Two point five seconds
had passed since launch. Any moment now. Matt hoped the rock of the arroyo and Suit’s own armor would protect him. He hoped . . .
T’Pok barely blinked at the sudden disappearance of the intruder below the rim of the arroyo. Silly, stupid alien. His
SpyEye floater imaged the intruder in a holo easily visible to any of his six eyes. His three-lobed brain was adaptable, as his need to coordinate ten legs in syncopation required a single lobe for movement. The other two were highly analytical and survival focused. While his combat suit lacked the rocket backpack of the intruder, it did link directly to the dome’s Defense CPU. Thinking in specific alpha wave patterns, T’Pok caused the launch of three solid fuel rockets from the dome, even as a distant part of his mind noted the alien’s rocket beads had penetrated the dome, spread a Knockout mist that had disabled his fellow organics, leaving only the dome AI in working mode, albeit distracted by white noise emitters the intruder’s rocket had sown among the gas beads. He felt victory approaching as the Anarchate rockets fired out of vertical launch tubes.
Streaking into the blue sky, T’Pok thought-imaged the intruder’s location coordinates to the mini-minds of the rocket shells, hoping the alien’s shoulder lasers would keep firing at his suit’s crystal
-lined outer skin, the deflection frequencies changing faster than he could think. But that was what automated expert systems were for. To conduct simple tasks like suit defense. Attack options required an organic mind allied to suit’s Tactical CPU. Thinking vengeful thoughts, T’Pok did not notice the intruder’s high elevation rocket shell had reached a point behind him that placed T’Pok directly between the intruder and the rocket shell.
Vengeance would be—
A three kiloton nuclear fission warhead detonated a kilometer behind T’Pok, its plasma fireball a miniature sun that emitted first a burning light that bathed his suit in thermal heat, then a whipping wind that would eventually pass him with a hurricane force. But before the blast wind reached him, the worst effect of the nuke occurred.
An electromagnetic pulse aura burst out from the fireball, irradiating T’Pok’s suit with EMF saturation in levels so strong it burned out his suit electronics, blinded his photonic systems, and scrambled his onboard Tactical CPU since light
speed neutrons cannot be deflected by pressor beams or magfields. While the thermal heat pulse would not fry him, T’Pok was suddenly blind, deaf, limited to his own thoughts, and unable to activate any suit systems, including his lasers and pressor emitters. Overhead, the three dome rockets exploded from the EMP effect.
“Nooooo!” his mind screamed as the
newly risen intruder’s laser pulse-cannons bit through his combat suit’s crystal coatings, now dead due to the EMP, and burned large holes through his hearts, lung sphincters and bowels.
Only his head, lying within the partly blackened helmet, saw the risen form of the intruder, its own combat suit firing laser beams from
manipulators and pulse-cannons even as Nanoshell borers carved into his flesh, energy dampers killed his suit’s autonomic defenses, and then the ultrasonic vibers vaporized most of his nerves, ganglia and spinal junctions, leaving his dying brain to wish for life.
Blackness greeted his last thought.
“Matt, is the Guardian dead?” called Eliana, her musical voice a relief after what felt like a lifetime of combat, but which had lasted just three full seconds. With a shudder he exited
ocean-time
, leaving the combat with the dome’s AI to a few minutes later.
He had won. The Intelligence dome
Offense functions had also been shut down by the EMP from his nuke, while the arroyo rock had indeed protected his own photonics, optical fiber networks and built-in electronics. But the nuke’s wind-blast pushed hard against him as he hovered above the arroyo. And the glowing plasma cloud that vaporized anything solid within a hundred meters now disappeared, leaving only fallout to decorate the desert landscape.
“Yes, Eliana, it is dead,” he replied over the tachyon comlink. “According to a lifescan by one of
my new Nanoshells, there is no thinking being done by its organic remains and the alien’s combat suit is burned out. Its Defense and Attack software is shattered into billions of random databytes.”
Matt shuddered inside and out, his nerves, muscles and tendons feeling the effects of having lived at computer speed in
ocean-time
. Receiving images at femtosecond and picosecond speeds, thinking in nanosecond mode, while muscles contracted at millisecond intervals, had exhausted his energy reserves. Dimly he felt Suit pumping electrolytes and sugars into his bloodstream even as its Tactical CPU managed those Nanoshells still working at gaining access to the dome’s self-aware AI. His years ago job as a Protector to an Anarchate alien who worked for its Combat Command made him certain the AI had shielded itself from the EMP as soon as the nuke detonated. But all normal hardware, electronics and active photonics inside the dome would be disabled. Getting in would be difficult, but not nearly as deadly as fighting the Guardian.
“Matt?” called Eliana, her
concern bringing her image to his mind’s eye. Still feeling with sped up senses, he recalled first her jade green eyes, her long black hair, her milky white albino skin and that needful little girl expression that had first tugged at his heart when she met him at Hagonar Station. “Are you okay?”
“I’m
in good shape,” he said over the tachlink, glad for the fact his voice did not suffer lightspeed lag from the distance its signal traveled, unlike normal radio, lidar and comsat signaling. “Be at peace. Now, I must enter the Intelligence dome and argue with its AI over the hiding place for the backup molecular memory crystal. Mata Hari, link to me please.”
He directed Suit to approach the dome’s metal skin a half-kilometer away. And i
n his mind there loomed Mata Hari’s
persona image.
She appeared as
a Victorian-dressed, dark-eyed, amber-skinned young woman with long black hair piled atop her head. It was a body and persona based on the World War I French spy who had worked both sides of that great war. Until caught and executed, despite claims she was in fact a double-agent working for Allied intelligence. The AI had no special phrase for what she and Matt did—lightspeed linking was simply how she thought, lived, felt and ran the mech-tech starship built by the ancient T’Chak. In-link with Mata Hari was far more complex than the out loud talking used by Standard organics. It felt like a continuous electrocution, but one which did not burn him. Together they were the symbiosis
“Yes, Matthew?”
“Did the dome AI send a tachyon Alert signal before the pylon’s destruction?”
“Probably,” she said, he
r black eyes squinting a little as her high-cheeked face turned serious.
Good. That too was part of the P
lan he had made with BattleMind, including the release of Mata Hari herself from the Memory Pillars on the Bridge deck since she, while a part of the ship and mind that filled the Dreadnought, was someone he cared for. And a true life personality that cared for him and Eliana. Unlike the previously hidden BattleMind that had appeared near the end of his space battle with the Halicene starship
Obliteration
. It had fought an amazing battle with the Anarchate Nova-class battleglobe
Excellent
, and defeated it. A feat not lately attempted in the annals of the Anarchate.
The grey metal of the Intelli
gence dome lay before him. Suit’s faceplate holo highlighted the spots where her rocket beads had entered, plus the single airlock type entry portal for official use by organics.
Matt smiled. No way would he risk an unpowered deadfall trap by using the entry portal. There could be many such non-electronic, mechanically activated traps awaiting him as a result of the dome’s total power shutdown. Instead, he thought-imaged a section of dome’s metal skin and directed his right shoulder
pulse-cannon to blast an entry hole.
Tilting Suit into horizontal mode he made for the jagged hole and its darkness.
Nullgrav both suspended him and propelled him forward. Thinking as he moved at slow organic speed, Matt queried Mata Hari on Phase Two of his Plan.
“How soon before you can pick me up from
down here?”
The
amber-skinned Mata Hari image frowned, as if thinking the way humans think. A nice touch from her persona analogue. She wore a white lace filigree dress of late Victorian vintage. “Ten minutes since the ship decoys are nearly in place in the middle of this star system,” she said in mind voice, her black eyes fixed intently on him.
Matt
floated into the dome and activated his infrared, UV and passive sensors so he could Nullgrav travel the dome’s tall hallways without setting off mechanical traps from the impact of footfalls on the hallway floor.
“Good. Hopefully we have an hour before an Anarchate
battleglobe shows up in response to the Alert call. More than enough time for me to chat with the dome’s AI.” He paused, thinking of what could still go wrong. “Please track me via Suit’s sensors and send a Defense sled down to patrol the dome, just in case some distant outpost manages to fly a suborbital shuttle to home base.”
“Agreed, Matthew,” she said softly, her spare smile betraying her thoughts at an organic like Matt telling her how to conduct backup operations.
Matt focused on the dark interior hallways, his infrared sight sufficient to show him entry passages even with all power shut down. Residual heat from electrical circuits and mechanical devices emitted enough infrared for his needs.
The still living bodies of two dozen aliens lay on the hallway floor or inside adjacent labs and rest chambers, their presence and the oxy-nitro air he passed through telling him that the Nanoshell Knockout gas beads had taken down every organic likely to pose a threat. Still, there could be methane breather aliens still active, or Guard morphoforms that did not rely on atmosphere. Some morphoforms were made especially for vacuum hunting, as he had learned years ago while serving on Protector duty for the Anarchate Combat Command alien.
Matt’s Suit
focused in on the neutrino emissions of the dome AI’s backup power source. The locale lay at dome center, but in a basement level. There was no portal entry for Standard organics. But that did not bother Matt. Hovering to one side of the radar imaged room below him, Matt set his fingertip lasers to concrete cutting frequency and outlined a two meter wide circle into the hard floor. It took time, but in five minutes the 30 megawatt fingertip lasers had cut through the meter thick concrete. Below him the cut out segment dropped down into the basement room with a loud “Clang.”
No
active offensive weapons or emitters detected
, said Suit in mindtalk to Matt.
“Thank you, my friend,” he PET thought-imaged, giving thanks for positron emission tomography tech that allowed Suit to read his mind and his brain to receive lightbeam impulses as speech from Suit.
You are welcome
, said the simple AI of Suit.
Matt smiled. Suit was learning something about human personas from
Mata Hari.
Lowering down into the basement on the
Nullgrav plates of his boots, Matt raised his Magnum laser rifle and pointed it at the small dome that sheltered the self-aware AI of this Anarchate installation.
“AI, communicate with me in this acoustic range and language,” he broadcast via Suit’s external speakers while his Tactical CPU spat lidar signals with the elements
of English at the AI.
A pink glow flared at the top of the small dome that covered a pedestal in the center of the room. Overhead,
lights came on and illuminated the spare room of metal walls, thick power cables, flat sensor faces, vid recorders and inactive laser mounts that had not the radioactive thermopile backup power of the AI.
“You . . . you will die, organic. An Alert signal was tachyon broadcast just before your starship destroyed the pylon. A
battleglobe will be here shortly,” it said in a gruff voice suggestive of a bear trying to speak like a human.
“Good,” Matt broadcast loudly. “I am counting on its arrival.”
Silence lasted thirty seconds. “You wish to be in this star system when it arrives?” said the AI.
“Yes,” Matt said. “My prior Protector service with
a Spelidon rat of Combat Command allowed me to acquire knowledge of your base here, around the star we humans label as SAO 47250, in what we call the Hercules constellation.” Matt recalled the three-fingered, long-tailed and black whiskered nature of the deadly species that had long provided warriors and commanders to the Anarchate. “My starship recently destroyed a Nova-class battleglobe commanded by a Spelidon in Sigma Puppis star system. Perhaps you have heard of us?”
The pink glow of the AI darkened. “You are Matthew
Raven’s-Wing Dragoneaux, species Human, from a home planet in Orion Arm, on the outer edge of the Halicene Conglomerate’s mercantile zone. Your alien ship design is unknown to us, but you call it
Mata Hari
. For some exotic Human reason.” The AI paused, the pink glow growing less dark. “I will provide this data to the incoming battleglobe. You will not be so lucky as you were in Sigma Puppis. You and your ship will die for this attack on Anarchate facilities. Which is perhaps why you remain sheltered behind your sensory helmet.”