Anarchate Vigilante (Vigilante Series 4) (40 page)

“Gravity pulses!” cried Malel from his ring
of WorkPads and holo pedestals. “Our NavRemotes triangulate the seven pulse sources to lie at a distance of . . . three light cycles out!” His fellow heavyworld ally angled his long scaly ears in a body sign that indicated puzzlement. “Sector Captain, they are not pursuing a near lightspeed flyby, as in prior battles.”

“Not yet!” Running Leader croaked to Malel and the rest of the Bridge crew on shift duty. “Chief Lark
, increase our supply of neutron antimatter, and power up the equatorial accelerator  to the level needed for black hole production.” He touched on the comlink to the Alcubierre engine modules. “Chief Engineer Melatoon, apply that Loglan mind of yours to activating our Alcubierre Bubble defense!”

The neurolink patch affixed to his skull showed him the complexities of moving a twelve
nipad
thick battleglobe from Alert status to Combat status. Scores of crew moved to relieve other crew at the Offense stations, including the polar antimatter cannon embrasures. The six fusion power plants that provided energy for every weapon, every gravplate and all ecofields inside his ship moved to maximum output. The flow of deuterium, tritium and lithium six isotopes to the magfield held plasmas in each fusion plant increased notably. He thought an order to the Bridge holosphere.

“NavCore! Have you alerted our fellow ship commanders to this news?”

Yanakutt the Brokeet gestured. “Affirmative, Sector Captain Running Leader. Both ships are moving from Alert to Combat status.”

He focused on the Brokeet at EMP Shields post. “Brokleen, orient our Alcubierre Bubble shield to face away from the gas giant. I doubt our enemy will try to materialize between us and the gas giant!”

“Complying,” clicked Brokleen.

Running Leader focused on the changed Bridge holo. This holo showed space from three light cycles out and inward, with the current orbital position of his three ships and the two planets icon highlighted. Shifting his vision from yellow light to ultraviolet and infrared, he looked for any sign of
comets or Assault Asteroids that might be aiming for them. There were no moving neutrino sources. Just the gravity wave pluses of seven starships that had arrived out system.

“My crew, there are two hundred battleglobes from Sector 15 in deep stealth hiding out there!” he said over the ship’s AllCall system. “We are the
hammer stone against which the outer fleet will press their attack on these T’Chak ships. Be ready to eject black holes, antimatter, our Bethe Inducer beam and every directed energy laser post!”

A small holo pedestal to the left of his Command Bench s
howed a repeat of the Charlotte clone galactic tachnet broadcast that had brought the renegade Human to this star. The Human Dragoneaux was no fool. It knew as well as he that a trap lay inside this star system. Perhaps it thought Running Leader would secretly apply the Nova Blast weapon against the planets of this system as soon as the T’Chak ships arrived near the gas giant? He had no such plans of course since the only ships with Bethe Inducer installations were his two battleglobes. But the Human did not know that. So perhaps it would seek a covert entry into the system?

Well, his ships had dispersed thousands of tachRemotes, Spy Eyes, sensorBeads, Assault Asteroids, antimatter-laden Supply Tubes, Thermonuke sleds, Picket Globes,
and similar devices, many in stealth mode. Most could detect neutrino, infrared and UV-emitting sources. Anything that did not send the Friend/Foe identifier emission would be instantly attacked.

Suzanne sat in her Interlock Pit, in mindlink with Matt, Eliana
, the blue mind glow of her ship AI Lorelei, and the minds of the other pilots and ship AIs. For most people this linkage over the tach module would feel crowded. But for pilots taught to compartmentalize their mental attention into hundreds of compartments, each segment operating on its own until a change required her personal attention, it felt normal.

Lorelei assumed her female T’Chak form. Her red eyes gleamed with her version of eagerness. “Is it correct that our Vigilante Matthew will travel to the gas giant using the Dark Energy
stardrive of our Bogean allies?”

“Yes, Lorelei. That is Matt’s plan. Which should happen with
in a minute or two.” She focused on a mental holo of the nearby star system, paying attention to the two planets and asteroid belt that made up the star’s ecliptic plane. Their ships had arrived about twenty degrees north of the ecliptic, which gave them a small ‘look down’ ability when detecting normal lightspeed emissions. However, the cluster of tachRemotes that her lifemate George had ejected just prior to their crossing of the ecliptic, now floated about the gas giant. “You can see from our own tachRemotes that the battleglobes have seeded the area with thousands of Remotes, Picket Globes and a few Assault Asteroids and small Supply Tubes. Matt aims to exit in Alcubierre stealth next to the two battleglobes. He will attack them before they know he is beside them.”

Lorelei’s purple back scales glowed with energy even as her crocodile snout opened to show sharp white teeth. “A tasty tactic. Do his actions better resemble your probability games of chess or poker?”

Suzanne laughed. She gave thanks she was not yet in
ocean-time
mode. So she could hear her own laugh and feel mostly normal. “Lorelei, you might ask that question of Mata Hari. After seven years spent inside Matt’s mind, and he inside hers, Mata Hari could do a better job than me at relating his actions to a game module!”

Lorelei gave a loud mental snort, loud enough to echo in her mind. Fortunately her AI, like the AIs of the other ships, spoke mentally at a volume much lower than that of BattleMind. “This persona will do as you suggest. Once Matthew resumes talking to us. He and Mata Hari have now entered the Dark Space realm
. They should arrive shortly.”

Suzanne let her mind go ‘open’ to future space-time. What she saw made her smile a bit. “Eliana,” she called to her mind-sister. “Matt will arrive safely. And he will be successful.”

The albino-white face of her mind-sister loomed before her, her dark green eyes looking distant, as if she too had taken a precog look at the near future. “Suzanne, thanks much! I just saw that myself. Good news. But looking ahead some days I see trouble swirling around Morrigan like a storm. Even more trouble lies ahead in Sector 15, where our fleet will head to after this business is completed. We . . . we all survive, from what I can see. But new players enter our future and the Anarchate officials I can sense have become fixated on killing Matt and destroying all of Ocean Fleet and Hexagon Prime fleet.”

Suzanne saw that herself, as she pushed her precog senses forward along the probable timeline. “Sister, recall that what we perceive is the future that is most probable. It can change, based on our actions and those of other actors elsewhere in the Milky Way. Feel reassured.
Our battle against cloneslavery will continue!”

Eliana disappeared. Only to be replaced by the dragon image of Lorelei. “My co-pilot, how does fleshly life create . . . small versions of themselves? Babies I believe is the term.”

Damn!
Had Lorelei been spying on hers and George’s last session of love-sharing? She hoped not. While being in continuous mindlink with eight humans and ten AIs made it hard to separate their private lives from their ship lives, everyone in mindlink had agreed to do so. Kind of a mental ‘clothing’ that they all applied to personal time spent outside of their Battle Council.

“Lorelei, add that to your questions for Mata Hari!” She sniffed, trying to push away her distinct and lovely memory of loving George of the wide shoulders, tight abdomen, strong
buttocks, black curly hair and—“Just ask her!”

Lorelei’s shape changed to her blue cloud persona. “I will inquire. After all, she and her Gatekeeper partner have done much research in this area.”

Suzanne paid no attention to her AI’s personal questions and comments. They had a battle coming up and Matt might need fleet support. They all must be ready to Translate into the system within milliseconds!

Matt
emerged from the Dark Energy stardrive in
ocean-time
mode, his thoughts winging through the two kilometers of ship
Mata Hari
, touching base with Mata Hari herself, with a wave at BattleMind as the giant dragon focused its attention on the Sun Glow and Graviton weapons. BattleMind loved destruction at the stupendous level. Even though Matt had no plan to use those weapons, well, the unexpected had a habit of changing the best thought-out plans of both people and AIs.

Their arrival in normal space-time on the opposite side of the system from the gas giant allowed Matt a seven femtosecond view of normal space-time. Then the ship’s Alcubierre shields enveloped
all six sides of the ship and they disappeared from perception by anyone outside their shields. Only the brief occultation of a distant star as they passed between the star and a viewer looking their way would alert anyone to the fact that some ship with perfect stealth had arrived.

The surprise happened.

“There’s a Corvette—”

“Corvette ship lying in Nova Blast position!” said Mata Hari in his mind.

“Damn!” He realized that the Anarchate planned to sacrifice its remaining two battleglobes and the small Courier in an effort to catch his fleet with the lightspeed expansion of the star’s corona in a nova blast that could catch them in place, before they could Translate out. Like they had done during the Dumbbell Nebula battle when they’d taken out an Anarchate Admin Center.

“Matthew,” called Mata Hari in tach mindlink. “Does the Dolmat ship captain know about this Nova Blast effort? We know one of the battleglobes is his ship, based on its spectrogram and emissions arc.”

Did he? Did the Dolmat herbivore who had come up with two new Offense weapons and the Alcubierre Bubble Defense intend to sacrifice himself and his other ships so the Anarchate could decimate Matt and his fleet? There was one way to find out. Or rather two ways.

“Suzanne! Eliana! Look at what I’m seeing on the far side of this star! Someone is planning a Nova Blast against us as soon as we Translate into the system,” he said, sending his mind-image to all the pilots of Hexagon Prime. “Can you two check the . . . the mind feel of this Dolmat? See if his mind reflects a suicidal mood?”

Suzanne’s blond smile and Eliana’s jade green glow both sent him mindpulses of agreement. In a few hundred milliseconds he perceived their mindtouch.

Eliana was first like always. “No sense of—
”

“Suicidal feelings or thoughts,” finished Suzanne.

The mind-sisters grinned at each other, then turned serious. “It seems this Dolmat captain was sent here to draw you into a trap that contained layers of which he was unaware,” they both mindspoke in unison.

Two hundred sixty-seven milliseconds, 47 nanoseconds, 23 picoseconds and 11 femtoseconds
, echoed the cyberclock in his mind.

Matt felt the attention of the other pilots and AIs in their mind communion. “Everyone, I’m glad I followed our advice to Immovable about always checking the far side of the star
that hosts an Anarchate base!” He sent a mindpulse of reassurance to everyone. “My ship and I will continue with our mission. We’ll see what can be done on site and in stealth. It’s likely I will call all of you to Translate into the system. Later!”

# # #

Running Leader
was getting frustrated with counting the
nitas
since the arrival of the seven gravity wave pulses. Was the Human trying to draw him out to battle on the system’s outer edge? Doing that would damage the pincer-on-pincer battle plan that Sytoon had shared with him.

“Crew, stay alert to anything unexpected!” he croaked in standard Belizel. “Yanakutt, call Dokeel am-thak over on the Courier
!”

The black and white stripes of the Hootnai quadruped appeared
in holo before Running Leader’s Command Bench. The elongated head and single eye of the Intel Base spy fixed on him. “Sector Captain, you have orders for attacking the gravity wave sources?”

“Not yet,” he croaked. “Where is the Human female clone? Is she awake? Able to talk?”

The long brown eyelashes of the Hootnai lifted slowly. “She is isolated within her rest cubicle. And yes and yes to your questions secondary. Why?”

“
Bring her out and put her before your tachnet visualizer. Perhaps the real-time image of her will draw a response from our target!”

The Hootnai gestured with a chest tendril. “As you wish. I have ordered a Security bot to escort her to the Bridge. We remain on Combat Alert.”

“As you should!” he croaked. Running Leader looked to his Spelidon crewman. “Chef Lark! Any sign from ship sensors of target acquisition?”

“None,”
wheezed the black-furred biped. “I am in neurolink with ship
Dedicated’s
Tactical officer and we are both randomizing our sensor sweeps. Any detection will draw an instant reply!”

Running Leader told himself to be patient. A hard thing for a
person used to being always on the move, always mobile as part of the herd commune. He’d found a career in the Anarchate navy by seeing duty on the Bridge as equal to work as a herd Scout, a person obliged to run back to the herd with news of predators. Unfortunately, unseen predators did not offer the herd an option for a stampede or a retreat.