Galactic Vigilante (Vigilante Series 3) (37 page)

“Show me the locations of these two globes in relation to the slaver ships.”

A three dee holo blossomed in his mind. The tight cluster of 900 habitat Globes, connected by scores of transit tubes, materialized before him. The two globes he cared about were located on the side of the base where the slaver ships were clustered. “Excellent. Now for the big one. Any data on which of the 160 battleglobes out there is the one occupied by Sector Captain Yorkel?”

George slammed a mental fist on the table that stood in front of his mental space. “Yes! Show us where this guy is!”

Mata Hari smiled a slow, nearly human smile. “Thought you would ask that. Yes, Matthew, though the decryption took some effort, here is the location of Yorkel’s battleglobe. Also the locations of every other battleglobe, the Supply Tubes, Courier ships and 100 asteroid locations labeled as ‘special ships.’ Whatever that means.”

He noticed something about the ‘special ships’ locations. “Mata Hari, I think those ‘special ships’ match up to 100 of the 4,306 locations you noted
earlier as having unusual energy signatures.”

“They do,” she said, her Spy persona frowning with intense interest. “But the base datafiles do not identify what is unusual about these ‘special ships
.’ We do know they have an energy signature that is not normal for a cold asteroid.”

“How not normal?” Matt asked even as his ship senses brought him the inputs that Mata Hari had noted.
George looked intensely interested too.

“Neutrino emissions, but at a very low level. Low enough to be from naturally occurring thorium or uranium deposits.”

One part of his mind said they had less than a second to go until they reached the far side of the outer shell of battleglobes, which would put them at 90,000 kilometers from the base. He did not wish to go beyond the range of his antimatter cannons.

“Good spying, my Mata Hari. Tachlink transmit all this data, especially the space-time locations of every battleglobe,
Courier and other ship within this area, to Ocean Fleet. Include the fake interviews for my human pilot allies. Oh, and order the fleet to be ready for Stepwise Translation jumps of a light second right after arrival here. There are thermonuke sleds out there, beyond the outer shell and taking a Translation jump within system is faster than moving off their arrival vector.” He smiled as something else hit him. “Adding to the gravity quakes caused by arriving this far in-system will be fun!”

George chuckled, thought of dishes rattling in a space habitat kitchen, and grinned wider. “Yup. Nice to know our fleet’s arrival will startle everyone!”

“Complying, Matthew. And while Ocean Fleet is heading this way, I will reverse our thrust so we will be heading straight at Yorkel’s defense shells when everyone arrives.”

“Yes!”

“Good!” muttered George, even as his stray thoughts brought to his mind the image of brown freckles and blond hair of his Nordic lifepartner.

Matt exerted tight mental control to avoid doing likewise.
Combat
. That was what must occupy him now. Along with the vital position intelligence they had gained. Tossing out a PET thought-image, he added the locations of the 100 ‘special ships’ to his list of targets for attack by
Mata Hari’s
directed energy laser domes and the antimatter cannons. He might not be as bloodthirsty or ruthless as BattleMind, but he liked the idea of heading straight at his enemy. And
Mata Hari’s
appearance within 90,000 kilometers would be a shock to the Anarchate. His ship’s Alcubierre shields were known but would be a frustration to their offense attacks. And he planned to lay down multiple antimatter cannon barrages just as soon as Ocean Fleet arrived and began their own AM barrages.

“They are arriving, Matthew.”

Yorkel had spent the last three hours in neurolink within his Captain’s Booth when
Defiant’s
AI flashed a Purple Alert image to his mind. The image co-occurred with a shuddering of the ship that said scores of gravity wave pulses now hit them as many ships Translated into the inner part of the base star system. Before he could think a thought, more images hit his three brain lobes, carrying blue-white antimatter explosions as too many battleglobes in the outer shell vaporized totally under the impact of thousands of antimatter beams.

“How!” he thought to the AI even as
Defiant
shifted its vector position per standard orders to every defense battleglobe. “What is—”

“Five hundred and seven T’Chak Dreadnoughts have Translated into this system, within antimatter cannon range,” shrilled the AI’s mindvoice in Brokeet click-speech. “All ships are firing back but the Alcubierre shields went up before any AutoFire beams could impact. Orders?”

This was the moment that he had planned for. Just not that they would be outnumbered three to one. Ignoring the question of where the Human had found 507 warships, he gave the command that would bring his surprises into the early seconds of this battle. And perhaps cause enough disruption to save a remnant of his great fleet.

“Sigma zi fourteen, nine twelve four.”

Skyree of the Solink felt his work globe shudder to the impact of hundreds of gravity wave pulses. Instantly he understood everyone had been wrong in assuming the weak pulses within the nearby supernova nebula had been natural. They were not. They were evidence of more ships than even Yorkel had emplaced in this system. And the arrival of the gravity wave pulses told him he must look to survival, albeit with an alert to his co-workers.

“A
n attack!” he cried in Belizel as he flared his leathery wings and then flew-hopped toward the globe entry hatch which contained vacsuits just inside the arrival chamber. “Put on vacsuits! Prepare for loss of eco-fields!”

Amidst the cries and grunts and ultrasonic whistles of his fourteen workmates, Skyree racked his memory for the location of the nearest Supply Tube or Courier vessel. The base’s arrival Globe 001 lay just three
nipads
away from his Globe 112. But only six transport vessels were attached to the globe. The rest had been grabbed by Sector Captain Yorkel for his purposes.

Touching the wallpad, the entry hatch opened onto the transit tube that led to other habitat globes. He grabbed at a vacsuit,
brought his wings into a cluster against his back, and began pulling on a generic vacsuit suitable for bipeds of his size. In his mind a mental timekeeper spoke to him.

“One second, nine hundred and thirty nanoseconds since Alert.”

Behind him sounded the foot pads and wing rustles of his workmates. Soon he would be crowded aside. Unless he entered the transit tube at a speed not normal for an avian like him.

Skyree sped along the tube faster than his workmates could follow.

Toktaleen of the Brokeet arrived in the target system in tachlink mind communion with other pilots of Hexagon Prime even as the five hundred ships of Ocean Fleet also popped into normal space-time all around him. Simultaneous with his perception of scores of steel grey battleglobes clustered in a pentagonal pattern that blocked access to the distant sparkle of the Intelligence base came his awareness of nanoBit computers, white noise generators, Offense sleds and tachRemotes that launched outward in the short femtoseconds before
Gondu’s
shields went up. Gondu was already in his mind, carrying over with him in
ocean-time
intimacy from when they had been in Translation.

“T
argets primary are battleglobes,” she said. “Firing!”

Toktaleen left his AI ally to the firing of the antimatter wing cannons as he ordered slashes of proton beams, neutral particle lasers and carbon-dioxide laser blisters to fire at hundreds of smaller targets that included two
Offense sleds now heading toward him at one-fourth lightspeed. Thermonuke sleds!

“Include those sleds!” he warned Gondu.

The female T’Chak dragon breathed antimatter fire at six battleglobes while her spike-tail swung sideways to kill the thermonuke sleds.

In his mind appeared Matt’s warning about ‘special ships’ lying in the nearby asteroid belt. The one hundred ship locations were identical to positions that even now
showed high neutrino emissions.

“
The ‘special ship’ asteroids are activating fusion reactors!” he called to his hexagon partners and to the ten Cohort leaders in charge of Ocean Fleet itself.

A second barrage of six antimatter beams came from
Gondu
to join three thousand AM beams from the rest of the fleet. Before his mental eyes fifty-three battleglobes had become blue-white vapor, even as his AI partner activated their Translation stardrive for the stepwise move to a light-second away from their current position. That would take them out of AM firing range, but a second Translation jump would bring them back into range, on a different vector.

“For my offspring!” he screamed in click-speech.

Matt felt Ocean Fleet and his seven Hexagon Prime partners arrive in normal space-time, each group of four ships around a central one already ring-cycling as Remotes sped out in a few femtoseconds as every ship’s Alcubierre shields soon wrapped them in grey cocoons. The cocoons were breached only by the black beams of antimatter fire that slipped through field openings which lasted less than ten femtoseconds, before closing again. The coordination of each ship firing AM cannons and megawatt level lasers through scores of tiny openings that flickered open briefly, allowed outgoing annihilation, then winked shut well before any AutoFire beams from the assembled battleglobes could hit them reminded Matt of a three dee battle simulation game that he had played while working as a Protector at Omega Casino. Except that game operated at slow real-time speeds. This reality happened in the range of femtoseconds, picoseconds, nanoseconds and slow milliseconds. In his mind a cyborg implant counted the time since the arrival of the two fleets.

“
One nanosecond, 53 picoseconds and 17 femtoseconds
,” said the tiny mindvoice.

“Matthew,” came the patient feminine voice of Mata Hari in her Lady of the Sword persona image. “All one hundred ‘special ship’ locations are powering up. As noted by Toktaleen and others. A
second antimatter barrage has gone out. Time to move stepwise in Translation?”

Matt thought quickly when in
ocean-time
. Faster than any normal human could think—other than Eliana and the others in Hexagon Prime who had become cyborg-human mixes like himself. Still, as BattleMind had often said, he thought slowly by AI standards. He reacted even slower since the memory of body reactions tied to thoughts always overlay any decision he made. He always overrode any effort to make his physical body work at lightspeed neurolinking speeds, but it was a distraction his AI allies did not possess. They perceived faster than he did too. Which is how Mata Hari’s warning spoke in his mind faster than he could think a reply.

“Translation shimmer!” she cried. “The special ship asteroids have a stardrive! They can only be—”

Out in space, four T’Chak warship cocoons brightened, then vanished as blue-white vapor filled the spot where once a living AI had inhabited a starship.

“—
kamikaze
asteroids! Stepwise Translation now!”

Matt’s mind shuddered as he fell into the greyness that was Translation space-time within an Alcubierre pocket universe. It seemed to last forever. He felt nothing outside the ship. He did feel Mata Hari’s surprise, her shock at losing four fellow AIs, and understood the roaring rage of BattleMind as the giant dragon spit mindfire at the destruction of his battlemates by a device of imperfect beings who were organic, flawed, yet very dangerous.

“All fleets!” he cried into the confusion of the group mind communion over their tachlink nodes. “Fire upon the new locations occupied by these asteroids with stardrives as soon as we exit Translation! Otherwise they will try a Translation attack again at the gravity pulse coordinates of each ship arriving in normal space-time!”

“
Four nanoseconds, 93 picoseconds and 47 femtoseconds
.”

“
Then go to Stepwise Translation again! We stepwise jump until every
kamikaze
asteroid is dead! And watch out for nearby thermonuke sleds that may aim for you!”

Mata Hari
re-entered normal space-time.

Matt felt the fleet pop into existence within light seconds of his position. They were far from the base and beyond the range of the battleglobes that
formed three shells, though the outer shell was nearly gone.

“Firing!”

His ship’s six antimatter cannons fired in three different directions. Though their range was just a hundred thousand kilometers, enough of the
kamikaze
asteroids had arrived within that range, on their first Translation and arrival effort, that he and two hundred of his fellows had targets they could reach. With a thought he told his mind communion partners to stepwise Translate back a half light second, with an upward vector away from the plane of the ecliptic.