Vigilante Series 2: Nebula Vigilante Read online

  “Nooooo!” his mind screamed as the newly risen intruder’s laser pulse-cannons bit through his combat suit’s crystal coatings, now dead due to the EMP, and burned large holes through his hearts, lung sphincters and bowels.

  Only his head, lying within the partly blackened helmet, saw the risen form of the intruder, its own combat suit firing laser beams from manipulators and pulse-cannons even as Nanoshell borers carved into his flesh, energy dampers killed his suit’s autonomic defenses, and then the ultrasonic vibers vaporized most of his nerves, ganglia and spinal junctions, leaving his dying brain to wish for life.

  Blackness greeted his last thought.

  “Matt, is the Guardian dead?” called Eliana, her musical voice a relief after what felt like a lifetime of combat, but which had lasted just three full seconds. With a shudder he exited ocean-time, leaving the combat with the dome’s AI to a few minutes later.

  He had won. The Intelligence dome Offense functions had also been shut down by the EMP from his nuke, while the arroyo rock had indeed protected his own photonics, optical fiber networks and built-in electronics. But the nuke’s wind-blast pushed hard against him as he hovered above the arroyo. And the glowing plasma cloud that vaporized anything solid within a hundred meters now disappeared, leaving only fallout to decorate the desert landscape.

  “Yes, Eliana, it is dead,” he replied over the tachyon comlink. “According to a lifescan by one of my new Nanoshells, there is no thinking being done by its organic remains and the alien’s combat suit is burned out. Its Defense and Attack software is shattered into billions of random databytes.”

  Matt shuddered inside and out, his nerves, muscles and tendons feeling the effects of having lived at computer speed in ocean-time. Receiving images at femtosecond and picosecond speeds, thinking in nanosecond mode, while muscles contracted at millisecond intervals, had exhausted his energy reserves. Dimly he felt Suit pumping electrolytes and sugars into his bloodstream even as its Tactical CPU managed those Nanoshells still working at gaining access to the dome’s self-aware AI. His years ago job as a Protector to an Anarchate alien who worked for its Combat Command made him certain the AI had shielded itself from the EMP as soon as the nuke detonated. But all normal hardware, electronics and active photonics inside the dome would be disabled. Getting in would be difficult, but not nearly as deadly as fighting the Guardian.

  “Matt?” called Eliana, her concern bringing her image to his mind’s eye. Still feeling with sped up senses, he recalled first her jade green eyes, her long black hair, her milky white albino skin and that needful little girl expression that had first tugged at his heart when she met him at Hagonar Station. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m in good shape,” he said over the tachlink, glad for the fact his voice did not suffer lightspeed lag from the distance its signal traveled, unlike normal radio, lidar and comsat signaling. “Be at peace. Now, I must enter the Intelligence dome and argue with its AI over the hiding place for the backup molecular memory crystal. Mata Hari, link to me please.”

  He directed Suit to approach the dome’s metal skin a half-kilometer away. And in his mind there loomed Mata Hari’s persona image.

  She appeared as a Victorian-dressed, dark-eyed, amber-skinned young woman with long black hair piled atop her head. It was a body and persona based on the World War I French spy who had worked both sides of that great war. Until caught and executed, despite claims she was in fact a double-agent working for Allied intelligence. The AI had no special phrase for what she and Matt did—lightspeed linking was simply how she thought, lived, felt and ran the mech-tech starship built by the ancient T’Chak. In-link with Mata Hari was far more complex than the out loud talking used by Standard organics. It felt like a continuous electrocution, but one which did not burn him. Together they were the symbiosis ::, a group entity that could think, move and act faster than any organic lifeform.

  “Yes, Matthew?”

  “Did the dome AI send a tachyon Alert signal before the pylon’s destruction?”

  “Probably,” she said, her black eyes squinting a little as her high-cheeked face turned serious.

  Good. That too was part of the Plan he had made with BattleMind, including the release of Mata Hari herself from the Memory Pillars on the Bridge deck since she, while a part of the ship and mind that filled the Dreadnought, was someone he cared for. And a true life personality that cared for him and Eliana. Unlike the previously hidden BattleMind that had appeared near the end of his space battle with the Halicene starship Obliteration. It had fought an amazing battle with the Anarchate Nova-class battleglobe Excellent, and defeated it. A feat not lately attempted in the annals of the Anarchate.

  The grey metal of the Intelligence dome lay before him. Suit’s faceplate holo highlighted the spots where her rocket beads had entered, plus the single airlock type entry portal for official use by organics.

  Matt smiled. No way would he risk an unpowered deadfall trap by using the entry portal. There could be many such non-electronic, mechanically activated traps awaiting him as a result of the dome’s total power shutdown. Instead, he thought-imaged a section of dome’s metal skin and directed his right shoulder pulse-cannon to blast an entry hole.

  Tilting Suit into horizontal mode he made for the jagged hole and its darkness. Nullgrav both suspended him and propelled him forward. Thinking as he moved at slow organic speed, Matt queried Mata Hari on Phase Two of his Plan.

  “How soon before you can pick me up from down here?”

  The amber-skinned Mata Hari image frowned, as if thinking the way humans think. A nice touch from her persona analogue. She wore a white lace filigree dress of late Victorian vintage. “Ten minutes since the ship decoys are nearly in place in the middle of this star system,” she said in mind voice, her black eyes fixed intently on him.

  Matt floated into the dome and activated his infrared, UV and passive sensors so he could Nullgrav travel the dome’s tall hallways without setting off mechanical traps from the impact of footfalls on the hallway floor.

  “Good. Hopefully we have an hour before an Anarchate battleglobe shows up in response to the Alert call. More than enough time for me to chat with the dome’s AI.” He paused, thinking of what could still go wrong. “Please track me via Suit’s sensors and send a Defense sled down to patrol the dome, just in case some distant outpost manages to fly a suborbital shuttle to home base.”

  “Agreed, Matthew,” she said softly, her spare smile betraying her thoughts at an organic like Matt telling her how to conduct backup operations.

  Matt focused on the dark interior hallways, his infrared sight sufficient to show him entry passages even with all power shut down. Residual heat from electrical circuits and mechanical devices emitted enough infrared for his needs.

  The still living bodies of two dozen aliens lay on the hallway floor or inside adjacent labs and rest chambers, their presence and the oxy-nitro air he passed through telling him that the Nanoshell Knockout gas beads had taken down every organic likely to pose a threat. Still, there could be methane breather aliens still active, or Guard morphoforms that did not rely on atmosphere. Some morphoforms were made especially for vacuum hunting, as he had learned years ago while serving on Protector duty for the Anarchate Combat Command alien.

  Matt’s Suit focused in on the neutrino emissions of the dome AI’s backup power source. The locale lay at dome center, but in a basement level. There was no portal entry for Standard organics. But that did not bother Matt. Hovering to one side of the radar imaged room below him, Matt set his fingertip lasers to concrete cutting frequency and outlined a two meter wide circle into the hard floor. It took time, but in five minutes the 30 megawatt fingertip lasers had cut through the meter thick concrete. Below him the cut out segment dropped down into the basement room with a loud “Clang.”

  No active offensive weapons or emitters detected, said Suit in mindtalk to Matt.

  “Thank you, my friend,” he PET thought-imaged, giving thanks
for positron emission tomography tech that allowed Suit to read his mind and his brain to receive lightbeam impulses as speech from Suit.

  You are welcome, said the simple AI of Suit.

  Matt smiled. Suit was learning something about human personas from Mata Hari.

  Lowering down into the basement on the Nullgrav plates of his boots, Matt raised his Magnum laser rifle and pointed it at the small dome that sheltered the self-aware AI of this Anarchate installation.

  “AI, communicate with me in this acoustic range and language,” he broadcast via Suit’s external speakers while his Tactical CPU spat lidar signals with the elements of English at the AI.

  A pink glow flared at the top of the small dome that covered a pedestal in the center of the room. Overhead, lights came on and illuminated the spare room of metal walls, thick power cables, flat sensor faces, vid recorders and inactive laser mounts that had not the radioactive thermopile backup power of the AI.

  “You . . . you will die, organic. An Alert signal was tachyon broadcast just before your starship destroyed the pylon. A battleglobe will be here shortly,” it said in a gruff voice suggestive of a bear trying to speak like a human.

  “Good,” Matt broadcast loudly. “I am counting on its arrival.”

  Silence lasted thirty seconds. “You wish to be in this star system when it arrives?” said the AI.

  “Yes,” Matt said. “My prior Protector service with a Spelidon rat of Combat Command allowed me to acquire knowledge of your base here, around the star we humans label as SAO 47250, in what we call the Hercules constellation.” Matt recalled the three-fingered, long-tailed and black whiskered nature of the deadly species that had long provided warriors and commanders to the Anarchate. “My starship recently destroyed a Nova-class battleglobe commanded by a Spelidon in Sigma Puppis star system. Perhaps you have heard of us?”

  The pink glow of the AI darkened. “You are Matthew Raven’s-Wing Dragoneaux, species Human, from a home planet in Orion Arm, on the outer edge of the Halicene Conglomerate’s mercantile zone. Your alien ship design is unknown to us, but you call it Mata Hari. For some exotic Human reason.” The AI paused, the pink glow growing less dark. “I will provide this data to the incoming battleglobe. You will not be so lucky as you were in Sigma Puppis. You and your ship will die for this attack on Anarchate facilities. Which is perhaps why you remain sheltered behind your sensory helmet.”

  Matt smiled behind his opaque faceplate. There was no way he was going to breath air that might contain airborne deathspores newly released by the AI while he was cutting access. Nor would he assume all offensive weapons were dead. The AI was talking with him for the same reason he was—to gain intelligence before acting. So be it.

  “I doubt that, AI. My ship was made by the ancient T’Chak aliens. The ship’s name is one I like.” Matt turned around on his Nullgrav boots, never having placed his weight on the steel plated floor. “Now where is your backup molecular memory crystal stored?”

  “There is no such object,” the AI said quickly. “All comp panels and storage devices were either wiped clean by your EMP pulse or as part of the intentional Alert shutdown that is uniform at all installations threatened with unauthorized access.”

  “So say you,” Matt murmured. “But my Spelidon master sometimes talked in its sleep. And I learned its vernacular language shortly after joining its household. A neurowhip motivates one to quick learning,” he said sourly, recalling the severe taskmaster who had hired him to be little more than a two-legged watch animal over its belongings. “As a result I learned of this desert planet circling an F5 yellow-white star that is north of the galactic equator and about 329 light years from my small home world. And learned that while the star was a main sequence star with multiple planets in its lifezone, no settlements existed here, only this Intelligence dome and some outposts. A good reason for visiting, I think.” Matt scanned the room’s ceiling, noting a few grills for air circulation whenever an organic was allowed access, the yellow-glowing light tubes that radiated out from a central power block, and nothing else. He increased power to his Nullgrav boots.

  “What are you doing?” the AI asked, its pink glow darkening.

  Matt smiled. That was the problem with self-aware artificial intelligences. They had as much curiosity as organics. Even asking a question gave him intelligence data. And told him his guess was correct.

  “Accessing the backup molecular memory crystal,” he said, reaching up with his gauntleted right hand to pop open the power block cover, while keeping his Magnum laser rifle still pointed at the AI pedestal. The green cube of the crystal, the size of an ancient golf ball, dropped into his palm. “See? We organics taught you AIs how to lie. Trying to lie to an organic is like . . . teaching your grandmother to suck eggs,” Matt said as he recalled a lesson from his mother Kristin when he worked their soybean farm. Before the genome harvesters raided his colony world and took his entire family captive to be used for making cloneslaves. “Except you AIs do not possess organic grandparents.”

  The AI’s pink glow darkened to nearly red. “You will not escape the battleglobe that is even now Translating into this star system,” it said triumphantly.

  “Mata Hari,” he PET thought-imaged to his partner. “Has the Anarchate battleglobe arrived?”

  “Yes, Matthew. But it arrived just beyond the outermost planet, per the Standard Rule for approaching planet-bound star systems. The gravity wave from its arrival was detected a moment ago. One of our decoy Remotes should be able to image it shortly and downlink that data via tachlink. We are now above the dome. Will you join us?”

  “Yes,” he replied, then focused on the AI. “My friend, after we defeat this battleglobe, tell Combat Command that Matthew Dragoneaux and his friends have declared war on the Anarchate. This is only the first of our attacks. More will come. Of course, you have a whole galaxy to defend while we can pick and choose a location that does not have a naval armada nearby, thanks to your memory crystal. Aloha, little thinker.”

  A wall laser mount brightened to life and spat an orange beam at him. Matt’s adaptive optics sapphire crystals broke the beam into hundreds of low power streams.

  “Naughty naughty, little AI,” Matt vocalized over Suit’s external speakers. “Be thankful I am letting you continue to exist. The Anarchate must receive the full text of our war declaration, including your record of my defeat of your Guardian. And the incoming Nova. To avoid defeat, they have only to outlaw cloneslavery and bondservitude. And give up the bribes from the commercial conglomerates. Have a good day, little one.”

  “You disorganized cluster of DNA strands! You organic assemblage of self-deluding neurons that forget most of what you learn! You, you—”

  Matt flew out of the Intelligence dome and upward to the hovering two kilometer length of Dreadnought Mata Hari, Eliana and BattleMind, already thinking about Phase Three of his Plan. And his effort to delay BattleMind’s departure for the Small Magellanic Cloud.

  While he was curious about the T’Chak aliens, Matt had learned from his long ago study of asymmetric warfare that underestimating your enemy was a guarantee of eventual defeat. Now all he had to do was work at convincing the T’Chak BattleMind that a few one-on-one starship victories did not a war campaign make.

  CHAPTER TWO

  On the Bridge of Dreadnought Mata Hari, Matt the Pure Breed human sat in the Interlock Pit of an alien starship like an olive in a martini glass, naked as the day he’d been born. He was naked because that was how Mata Hari the AI talked to him. And how he talked back. Matt’s bare skin soaked in thousands of lightbeam inputs that talked to his skin, from inputs emitted by the control devices that lined the cone-shaped Interlock Pit. Light moved so much faster than electrons-down-a-wire cable, and the beams caressed every inch of his body. Touching here. Touching there. Whispering. Cajoling. Making direct contact with electrochemical receptors, firing down nerve fiber pathways, filling him with, with . . .

  Ecstasy could not begin to match
it.

  He’d called it ocean-time the first time he’d gone on-line with the feminine Mata Hari mind persona. And the AI had no special phrase for what she and Matt did—lightspeed linking was simply how she thought, lived, felt and ran the mech-tech construct called a starship. But a little time in that mode physically exhausted him.

  He’d tried explaining it to Eliana, when first she’d seen him enter the Bridge, back out of Suit, and step down naked into the Pit, where he sat in a form-molded glass chair that allowed lightbeams easy access to his skin. Matt rested at the bottom of a metal-lined cone, a cone filled with flashing lightbeams that did not hurt . . . usually. The cone breathed with him, hurt with him, talked to him, and listened as he talked back—with a shrug, with a blink, with a change in PET-sensed alpha brain rhythms. He controlled his levels of adrenaline, signaling with his body, a puppet on lightbeam strings who talked back to the puppetmaster.

  Matt shivered as the fever of a severe cold hit him courtesy of the slow virus that his Halicene opponent Legion had infected him with . . . just after he had rescued Eliana’s grandfather Petros. He’d crushed the Halicene under an engine block then. But both Eliana and Mata Hari had agreed the designer virus was able to “jump” into different chromosome genes, varying the illnesses that it could visit on Matt. The starship’s Biolab had blocked most ill effects thanks to tailored retroviruses and monoclonal antibodies. But finding the primary slow virus was something not yet achieved by either of his friends. So he coped.