Anarchate Vigilante (Vigilante Series 4) (9 page)

One second, 112 nanoseconds, 71 picoseconds
and 86 femtoseconds
, said his internal cyberclock.

“Commerce Station destroyed,” called Ben in an excited voice.

Matt’s attention left behind the marble-sized black hole that had been a planet as large as Venus. His primary attention focused on the puzzling actions of the two Courier vessels, which had streaked away from Stony toward the system’s orange star the moment his ships’ gravity waves registered on Anarchate sensors. While that meant the small ships were only a few seconds closer to the local star than Hexagon Prime fleet, their choice to not go into Translation or to fight his ships puzzled him.

“Mata Hari, how soon before the Courier ships are within AM cannon range?”

“Three seconds Matthew,” she said, her silvery sword reaching beyond the Bridge and slicing apart a Thermonuke sled that had exited stealth and was throwing itself at ship
Mata Hari
with one-fourth lightspeed acceleration. “The Courier ships are moving at just one-tenth lightspeed. A very fast acceleration from a slow orbital speed. But our ships are overtaking them quickly.”

Why were they fleeing? And toward the local sun at that?

“After them!” snarled BattleMind, the anger in the T’Chak AI’s mind striking Matt like a hurricane snapping through buildings and trees. Even Mata Hari’s mental buffering did not save Matt from milliseconds of disorientation.

Hexagon Prime fleet streaked past planet three and headed into the inner system spaces. In time swift as light, they lay within five AUs of the orange flare star. Their course had been calculated to take the fleet well south of the star, into space below the system’s planetary ecliptic. Matt shook his mind free of BattleMind’s disruption.

“Fire on the—”

“Matt!” cried Suzanne and Eliana both in his mind, their voices preceding any physical image. “Translate! Translate now!”

“Why can’t we—”

“The star is going nova! Translate!” the women cried in the minds of each pilot.

Ahead, the orange corona of the star bulged outward visibly, moving toward them as fast as light.

“Translate!”

Matt and each of his ships diverted all power to entering Alcubierre stardrive. About his ship grew the grey cocoon of Alcubierre space-time, that strange universe-within-a-universe that allowed all starships, Human and Alien, to travel from star to star at large multiples of the speed of light. For within the Alcubierre space-time bubble, the rules of its universe made the outside universe very small. Small enough so that sublight speed within Alcubierre space-time translated into FTL speed in the normal Riemannian space in which stars, galaxies and planets existed.

One second,
323 milliseconds, 67 nanoseconds14 picoseconds and 13 femtoseconds.

“What happened?” he asked as the minds of his pilot battlemates told him via tachlink node that all eight ships were safe in Alcubierre space-time.

Suzanne and Eliana, a blond and an albino, appeared simultaneously in the mindlink they all shared. Gone was the Park grassy field. Only the image of a star billowing out its substance in a lightspeed expansion of its corona filled the background behind them.

“A trap!” Eliana yelled.

“A Courier with a Bethe Inducer weapon onboard lay on the opposite side of the system star,” cried Suzanne, her green eyes filling with tears.

“The ship induced a nova expansion when the two Couriers sped toward the sun,” Eliana said breathlessly. “Must have used a tachlink to alert the ship that was hidden from our view by the star itself. The unseen Courier was lying in wait for anyone who attacked the admin planet.”

Sarah’s blue-eyed gaze filled with alarm. “Ben! He is our newest pilot! It could have gotten him!” she said in the voice tone people used when referring to someone special.

“I’m fine, Sarah,” said the young man who had withstood neurowhip beating from a slaver just befor
e the Intel Base battle. His mind image tipped back his Aussie bush hat.

Matt, feeling the fatigue of still being in
ocean-time
superfast thinking, put it all together. “Well, Ben, now we know the new battle tactic of the Anarchate. Blow up the system’s star when any T’Chak Dreadnought shows up to attack an Anarchate facility.”

“Matt,” cried Sarah as
she brushed at her brunette hair as if she were attending a formal event instead of an informal mind chat. “We have to let the other cohorts of Ocean Fleet know about this! Now! Or they could be caught too close to the local star to enter into Translation!”

Matt blinked. Sarah was right. A minor reason all starships exited Alcubierre space-time at the heliopause of a star was because the closer one came to a star, the greater
the gravity field in local space-time. Within a half AU of any star the Alcubierre space-time field could not form, no matter how many fusion engines fed it the power to tap into the negative energy of the universe. And this was not the time to allow his attention to be diverted by the signs of Sarah and Ben’s romance.

“Sarah, yes! I’m reaching out to Immovable now!”

He used the tachlink node to reach out thousands of light years in search of the T’Chak AI Immovable. The AI had represented itself and nine other cohort commanders of the 494 ships in Ocean Fleet. Those ships had split into ten cohorts to attack different sectors of the Anarchate. Some cohorts lay on the far side of the galaxy, more than seventy thousand light years away. But the tachyons of tachlinks crossed that distance as if it did not exist.

“
Hello, Vigilante Matthew,” came the calm mindvoice of Immovable. “What prompts you to . . . oh! That is an unpleasant new tactic of the Anarchate.”

Matt nodded mentally at the T’Chak dragon who embodied the neuter gender of the organic T’Chak aliens. Immovable’s pink eyes fixed on Matt, then quickly took in the mindshapes of the seven other pilots and their AI companions. “Yes it is! Please share our experience with the commanders of every cohort, and especially with
your human and alien co-pilots,” he said. “There will be a need for fast adaptation if any Dreadnought encounters this sneaky use of a Bethe Inducer to overload our Alcubierre defense shields. Any ship touched by a star’s expanding corona would not survive that contact.”

Immovable flexed its black wings, while its yellow-scaled forearms reached out with grasping claws. “Whatever being in the Anarchate devised this new tactic, it is a danger never before used among our perfect masters the T’Chak, nor is this tactic recorded in the public histories of the Anarchate.”

“Matt,” called Eliana from the sidelines. “Will the Anarchate blow up the sun of a system where there is a living world with people?”

Would they?

“Unlikely,” said Toktaleen in Brokeet click-speech. “It would violate the Anarchate’s pledge to not interfere in the internal affairs of any planet. But any sun with only an Anarchate base would be a likely target for this tactic.”

Immovable thumped its spike-tail on
their mental floor. “The precognitive abilities of your two psychics, Eliana and Suzanne, they detected this planned event before it happened?”

Eliana rubbed both eyes with her hands, and sighed. “Yes, Immovable. Suzanne and I had held back from extended time sensing due to the . . .
the pain of hearing thousands of minds die on planet Stony. But as we headed toward the local star in pursuit of two Courier vessels, Matt’s wonderment about those vessels prompted me and Suzanne to look ahead. To see what the Couriers might intend.”

Suzanne grew large in the mental conclave. “Our precog view showed the star’s corona expanding to engulf the two Couriers even as the Courier on the far side of the star went into Translation and escaped the nova expansion. Its position just beyond a half AU was close enough to hide it from our ship sensors
. And our fleet had no tachRemotes in the system that could reveal the hidden Courier.”

Immovable opened its long crocodile mouth. A pink tongue slithered over sharp white teeth. “Then future attacks on Anarchate bases must include a least one T’Chak ship that emerges on the opposite side of the local star. That will at least allow our
pilots to detect the lightspeed image of such a ship.”

“Good solution to this new surprise,” Matt said, taking in the mental attention of his fifteen mindguests plus Mata Hari and BattleMind. “It is clear that a new mind now directs Anarchate fleet operations. Someone who is as inventive and sneaky as was
Sector Captain Yorkel. Immovable?”

“Yes?”

“I suggest you and your nine other cohorts hold off on any attacks until Hexagon Prime can learn about other new Anarchate battle tactics.”

The neuter dragon swirled its scaly tail. “One of my cohort leaders can do this detective work as easily as your fleet, Matthew. Let us share in the dangers. You organics are all too quick to become martyrs to a cause.”

Were they? Was he? “Well, alright,” Matt said. “Assign one of your cohort leaders to enter an Anarchate target system, with a backup ship on the opposite side the star, and see what other tactical surprises the Anarchate has invented. We will do the same on our side of the galaxy.”

“Agreed. And thank you for this warning. We will be in touch when new data is discovered.”

The mindimage of Immovable winked out of their mental communion. Matt shook his head. “Let us resume course toward Antares A star. It contains the planet Working, where my mother is held captive. But our first rescue will be my sister Charlotte, on Megil, in Alkalurops C system. Seven of our ships will arrive at ten light years out from Megil’s star, while one of us will arrive at its heliopause and pretend to be a commerce ship. The Omega Centauri station IDs offer us plenty of options for ship camouflage and Trade contents.”

“
Can do,” said Sarah as her image faded from view.

George waved at Matt. “My battlemate, let me go in as the pretend commerce ship. Any landing at Halath city will require passing an Anarchate people tracking station. Your face and body are surely on their automated Watch List. Me, I’m a refugee from Omega Casino just trying to survive by working for an alien.”

Matt knew George had a point. There was no way he could safely visit the surface of Megil, either in Suit or in person. “George, thank you. Stay in tachlink with us while you are down there. If my sister is there, the whole fleet will Translate in and be damned the Anarchate officialdom!”

George
smiled, then waved goodbye. The other pilots faded from Matt’s mindview . . . except for Eliana.

“Matthew,” she said as in his mind she walked up to him, reached out and grabbed his shoulders. “I almost lost you!”

Matt’s slow physical body, feeling the fatigue from being in
ocean-time
thinking mode, left the superfast thought mode that had been essential for the recent battle and for their escape from being incinerated by a dying star.

“I know,” he whispered as his body collapsed back into his chair. “I almost lost you!”

Together in mind, they comforted each other.

George
O’Hussey cracked his knuckles as he sat in the Interlock Pit of ship
Inevitable
, feeling belated shock at just how close they all had come to being consumed by the superhot corona of a star exploding into a nova. While the T’Chak ship he piloted was a tech wonder, and its female AI a delight to play a game of Tavli with, it was not invulnerable. Not to a nova.

“No, George, I am not invulnerable,” said Inevitable in a musical tone that echoed the ancient songstress Joan Baez. “But this Task of Vigilante Matthew to rid the galaxy of cloneslavery is a . . . an honorable task, worthy of your Irish forebear
s. And destruction of the Anarchate military and naval forces fits with the original Task given to all of us by our perfect T’Chak masters.”

He smiled at the AI’s lengthy effort to encourage him. She was trying to be as emotional as Mata Hari, but she lacked the seven years of day-to-day mind sharing that Matt and
Mata Hari had. “Inevitable, I know you’re not invulnerable. And while I felt fear for my lifemate Suzanne, I would grieve if ever I lost you and survived to know of the loss.”

The
AI dragon flapped her wings as she looked beyond the Park meadow where most pilots came to rest and enjoy growing things. “Speaking of whom, Suzanne calls for you. As perhaps you can feel by direct mindtouch?”

“Yes, I can,” he told the polite AI. “Later.”

The dragon vanished to be replaced in his mind by the golden curls, green eyes and brown freckles of the woman he had fallen in love with. He had only one regret.

“One regret, George?” she said with a bemused smile. “What’s the regret you have about falling in love with me?”

“That we did not discover each other years earlier, while working at Omega Casino,” he said in a mind tone that hopefully carried a sense of how finding her was like finding an oasis in his solitary life.

Suzanne’s expression became tender. And focused in her mind tone. “I love being your oasis, George. And I guess we owe our kidnapping by Matt for the discovery of each other.”

He chuckled, the sobered. “Just now, in the group talk about this new nova tactic, I feared for you.”