Mata Hari lifted a black eyebrow, then swept hair from her forehead with her free hand. “Interesting. But you must be aware that this starship has thousands of combat devices, from nanoware energy seekers to nan
oBeads for surveillance to Fire-and-Forget KKMs to self-guided Offense Sleds that can force an entry into any solid structure. As we did some months ago in Halcyon system,” she said, stepping back from George so everyone was in her view. “Also, Matthew will be in tachlink contact with me every step of his action onboard the harvester ship, while various of my small devices will assist him in locating the human captives. Your offer is . . . generous, but not needed.”
George’s lips thinned. “Mata Hari, you are clearly an amazing battle companion to your Matthew. As we have all seen lately in thes
e different space battles. But—” he looked aside to Gatekeeper as if seeking help. “But Matt is organic. I am organic. Having someone to ‘cover your back’ is an ancient human combat tactic that can only be fulfilled by another organic. Like me. Let me speak to Matt about this, please?”
“Mistress,” Gatekeeper spoke to Mata Hari, who shifted her gaze to his light-studded sphere. “My experience with humans visiting and departing from the Omega casino verifies that organics of all species often desire one or more companions of their own species when facing difficult choices. I can uplink my organic encounter history to yo
u if you wish. Lady of the Sword.”
“Proceed with the u
plink.” The AI partner of Matt Dragoneaux looked intently at Gatekeeper, offered a sigh, then gave her fellow AI a tight smile. “Thank you, my friend. Your experiences are indeed helpful.”
Mata Hari turned her attention back to George. She swung her
saber sword up to waist height, put its tip in her free hand as if testing its sharpness, then nodded abruptly. “Your point is valid, based on the human combat histories I have reviewed in the seven years of my work with Matthew. And based on Gatekeeper’s own observations. Follow me to the Bridge.”
She turned and headed for the slidedoor and Spine hallway, clearly choosing to act as human-like as George. Who followed her out with a Thank You wave to
Sarah. She smiled at them both. This AI woman warrior already understood the value of keeping a friend close by. And George was on his way to whatever future would happen. She turned back to the twinkling lights of Gatekeeper and the helpful face of Eliana Themistocles..
“Shall we continue our colony planning and strategizing?”
Gatekeeper’s status lights turned from a solid green color to the normal variety her AI friend usually showed. “Yes, let us continue.”
“Sure,” Eliana said, moving to sit in a nearby cushion chair. Sounds like you have done some planning already.”
Sarah sat down and grabbed a datapad that held vital statistics on Morrigan, its people and its places of habitation. Someday she would ask Gatekeeper what was meant when its status lights all assumed one color. She had never seen it happen before on Omega, and now it had happened twice here on this starship. Both times in the presence of the Mata Hari AI. Interesting. She tapped the datapad and showed it to Gatekeeper, then to Eliana.
“This is a good design for a communal shelter, if we end up settling as a group in the countryside. What do you think of it?”
Shortly both of them were arguing nicely.
Matt left
ocean-time
as one part of his mind heard Mata Hari’s warning that she was returning with George O’Hussey, one of the human refugees who had a proposal for Matt. He grimaced, wondering if this was a tricky way to get him to change his mind about the rescue, but dismissed it quickly. George had always been a direct talking man who looked beyond immediate issues. Like his volunteering to help with pro-freedom messages. Matt had enjoyed playing chess with him during the Translation trip, and felt happy at the joint decision of George and Suzanne to be a Committed couple.
The S
pine pressure hatch opened with a slight air pressure equalization sound, then Mata Hari stepped over the hatch rim, followed by George. They both stood at the back of the Bridge, outlined by the red diagonal stripes that encircled every pressure hatch on this alien starship. Pulling the fiber optic cable off his neck, Matt climbed out of the Interlock Pit and moved to sit in Eliana’s accel-couch, turning it to face his two visitors.
“George, Mata Hari has told me you are here because my Eliana thought you had something worthwhile to say to me. What is that?”
O’Hussey glanced around the Bridge, stared a moment at the cluster of Memory Pillars that housed Mata Hari’s AI mind, glanced at the front holosphere that depicted the space before them, and then faced Matt. He gave a slight bow.
“Vigilante, I am Irish by heritage. We of Eire hold tight to honor and the duty to show courage in a fight to achieve what is right. Your rescue of these captives is a right cause. I wish to accompany you to the harvester starship as you battle companion. I’ve used hand lasers before, in my Repairs job. And I’ve spent months in vacuum while working at Omega,” he said, running out of breath.
Matt scanned the flushed face of the stocky, heavily muscled man who kept his black beard properly trimmed, his Repairs jumpsuit clean and his boots decently secured. He knew that in combat the small details often became as important as who held what weapon. And while Suit would allow him to overcome any opposition from the ship’s crew, having George available as a human backup to help with getting the captives onto the
Ariadne
shuttle would be useful. Of course he would be in constant contact with his partner Mata Hari, and would rely on her SpyEye floaters and SensorBead gyrocopters to scout ahead, but having someone who could cover his back would be nice. But would George obey him instantly, since his cyborg senses gave Matt a reaction time faster than any normal human or alien?
“Thank you. Drop your jumpsuit. Get naked.”
George looked startled, glanced at Matt’s Barbarian Queen partner, then shrugged. “Sure.”
Without clothes George did indeed show a decent musculature from hard work and the weight of carrying tools that did not have their own
Nullgrav plate. He appeared to be 35 Earth years in age, with no bags under his eyes nor excess weight from overindulgence. He doubted the man was a heavy drinker. Though Mata Hari would check his biochemistry before Matt left for the rescue. “Good. Mata Hari, make visible your laser beams as you scan George’s body for making a combat suit similar to the one you did for Eliana. And provide him with a cutdown Magnum laser handgun like Eliana’s.”
George watched dozens of red laser beams perform a low power survey of his naked body, then looked to Matt. “Is this kind of optoelectronic scanning the reason you sometimes go unclothed in the Spine hallway?”
“Yes.” It was nice to see George making the obvious conclusion from the body scan and Matt’s own nakedness. “Before your crowd came aboard, I was naked most of the time. Mata Hari prefers it as it gives her the greatest surface area in which to sensor link my body to her mind, and to link my body with functions of this starship.” Matt looked aside at the intense stare of his partner. Her eyes held a look he realized was similar to what he saw in his own eyes when using a mirror for cleanup. So be it.
“Mata Hari, please make the fabrication of a combat suit for George a top priority,” Matt said, turning his gaze to George. “Give his helmet full tachlink capability, multi-spectral vision and scanning, onboard food and water,
Nullgrav boot plates, external speakers and pressors for basic defense against any solids that approach him. And provide any other option you think helpful to his support task.”
“Will do
,” said the Barbarian Queen as she looked George up and down, then caused a holo combat suit to overlay George’s body. “Will something like this do, Matthew?”
He noticed the extra heavy ceramic armor, the coating of sapphire crystals for laser deflection,
a copy of his Running Wolf motif and a sturdy helmet similar to the one he had while in Suit. No backpack, of course, since it would take weeks to fabricate a duplicate of Matt’s Suit. But her design for George would keep him safe from handgun lasers, thrown explosives and nerve gases.
“Looks fine to me,” Matt said. “George, dress and return to your lady. Mata Hari will call you in a few hours to try on your combat suit. Spend at least three hours walking in it and working its onboard Tactical CPU and
other devices. You don’t need to be guessing how to turn on your Nullgrav boots when entering an enemy ship.”
“I will. And thank you, Vigilante. You can rely on me.”
CHAPTER TEN
Matt stared at the holosphere image of the genome harvester starship that had obeyed Mata Hari’s fake Anarchate Stop and Await command for a live inspection by Anarchate officials. It looked like an upgraded corvette, with top and belly mounted laser domes, plus a proton beamer mounted at its nose. Better armed than the local system’s corvette, he suspected, plus faster. It had indeed been accelerating up to one quarter lightspeed. Now, it floated in space in the darkness beyond Dagda’s seventh planet, but still far from the heliopause. Far behind was the Morrigan corvette, which only now was passing the sixth planet gas giant that someone had named Abhean. Matt shrugged. Names did not matter to him. What mattered was this ship, its crew, its weapons and how it might react to his arrival aboard their shuttle,
Ariadne
. He looked to his right at the dragon form of BattleMind, who had just now appeared on the Bridge.
“You know from sharing by Mata Hari why and how I plan to board this starship,” Matt told the scaly alien. “Because it is an outlaw ship that operates under Anarchate dominion, my combat on board it will be helpful to your conquest plans for this galaxy. Agreed?”
“Irrelevant,” growled BattleMind as it half-spread its giant wings. “This craft could easily be destroyed by a low power excimer laser. But you have this weakness for salvaging organic lives.” The dragon looked across at a seated Eliana and the holo of a battle-dressed Mata Hari. “At least the upcoming landing on the third planet will rid my home of most of this organic infestation.”
Matt gritted his teeth, wanting to argue. He did not. Instead, he climbed out of the Interlock Pit
and walked toward Suit where it stood against the back wall. “Yes, soon the 152 human refugees will be gone from this starship. Then we will head for our next combat site. But until then, I have a duty of honor to carry out. If you have any concept of honor, that is.”
The dragon’s red eyes appeared in his mind via optical neurolinking. “My Task is paramount. Doing my job in the most complete way possible is why I tolerate you, your Eliana and the linkage you call Mata Hari. You three do have your uses. But while you waste time I will review the Anarchate Combat Command sites for a location suitable for a further lesson. Do not disturb me.”
The disappearance of BattleMind from his mind and from the Bridge left Matt feeling . . . less crowded. He nodded aside to Eliana. “My love, you will see all that I see via tachlink to the front holosphere. And Mata Hari can explain anything while also working with me and George. Now, it is time for me to enter Suit and join George aboard the shuttle. Later.”
“Later, my dearest,” came Eliana’s soft voice even as Matt entered Suit from the back, felt for the exoskeleton footpads, ducked his head under and up into the helmet, pushed his hands out into his laser-tipped gloves, and blinked his right eye to close the back clamshell. Its closure was signaled by an Eyes Up virtual reality checkout display on faceplate.
He stepped through the red-bordered pressure hatch to the Spine hallway and began his Suit checkout. A one kilometer walk would be time enough for verifying what Mata Hari had already checked.
Matt blinked to
signal the virtual-reality display to split into three quadrants. Starship
Mata Hari
took form inside his helmet, its hallway and outer skin shape relegated to the faceplate’s right quadrant. He studied the central tube and outrigger pontoons of Hull Prime that Mata Hari had chosen as the least unusual appearance since the T’Chak ship could not imitate a twelve-kilometer wide battleglobe. The left quadrant showed the placement of lifeforms, energy sources, and motion vectors—all in three dimensions that rotated within a miniature graphics display. He focused on the left side as new data shimmered into being. A downlink from Mata Hari glowed like a red cloud. Within that cloud floated the harvester starship that ID’d as
Powerful
, while also showing nearby space, unpowered asteroidal debris, gamma and beta radiation levels, and solar wind fluxes from Dagda’s yellow-white surface.
Matt went to gestalt focus, simultaneously seeing the faceplate images and the inner surfaces of his contact lenses. On those lenses flickered readouts from the twelve weapons systems of Suit. All showed green-light Ready status.
Watching the empty Spine hallway through the center of his faceplate, Matt ordered Suit’s CPU to conduct a Systems Checkout.
Hundred megawatt laser pulse-cannons stirred to life on either shoulder, tracking around the
hallway, seeking Lock-On. A thump-crump sounded from each bicep as ten rounds of High Explosive Discarding Sabot shells cycled into miniature rocket-guns; they made each bicep look like a bagpipes factory. On his chest, the pulse-Doppler radar whined on. Millimeter-wavelength pulses ranged down the long hallway, probing the optical matter side walls and the flexmetal composition of the hallway floor and ceiling. Hard against his spine, the rocket launcher backpack grumbled down to Standby, told by Suit’s CPU this enclosure was too small for a kiloton atomic. But on either hip, and snugged up against his belly, backup magnetohydrodynamic power units pulsed to life.
We are ready!
The MHDs screamed, sounding like little electron bees. They stood ready to feed surge-power to the shoulder lasers, to his fingertip lasers and to Suit’s tractor and pressor beam emitters. Other weapons systems flashed by, also powered on. Ultrasonic vibers. Fire-and-Forget Nanoshell launchers. Nerve gas dispensers.
“Now? Can we go now?”
Matt smiled at their eagerness.
Not yet
, he told them via PET thought-imagery. Checkout done, Suit delivered a new display to his central faceplate, devoted solely to the
Ariadne
shuttle that floated on Nullgravs in a belly cargohold.
He smiled at the fake emblem of the Anarchate, an image of the Milky Way galaxy speared by a lightning bolt. That was a nice touch
by Mata Hari, along with the actual ID number from a shuttle that had recently arrived at the Intelligence dome landing field. While it was unlikely a crew of pirates would know Combat Command data, Matt liked it when his AI partner took care of the small details. It reassured him that bigger details, like the watch on the approaching Morrigan corvette would continue, as would planning for the offloading of the Omega refugees once they reached Morrigan. The planet’s capital, Lisdoonvarna, had a very large central park that could accommodate the two kilometer length of starship
Mata Hari
. And landing amid meadows, shrubs, clusters of oak and willow trees, and a small creek that bordered one side of the park would be a welcome relief from long days inside his starship.
Matt arrived above the cargohold that held
Ariadne
. Clearing his central faceplate he called to his partner. “Mata Hari, pouch me down through the floor to the cargohold.”
“Certainly,” she said, her mind image still that of the Barbarian Queen with a
saber sword and a look in the eyes one would not wish to see on a dark night.
His boot
Nullgravs lowered him to the level of the front airlock for the shuttle. It cycled open for him. Matt pulled himself inside using a helmet tractor beam emitter. The lock door closed quietly behind him, then pressure locked. The inside lock door cycled open. He entered the front passenger area, looking for George. His companion was not seated in any of the two rows of seats that could hold twenty passengers. Smiling to himself when he could have just asked Mata Hari to image George’s location to him, he turned right and strode into the separate pilot’s cabin.
“Hello, Matt,” rumbled George as he stood to one side of the room, his combat suit fully activated except for his helmet, which was folded back atop his broad shoulders. The man’s Van Dyke beard was twisted with a smile. The kind of smile one gets when a wish is granted.
“Hello, George.” Matt smiled through the central space of his faceplate but maintained the images of starship
Mata Hari
on his right quadrant and of harvester ship
Powerful
on his left. Verifying that George was cross-linked to his tachlink com, he called to his partner.
“Mata Hari, have you placed your limpet complink near the harvester ship’s Navigation computer?”
“Yes, Matthew,” she said, then appeared beside him in the small pilot cabin of the shuttle.
Matt gaped. “What, uh, how did you—”
Mata Hari’s hawk-like look showed a brief smile. “Added some holo emitters to Suit’s front panel. Allows me to be with you and George in image, though not much in substance as aboard our ship. You like?”
Matt liked t
his surprise. “I like. Did some of your SpyEye floaters and SensorBead gyrocopters also follow me aboard?”
“Of course.
Along with Seek/Identify sensors, software viruses, tachlink Sensor Remotes, poison gas sensors, and some nanoBit computers for lock decrypting. And my limpet complink is ready to take over that ship’s Nav computer once you enter
Powerful
.” Mata Hari gestured with her sword toward the normal light image of the harvester ship, which lay just fifty kilometers away from
Mata Hari
. “That will give us control over the pressure doors and hallway access. Should reduce your active opposition.”
“Thanks. And I like choosing my encounters versus dealing with my opponent’s choice.” Matt eyed
the distant image through the shuttle’s quartz crystal viewing band. As ordered, the
Powerful
had ceased acceleration and now floated beside Matt’s ship as the two of them headed out-system at one quarter lightspeed. The Morrigan corvette was only now approaching the orbit of the seventh planet. It lay several hours journey behind them. For Matt, that was just fine. His business with the genome slavers would be long over by the time
Mata Hari
passed the corvette as his ship headed in-system to planet three. “Well, George, why don’t you join me and Mata Hari in the passenger compartment? There is no need for you or me to pilot a craft that is part and parcel under the control of Mata Hari’s mind.”
Geo
rge followed Matt and the chain-mail clad Mata Hari out to the front rows of seats, near the front airlock. That was the one that would be docking with
Powerful’s
mid-ships airlock. Most likely one of the crew would be just beyond the inner airlock door to greet them. Matt liked that. One more obstacle that would not stand long. As they sat, the ship launched them toward the harvester ship. Thinking of the brief surprise his presence would be to any crewman or captain watching via a videye, Matt welcomed the insect swarm of hundreds of Mata Hari’s sensors and nanoshells. They would do their thing in parts of the ship while he and George headed for the cargo area that would likely be holding the fifteen captives. His memory of cloneslave decanting service on Alkalurops said genome slavers did not treat captives well. They provided only the minimum food, water and temp needed for the captives to arrive alive and available for resale, after flesh samples, sperm and eggs were taken to create cloneslave babies. He bit his lip, hating what he had done in the past in order to survive. Well, he could now make up to Charlotte his failure to invite her to join him on his skimmer ride into Alois Port. She would have been one more family survivor—if he had not been so focused on pleasing his father. Blinking his eyes, Matt turned his attention to George, who now had his helmet securely attached to his combat suit.
“George, did you get in much practice with that Magnum handgun?”
The red-faced man nodded behind his helmet’s faceplate. “Yes,” he said, his voice arriving via the inbuilt tachlink communicator. “An hour of normal light target shooting, then a second hour of shooting by way of infrared and UV imaging. In case the lights go out after we arrive.”
Matt liked the attention George had paid to plausible defense options which the harvester crew might take. “Good. It is indeed likely that whatever ‘daylight’ is present in this ship will die once the captain realizes this is a hostile takeover. Course, shortly thereafter Mata Hari will have control of all ship systems via her limpet complink. So this ship will not be able to run away, lose its air in a hallway, or do anything without the agreement of Mata Hari. Who, as you see, will also be
with us.”
George smiled behind his clear faceplate. “I like it that she will be here. She was nicely patient with me during the fitting of this suit, and in the target practice.” The man twisted in his seat
to face Mata Hari. “Thank you, Lady of the Sword, for helping me be a help to your Matthew.”
Mata Hari, sitting across the aisle from the two of them, showed George a grim smile. “You are welcome. And now . . . we are arrived. Our airlock attachment is cross-linked to the ship’s hull and front airlock. Shall we depart?” she said, standing up and bring
ing her sword to port-arms, with the blade edge facing outward.
Matt rose, enjoying the smooth feel of how Suit’s exoskeleton worked with his own, cyborg-upgraded muscles
, bones and biochemistry. Suit could sense when he wanted extra power to any limb, felt sick and needed help from onboard nanoDocs, or needed fast wound healing and counter-shock therapy. With a blink of his right eye, Suit’s virtual reality display now shifted to show the outer hull of the harvester ship with
Ariadne
attached in parallel mode in his left faceplate, while his right quadrant showed a guesstimate of the airlock area and adjacent arrival room based on corvette schematics that Mata Hari had accessed during their ten hour trip to this rendezvous. Matt moved up and entered the small airlock, with George squeezing in beside him, followed by a swirl of Mata Hari’s Remotes and sensors. Matt preferred to encounter the ship’s crew with overwhelming force and shock.