hair spreading out to cover his head. She wrapped her
arms around his neck and hugged him close. “Oh, my Matthew. I was so worried for you while we waited for you to return to us from that battle. I . . . I felt your mind pain from the laser strikes on
Mata Hari’s
left side. We all did. Suzanne, George and everyone else. Feel my love!”