“Of course,” Matt said, wondering just how far this couple was willing to go. “That would be helpful and might offset some of the negative Anarchate propaganda once the facts of my attacks are released to the galactic public.”
Suzanne squinted her green eyes. “There’s been no word about your Halcyon battle or later battles?”
“None,” Eliana said. “It’s politics, of course. The Anarchate cannot afford to admit one starship can be a problem, let alone a single species like us humans.” She bit her lip. “That is why Matt and I think our home planets are safe from retaliation. As Morrigan would be safe. The Anarchate’s Central Nexus administrators cannot admit their ancient galactic system can fail in any fashion. It will take many more attacks before the exploits of starship
Mata Hari
appear on the controlled tachnet channels. But your theme of ‘Freedom Yes, Slavery No’ can appear before the news of our actions becomes known. Maybe it will help alien cultures to understand what Matt and I, with Mata Hari’s help, are doing.”
Gatekeeper floated up to George and Suzanne, surprising Matt in view of the silence shown by the two AIs. “My friends, congratulations on your decision to Commit to each other. It seems that celebrations are in order.”
Matt blinked at his own blindness. He was so used to liaisons of all sorts by all kinds of beings that the obvious closeness of George and Suzanne had not prompted his memory of his parents. And their love for each other. A love he had found a second time with Eliana. He reached out to grip George’s hand.
“Congratulations big guy!”
Eliana hugged Suzanne, whispering something in the woman’s ear, then waved over Mata Hari. “Hey gal, you may be a holo but give this woman a hug over her good news!”
Mata Hari, still dressed in her frilly white sheath, walked over to Suzanne, bent down a little and wrapped two white sleeved arms around Suzanne. “Congratulations mistress Suzanne. I hope you and George will be happy for . . . a very long time.”
Suzanne’s green eyes widened as she felt the semi-solid natural of Mata Hari, thanks to the AI’s use of mini-tractors to make dense the air space occupied by her three dee shape. “Wow! That was the first real hug I’ve ever gotten from an . . . an AI who feels like a real woman!”
Matt noticed how the twinkling status lights of Gatekeeper
shifted to a uniform green glow, as if the Omega AI was . . . feeling something. Something beyond its algorithms and its intellectual thoughts. Could there be a romance building between it and Mata Hari? If so, how would the Omega AI’s departure at Morrigan affect the only friend he’d had for seven years?
CHAPTER NINE
Three days later they arrived just outside the heliopause of Morrigan’s F3 main sequence star that was hidden from Earth view by the red-orange supergiant at the center of the Jewel Box. Matt left Translation in normal human mode since there was no reason to expect the presence of an Anarchate battleglobe or any warlike behavior by the million inhabitants of the system’s third planet. Looking much like Earth, with half its surface occupied by two giant oceans and several small seas, Morrigan’s EMF emissions now appeared on the forward holosphere. The broadcast centered on a male human who wore a military-style outfit.
“Citizens, we are chasing the genome harvesters who kidnapped fifteen settlers from the
farming town of Rathfriland, but their ship is faster than our corvette.” The elderly man with short grey hair grimaced. “Our Tachyon Pylon will be rebuilt in a few weeks. Then we can call for Anarchate help. Perhaps the vidimages of the kidnapping will fit some record of theirs.”
The man’s image disappeared to be replaced by the auburn curls of a newswoman used to doing live news, versus net-talk chatter. “Governor
O’Davoren has activated the militia and is sending help to the law officers of Rathfriland,” she said, her strong accent reminding Matt of some humans he’d met who called the small Earth island of Ireland their home. An accent like that shown by George. “The harvester starship was last seen heading for the outer planets before our ground scopes lost their image. But neutrino detectors are following them and estimate the ship is passing planet four, the Badb. Perhaps she will gift them with fear and confusion, so our corvette can catch it,” she said with a sigh.
Eliana turned in her accel-couch to face Matt. “How old is this broadcast?”
Matt consulted his internal databyte nanocube. “About fifteen hours. Their home planet, which they call Morrigan, is located about two AU from their home star, which they call Dagda. But this system’s heliopause boundary is much further out than their outermost planet seven, which is located at a distance similar to Sol’s Pluto. So we are about 150 AU out from the star. Which means the broadcast is about fifteen hours old.”
Eliana rested her chin on a fist. “Our speed?”
“Three quarters light but slowing,” he said.
“The harvester. How fast do you think it is going?”
“Maybe one quarter lightspeed, since a system corvette cannot do better than one-tenth lightspeed.” Matt blinked, noticed Mata Hari had taken holo form to his right, and gave thanks that BattleMind was resting, sleeping or ignoring them, whatever a T’Chak AI did when it rested. “Why all the questions about this system and the harvester?”
Eliana frowned slightly. “You don’t see it, do you?”
Maybe it was Translation shock or the aftereffects of Interface fatigue from the combat in CC41324 system. But his inner self, the place where his memory pain dwelled, now erupted with awareness.
“Yes!” he growled,
recalling a fifteen year-old memory. “We could intercept this harvester ship and free the captives. Mata Hari, begin emitting the Anarchate Combat Command ID code that all their ships use when encountering one another. And . . . pull our AM pontoon wings in closer to our nose, so our shape will resemble a courier’s triangle profile.”
Eliana smiled at the chance they might rescue captives. Matt did not. Inner ferocity did not allow a lightness of mind. “And my dear AI partner, use the image of Commander Chai and his spoken words in the S
pelidon dialect to fabricate a Stop and Await inspection order for the harvester. Use the Anarchate icon image, of course. Make Chai sound harsh and suspicious. Can do?”
Mata Hari’s Victorian image nodded calmly
from Matt’s right side, though one hand touched her pearl choker. “Can do, Matthew. What method will you use to extract the captives?”
“Suit and myself,” he said flatly, his tone accepting no argument. “Let Sarah Vasiliades and the other humans know we are diverting slightly from standard arrival mode to rescue captive humans. Block any complaints from them. Have your neutrino sensors detected the harvester starship?”
Eliana, he saw in his mind’s eye, leaned forward, perhaps as eager as Matt to know the scope of their challenge. Mata Hari turned his way and spoke her answer in addition to sending him a neurolinked three dee map of Dagda system, the placement of its seven planets, its version of a Kuiper Belt, and the location of the genome harvester starship.
“It is passing the orbit of planet seven, which the local humans have named Beag, after a minor Celtic goddess know
n for having a magic well.” She reached up to unloose her black hair so it fell like a waterfall over white shoulders. Her look became that of a Barbarian Queen. “Its vector is just twenty degrees off of our incoming vector, and in parallel with this star’s ecliptic. At our current speed we will reach it within ten hours.”
“How soon before it detects our presence?” Eliana asked, duplicating
Matt’s own thought.
“Well, it is already aware of us from our gravity wave pulse due to Translation entry. So it knows our location and incoming vector, in general terms,
as do the authorities on Morrigan,” Mata Hari said, adjusting the bronze bracelets that now appeared on her wrists. “But the harvester’s normal light telescope cannot resolve our form until we are within two light hours of convergence. Assuming their ship is an upgraded corvette with the usual two domes of directed energy weapons.”
Eliana looked at him. “Matthew, why
are
you
going to free the captives? This ship’s sled Remotes could do the job, the same way they rescued you and me from my brother’s space station, after the blast that disabled our transit car.”
His memory pain made Matt feel raw inside, but he could not lash out at his lifepartner. Perhaps a memory image or two would educate her to why he had to do the rescuing. Personally. In Suit. So he could
see directly the looks of relief of the captives, and the terror on the alien visages of their kidnappers. Hopefully some of the alien crew would be able to exhibit some version of terror. He knew that he planned to extract that emotion before killing them all.
“Mata Hari,” he said aloud. “Please take these memory images from my life . . . before the harvesters came to my planet fifteen years ago.
And this one from afterwards. Convert them to moving vid, encode them into a memory block, and present the block to Eliana for her viewing whenever she chooses.” He turned to his organic partner.
“Eliana, my dear, I am sharing with you my memories of my Mom, Dad
, my three younger sisters and my oldest sister, Charlotte. You have heard my story of their kidnapping by genome harvesters who got away and likely sold them to the cloneslavers of Alkalurops. Perhaps after viewing the memory images you will understand why I must do this in person. And Eliana?”
“Yes, Matthew?”
“Thank you.”
She dimple smiled. “For what?”
“For giving me this opportunity to stop the same horror from occurring to someone else.”
Eliana’s smile grew somber. Then she noticed Mata Hari’s final change into her Barbarian Queen persona, this time with a sharp
saber in one hand and a chain-mail outfit covering her black-skinned body from neck to knees. The AI’s appearance matched the unrelenting determination of Matt. Which was only proper since Mata Hari had experienced Matt’s memory pain as he transmitted the visual memories of his family via neurolink. His AI partner had long known his motivation for becoming a Vigilante. Now she better understood the emotions underlying his choice. He gave thanks that this AI had gained a level of emotionality that no other AI he’d ever encountered could match. Today, Mata Hari acted with the inner sense of a true Barbarian Queen out to avenge a horror done to her clan family. In truth, she had become an Amazon.
Eliana lay in the accel-couch as Matt fell into
ocean-time
linkage with the starship and with the battle-clad Mata Hari. She held the small cube of the memory block that held the family images of Matt’s past. When he had been a normal human male of sixteen years, about to head off to the colony planet’s Port to buy parts for their soybean harvester and potato excavator. The time before he’d been orphaned and left to find any kind of work for alien task masters. The time before he’d first felt the touch of a neurowhip. She shivered.
Knowing they had ten hours before combat would occur, with plenty of time for her to visit with Leader Sarah about the alteration in plans, she pressed the cube into a reader slot of the accel-couch, reached back to place the neurolink circlet on her head, and closed her eyes as she began the alpha rhythm that would activate the
memories.
“Matthew, come inside for dinner,” called his mother’s warm voice.
Young Matthew left the hillside grain shaft and his six-legged groundhugger pet to hide as best it could, hoping his father Benoit would not find his pet. He walked to the earth-walled homestead that his mother Kristin had made into a warm, welcoming and cozy place for him and his four sisters. His Dad worked him too hard, but he understood they had to grow their own food and extra food to sell for platinum Standards. So they could buy machinery parts and pay for vidlink tutoring of him and his sister Charlotte in school stuff. Sometimes he wished there was a live tutor in a school house with other live students, but homesteads in this rural part of Thuringia were too far apart for students to gather in a group. And vidlink education had been the standard teaching mode since humans had left Earth for the stars. Or so his parents told him.
“Hi Mom,” he said as he entered the kitchen. Moving to the sink he washed his hands under the attentive look of his father Benoit. His brown-haired sister Charlotte
was focused on a datapad filled with a homework assignment. His other three sisters were already seated, playing a game of Rock and Scissors.
His Mom Kristin looked away from the microwave cook unit to him, her face pink from the heat of the radiant stove that kept their four room homestead warm despite the
thunderstorms and winter gales that buffeted them this time of year. She brushed a strand of black hair away from her high brow, smiled at him, then nodded at a stack of plates. “Matthew, will you lay out the plates for everyone? And bring a pitcher of lemonade from the cooler? Thank you son.”
Matthew did as asked, then sat at the round table, with his father to his right and Charlotte to his left.
His younger sisters Melody, Janine and Sally sat close to his mom.
“Favorite, favorite,” teased Charlotte under her breath.
Matt ignored the latest tease line of his twelve year-old sister. She knew he was almost an adult at sixteen, and she could not stand the fact that their Dad had tasked him with the job of buying machine parts at Elios Port, using the groundskimmer to get there. It was a five hour journey down the peninsula and over rolling flatlands, and he knew that Charlotte wanted to ride with him. But Matt had not invited her since he understood his Mom wanted to teach needlework embroidery to Charlotte and her younger sisters, while his Dad worked the potato excavator to bring in the last bushels of potatoes before the ground froze winter solid. So he changed the subject.
“Having any luck with your trig lessons?”
She turned upset brown eyes his way. “Who said I was having any trouble!”
Matt just smiled, enjoying how his years in the family had taught him the art of reading what worried other people. Doing bad in math was his sister’s pet peeve. So, he let the dig lie and
looked up as his Mom laid down a platter of roast groundhog, then sat herself.
“Shall we say grace?” asked Kristin Dragoneaux
.
Matt bit his lip, knowing his Mom was lightly teasing their Dad, who preferred the Old Catholic grace to his Mom’s Unitarian praise of the Spirit
of Life.
Together
the seven of them said grace to the Spirit of Life, each of them happy to be with each other.
Eliana blinked her eyes, pushing away the wetness she felt. This family scene was soooo like her own times at home with her older brothers Ioannis and Konstantinos, her Mom Beatrice and her Dad Andre. So normal was this memory of Matt’s. And so soon to be his last memory of his family together. Did he regret not inviting his sister to ride into the Port with him? She would not have been kidnapped by the harvesters if he had taken her with him to Port
Elios. She sighed to herself. Every person had regrets of the past and hopes for the future. As she had hopes for herself and Matthew, once this Anarchate crusade was finished. They should be able to find an out of the way colony world where they could blend in with fake names, buy a homestead or craft shop, settle in and begin a family. Children. She so wanted children. And she so hoped that her crossbreed nature would not require them to use an artificial neonatal placental unit. In her mind, a new image took shape from Matt’s memory sharing. This image was not of his family.
Matt winced from the
lash of the neurowhip on his bare back, did not strike back at the six-legged Malidon creature who ran the cloneslave vats for an absentee owner, and reached into a small metal vat to haul out a cloneslave fetus now seven months old that belonged to the rat-like Spelidon species. It lay inside a clear cylinder that served as an artificial placenta since no normal female Spelidon would willingly give birth to a baby that would be mind-encoded for obedience to any sapient that paid enough platinum Standards to possess the ultimate in a personal Servant. Or personal toy for sadistic torture. Or worse. Matt tried not to think of what the wrinkled fetus with two eyes, a long hairy tale, three-fingered hands and a rat-like snout would think of its existence.