Galactic Vigilante (Vigilante Series 3) by T. Jackson King Page A
Authors: T. Jackson King
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neutrinos such as the fusion power plants of her ship and the 507 other T’Chak Dreadnoughts that shared deep space with her, and where the starships of the ten Cohort Commander AIs were located. With a shiver she left the UV, infrared, radio and x-ray images that she could “see” using ship sensors and focused on the large holosphere in front of her. It showed a normal yellow light image of her T’Chak fellows, lying against the stellar necklace of nearby stars, but it felt . . . incomplete somehow.
A blue cloud chuckled in one corner of her mind. “Incomplete?” queried the mindvoice of Lorelei, the T’Chak AI who had woken from a millennia long sleep to discover her old organic masters were long dead, with new masters like her, Matt, Eliana and George replacing them in the prime Task of overthrowing the Anarchate rule of the Milky Way. “We are a light year distant from Component C star of the Alkalurops trinary system. There is nothing around us other than near-vacuum, specks of interstellar dust, a few molecules of hydrogen and helium wafted here on stellar winds and gravity waves from the giant black hole at the center of your galaxy that holds onto every piece of matter and energy ever emitted in this assemblage of 400 billion stars. How can such a space ever be incomplete?”
Suzanne smiled to herself. As someone who’d grown up on old Earth, in the Swedish town of Skelleftea, which overlooked the salty waters of the Gulf of Bothnia, she was used to going fishing all by herself. Early on she’d learned to read the clouds, waves and winds as signs of changing weather. She had always returned with a catch of mackerel that fed her parents and two younger brothers. Then had come the worldwide exams to enter the Anarchate’s regional software and programming school that orbited the star 51 Pegasi. She had earned her place among the hundred people of Earth who chose a life among the stars and work for one of the sixteen interstellar conglomerates that dominated commerce and trade among the stars. She had spent the last ten years at Omega Casino, working with a few humans and many aliens. Until Matthew Dragoneaux arrived to teach the casino’s fifteen owners the negative side of ‘owning’ people in bondServant contracts. She PET mind-spoke to Lorelei.
“Of course this deep space region is not empty. But see my memory of fishing in the coastal waters near Skelleftea? I loved deciphering the rules of weather as I spent long hours fishing,” she said, sitting back in the glass chair of her Interlock Pit.
The female persona AI who had long ago chosen the name Lorelei from an obscure dialect of T’Chak, now changed from a blue mind cloud into a blond-haired, tall and slim copy of herself. “Is that why you attended the Software Academy at 51 Pegasi?”
Was it? Was her need to know the exact rules of weather the factor that had led her to study the binary language of expert software systems, terabyte-per-second computers and the quirks of self-aware AI systems? “Perhaps so, Lorelei. And regarding the deep space that surrounds us, is every T’Chak ship now present?”
“Yes,” Lorelei said, then PET image-thought to her a complex three dimensional map of every neutrino-emitting starship within five light minutes of their location. “We are here. George is there.” Two white light dots began blinking slowly. “Matt is there. And your friend Eliana is here.”
“I already know where Eliana is, dear Lorelei.”
Suzanne and Eliana had been in telepathic communion when their two ships left Translation and appeared in the deep space region that lay between Alkalurops A and the outer binary group of two Sol-type stars that lay 4,000 AU from A. Matt had said this location was near the spot where the annual convention of genome slaver starships would arrive within a few hours. Thus, while the appearance of 507 gravity wave pulses would be immediately detected by the Anarchate naval base on the moon of the
A blue cloud chuckled in one corner of her mind. “Incomplete?” queried the mindvoice of Lorelei, the T’Chak AI who had woken from a millennia long sleep to discover her old organic masters were long dead, with new masters like her, Matt, Eliana and George replacing them in the prime Task of overthrowing the Anarchate rule of the Milky Way. “We are a light year distant from Component C star of the Alkalurops trinary system. There is nothing around us other than near-vacuum, specks of interstellar dust, a few molecules of hydrogen and helium wafted here on stellar winds and gravity waves from the giant black hole at the center of your galaxy that holds onto every piece of matter and energy ever emitted in this assemblage of 400 billion stars. How can such a space ever be incomplete?”
Suzanne smiled to herself. As someone who’d grown up on old Earth, in the Swedish town of Skelleftea, which overlooked the salty waters of the Gulf of Bothnia, she was used to going fishing all by herself. Early on she’d learned to read the clouds, waves and winds as signs of changing weather. She had always returned with a catch of mackerel that fed her parents and two younger brothers. Then had come the worldwide exams to enter the Anarchate’s regional software and programming school that orbited the star 51 Pegasi. She had earned her place among the hundred people of Earth who chose a life among the stars and work for one of the sixteen interstellar conglomerates that dominated commerce and trade among the stars. She had spent the last ten years at Omega Casino, working with a few humans and many aliens. Until Matthew Dragoneaux arrived to teach the casino’s fifteen owners the negative side of ‘owning’ people in bondServant contracts. She PET mind-spoke to Lorelei.
“Of course this deep space region is not empty. But see my memory of fishing in the coastal waters near Skelleftea? I loved deciphering the rules of weather as I spent long hours fishing,” she said, sitting back in the glass chair of her Interlock Pit.
The female persona AI who had long ago chosen the name Lorelei from an obscure dialect of T’Chak, now changed from a blue mind cloud into a blond-haired, tall and slim copy of herself. “Is that why you attended the Software Academy at 51 Pegasi?”
Was it? Was her need to know the exact rules of weather the factor that had led her to study the binary language of expert software systems, terabyte-per-second computers and the quirks of self-aware AI systems? “Perhaps so, Lorelei. And regarding the deep space that surrounds us, is every T’Chak ship now present?”
“Yes,” Lorelei said, then PET image-thought to her a complex three dimensional map of every neutrino-emitting starship within five light minutes of their location. “We are here. George is there.” Two white light dots began blinking slowly. “Matt is there. And your friend Eliana is here.”
“I already know where Eliana is, dear Lorelei.”
Suzanne and Eliana had been in telepathic communion when their two ships left Translation and appeared in the deep space region that lay between Alkalurops A and the outer binary group of two Sol-type stars that lay 4,000 AU from A. Matt had said this location was near the spot where the annual convention of genome slaver starships would arrive within a few hours. Thus, while the appearance of 507 gravity wave pulses would be immediately detected by the Anarchate naval base on the moon of the
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