Vigilante Series 2: Nebula Vigilante (32 page)

The other Circle Panels were equally negative in their click
response. Then a panel node echoed to him from the Defense cadre. “Commander, clutchmate Argane here. I studied their glyphs before joining Mother’s Defense. But no one knows their meaning. My regrets.”

Lateen raised up on all ten of his
tube feet, his four eyes taking in the entire Command Deck of seven Circle Panels. “Then I will have our Library computer emit the mathematical Contact code that the Great Mother created in case of contact with lifeforms not of the Haktoon. Transmit on the hydrogen emission frequency, Navigator Salseen.”

“Complying, Commander.”

In space no one can hear a commander’s three hearts beating. No one but himself. Giving thanks for the ending of the attack, but preparing himself to sacrifice his life and his ship in defense of the young Mother now on the planet below, Lateen allowed himself to wonder. What would the Old One say to them? And why had the Old Ones disappeared to leave their structures to decay from the ravages of weather and time?

# # #

Suzanne moved to help Mata Hari with the effort to establish communications with the alien starship, using the algorithms they’d relied on to talk with the Bogean Harmony
. Then an insert image showed in the holosphere’s globe of black space, the green and blue planet of Temtok and a tapestry of closely-packed stars. It showed a series of ten-pointed stars arranged in a mathematical progression of one through ten, then increasing in complexity. The series was arranged in a circle, for some reason.

“Mata Hari!
” she called. “The alien ship is sending a standard First Contact mathematics code. Are you linking it into our Bogean algorithm?”

“Yes,” said the suddenly alert holo of Matt’s partner, her persona changing from tired Spy mode to the embroidered summer outfit that Suzanne now knew indicated her happy mood. “It is very similar to the First Contact modali
ties used in the Anarchate.”

Matt set down his squeeze bottle of pink lemonade and looked over his shoulder to her. His smile looked tired but happy. “Well done,
mistress of the computers! Maybe George and I can avoid a ship boarding. I love being in Suit, but I am growing tired of always treating everyone else as a potential enemy.”

The
red-glowing metal globe of  Elegant Harmony floated over to rest between her couch and George’s. Her lifepartner fingered his beard, then smiled at her. “I agree with Matt. Combat when necessary, getting drunk whenever possible!”

“Weakening your mind processes is not advised,” said the soft voice of Elegant Harmony. “We may yet be ordered to dispose of this intruding vessel. But communicating with it allows us to provide better data for any living master.”

“Exactly,” rumbled the giant form of BattleMind’s holo shape. “My T’Chak masters always took the time flow needed to better understand an issue. That is why they dispatched me and my brethren to your Milky Way galaxy. They were willing to take the time needed for an in-depth inventory of Anarchate resources, starships, shipyards and control centers.”

“Which we have partly done,” Matthew said from the sunken cone of his Interlock Pit. “More remains to be done, before we depart for the Lacunae Mindworks.”

“Without a doubt,” said Mata Hari’s holo.

“Agreed,” said Elegant Harmony.

“Correct,” rumbled BattleMind, its mood amazing to Suzanne. While clearly impatient, the T’Chak AI now sounded thoughtful. Such a pleasant change.

“Conversation before assumption making is always desirable,” said the warm voice of Gatekeeper as it stoo
d beside Mata Hari.

Eliana looked back at Suzanne, her white face looking tired but happy. “When four AIs agree on anything, you know the universe is in perfect balance!”

Suzanne would have choked on a drink of water, let alone wine or lemonade, if she had been drinking. Instead, she laughed very loudly. “Yes, yes, ohhhhh yes!” she said to Eliana.

Matt looked at them both, then aside at the holo shapes of the four AIs. “You know, I’ve never been in the company of four AIs at the same time.
Until this long trek. This seems like the perfect time to bring out a bottle of champagne. George, is there any left from the Morrigan supplies?”

“Yes,” her lover said eagerly. “I volunteer to run and get it!”

Suzanne, Eliana and Matt laughed loudly, then as the four AIs looked puzzled, they laughed even louder.

Matt
looked at the image of what resembled a cross between a land crab and a starfish. Resting within a circle of control panels, an alien with the name of “Lateen” stared out at Matt with two of its four eyestalks. The eyestalks sprouted just below the brown armor-skin that capped a radial symmetry lifeform with ten flexible legs. A crab-like mouth with chewing palps occupied the center of the creature. It most resembled a fat discus with eyestalks that sprouted every ninety degrees of its upper body. It wore no clothes, but the skin below the armor cap looked pinkish with white nodules. But those colors and shapes were an illusion as the skin suddenly changed color to match the brown metal of the control panels. Somehow, this creature possessed the chromatophore skin cell ability of Earth’s octopi. And Matt’s appearance must have startled it into an autonomic Flight-Hide reaction.

“I apologize for my unusual shape,” Matt said aloud, trusting to the ability of Suzanne and Mata Hari’s translation program. “My species is land-evolved. While the shape of this T’Chak lifeform that stands at my side is both land and air capable. We have returned to this star system after a long absence
. The star and its planets are the home world of my companion, BattleMind. That is why our ship fired at you. Once. It was an instinctive reaction.”

The two eyestalks gradually lost their brown color as other body parts resumed the pink and white nodule appearance. The eyes atop the stalks moved in a way that showed the alien automatically used binocular vision to see its environment. “Apologies for my own instinctive reaction. Each of you resembles land creatures that once hunted my species. Before we created the Mother Combine that now guides all we do. We call ourselves the Haktoon. What do you and the Old One call yourselves?”

“Human,” Matt said, noticing that behind the ship commander lay six other metal circles, each with a Haktoon resting in the center.

“T’Chak,” rumbled BattleMind as its holo image spread its black wings. “You are trespassing on one of our worlds. I fired on your ship because it is our nature to defend our home space. What is your intention in visiting this star?”

The two eyestalks of the Haktoon commander shifted from Matt to BattleMind, then seemed to look beyond them at the shapes of George, Suzanne, Eliana, Gatekeeper and Elegant Harmony, before swinging back to the holo of BattleMind. “We have only recently developed the MotherFlight stardrive. This is our second trip out from our home star. We seek warm, humid planets like the one below to colonize with our Mothers and our egg clusters. We did not detect any living . . . T’Chak on the planet’s surface, and the few constructed locations are abandoned. While our species has labeled you the Old Ones, based on ruins on our world, this is the first time we have encountered a living T’Chak. Is there a reason we cannot occupy this unused world?”

Matt raised a hand to gain BattleMind’s attention, then said via neurolink mind-talk, “Be patient. You know you can destroy this ship and these aliens. But any living master may wish to know of them. After all, they are the first space-going species to appear since the death of your masters.”

BattleMind opened its white-toothed mouth, its red eyes focused solely on the alien commander. “Yes,” it said to the alien. “It is a world that belonged once to the T’Chak. And this is our home system. The star is StarHome and the fourth planet out is our birth planet, HomeWorld. I must speak with one of my masters before I know what is allowed. You are . . . invited to accompany us to the fourth planet, which was our purpose in materializing outside this system.”

Clicks sounded in the background as other Haktoon expressed their views to the alien commander. Some were angry words, some words were despairing and a few sounded curious. Lateen stood up from its rest-bowl. Its mouth-palps moved.

“We accept your invitation to visit planet four. We tried to approach it but artificial satellites in low orbit fired on us, causing us to flee. Since we are a colonizing vessel, we are not outfitted for extended fighting. We hope your masters will accept us as your friendly neighbors.”

BattleMind lifted its spike-tail. “The Defense devices will not harass you if you stay
close to my ship. Accompany us and we will both have time to visit with the masters.”

Matt gave mental thanks he had not had to threaten rebellion against BattleMind’s Task plan. It was, after all, what he most wanted. A galaxy with some degree of law, some kind of centrally-enforced justice, an end to bondservitude and an opportunity for stars to join together in more than trade. Perhaps, if a living T’Chak could be found on HomeWorld, BattleMind would come to accept his perspective on how to fulfill an ancient Task given by long-dead T’Chak. At the worst, they could find a T’Chak courier ship and try to make it back to the Milky Way. But his
geis
demanded he make every effort to overturn the society that had killed his Helen, and to bring freedom to other worlds. Such he would seek, no matter what the future held.

CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN

Matt had never seen the Bridge so crowded. When it became apparent the Haktoon ship could not hover on Nullgrav just above the Collegium Central city of the T’Chak, BattleMind had reluctantly agreed to take aboard the Haktoon commander Lateen and a Defense assistant by the name of Argane. While he occupied the Interlock Pit, with Eliana, Suzanne and George to his left and rear, the wide-bodied shapes of their alien guests filled much of the space to his right. As for the AIs, their holos or physical shapes occupied the rear of the Bridge, near the two combat suits. Except for BattleMind, whose holo stood forward, next to the front holosphere. At least the two Haktoon had affixed a translator comdisk to their upper shells so their click-talk could be understood by everyone else.

Clicks sounded from Lateen. “You are not an organic, are you, BattleMind of the T’Chak?”

The crocodile jaws of the AI who ruled Matt’s ship opened briefly. “I bear the image of my makers. My nature is that of a self-aware entity, like you. My physical embodiment is similar to that of the AI known as Gatekeeper, or the other globe that contains Elegant Harmony. We do not need to be organic in order to think. Or to control this starship. Understood!”

In his mind Matt saw the skin color of Lateen and Argane suddenly change to silver, to match the flexmetal floor and walls of the Bridge. Slowly they resumed their natural color. The mouth-palps of Lateen clicked sharply. “Understood.”

George, wearing only a kilt, looked over at the two starfish crabs. “Commander Lateen, how did you detect that BattleMind is not an organic? The holographic images of it and our friends Gatekeeper and Mata Hari are three-dimensional representations accurate to the smallest element.”

“Bodyheat,” Lateen clicked at normal volume. “When the
Day-Star sets, we see by the bodyheat that all lifeforms emit. When Day-Star rises, we see by the emissions you call ultraviolet. Sadly, we do not perceive these ‘colors’ that you, George, describe as a decoration format for your flexible body shelter.”

Matt smiled to himself. To call a kilt a ‘body shelter’ would seem to be an insult to all that was
Scottish. But George waved a hand toward the two starfish crabs. “Thank you. Our human vision is more limited. We do not see in either bodyheat or ultraviolet. Our vision matches the yellow of our home star, though we see well at night.”

Argane the Defense
alien clicked slowly. “And yet, your species became the dominant lifeform on your planet. How did that happen?”

Eliana looked past Matt to the two aliens. “
We are an adaptable species,” she said. “When the climate changed four million cycles ago on our home continent, we moved out of the trees to be ground-dwellers. A million years ago our ancestors adapted to similar changes and moved out of that one continent to occupy most of our world. More recently in time we occupied some shallow subsea environments. We soon moved to space habitats, then outward to nearby stars in Waves of colonization, similar to what your species now does. We are also a highly curious species.”

Matt enjoyed the in-person reactions of the Haktoon, but his primary focus was on their descent from orbit to the surface of HomeWorld, where the ship would hover in Colossus Mode on four massive pressor beams. In the front holo, and in his mind by way of the cable, he saw the immensity of Collegium Central. The silvery shine of its three-sided buildings, the flaring of reflected sunlight from its glass structures and the radial symmetry of its primary land access routes occupied an oval space measuring four hundred square kilometers. Of note were pillar-like buildings that held wide flat roofs, perhaps landing roosts for the high-flying dragons?

“Move to the central plaza nexus,” BattleMind said both in words and in Matt’s mind.

“A beautiful city,” he said as his thoughts guided the
Nullgrav flight of
Mata Hari
.

“All creations of my masters show a sublime symmetry,” the somber AI said. “They are a perfect lifeform. Such perfection cannot have disappeared from this space-time.”

Knowing the ability of stasis chambers to stop all physical processes while allowing the mind time for slowed down entertainment, thanks to his own lifepod experience seven years ago, Matt could believe a few T’Chak might still survive. But would they be sane after being in stasis for 207,000 years?

“Now hovering
above the central nexus plaza,” Matt mind-spoke to BattleMind, whose purple cloud of awareness, while immense in its complexity, did not batter his mind. He gave a softly worded ‘Thanks’ to the cloud.

“This ship’s flexible hull will enclose each of us and place us within the central plaza using a pressor beam,”
BattleMind said, turning to face everyone on the Bridge. “Prepare yourself to be transported.”

“Wait!” Matt said as he climbed out of the Pit. “George and I will wear our combat suits to the surface. In case animal predators now occupy the city.”

“And I,” clicked Lateen, “do not understand this pressor beam. What is it? And will we be safe?”

BattleMind spread its black wings wide open, with one wing passing through the Memory
Pillar cluster that contained Mata Hari. “Safe you will be. The pressor beam is an invisible field the pushes and also contains. You will experience only the natural gravity of HomeWorld, which is similar to that of Temtok. Have you changed your mind about seeing a master?”

“No,” clicked Lateen slowly. “We are prepared for descent to the ground.” It blinked its two nearest eyes. “We have never, in person, been so elevated above the ground.”

Matt felt Suit close behind him and accepted the fiber optic cable connection to his cervical plug. The sense of the entirety of the ship was now restored. Avoiding
ocean-time
but accepting the inflow of multiple mind inputs, Matt felt and ‘saw’ the golden cloud of Elegant Harmony, the purple cloud of BattleMind, the red cloud of Mata Hari and the brown cloud of Gatekeeper. Next to him George also finished his suit adjustments. “Ready,” his combat mate said over the tachyon comlink.

“Ready,” Matt said to BattleMind, whose thoughts seemed focused on the broad expanse of Collegium Central, searching in vain for any kind of tachlink signal, or controlled movement of any device like himself. None was present.

“Departing for the surface,” BattleMind said as its holo disappeared.

In his mind Matt perceived the shapes of Eliana, Suzanne, Gatekeeper and Elegant Harmony disappear through the flexfloor as the ship’s hull pouched open,
dropping all of them into the air below, then downward to a white stone plaza bigger than the
Arch de Triomphe
plaza in old Paris. Leastwise, bigger than the datapad image he’d studied years ago. All sides of the plaza were fronted by buildings of various shapes. Which one would BattleMind head for?

Lateen’s skin changed hues several times during the descent from the T’Chak starship, which still displayed its two-winged, long tail and toothy front. He noticed that at the edge of the plaza below there were four large depressions in the stone. Perhaps those were the touchdown points of what the T’Chak intelligence had called ‘pressor feet’. Just above him sounded the frantic clicks of Argane.

“Commander! This is unnatural! It is—”

“How we reach the land surface without use of our shuttle. Which was used to transport our young Mother and her two ten-packs to the surface of this Temtok just before the ar
rival of the Old One starship,” he clicked to his clutchmate. “Be patient. And be observant. This is the place from which the Old Ones ruled this entire star cluster. We have much to learn here.”

His Defense clutchmate quieted. But inside himself, Lateen’s three hearts beat faster than normal.

He gave thanks their ship had not tried to fight the Old One starship. The Haktoon had nothing like this flexible metal, or the hundreds of ten-packs of laser mounts. And the antimatter cannons that adorned each of the ship’s wings were a marvel also unknown to his people. Still, if they could be good students of an organic Old One, perhaps they would gain not just a new colony world, but an ability to rival the greatness of the Old Ones. After a few million cycles, he told himself.

# # #

Matt and George touched down near the center of the plaza at the same time. They turned backs to each other and began scanning the surrounding buildings in all wavelengths, while also being attentive to ground vibrations in case some device rose up from below the plaza’s surfac
e. His biceps rocket tubes ejected dozens of sensorBeads, energy seekers, SpyEye floaters, with the Fire-and-Forget nanoshells held at the ready, in case some large creature disputed their presence. Meanwhile, in his inner mind, he felt the presence of all four AIs, and the nearby landing of Eliana in her own combat suit and Suzanne in her blue jumpsuit.

“Matt
hew!” called Eliana in an excited tone. “Look up! To the ship!”

Activating the videye atop his helmet, Matt saw a large purple globe being pouched out by
Mata Hari
, then slowly descending on its own Nullgrav power. The globe was not smoothly round like the nearby globe of Elegant Harmony. This globe that he had never before seen was made up of triangular plates that made it resemble two geodesic domes joined at the base of each. As it grew closer he noticed glyph-signs carved into its metal, glyphs similar to those he’d seen on board the starship.

“BattleMind? Is that you?”

“Yes,” said the T’Chak AI in his mind as its bodyshape holo appeared beside him and George. “I am bringing my awareness modulus to this search effort. Mata Hari’s mind modulus remains on board the ship. Though everyone is here in either physical or mind form.”

And so they were as dear Mata Hari materialized in holo form, thanks to emitters from his Suit. Matt turned his attention back to the broad plaza and its surrounding buildings. The shapes were a mix of three-sided pillars, geodesic domes like the one where they’d found Elegant Harmony, cubes, glassine arches that seemed to be made of precious stones, a single round pillar that reached a hundred meters into the air to provide a high ‘roost’ landing spot for a species that flew more than it walked, and long sinuous waterways that were festooned with greenery. Sadly, he also saw dozens of float
er wrecks scattered about the plaza, and similar debris beyond, according to his SpyEye floaters as they fanned out beyond the plaza, searching for life and for any threat.

“To the pillar,” BattleMind said, moving toward the
roost pole that stood near the center of the plaza.

“Not that dome over there?
” Matt said over mind-link.

“The obvious is not always correct,” muttered BattleMind, the purple cloud of its awareness spreading out like Matt’s and George’s to envelope the plaza and buildings beyond. “I have emitted a neutrino recognition pulse that should prevent any hostile action by Defense installations.
Here and below.”

“Good,” said George, his bearded face filling Matt’s
left side helmet quadrant. “I don’t like trying to guess where weapons are hiding.”

“No need to guess,” BattleMind said. “Observe.”

Around them, at the curve where the plaza met the surrounding buildings, there rose mountings able to project proton, carbon-dioxide and neutral particle beam lasers, along with KKM launchers, and a single long tube able to project coherent antimatter. Each Defense mounting aimed at them first, then elevated to where
Mata Hari
floated a thousand meters above them, then finally pointed outward toward the distant horizons.

Matt gulped. “Uh, are they now set to defend us and the starship?”

“Yes,” BattleMind said as they stopped before the black metal of the sky roost. “Follow me.”

Matt and George waited for the globes of BattleMind, Elegant Harmony and Gatekeeper to enter the triangular archway that had suddenly appeared, as if this metal
could pucker open like the flexmetal that made up the body of their starship. Eliana patted his armored hand as she passed by, while Suzanne tried to kiss George’s faceplate. She failed until he put one arm under shoulder and lifted her up. Matt wished he’d thought of doing that, but now was not the time for romance. Neither of the Haktoon starfish beings sought to comfort each other as they followed after the women. Anyway, now was the time to be on total alert. As he had told Suit’s Tactical CPU upon their landing. Its Threat Readiness icon showed pale green, signaling it was prepared to take over Suit and fight a combat retreat if Matt was somehow disabled. He followed George’s white shape into the shadows lying within the roost pillar.

Blinking, Matt told his contact lenses to shift to UV, infrared, microwave and the yellow-white of StarHome’s natural daylight. He reset Suit’s danger perimeter to a half-meter just to be sure none of the nerve gas dispensers ejected while they wa
lked down the spiral rampway that resembled the access route to the modulus habitat of Elegant Harmony. Round and round they walked, until Suit’s inertial sensor reported a depth of a hundred meters. Deep enough to avoid most bomb Remotes and deep penetrating assaults. Though an asteroid impact at planetary escape velocity would surely destroy anything in the center of Collegium Central.