Free Vigilante Series 2: Nebula Vigilante by T. Jackson King Page B

very alien AI.

CHAPTER FIVE
     
    Sitting naked in the Interlock Pit of the Bridge, with Eliana safely sheltered in a cocooning accel-couch to his left, Matt pulled his attention away from the 22 starships that were leaving orbit with the blessing of Mata Hari as she removed her limpet complink controls over their onboard Navigation computers. He took a moment to adjust to his clear plastic seat.
    He rested hands on transparent input pads, snugged feet against similar pads, and felt his body restrained by the inertial motion fields. The fields kept him safe during vector changes. Wouldn’t do to have him bouncing off expensive alien hardware. While inertial motion fields were normal in all starships, what was not normal were the low power yellow laser beams that touched him from head to toe.
    Optical neurolinking it was. It meant that Matt felt the ship as if it were a suit of clothes. And the ship felt him as if he were . . . what?
    As a human-cyborg hybrid, he was used to vid-images displayed against his contact lenses. Used to his body’s autonomic linkage with onboard nanoware CPUs. He’d even gotten used to the knowledge-augmentation databyte nanocubes that rested in his brain’s visual cortex—they gave him See-Identify education in strange phenomena. But this optical neurolinking was different. Even after seven years, he was still adjusting to it. As was Eliana, who had boarded his ship with a rampant hatred of artificial intelligences. Due to a medical tragedy her aunt had suffered. Now, Eliana was . . . female-friendly to Mata Hari whenever his AI materialized in holo form. It was a change he welcomed.
    The back of his neck twinged. Mata Hari was reminding him it was time to get under way and leave Omega. With a sigh, Matt reached back, grabbed the multi-pin optical fiber cable, and plugged it into the receptor implanted in the back of his neck. At cervical vertebrae one level.
    Matt focused, accepting electronic and lightspeed photonic input.
    The dam burst as once more he took in ship systems. He stayed out of ocean-time since no threat had yet appeared. Still, oceans filled him, oceans of sensor-fed data filled his mind’s eye.
    “Matthew,” said Mata Hari in his mind and aloud for Eliana’s benefit, “the twenty-third staryacht with the fifteen Owners on board is now departing, but our friend the AI Gatekeeper has left it and is heading our way. He wishes to board us and travel as part of the human grouping. What do I tell him?”
    Matt appreciated the fact that Mata Hari was talking to him at slow human normal speed, rather than forcing him into ocean- time and direct tachlink with Gatekeeper. “Tell him he is welcome, but must remain in the commissary section and not seek to interfere with any ship systems whatsoever, unless you, I or BattleMind ask for his assistance. Does he agree?”
    “He agrees,” Mata Hari said in a tone that felt to Matt like excitement. Hmmm . A female AI and a male AI. Could there be more to the two of them being together than simple algorithm sharing? “Matthew! Stop thinking that way!”
    Matt grinned to himself, did not look at Eliana and thought/spoke agreement. “Yes, that was impolite of me. Have the ship’s flexhull pouch out, englobe him and deliver him to the commissary now that he understands our conditions of acceptance.”
    “Complying,” Mata Hari said with a stiffness to her tone that made Matt bite his lip. He focused instead on the forward holosphere which depicted Omega and the Casino dome and Guardian box. He tensed both biceps. “Mata Hari, feed full power to the antimatter pontoons, please.”
    Eliana inhaled sharply but said nothing. Matt went to gestalt mode and became one with the outer and inner ship, albeit at slow organic speed. Squinting his eyes at the telescopic image of the casino that lay two thousand kilometers below their orbit, he visualized a targeting bull’s eye and thought the command.
    Two coherent antimatter beams shot