Matt walked into the Bridge in Suit, stepped to the right rear wall, and smiled as extra accel-couches popped up from the flexmetal floor to form a crescent curve from the left
side of the Interlock Pit to directly behind where he usually sat. Eliana, George and Suzanne entered the large room and headed for couches as Eliana chattered about the side wallscreens, the front holosphere, the person-high stack of Memory Pillars in the rear of the Bridge, and how Matt sat naked in the Interlock Pit in order to be in optical neurolink with both Mata Hari the AI and with the ship itself. Stepping backward out of Suit, then walking around it to the Pit, Matt focused on the upcoming argument with BattleMind. It was an argument he was determined to win.
Sitting in his clear plastic chair in the Pit, Matt reached back, plugged in the fiber optic cable to the back of his neck, and blinked his right eye to change the forward holosphere so it showed the star-speckled space that lay ahead of them as they prepared to leave orbit around Morrigan. Mentally he gave thanks that Airmed and Balor had ordered their Port
mechanics to fill
Mata Hari’s
water tanks, supply several tons of deuterium-lithium six fuel pellets, and provide additional tons of frozen meats, fresh vegetables, canned and boxed foods, and multiple liters of beer, wine and Scotch. His head ached a bit after yesterday’s party in Eire Park, but today’s move to the Port of Lisdoonvarna, followed by the rise to orbit, had focused his attention like nothing else.
In his
mind’s eye, starship
Mata Hari
changed its shape into the giant T’Chak dragon figure first created by BattleMind. The side pontoons assumed the shape of giant wings, tipped with three antimatter pontoons on each wing. The directed energy weapons domes popped out along its armor plated back, and its nose lengthened into the crocodile-like snout with flexhull curves that outlined scores of teeth. At its front gaped the mouth portal where the ship’s axial plasma funnel would shoot out two hundred meter purple plasma globes when something needed vaporizing.
“We are now in Battle Configuration,” said Mata Hari as her holo shape materialized between Eliana and
Suzanne. This time she wore the white, floor length chiffon and lace dress, with black hair piled up that signaled her Spy persona. It was an image that Matt had become accustomed to. At his left, his three human friends all smiled. Well, that would change soon enough.
“Thank you, Mata Hari. Please bring our engines up to three-quarters lightspeed thrust, with our antimatter overdrive kicking in at one-quarter.” Matt bit his lip. No way to put the moment of stress off any longer. “In a moment I will be moving to
ocean-time
. Please explain to my friends why conversing with me will be impossible. But they will hear my discussion with your . . . overseer.”
“Of course, Matthew,” she said, black eyes looking deep into him even as
she felt him send out a PET thought-image to activate
ocean-time
.
Five milliseconds
, said Matt’s onboard databyte nanocubes in his visual cortex. In his mind he felt the entire starship rushing into him, filling him with millions of data bits and a three dee imagery that gave shape and substance to the dragon shape which only his eyes had perceived. Thoughts of Mata Hari and her physical starship components rushed through his mind and body, filling him with a kind of ecstasy as the three of them became <
“Hello, Matthew,” came the mind voice of Mata Hari as she filled his mind’s eye with three person
a images. She was there as the nearly nude Barbarian Queen, then as Mata Hari the Spy and lastly, as a black-haired young woman dancing through the meadow of Eire Park in an embroidered blouse and red skirt with dragon emblems. Though it was the music surrounding the third persona that struck him. A human voice sang “You’ve Got A Friend” even as the dancing third persona moved among the living grasses with her eyes closed, perceiving a reality new to her.
His inner self smiled his appreciation of her new persona guise. “Wonderful to see you dancing so wildly and carefree, dear partner. You felt the emotions of the other people there?”
Mata Hari smiled, dimples showing under her high cheekbones. “Yes! I felt them vaguely, thanks to the music and their voices. Though I can thought-link only with you, dear one.”
Her open affection for him was something
very welcome. “So, you don’t miss leaving behind our good friend Gatekeeper? To help the refugees?”
His AI partner raised one perfect back eyebrow as she assumed her primary Spy persona. “Miss him? Why should I? He is even now fabricating a small ecoweb garden with imported trees, grasses and flowers in a room next to the swimming pool.”
“What! Why didn’t you tell me—”
“Matthew,” she interrupted the way a woman would interrupt a man, with a smile that was assured
and confident. “You have brought two companions aboard. Why can I not do the same with one?”
Gaekeeper had become a c
ompanion? A surprise. But a nice one. “Well, you are correct,” he said via mind-link. “Actually, I am happy for you. I hope you and Gatekeeper will enjoy each other’s . . . mind-talk via tachlink.”
“We have enjoyed such a linkage already, and hope for more such stimulating . . . encounters.”
In a corner of his mind he saw Eliana begin to smile as she heard his and Mata Hari’s conversation begin. No doubt she and Suzanne would enjoy plenty of female giggles at Matt being outmaneuvered by a female AI. Humph!
One second
, said Matt’s onboard databyte nanocube.
“Mata Hari, please buffer my mind as I call our overseer to the Bridge. Hopefully he will not vaporize all of us.”
“Hardly,” said a newly sober Mata Hari as her essence flooded his mind and Matt felt, in a distant realm, her affection for him and her growing delight at being in link with a male AI like Gatekeeper.
He nodded mentally. Then, focusing his thoughts, he hailed their master.
“BattleMind, please join us on Bridge in your visual persona,” he called, filling a sideband with images of George, Suzanne and Gatekeeper and how the three of them had helped him during the boarding of the genome harvester starship.
“Little one,” boomed the hurricane force mind voice of BattleMind, “you further infest this vessel with organic residue. Why!”
“For more efficient combat operations of myself, my female partner and for the carrying out of your Task, Destruction Device 647,” he said with formal mind-talk. “On a side channel you will note how the human George was helpful to me in a recent combat operation, while the human Suzanne helped in the offloading of the 152 human refugees from our Omega operation. The AI Gatekeeper has great knowledge of how to relate to all organic species of this galaxy, and will surely be useful in the intelligence analysis of the molecular memory crystal we obtained from the Anarchate Intelligence dome.”
BattleMind’s mental senses receded slightly as the T’Chak sensed his mind strain under the impact of the dragon’s thoughts. “I show myself once again to your
fellow organics,” it said in a tone of disgust.
To Matt’s right there appeared a twelve-foot tall dragon with partly furled wings, dark red eyes
, a slightly open crocodile snout, and black claws that adorned the forward edge of each wing. It stood with crossed forearms and on giant feet. It ignored his companions and focused attention on the forward holosphere.
“Observe our next destination,” it said with a tone of bother at having to communicate in the organic fashion.
In Matt’s vision appeared a region of space known as the Norma Arm of home galaxy. A globular mass of stars lay close to the inner edge of the arm. It carried the name Omega Centauri.
“Omega Centauri cluster,”
Matt thought-spoke to both the shimmering mind of Mata Hari and the too powerful intelligence of BattleMind. “There are millions of stars in that cluster. I recall that in its center they are spaced so close together there is less than one-tenth of a light year between each star. Why go there?”
BattleMind emoted a sense of satisfaction. “We have conducted several useful combat
encounters with Anarchate devices,” it said. “Now it is time to assault one of the Anarchate’s governing planetoids. In orbit around the G3 star known as CC4137 is a large moon with its own atmosphere that circles a gas giant. It resembles the moon Titan in your Sol home system. While cold and with a nitrogen-methane atmosphere, the moon has lakes of liquid ethane, ethane rainfall, high winds, cryovolcanic areas and a liquid ammonia-water hydrosphere at a depth of around 200 kilometers. A primitive life similar to your manta ray creatures lives there, but is not intelligent.”
“Then why go there?” Matt interrupted even as his databyte nanocubes showed scores of images of Titan as revealed by the Cassini-Huygens lander and subsequent automated balloon surveys of the moon that was larger than the planet Mercury. Prebiotic amino acids and nucleotide bases had been found on Titan. It seemed the same process had occurred on this moon whose star was somewhat older than Sol.
“Because,” emphasized BattleMind, “its methane ice surface is covered by millions of habitat domes that are all connected via a tachyon comnet which allows for efficient organic-inorganic communications. The moon is a regional Administration center for that arm of your galaxy, and all the stars within the globular cluster. The hostile temperature and atmosphere keeps all organics within the habitats, while multiple Tachyon Pylons link this center to nearby Anarchate planets.” BattleMind presented a molecular memory crystal image of the large moon that he said was only months old. “In short, this moon governs the interactions of several trillion organic lifeforms scattered around that part of the galaxy. Removing it from the Anarchate network will be disruptive and impossible for authorities to hide from the organic populace. Public confidence will be reduced in the Anarchate. That reduced confidence will be useful when I and my masters return with our fleet to take over your galaxy.”
Matt licked his lips. “What is the organic population on the moon, whatever its name might be?”
“Four million, three hundred and twenty-four thousand organic lifeforms,” the dragon said with a toothy mental grimace. “The Anarchate name for the place is Megadene.”
So many lives! And many of them would be spouses and offspring, since every alien species known to the Anarchate produced some type of generational successor. “How many starships are usually in orbit there?”
The mind image of BattleMind matched its outside holosphere shape. It spread its wings, flapped them once to produce a mind-flow gale that nearly caused Matt to pass out, then its mind senses receded a bit as it detected his distress. “Organic who can barely think even with tiny devices inside you, there are usually twenty to thirty starships in orbit. Two of them are always Nova battleglobes, while the others are a mix of courier ships and cargotubes. Why?”
Matt gritted his teeth. “I had a brief hope we could destroy the battleglobes and give the inhabitants a chance to evacuate via starship,” he said.
Puzzlement flowed from BattleMind. “Why allow
any
evacuation, even if there were a million starships in orbit? The point of my armed survey of your home galaxy is to assess the combat strength of the Anarchate and its inorganic constructs like the battleglobes, while causing maximum damage and disruption. Why should I allow any organic to survive? They would only resume similar duties elsewhere.”
It was clear BattleMind had never birthed any kind of offspring.
Or that it even understood the concept of children.
“I understand children, Matthew,” whispered his friend Mata Hari. It is a topic discussed by myself and . . . Gatekeeper. We
each have enough emotions to realize how having offspring both enriches one and causes intelligence to rise to a unique plateau,” she said, her tone sad but determined. “But there is no way to offset BattleMind’s logic. It is doing as an organic T’Chak would do.”
Matt wondered if there were any T’Chak left alive in the
Small Magellanic Cloud. Or in the nearby Large Magellanic Cloud? What was it that had wiped out the species? And could a few living T’Chak still survive in stasis chambers hidden away somewhere? That was for later. Omega Centauri was for now.
“Understood, BattleMind,” he said
with a weakening mind-flow. “Do we Translate directly to the orbit of the moon Megadeen, to its stellar heliopause, or do something else on the way there?”
“Something else,” muttered BattleMind as it sensed Matt’s disapproval of the death of so many lifeforms. “Megadeen and its star are located 8,324 light years from the Morrigan star system. We will need additional fuel by the time we arrive. I pla
n to materialize outside a mercantile world, assume the shape and tachlink ID of a Brokeet starship, pay for the needed fuel, then depart by Translation and arrive within a few diameters of the moon Megadeen. Our Translation appearance deep within the seven planet star system of CC4137 will cause moonquakes and disruption. That will allow us to dispatch the two battleglobes before we remove the moon and its occupants.”