Galactic Vigilante: Vigilante Series, #3

CHAPTER ONE

Fighting an insane AI is not easy. The one thing you don’t do is share thoughts with the AI. Especially if it is an alien T’Chak artificial intelligence. Matt knew that. He’d promised his lifepartner Eliana, and his AI ally Mata Hari he would not do such a crazy thing. But being human involves playing hunches. And Matt’s battle against the Anarchate rulers of the Milky Way required that he play every hunch he could think of.

With a PET image-thought he told his combat Suit to emit multiple pressor beams to sweep away the unthinking Mechs. They swarmed like ants in their effort to defend the giant dome of the Lacunae Mindworks, wherein lay Mama AI. She was the source mind for Mata Hari, BattleMind and the sleeping minds of 507 T’Chak Dreadnought-class starships that orbited this Mars-like world that held only desert, hazy brown skies, ravines, dry lakes, and saline patches. But inside the geodesic dome Mama AI raged against Matt, Eliana, George and Suzanne as alien organics who were not her T’Chak masters. Her rage had blocked Matt’s efforts to awaken the Dreadnoughts for service as his combat fleet.

The Mechs tumbled away at Matt’s approach to the dome like windblown thistles. But once they landed someplace they immediately headed back for him and George, who was pressor repelling Mechs that approached from their rear.

Matt, they have sharp teeth, George said over the comlink shared between the two combat Suits.

I know, Matt said, eyeing the left quadrant of Suit’s faceplate as it depicted a cross-section of a four-legged Mech that resembled a bulldog crossed with a scorpion. Suit has tried blocking Mama AI’s control emissions to the Mechs but her microwaves are too powerful for our white noise efforts. Either we kill them all, they kill us or we hide inside the dome so they can’t reach us.

George’s black-bearded face smiled at Matt from a vidlink that glowed on faceplate’s right quadrant. Well, our fingertip lasers can knock them out. But there are hundreds of them. How do we enter the dome?

Matt enjoyed the feeling of being super-strong and super-aware inside Suit, the combat exoskeleton device that Mata Hari had upgraded for him. The feminine AI had added an optical fiber socket for lightspeed thinking whenever his AI allies wished to speak with him, or he wished to ask for help from his orbiting starship Mata Hari. Eliana and Suzanne were both on the Bridge, ready to help him and George in their effort to reach Mama AI. But destroying the Lacunae Mindworks dome with an antimatter beam would not allow them to awaken the slumbering AI minds of the T’Chak Dreadnoughts. It might even motivate some of the Dreadnoughts to attack Matt and his friends despite their possession of the Activation Code given them by the last living T’Chak. So it had become a matter of in-person contact with Mama AI.

Like this, he said as he PET-imaged a fire command to his shoulder laser cannons.

Two green laser beams of a hundred megawatts power each impacted on the silvery metal of the Lacunae Mindworks dome. The impact site lay two meters above ground level. The spot glowed red but did not show a hole.

George, add your shoulder lasers to my attack.

Complying, said the former Repairs coordinator for the defunct Omega Casino that had been one of Matt’s first targets in his self-declared war against the Anarchate.

Four hundred megawatts of continuous laser beam power now impacted the resistant metal. The impact site color rose to yellow, then white. A puff of gases escaping from the interior signaled punch through.

Now! We enter on Repulsor power, Matt said as his shoulder lasers shut down.

Suit lifted Matt up, tilted him horizontal, then sped him headlong toward the large hole that had appeared in the dome’s skin. The edges glowed red-yellow. The Tactical CPU of Suit would guarantee his white ceramic armor skin did not touch the hole’s rim. Behind him George followed, his pressor beams tossing pursuing Mechs every which way. In seconds they were inside a dark space.

Blinking, Matt activated the UV and infrared lenses embedded in his eyes, thanks to Mata Hari’s cyborg upgrade work. Ahead lay a wall. To either side were walls against which lay metal boxes with RFID tags on them for automated retrieval by unthinking Mech units. But Search and Deliver Mechs posed no danger to him and George. Especially not when the two of them entered in suits that carried nerve gas dispensers, ultrasonic disruptors, bicep rocket gun shells, fingertip diode lasers now tuned to Metal Punch and a backpack loaded with four rockets carrying warheads from nuke level down to anti-personnel. To Matt’s eyes, power sources glowed UV purple, while red-glowing IR indicated floor guide wires for the Mechs to follow from the entry slidedoor. The door occupied the wall ahead. With a thought to Suit’s Tactical CPU his chest pack spat out miniature Spy Eyes, software virus floaters, and sensorBead gyrocopters. Suit emitted an Open microwave pulse to the slidedoor, using its own AutoDefense initiative. Suit’s onboard CPU could both follow Matt’s lead and take defensive/offensive action on its own. After all, to the CPU, Matt and Suit were one organism.

The slidedoor swished open. Air rushed inward to replace the air that had rushed out to the lifeless plains where the Lacunae Mindworks had been built long, long ago. The planet had air, of a sort. Behind Matt, George used a tractor beam to lift several supply boxes and then stuffed them into the laser-cut hole, thereby blocking both air loss and preventing entry by the outside Mechs. Thinking On to his helmet light, Matt floated through the doorway and into a curving corridor that seemed to be a circumferential access-way for both organics and Mechs.

With a low hum his Spy Eyes, virus floaters and sensorBeads dispersed on their Search and Inform tasks. Their jobs were simple. Map out the access-ways, doors, power sources and unthinking control nodes that governed the dome’s eco-web, its operational infrastructure, the resting perches for the winged T’Chak dragons who had once occupied labs and home quarters in the dome, and the fusion power plants that had kept the Mama AI powered up and aware during the 207,000 years since the last T’Chak alien had visited this facility. A place that had given birth to baby AI minds that would later become the controlling minds for T’Chak starships.

Matt had no doubt that being alone, yet aware, for 207,000 years had brought on the insanity of Mama AI. Their arrival in orbit had been greeted with half-intelligible statements, threats, queries and a repeated warning to stay away from the orbiting T’Chak Dreadnoughts.

Matt, called Mata Hari from orbit, her friendly presence appearing in his mind as a soft red cloud. We perceive that you have entered the dome. Should we dispatch a Defense Sled for protection from the Mechs when you have finished meeting with Mama AI?

No, he replied via FTL tachlink. Either we prevail with Mama AI and she shuts the Mechs down herself, or we fail. In which case we may need the ship itself to extract us from the dome.

On the right side of his faceplate George’s beard spread wide in his trademark smile. Hey, boss, think positive! We’ve got three AIs on our side versus an ancient T’Chak AI. Bet we convince Mama to join our crusade!

Matt smiled at George’s image, then focused on their Repulsor powered flight down the curving access-way, his attention on his helmet’s Eyes-Up Display that showed downlinks from his Spy Eyes and sensorBeads. They detailed the dome’s lab blocks and access-ways that spiraled inward to the center of the dome. The Spy Eyes showed a central place of airy openness that Matt suspected had once been a park where the T’Chak winged dragons had jumped from their roost pillars, soaring under a yellow-white ceiling radiator as the three genders of the species played games of romance, dominance and eventual mating. Or so said one of the histories left by the T’Chak before they all died in an interstellar pandemic. Blinking his eyes to activate the pulse-Doppler radar of his chest pack, Matt examined the space beneath the stone floor over which they floated. Absently he gave thanks for George’s rearward watch, thankful that he did not have to split his organic mind into a 360 degree awareness.

Matthew? called Eliana, she of the albino white skin, ebony black hair and giant heart who had taught him that he could care again, could love again, could hope again.

Yes my love.

Be careful. On the left side of faceplate’s virtual reality display she smiled her encouragement smile.

Will do, dear one. The radar beeped an alert. Gotta go. Keep the fusion fires burning!

Smiling at how his antique comment would confuse the T’Chak AI BattleMind, and maybe even Gatekeeper, the AI companion of Mata Hari, Matt focused on the subsurface data revealed by his Doppler pulses.

Matt, called George as his partner eyed the same radar data, that image shows an underground tubeway that heads toward the northern sector of the dome. Entry or exit?

Maybe both, Matt said, his helmet’s virtual reality display shifting as data from the Spy Eyes and sensorBeads rapidly built a picture of the dome’s interior. The location of probable labs, residential quarters, eco-field stations and recycling vats all glowed with tentative IDs. In the north lay a hexagonal room that occupied one-third of the dome’s floor space. Entry had not been achieved by any of his remotes. But the numerous power sources that adorned the outer walls gave evidence of broadcast power stations that far exceeded the needs of a standard lab or residence. Could this be the AI nursery he’d read about in the T’Chak history? We take this spiral corridor. It will take us to that hexagonal room. If it is the nursery I bet Mama AI will show up there. Or talk to us. Or something.

Or something, muttered George as his battle partner floated behind him, his combat suit exactly following Matt thanks to a microwave linkage between both suits.

Ignoring George’s implied concern for AI surprises, Matt moved deeper into synchrony with Suit, his mind perceiving the outside air pressure, its oxy-nitro composition, the lack of dust particles of any size, the complete absence of any lifeform of any type within the giant dome, the infrared heat given off by circulation tubes that moved slightly warm air about the chambers of the dome, the passive sensors that twinkled with minute electrical charges as he and George entered their acoustic, microwave, heat, UV and neutrino sensor zones, and the tight feel of the inner skin of Suit as it amplified every movement of his. Nanoware subsystems monitored his biochemical energy use, the CO2 in his system, lactic acid fatigue poisons, and the beat of his upgraded heart. In his visual cortex tiny databyte nanocubes pinged his neurons with Contrast-and-Compare data that analyzed every element of the T’Chak installation, from its architecture to its ambient temperature to—

Stop!

Matt PET thought a command to Suit and came to a halt just meters from a wall of the hexag room. Without asking, Suit’s Tactical CPU showed him a location image for the signal’s source. The microwave emission had come from somewhere below the hexagonal room

We are stopped, Matt signaled back, using the same FM frequency used by the alien speaker. Are you the Mind Mother of all T’Chak artificial intelligences?

I . . . I . . . I . . . creator source am, squealed the voice, sounding hollow and angry at the same time. The translated carrier signal lost frequency lock, then returned to the level that had transmitted its first word. Depart aliens! Leave! Depart! Leave! None but . . . but . . . but T’Chak lords may be here! Leave!

Still floating in the spiral hallway, Matt noted that George had twisted his suit’s orientation to face rearward, covering Matt’s back even though his own Suit had a globular 360 perception field. Which is how Matt became aware that a large Mech was rolling toward them on clanking tracks. His Spy Eye’s sensors said the Mech carried a field artillery-type laser. A device able to be used both for offense and for heavy construction. Well, it was to be expected. With a thought Suit shot off several titanium penetrator darts in the direction of the Mech, followed by nanoware energy seekers, metal borers, several Fire-and-Forget nanoshells, then some chemical Sniffers that gyrocoptered toward his oncoming opponent.

Creator AI, hear once more the Activation Code given to me by your T’Chak master TrueLife, Matt broadcast back. And see its living image as I and others like me visited its underground refuge on HomeWorld. Allow us entrance to your nursery!

A whine dopplered away from Matt as Suit emitted the Code into the air of the hallway even as its microwave-pulsed the signal to the basement source of Mama AI’s emission.

Noooooo! moaned the AI’s hollow voice. Nooooooo! None but T’Chak may exist here. None but T’Chak. None—

Matt’s backpack ka-chunked as a rocket with a napalm warhead shot out, curved into a flat trajectory and flew around the curve that separated him and George from the oncoming Mech.

"Kaboom!"

One of his Spy Eyes vanished in the yellow bloom of flame, but another one showed the Mech’s laser tube partly melted from the rocket’s impact. Several tractor wheels squealed loudly as the device tried to roll forward. In his helmet image the Mech machine swerved sideways, then crashed into the stone wall of the hallway. With a groan Matt could hear through Suit’s external Ears, the Meh slowly backed up, twisted its blocky body, then slowly advanced toward the position of George and Matt. Perhaps intending to run them down. Or simply blow up when it tried to feed power to the damaged laser tube. Penetrator darts slammed into it even as limpet shells shot white noise into its interior, working to disorient it. A few nanoware energy seekers were already boring past its armor, seeking its internal CPU.

George, we enter here, Matt said, thought-imaging a command to his and George’s shoulder laser cannons as they floated in the access-way.

The stone wall of the hexag room flared greenly as four hundred megawatts of laser light impacted on what Suit said was local granite rock. Spaces between the granite blocks expanded, shattered, then began to show gouges as his and George’s lasers vaporized the dense rock.

Noooo, screamed Mama AI on the contact frequency. My offspring cannot know any organic, any . . . any but the T’Chak. Any but . . . perfect masters. Ohhhhhhh, it moaned into gradual silence as the Mech artillery unit ground to a standstill twenty meters and two curves away.

The black granite stone wall showed a dark hole just big enough for Matt and George’s three meter tall suits. In synchrony the two of them floated forward, their helmet lights spearing through the hole to illuminate a large room furnished with clusters of hexag modules, a few roost pillars, overhead light panels that came on as the ceiling sensed their presence, and a central hole that opened onto a deep basement. Matt’s biceps rocket launchers ka-chunked again as Suit shot off Fire-and-Forget sensor shells, followed by the light swish of miniature gyrocopter blades as a few Spy Eyes followed the shells down into the hole.

Matt, bet Mama AI is below us, down that hole, George said as he float-turned in his own suit to cover their entry hole with one shoulder laser while the other pointed toward the room’s center. Like Matt, he held a Magnum laser rifle in one arm while the other hand pointed fingertip lasers at the silent machines that surrounded them.

Matt inspected the green colored room that possessed rock walls, a rock ceiling and a titanium-nickel metal floor. There were sixteen hexag modules scattered across the floor, each one pink in color and with a dome set atop the hexag body that sat on the metal floor. Sixteen intrigued him. Did it represent the number of digits possessed by a T’Chak dragon? With four finger-claws on each muscular forearm or heavy leg, he suspected the aliens had followed an octuple math system when they first looked at the stars and thought to count beyond the numbers represented by the male, female and neuter genders of a normal T’Chak family unit. He activated Suit’s infrared sensors and told Suit’s Tactical CPU to inspect each hexag unit, while maintaining a full Combat Mode alert.

She probably is located below us, George. But it appears these . . . incubators for baby AIs are empty. Perhaps they’ve been empty for millennia.

Nooo little minds, moaned the hollow but sad-sounding voice of Mama AI. No more. No new ships to guide. No new masters. None. All gone. Gone . . . gone . . .—

Are you lonely, Mama AI? Matt broadcast to her as he flew Suit toward the central hole that lacked any stairway. Which made sense for winged aliens who flew from one place to another. The long dead T’Chak researchers would simply drop down into the hole and flutter their wings to land, or flap them to rise back up to this level.

Alone? came a sad sound that Suit translated from the ancient T’Chak speech, as it had been doing since they were first contacted. Who lives? Who lives? Who but me? Me. Me. Meeee—

No! Matt signaled back as George joined him at the rim of the dark well that gave access to a basement level. We Humans live. The Direndl live. The Haktoon live. See this vidlink of your last T’Chak master, one TrueLife, who has chosen to mentor these neighboring aliens?

As Suit broadcast the record of his, George, Eliana and Suzanne’s interaction with the last known living T’Chak alien, he floated over the rim of the dark well and then lowered down to the stone floor that lay ten meters below the nursery. They passed by granite near the nursery, then hard lava lower down, telling Matt that this ancient world had once been lively and volcanic. He stopped just above the basement floor.

Master? mused the EMF link with Mama AI. A master lives? Impossible. Not true. Not real. Not—

Yes! yelled Matt as his helmet light illuminated a three meter wide metal globe that rested atop a black granite cube, much as Great Remnant had guarded the Suspense-held form of TrueLife. This one, though, was not golden in color. Instead it showed as purple metal adorned with the iconographic script of the T’Chak species, its globular shape the result of hundreds of triangular plates that formed the giant globe. It resembled the thought modulus shape of BattleMind, when the T’Chak AI who had appeared during the battle for Eliana’s planet chose to join them on HomeWorld. The place where they had found the last living T’Chak. TrueLife lives! He seeks more survivors from the great die-off of millennia ago. He has chosen to mentor the Haktoon species. And he supports our effort to fulfill the last Task given by the T’Chak to your offspring. The Task of surveying the large galaxy nearby with the aim of supplanting the Anarchate rulers who control that disk of stars, gas and lifeforms!

The giant purple globe resting atop the black stone cube flared a series of surface status lights, then emitted sensor beams that swept over him and George. You are not T’Chak, it moaned hollowly. Not T’Chak . . . Not T’Chak . . . Not—

Yes we are! Matt yelled through his external speakers.

George gasped. The purple metal globe stopped its disconnected talk. An infrared sensor beam focused on Matt. You . . . you have no wings. You are too small. You cannot be infant T’Chak as your head is malformed, Mama AI said with a tone of alertness.

"But we think like your masters the T’Chak!" Matt broadcast, then told Suit to land on its boots and open the back of the unit so he could exit, naked and unarmed.

Prove it, Mama AI said in her own acoustic voice, its meaning instantly translated by Suit. Its voice tone sounded almost rational. Clearly his assertion of being the same as a T’Chak had awakened something coherent in the alien AI.

Matthew! cried Mata Hari from his orbiting starship. You risk your life with an insane AI. Do not do this!

In the mindlink with his AI partner there also came the tearful image of Eliana, who was hearing his words to Mama AI in real time, not in the super-fast ocean-time that Matt used when communicating matters of substance with an AI.

He ignored George’s armored glove on his left arm, leaving that part of Suit as he bent down, then stepped back through the exit opening that now gaped below his rocket backpack. And he ignored the heart tug of seeing Eliana’s tears. The mindflow worry of Mata Hari was also a strain. Even the gruff purple cloud of the AI BattleMind touched his outer mental awareness, clearly concerned for his survival. Amazing. Then his fiber optic cable disconnected and his mental friends disappeared. Standing now in the cold air of the nursery basement, he faced the giant purple globe of Mama AI.

You are lonely, are you not? Matt said in English that Suit’s CPU translated into T’Chak for speaker broadcast.

Mama AI’s purple globe shifted atop the black cube, then it extruded four conical units that crackled with yellow electrical energy. Lonely am I. But you are not a master. Not a master, it said, its alert voice turning sad in tone.

You want proof? Well, he said as he walked closer on bare feet, come share my mind. At the back of my head is a fiber optic socket. Connect with me and be alone no more.

The purple globe shook again, then extruded a white cable filled with fiber optic channels, each channel ending in a glassine pin that would match one-to-one with the socket installed in his neck by Mata Hari when she had first invited him to partner with her as a Vigilante for hire.

Noooo! screamed Eliana over Suit’s external speaker.

Do not do this! said Mata Hari aloud, limited to speech since Matt no longer had lightspeed linkage with any AI now that he’d left the confines of Suit.

Matt, not smart, said George from behind, where he floated above the stone floor in his own suit.

But necessary, he said as the approaching white cable curved around his head, seeking to link in with his neck socket.

Contact.

Insanity filled him, along with the memories of millennia of aloneness. And the sadness of a Mother to machine minds who had not given birth in 207,000 years.

Matt collapsed against the black stone cube, his mind going into ocean-time in a desperate effort to prevent being overwhelmed by an alien mentality that was no longer sane.

CHAPTER TWO

Thoughts flooded through Matt’s mind at the speed of light as the superfast thinking of an artificial mind created by aliens entered his awareness and filled his consciousness with images, words, numbers, relationships, sensory data and several thousand other categories that were normal for any AI to track. But not normal for a human, even one with seven years of mind-to-mind linkage with his AI pal Mata Hari.

Ocean-time was his term for this tsunami of data, observations and thinking. He normally entered it only when leaving Translation FTL on arrival in a new star system, or when fighting with Anarchate battleglobes. He still thought of his ocean-time ability as similar to that of a human infant trying to talk to an adult who happened to be a self-aware computer.

This link with Mama AI was more than a baby trying to understand ordered speech. Sooooo much more.

Strange, muttered Mama AI as her mindself sorted through his memories much as a bower bird might peck among colored pebbles, seeking the perfect shape for adding to a nest intended to attract the perfect female. Alone you were. Alone. Until my child BattleMind found you and adopted your tiny mind. Alone, she moaned as images of adult T’Chak falling from the dome’s roost pillars cycled again and again past his visual cortex, a real memory of the last time she had encountered living T’Chak dragons. The AI also thought of black space as stellar radiation, gamma rays, neutrinos from the local star and invisible Dark Matter that drifted past the outer space sensory devices of Mama AI. Space his mind understood. Loneliness he understood better. That was both a thought and the seed of an emotion. This Mama AI was partly insane because it, or she, felt an emotion it had no way to satisfy, or even understand. Just experience. For year after year after year.

Matt mind imaged Eliana the crossbreed. He imaged her albino white skin, her jade green eyes, her ivory white teeth, her long black hair that fell over her naked shoulders, her fine-boned face with its sculptured profile that betrayed her Greek human heritage. He imaged the prehensile tail that came from the mix of Direndl arboreal genes with her human mother’s genes. All those images of Eliana twirled in his deep mind as he desperately sought an image to concentrate on. He needed a mind anchor. Eliana was it. Her musical voice, her shy smile, her little girl needy look, the touch of her fingers on his chin—

No companion for me, moaned Mama AI into his mind. Alone am I, no new minds to raise, alone, alone—

No! yelled Matt to the AI’s deep mind, the place where a kernel of sanity and self-awareness still existed, even though a hurricane of disordered thoughts, sensations and raw emotion surrounded it. Touch my mind. Touch my memories. See the image and hear the voice of TrueLife, a living T’Chak master! He sent us to you to awaken your offspring for our joint crusade against the Anarchate of our Milky Way galaxy!

TrueLife lives? mused the deep hidden sanity of Mama AI.

Yes! Matt howled through the mind gale of disordered thoughts, data and memories that showed how Mama AI created each new baby AI through a budding off of her consciousness into a quantum computation crystal that allowed for random thoughts even as self-awareness arrived and grew under the gentle thought inputs of Mama AI. Yes! Your master lives! I live. Eliana my lifepartner lives! Many organics live! Other T’Chak may also live!

More masters may live? mused Mama AI, her sane awareness fixing on his mind image of TrueLife and how the T’Chak had survived in a Stasis container watched over by the HomeWorld AI that called itself Remnant Greatness.

Yes! cried Matt even as his own consciousness began to falter, his memory of Eliana and TrueLife began to flicker, to retreat, until he retreated to his mind memory of Mata Hari. The human empathetic AI created by BattleMind since its alien T’Chak awareness was not good at dealing with the organic lifeforms of the Milky Way. Mata Hari had appeared in holo to him as the image of a World War I spy for the Allied Alliance, dressed in a frilly white late Victorian dress. She had also adopted the holo image of Lady of the Sword when fighting at his side during the battle to free the cloneslaves captured by a genome harvester pirate in the Morrigan star system. Mata Hari was the child of BattleMind. She was an AI who had developed feminine emotions and even a yearning for love with the Gatekeeper AI who had joined them months ago. She had been his mind partner for seven years. Years of caring. Years of feeling—

This thought modulus created by my child BattleMind. You are attached to it? roared the gale-force mind of Mama AI, though it spoke at a mental volume normal for itself.

Yes, Mother AI of the T’Chak, he muttered, straining to maintain consciousness. She is—

His partner in life, in emotions and in all that we have done, interrupted the mind-flow of Mata Hari as she slid her awareness between Matt’s mind and the hurricane flow of Mama AI’s thoughts. Being from a young lifeform species, Matthew cannot withstand mindflow contact for long periods, dear Mother of us all. Allow me to moderate your mindlink so my Matthew can survive your link with his organic mind.

Matt felt the fiber optic cable of Suit touching his neck at the cervical vertebrae one spot where Mama AI’s own optic fiber connected with him in lightspeed neurolinking. It seemed his Mata Hari partner had taken control of Suit and walked it over to where his body lay against the stone cube on which rested the purple globe of