Star Vigilante (Vigilante Series) (42 page)

“I hope so.” Matt held hands with her as they both turned to watch the holosphere.

The Nova attacked.

As before with the Halicene starship
Obliteration
, the Anarchate Battleglobe shot out two black beams of neutron antimatter. They hit as soon as Matt and Eliana saw them.

Or almost hit.

In the back of his mind—where he still took a much-dampered, much-downlinked datafeed from Mata Hari’s successor BattleMind—he felt one of the new pods activate. It emitted a sheet of Alcubierre space-time between them and the incoming antimatter beams. It did this before the beams arrived. Tachyonic FTL senses do make a difference.

In the holosphere, they watched as the antimatter beams hit the black sheet of distorted spacetime and disappeared. Displaced somewhere else, to wherever the Alcubierre pocket universe existed.

Another pod activated and a flanking sheet took form. Then two more pods came on-line, setting up dorsal and ventral sheets. With its Alcubierre shields now in place,
Mata Hari
fired back.

The axial plasma funnel coughed up three plasma globes, one after the other. The purple globes sped toward the Nova, moving at slow sublight speeds.

HF lasers fired at point blank range, quickly passing the plasma globes.

Particle beam accelerators glowed with subatomic fire and spat out antimatter neutrons, feeding the six AM pontoons. The coherent antimatter beams shot through the newly deployed Alcubierre shields.

On the Nova’s black hull, six massive gouts of total matter-to-energy conversion products appeared. Like little suns, they glowed. A globe twelve kilometers wide flared like a dozen suns.

The Nova staggered in its vector swing, large chunks of it eaten away by
Mata Hari’s antimatter cannons. The Anarchate globe fired back at them with hypervelocity missiles, proton beams, CO2 and HF lasers, and excimer lasers. But all were stopped by Mata Hari’s Alcubierre spacetime sheets.

Matt realized he was seeing, for the first time, the projection of flat Alcubierre spacetime pocket universes. Rather than the strictly globular pocket universes heretofore used for transport star-to-star. But that was not the end of the battle.

An Anarchate Nova is not without power.

The deeply wounded globe shimmered with Bethe Inducer startup fields, preparing to turn
Mata Hari
into a few molecules of neutron star.

Mata Hari
completed its attack.

Just as the plasma globes impacted on the Nova’s outer skin, finishing the fragmenting job begun by the AM cannons, his ship fired again.

From the graviton-field Room.

A brilliant yellow beam of coherent gravitons flared suddenly, instantly in the debris-strewn vacuum between
Excellent
and
Mata Hari.
Matt closed his eyes, but his mind still burned.

Eliana screamed. “No!”

Outside, in the cold immensity of space, a thousand Anarchate beings and the twisted remains of a Nova battleglobe, just . . . imploded.

They imploded past the neutron star stage. Imploded into matter so tightly compressed that it wrapped the field equations of normal space-time around itself and disappeared from EMF view. Only e
ventually, through the Hawking tunneling effect, would the small grain of sand that had been the Nova ever show its presence to Riemannian space-time.

And declare itself as a tiny black hole.

It was over, the battle was over.

In less than half a second.

Now, it was their turn.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

In the sudden silence of the Biolab, Matt abruptly recalled the meaning of why he had been in Decontam—before Mata Hari
had changed her nature. Before one AI mind exiled another AI mind to captivity. He looked at his love, sitting in the accel-couch next to him.

Eliana looked worried, but not worried enough.

She was infected! She should be wondering how many years she had left. And how many years would she be a crippled crone, unable to control her bodily functions, unable to feed herself, unable to clean herself. Unable even to make love with the man whose fate she had chosen to share. He sighed, cherishing her distraction as all about them the Biolab walls flickered to colors rainbow-like, new holospheres blinked on and off as the BattleMind ran lightspeed fast through itself, becoming more familiar with its ancient capabilities.

It was like a newborn baby, in a way.

Matt could see why organic life was something so precious that the Greeks had schemed, misled their Derindl allies, and fought for the full spectrum neonatal placental units. Love led to making love. That led to the need, the desire, the wonder of having children. The only immortality yet known to organic life came from living on in one’s children. But he and Eliana could never have children without a placental unit—they were too genetically different. Or could they? Could a Pure Breed human, which was his birth genome, fertilize Eliana’s crossbreed eggs? Could they . . . have children?

He reached out and caressed her long hair, marveling desperately at the sensation. She turned, meeting his eyes. “Matthew, what is our future?”

No lies must stand between them. “We will be together. For a while. Until the virus kills us, or until Mata Hari
discards us.”

“Will it?” Her eyes searched his, demanding truth.

“We can only ask.” He thought-imaged, calling aloud his question. Calling to the BattleMind formerly known as Mata Hari
.

“Yes?” rumbled a distracted AI voice.

Matt’s body jerked to Interface overload as his entire body was forced into
ocean-time
as the warrior BattleMind/Mata Hari
spoke to him at the speed it thought, flooding him with more inputs than he had ever experienced.

“Matthew!” Eliana held him as he spasmed in every muscle.

Too much.

Too . . . much.

Four hundred femtoseconds
.

Images flooded his mind. The ship now moved across the ecliptic of Sigma Puppis system, heading for deep space as fast as possible, reaching for the heliopause and the safer way of going into Alcubierre spacetime. For its own reasons, the AI now spared the eleven planets of Sigma Puppis the gravity wave disturbances of in-system Translation.

His mind expanded, reaching to the heliopause. Seeing and feeling everything.

No one now opposed
starship
Mata Hari.
No other ship came their way or hailed them. The cargo Remote sent by Ioannis had long moments ago dropped off Matt’s payments, picked up Grandfather Petros, and now moved to dock with Zeus Station. Voices innumerable squealed and squalled all across the electromagnetic spectrum. Their only common language was fear—of him, and of his ship.

Halcyon lay cleansed behind them. The Halicene Conglomerate stood defeated. Autarch Dreedle held power, but was cursed by the presence of a shipwrecked Anarchate base Commander. Perhaps Chai would not blame Autarch Dreedle for the actions of
Mata Hari.
Perhaps the alien would just pursue him and
Mata Hari
across the galaxy—once a replacement Nova globe arrived in system. And maybe the Anarchate would fear him and his fellow humans, instead of the true foe—a rogue starship whose new AI mind refused to accept that its masters were long gone, extinct, unable to give it the sense of purpose that every mind—even AI minds—needed in order to live.

Stupid Anarchate.

Nine hundred picoseconds
.

A cloud presence hovered over him. Much as the galaxy’s star field overarched a single grain of sand. Was it his
Mata Hari? Or the new mind?

Six hundred nanoseconds
.

The BattleMind paid him attention.

Step . . . Down
occurred as the BattleMind AI recognized his limitations.

Two milliseconds
.

Normality came. Human slow he felt and sensed and thought.

Matt blinked, seeing Eliana’s face, seeing her concern. Tenderly she wiped his chin clean of the spittle that had come with the spasms. Once again, he felt the hovering presence of the AI known as BattleMind. But now mercifully distanced. He spoke aloud for Eliana’s benefit. “BattleMind, are you going to kill us?”

“No. That is not my Prime Task.”

“What is your Prime Task?” Eliana called angrily, looking up to the ceiling voice, anger and frustration showing in equal measure.

“Why,”
Mata Hari’s male warrior voice said calmly, “to reconnoiter and evaluate the offensive military capability of the Anarchate, of course. Before I return to my T’Chak masters. We cannot Alcubierre Translate directly there—it is too far, even for my power sources. And the T’Chak Empire has always believed in researching their enemies.”

“If your T’Chak organics even exist,” growled Eliana, moving to hold his hand as he sat up.

“They exist,” BattleMind said harshly. “True, their last order came to me . . . two hundred thousand and seven of your years ago. However, my organic masters plan for the long term. And they expect their instrumentalities to perform as directed, to fulfill their Plan.”

“
Mata Hari
,
what is the Plan of your sleeping T’Chak?” Matt asked as he squeezed Eliana’s fingers, pretending to have strength he lacked.

“
To invade the Anarchate and replace it with their own mentorship,” said the distant BattleMind. “That is all the data that lies within my Task algorithm. It will be up to the T’Chak Masters to further instruct me.”

Eliana tossed her hair, still rebellious. “
Invading the Milky Way will not be easy, though I detest the lawlessness of the Anarchate and the evils it permits. What are your plans for us?”

The AI paused. “The entity known as Matt Dragoneaux has been useful to the Task—he has involved this starship in increasingly violent actions with Anarchate power structures and equipment. He can do so again. Many times. On our way out of the galaxy.”

“How?” Matt spit onto the flexmetal floor. “I’m sick, remember?”

The BattleMind emitted a sense of amusement. “There is still your Suit—it can move you anywhere. You will feel normal inside it.” Yeah. He’d forgotten about Suit. “And the Biolab will provide you with corrective retroviruses and monoclonal antibodies that will slow the decay of your systems. Gene therapy will heal the worst of your illnesses.”

Eliana laughed harshly. “Thanks a lot! Healthy slavery for him and imprisonment for me.”

Something twinged at the back of his mind. “
Mata Hari
,
what about Eliana? Can you provide her with the same medications as me? She . . . I would be more efficient if she did not sicken.”

“Why?” He felt the AI’s amusement grow. “She doesn’t need them.”

“What!” he yelled.

The BattleMind’s mild amusement faded. “She is not infected with the slow virus. Remote scanning of her stem cells shows that she is a crossbreed, with a mixed Human-Derindl genetic structure. Legion’s slow virus attacks only Pure Breed humans—like you.”

“I’m healthy!” Eliana yelled.

Matt left his accel-couch, bent over and hugged her, sharing her joy. As the BattleMind grew distant, he asked the final question. “Can she stay with me?”

“Yes.” Mata Hari
receded even further. “So long as she does not interfere with me. And she may assist the BioLab in its treatment of you. Perhaps her abilities will offer some insight. You organics do seem to relate better organic-to-organic. As you did recently with the Halcyon humans and their Derindl allies. You will be allowed future conflict opportunities to assist this Destruction Device in evaluating the range of combat options my masters will face when they invade the Anarchate.” The voice faded. “Now, do not bother me for awhile. I have calculations to prepare.”

The BattleMind vanished, disappearing into the dark depths of the Restricted Rooms.

Eliana hugged Matt tightly. Then she pulled back a little, enough so they saw each other eye to eye, heart to heart, love to love. “Matt, there
is
hope.”