Flapping its giant wings, BattleMind roared a phrase that deafened Matt’s mind with his gale force strength, even if Suit insulated him from its ‘live’ sound. Thankfully the code phrase was short.
The T’Chak dragon image glowed redly, similar to the eye color of BattleMind’s persona image. He reactivated Suit’s outer Ears in time to hear a grinding of stone against stone and the translated phrase “
Enter, master of the race.”
Matt and George followed the holos of BattleMind and Mata Hari into a large, dome-roofed space of round walls with no corners. His sensorBeads floated ahead and to other parts of a room larger than the Bridge on
Mata Hari
. The room was mostly open space except for a square black stone lying at its center. Atop the two meter high square rested a translucent globe that was slowly beginning to glow with a reddish light. Looking to be a meter wide, he wondered if this was the Planetary AI.
“It is
the Planetary AI, Matthew,” said the soft voice of Mata Hari as she also mind-spoke. “Its container is similar to that used by Gatekeeper. Since we AIs think at the quantum uncertainty level, there is no need for a large volume to house our awareness.”
BattleMind’s holo moved to stand before the red-glowing globe.
It spoke in T’Chak, which Suit translated for him and George.
“My identity is BattleMind, of Destruction Device 647 of the 94
th
Imperial Dynast of the T’Chak Imperium. Where are our organic masters?”
A round patch glowed redly on the black stone square. “
They are gone, Destruction Device BattleMind. Only you, myself, and similar awarenesses on other colony worlds still think, still remember the heritage of our builders. Why are you here?”
BattleMind growled like a storm squall and flapped its wide wings. “No! It cannot be! There must be some Masters surviving. Perhaps in
stasis chambers? From whence came the latest tachlink signal you have memory of?”
“
From the direction of Cluster Prime, perhaps even from the original home world. That was . . . long ago. None have visited me since that tachlink signal. Except for you. Why are you here?
”
“Tell it your Task,” Mata Hari said softly in Matt’s mind
The fury that battered Matt’s mind as the purple cloud of BattleMind discovered facts it did not like, that fury retreated a little.
“I and my ship are here because I have fulfilled the original Task assigned to me and the other seven hundred Dreadnoughts. I have fought battles with starcraft of the Anarchate that rules the large galaxy nearby. I have gained intelligence of their bases, command structure, devices and organic components that will be vital to our future conquest!”
The red-glowing globe grew darker, then paler. “
A conquest that cannot happen without organic guidance. But I am unaware of any living T’Chak. Anywhere within tachlink range. Which includes both clouds, as you know. Your return is appreciated, but now you must join your brethren that orbit the Lacunae Mindworks. Until our organic masters return, there is no conquest that we can
—”
“No!” screamed BattleMind.
“Yes!” yelled Matt into the mental cloud of fury and anger that was BattleMind. “Remember my first talk with you, after the Halcyon battle? We humans
are
organics. Other intelligent lifeforms in the Milky Way will join you and other Dreadnoughts in overthrowing the Anarchate. If we can get the cooperation of yourself and other AIs like this one. Does it have a name?”
BattleMind’s red eyes glared at him from the holo, but his sense of its mind-flow carried a tone of . . . interest. The dragon holo faced back to the Planetary AI globe.
“Your personal identity. What designation do you choose for yourself?”
“
The masters used to address me as Elegant Vessel
.”
“Tell me how our organic masters disappeared, why they died, as nearby bones seem to speak.”
“
There was a rise of social disruption as polities within the two clouds argued among themselves. That was normal to the history of the masters. What was not normal was the arrival of an organic-born disease among some lifeforms carried back by one of your Dreadnought brethren,
” said Elegant Vessel. “
This disease was airborne transmitted. It spread among the masters who entered the Dreadnought with the diseased lifeforms. The period between infection and the start of life decay was long enough for infected masters to travel to other worlds. Before such travel was suspended, every world of the Imperium was infected. Including this world Lomax, imperial capital for this sector of the larger cloud.
”
Matt PET thought-imaged his suspicion to Mata Hari. “Could this disease have been something like the Bird Flu or MSR that humanity suffered from, before we developed the Universal Enzyme to protect against such airborne diseases?”
“Matthew, it is possible,” she said.
BattleMind ignored their byplay, its attention focused on learning the details of how its masters had died. “Elegant Vessel, show me an image of this diseased lifeform.”
“
This is the deadly lifeform the Dreadnought brought home.
”
A holo took shape above the red-glowing
AI globe. As the holo cleared, Matt saw a small dinosaur, feathered with wings, about the size of a chicken. Could there have been a few survivors from the age of dinosaurs? Some small critter that survived the Great Extinction event 65 million years ago? There were armored fish that had survived to the Information Age of Earth. Why not an ancestor of Earth’s birds. In which case, had the T’Chak visited Earth 207,000 years ago?
“What planet and what star gave birth to this
small monstrosity?” BattleMind asked.
“
This minor main sequence system.
”
The dino-bird holo blinked out and was replaced by a polar view of a yellow star with
eight planets circling it. One planet, the sixth one, showed a small halo, or ring, circling the gas giant. But there were millions of Earth-like planets in the Milky Way, and gas giants with rings or moons about them were common. Surely there could be star systems with eight planets in them with one or more Earth-like worlds? It would be all too strange if a T’Chak visit to Earth led to the death of the T’Chak, even as humanity’s Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon subspecies competed among themselves.
“
The third planet outward from the star was the source of the diseased lifeform,
” Elegant Vessel said.
“I do not recognize this star system, though a study of the background stars and Cepheid variables may identify its location in the large galaxy,” BattleMind said. “Is this lifeform and the disease still living on this world?”
“
The lifeform died not long after its arrival, perhaps due to the higher ultraviolet of the world it arrived on. While located in Cluster Prime, the arrival world’s home star was a strong emitter of ultraviolet, which harms not the masters species, but did kill the deadly lifeform. As for the disease, it is assumed it no longer lives, since the native airbreathing lifeforms on this world did not show any illness after our masters died
.”
BattleMind flapped its wings slowly. “Were the local lifeforms affected by this disease?”
“
Yes, but only those within or near our cities and habitations. And only the airbreathing lifeforms. Those in the seas, lakes and at a distance were not affected. Cycles later, local lifeforms entered this city and survived, when previously they had died.
”
BattleMind swung its long, spike-tipped tail halfway around the room until it curled around the black stone that supported the red-glowing AI globe. “Then a visit to Cluster Prime and other colony worlds will not endanger my organic companions, two of whom accompany me and my Mata Hari modulus. They represent one of the minor species in the large galaxy. While primitive, they have proven useful in my learning of organic battle tactics.”
“
But why visit anyplace else? You will find the same lack of thinking lifeforms elsewhere. Why not stay here and . . . converse with me. The long sleep was boring.
”
Matt smiled, sympathizing with this ancient AI. Maybe it could join them aboard the starship. “BattleMind,” he called to the purple hurricane before it could reject the request. “Why not invite this AI to join us aboard the
Mata Hari
? If you do find living masters in stasis chambers, it will give this AI a reason for continued existence.”
“Impudent organic!” snarled BattleMind. “My ship is
my
domain! I have more reason now to exclude organics from my domain. If one lifeform carries a disease that can kill a master, then perhaps all species need to be . . . restricted to your homeworlds.”
Matt did not like this AI’s version of the Anarchate rule that enforced interstellar anarchy. “But Elegant Vessel is artificial, not organic. And the diseased lifeform is ancient on our time scales. Surely such a disease has now vanished from the T’Chak worlds and the home world where it arose.”
“Yeah,” said George, whose expression in Matt’s left side quadrant showed he was alert to the danger that Earth might have given rise to an alien-killing microbe. “Elegant Vessel is lonely. It needs company. Just like your Mata Hari needed the companionship of Gatekeeper. She has functioned better since his arrival. Right?”
The crocodile snout of BattleMind opened, closed, then opened with a guttural sigh. “Tracking the logic of you lifeforms is both disgusting and tedious. You are correct. Elegant Vessel may accompany us. It will provide me with the level of intelligence that is sadly lacking among you organics. And yes, Mata Hari’s functioning has improved since she began showing these organic emotion elements.” It unwrapped its tail from the stone block. “Do you need transport, Elegant Vessel?”
“
Yes, since this globular form lacks Nullgrav capability. But one of your organics can carry me. My weight is one-tenth that of a living master
.”
“George,” Matt said aloud,
as his fatigue from BattleMind’s harshness made him doubt his ability to act as a beast of burden. “Will you carry this AI’s globe?”
“Sure Matt. I’ve got the muscles for it.”
His Irish combat mate stepped forward, waited for a red light pulse from the AI, then wrapped his armor-covered arms around the meter tall globe and lifted. “Ummph,” he muttered. “About fifty kilos it is. Not terrible. Can manage to get it to the shuttle.”
BattleMind’s holo shape already stood at the open entry to the AI’s chamber. “Follow.”
Mata Hari, Matt, and George with the Elegant Vessel AI followed the giant dragon out of the room, then up the spiraling rampway to the interior corridor of the yellow stone dome. As he walked, Matt gave thanks that he’d never thought-imaged the shape of Sol system or Earth or Saturn to the attention of BattleMind. Nor would he even mentally muse about that now. The last thing any of them needed was a T’Chak AI hell-bent on destroying Earth, or a planet like Earth, for its sin of killing its masters. Thinking of the billions of Earth-like planets in the Milky Way, and the variable numbers of planets that circled almost every one of the 400 billion stars in the Milky Way, Matt was sure he could divert any speculation by BattleMind about disease origins. After all, its primary purpose was to fight and destroy the Anarchate. And Stage Three of the plan he had presented to BattleMind long ago provided for just such a galaxy-wide campaign.
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
Eliana splashed lake water at Matt as they, along with George and Suzanne, swam like fish in the small lake created by Gatekeeper. The Omega AI’s holo sat nearby on a bench with Mata Hari, while Elegant Vessel roamed the park’s tree and brush zones as if seeking the secret of its lifeweb assemblage. The ancient T’Chak AI now moved atop a Nullgrav plate. While friendly to them all, it seemed most interested in the frogs, lily pads and small insects that Gatekeeper had kidnapped from Morrigan. But . . . where was Matt? He’d gone underwater after her splash and—
Water
spouted from Matt’s mouth as he surfaced in front of her. It hit the middle of her face. “Got you!” he said with a wide smile.
She reached out and grabbed his wide shoulders, then pulled his nude body close to her own. Blinking water out of her eyes, she stuck
out her tongue. “But now I’ve got you! You don’t get away, not without paying a price.”
To the side George had likewise surfaced beside a
freckled Suzanne as she wrung water out of her long yellow tresses. Their two friends glanced their way a moment, then turned to water tickling each other.
“What price?” Matt said as her wrapped his strong arms about her waist as they stood belly deep in the shallow part of the lake.
His deep brown eyes fixed on her, only on her even though Suzanne’s naked form was no doubt attractive to any male. She loved that about Matt, how he could focus intensely and to the exclusion of all else. Whether it was the overthrow of the Anarchate, the freeing of harvester captives or the pleasuring of her last night, their last night before emergence in the Cluster Prime of the Small Magellanic Cloud.
“Just a kiss, my love,” she said, reaching up to caress his left cheek. It felt stubbly. But Matt had rejected the idea of growing a full beard like George’s black spade that lent depth to his Irish brogue accent.
Matt leaned down, lifted her up a half foot and kissed her deeply, his tongue toying with her tongue. It was a loving kiss, just as his gentle hug was a sign of appreciation. But being a normal male, she felt his arousal against her belly. All men were this way, she had learned while still in school. Most women came into their own needs later in life. As she had, in a few affairs before departing on her search for a Vigilante to save Halcyon from the Stripper mining machine that the Halicene Conglomerate had emplaced. But these last four months with Matt, and the months before that as they fell in love during the battle for Halcyon, had brought her to a fuller awareness of her ability to respond to a loving man. With deep regret she pulled back from the kiss.
“Thank you, my Matthew. The price has been more than paid.”
He grinned, ran one hand slowly up her bare back, then lifted it clear of the water to cup her left cheek in the same way she still cupped his cheek. “You have helped me heal, my beauty. Thank you.”
She gasped, recalling his memory of the last time he’d been with his parents and four sisters. She felt new wetness in her eyes. “So glad to know that, dear Matthew. But now . . . shall we join George and Suzanne for that picnic lunch Suzanne made for today? Her homemade bread is a wonder.”
“Yes, most definitely we should enjoy this meal.” Letting go of her, Matt took her left hand and walked with her to the shore of the lake. “Too bad Mata Hari and Gatekeeper cannot enjoy the taste sensations of solid food.”
Mata Hari looked his way, dressed now in another summer dress with a French lace pattern, courtesy of Suzanne’s pattern book. “But Matthew, I
can
enjoy the taste of food. If you don’t mind my use of optical neurolinking to your mind.”
“Go ahead, link in,” Matt said with a chuckle as he bent down to pick up his
yukata
robe. “This robe leaves enough skin showing for you to do that.”
Eliana wrapped her skirt around her waist and decided to go topless, as Suzanne was doing. After all, they had both seen each other’s man without clothes as they exited from their combat suit
s. And none of them were skin-phobic, unlike some human cultures. George, however, did like to wear his red and tan kilt whose pattern belonged to a Scottish relative. That still left plenty of hairy chest and black beard for her to appreciate. From a distance, of course. She and Suzanne had set the rules for dealing with their men shortly after leaving Megadeen and embarking on this long pilgrimage to the Magellanic Clouds. They had their time together as women, discussing food recipes and embroidery and board games they both liked, while the men spent their time in combat practice and in training George on the fine points of being in neurolink with his combat suit and its panoply of weapons. The evening meals they often shared, enlivened by the wine and beer given them by the Morrigan governor, made for a five nova meal anytime they wished.
George looked up at her from the dark green grass where he and Suzanne now sat. “A platinum Standard for your thoughts?”
She sat down beside Matt and smiled at Suzanne and George. “No charge. This time. I was just thinking how blessed Matt and I are to have friends like you two. I am more open-minded than before I left Halcyon, and Matt loves his foot races with you, George!”
Suzanne laughed, her
mezzo soprano voice a delight to hear. “And you, dear Eliana, are a wonder with research algorithms!”
They laughed together, then began sharing the food hidden away inside a
basket of branches taken from a tree native to Morrigan. Eliana hoped their time in Cluster Prime could be as peaceful and joyful as the present. But the unknown is always a surprise, and often dangerous she reminded herself. Still, they had spent four months in traveling 197,000 light years to the Small Magellanic Cloud, most of it in a peaceful manner. Those months she would always cherish.
Matt sat naked in the Interlock Pit, the fiber optic cable snugged into his neck socket, his hands resting on the
control surfaces of his chair. Not yet in
ocean-time
, he felt shaky. The slow virus had hit him with a bout of diabetes a few days ago. The antiviral nanoDocs in his body usually did well to keep his biochemistry in balance, and to provide him with surge energy during a fight. But this ‘slow virus’ was a real bother. Well, maybe Eliana’s genetics work with Mata Hari would develop a vaccine. Or a Hunter-Killer retrovirus tuned to track down and kill only the slow virus. He hoped so. Anything that interfered with his ability to protect his three organic friends, while also working with the four AIs now aboard
Mata Hari
, that was what mattered most to him. To defend life, to destroy those who would enslave, it was a simple motto. But enough for him.
“Matthew,” called Eliana from nearby. “What will we see upon emergence from Translation?”
Mata Hari or Gatekeeper could have told her. But human to human was their way. A wonderful way. “Many many stars. A tapestry of white diamonds, red garnets, blue aquamarines, yellow quartz and orange citrines,” he said, recalling the dense starfield that was Cluster Prime. “Our earlier stop just outside the cluster allowed us to orient on the exact position of HomeWorld and its F7 main sequence star. We used the navdata of Elegant Vessel to project the star’s motion across the cluster, but after 200 millennia of moving through the cluster, our arrival point is not that exact. Which is why we are aiming for the heliopause of what the T’Chak call StarHome. We will arrive light hours distant from StarHome and HomeWorld. Which is how we usually exit Translation.”
“Matt,” called George from behind him. “Any evidence of other space-going species since the mass death of the T’Chak?”
“No,” Matt said as in his mind his internal timekeeper counted down the minutes until emergence. “But the data of BattleMind and Elegant Vessel are not current. And it only took humanity a hundred thousand years to advance from hunter-gather to Alcubierre stardrive. If there were planet-bound sapients on some stars in Cluster Prime, they could be roaming around by now. Especially since this cluster possesses millions of stars and thousands of habitable planets.”
“Your statement is speculation,” said Elegant Vessel as it floated to Matt’s right, in the space often occupied by BattleMind. “
Our T’Chak masters occupied 27,326 planets within Cluster Prime just before the disease killed our society. There were thousands more occupied planets in both cloud clusters. After two million years of growth and expansion, my masters had inventoried every main sequence star in this cloud and most in the larger cloud nearby.”
“But,” said the holo of Mata Hari that stood beside Suzanne’s accel-couch, “did your masters inventory any planet-bound yet
intelligent species?”
“No,” said Elegant Vessel, its red-glowing globe shifting closer to Matt. “But why should they? There were no other space-going species in the two million years since they moved away from HomeWorld and out into the two clouds. Why search for the unlikely?”
Suzanne chuckled. “Because the unlikely, over time, is guaranteed to happen. Somewhere,” she said to the Planetary AI. “Neither I nor George nor our Omega friends ever expected to see the Omega casino dome vaporized. But a genome harvester raid led Matt to leave his home planet, travel, find Protector training, then to link up with Mata Hari and this starship. The last one remaining in home galaxy, it seems. They then gave Vigilante help to Eliana’s planet, which resulted in the visit of an Anarchate battleglobe. Which visit led to the battleglobe’s destruction and the emergence of BattleMind. Those events then set Matthew, Mata Hari and BattleMind on the pathway to defeating the Anarchate by way of a visit to the T’Chak home cluster. Now, each of those events viewed singly would be rare or common. But linked together, as they have been, surely that meets your definition of unlikely?”
In Matt’s mind a purple cloud swirled, grew larger and then appeared to
the right of the Interlock Pit. BattleMind, it seemed, wished to see the condition of HomeWorld and StarHome. And perhaps to add its platinum Standard to the discussion of what was unlikely in a part of space-time where the four hundred billion stars of the Milky Way, and the several hundred million stars of the clouds, provided fuel for organic speculation.
“Likely or not, this Destruction Device is returning to its home,” BattleMind said as its deep red eyes focused on the front holosphere, still
grey from their presence in Alcubierre space-time. “What we find here will guide myself and Elegant Vessel in our future actions. You organics will then learn your roles in fulfilling the Task of the T’Chak Imperium.”
Emergence is approaching, Matthew. Three seconds
, said Mata Hari in his mind.
With a g
rimace, Matt PET-linked to the racing thoughts of Mata Hari and, eventually, to those of BattleMind.
Ocean-time
flooded over him the way an ocean flows into a dry basin. Femtoseconds rushed by as picoseconds moved tick-tock past his awareness, and nanoseconds felt like long minutes. A torrent of data inputs filled his mind, his body, his senses, his awareness, it filled . . . every part of him except his soul. That he held separate, though how he did so he did not know. Time now for feeling the ship like a skintight vacsuit. Time to feel the energies surging from the ship’s fusion reactors to every habitat and weaponry space within the ship. And time to perceive this new space-time, as the front holo suddenly filled with millions of colorful jewels, with the yellow-white glow of StarHome at the center of the holo.
“Home,” mused the soft
mind-voice of Elegant Vessel.
“Our masters’ home,” growled BattleMind, its dragon form flaring its black wings to full extension even as its spike-tipped tail flowed backward until it
wrapped around the Memory Pillars that housed Mata Hari. “Surely at least one survives. Perhaps many. They were the perfect lifeform. Perfection cannot have disappeared.”
Matt focused on
the F7 star that the T’Chak called StarHome. He took a graphics download from a databyte nanocube resting in his prefrontal cortex, mind-viewed it, transferred the image to his contact lenses, and split his awareness between the databyte image of the system and the distant glow of StarHome in the front holo.
Fourteen nanoseconds
, whispered Mata Hari in his racing awareness.
The graphic image
showed the system held seven planets. Planet One was an airless Mercury analogue, while Planet Two was hidden in white carbon dioxide vapor, its surface temp equal to that of Venus. Planet Three, while habitable to most lifeforms, was a humid, hot jungle world similar to how Earth had been during the Carboniferous Age, when oxygen levels were high, plant growth was everywhere, and the polar ice caps nearly non-existent. A nice home for lizards and sharks, given the shallow oceans that covered a third of its surface, according to the databyte’s ancient records. HomeWorld was Planet Four, a cross between Earth and Mars. It possessed small oceans, a good oxy-nitro atmosphere, temperate zone forests, broad desert expanses, and long strings of smoking volcanoes at the tectonic plate boundaries that split the planet’s surface into four continents. It was dry in most places, except for a few jungle-covered spots, while the high mountains created by crustal subduction were the site of T’Chak vacation homes. Or had been. HomeWorld was circled by a large moon nearly the size of Earth’s Moon. Beyond this planet-and-moon system lay two gas giants and an icy Pluto-type planet that orbited far out from the hot rays of StarHome. Being an F7 main sequence star, StarHome’s habitable zone lay further out than Sol’s, but included Planets Three and Four. Per the databyte, almost no T’Chak had lived on Three since they preferred a dry environment with the hot updrafts to be found in mountainous terrain. A feature not common on Three.