Star Vigilante (Vigilante Series) (2 page)

Ten meters
.

A black-suited woman moved toward him, her long black hair fluttering slowly in the six-tenths gee gravity of
Wiggles
. Her arms swung casually at her side. Her eyes—her needful jade green eyes fixed on him.

Eight meters
.

A serious look filled her pale white face. Her head canted forward a bit, implying determination. An almost human woman approached.

Six meters
.

Was she really human? Or . . . was she an alien-constructed clone put together from stolen or bartered human cells, mind-programmed, emotionally neutered, and devoted solely to the Master who would periodically reward her brain’s pleasure center with impulses from a trickle current? Or punish her with sadistic lashes from a neurowhip?

Perhaps she was the cyborg vessel for a self-aware, silicon-germanium supercomputer from a far star system, who figured it needed an organic form while slumming among organics?

Or perhaps she was just a mindless biological Remote filled with plague spores, built according to a convenient bipedal form, and programmed to seek out and infect carbon-based lifeforms similar to the original genome pattern?

Such things existed in the Anarchate. The options for Hunter-Killer weapons systems are not limited to the electronic, photonic and inorganic.

Four meters
.

She slowed, blinking long black eyelashes. She spoke. “Are you Matt Dragoneaux, Human, Work Sigil—Vigilante?”

His comdisk translated a weird language full of polytonal phonemes. Ancient Greek.

Three meters
.

“Stop!” he said, using Suit’s external speaker.

She stopped, swaying slightly in the weak gee-field of
Wiggles
. Bare hands stayed at her side. His displays keened with Threat Readiness signals. Suit hungered to attack her!

Matt blinked a code sequence. Suit Locked-On a single laser pulse-cannon, centering it between her eyes. They were deliciously green—as nearly as he could see in flickering orange light of the dive. Her hair glimmered with an ebony black luster. And her skin shone alabaster white—where it showed outside her vacsuit.

An albino! Or, a partial one since her hair and eyes were naturally colored. “You’re late. Identify yourself.”

She looked irritated. His faceplate display tracked an increase in double-heart pulse rates. Carbon dioxide exhalations increased slightly. Muscle tension changed a bit. Cheek muscles tightened. Minor facial tics showed on her right jaw. Under the vacsuit, full breasts rose and fell regularly, not yet showing the rapid breathing of worry-threat-danger.

“I am Eliana Antigone Themistocles, Derindl/Human genetic mix, Sigma Puppis star system, planet Halcyon—a Third Wave colony. My Work Sigil is Molecular Geneticist.” She frowned. “And I am not late!”

Ahhh—a Derindl/Human crossbreed!
That explained the albino skin that happened when species crossbred. But what was her purpose? And would she, like everyone else he’d met, lie to him? “Turn around.”

She looked confused, then exasperated, finally resigned. “If you insist.” She turned, presenting her back to him.

Each shoulder blade was covered by a cylindrical lump. Lower down, and just above the trim buttocks, lay a coiled bulge. Was it the vestigial tail of the Derindl arboreal dwellers? Either that, or a clever imitation to fit a totally false story. Matt double-blinked and took a Threat assessment of her back. His faceplate’s Eyes-Up display changed. The right quadrant showed only small, pressurized oxygen canisters riding over her shoulder blades, a heat signature denoting both hearts and the groin, and no weapons other than the laser handgun and machete. Curious. She was remarkably under-weaponed for a place like Hagonar Station. Did she have capabilities unknown to him? Or was she an innocent abroad, unaware of the dangers at Hagonar? And the risk she’d exposed him to by being late . . . .

“Face me, please.”

Storm clouds gathered in her eyes as she finished pirouetting. “I, I—”

“Do not touch your weapons, Themistocles-person.”

“What!” Her mouth gaped. A vein on her forehead pulsed angrily. “You, you—”

“Yes?”

“You clone!” Anger made her beautiful—far too beautiful. “How dare you speak to me as I were only a cipher!”

Matt’s bicep rocket-guns locked onto her midbody, activated by her Threat tones. Both shoulder pulse-cannons now aimed between her eyes, their pinhead sighting lasers putting green dots between black eyebrows.
Damn
. That’s the trouble with staying in neurolink with one’s weapons systems—integration with them becomes second nature, like breathing, sleeping, eating . . . and fighting.

She was definitely a naif. Naive to a fault. Certainly not stupid considering her molecular geneticist training. But how trustworthy?

Matt sighed. “Lower your voice, please. My Suit systems detect Threat.”

Her jaw muscles jumped again. Eliana Themistocles eyed the bicep rocket-guns and shoulder cannons bristling from Suit like needles on a cactus. If she even remembered what a cactus was. Had been, once—long ago. Before the deserts were flooded to grow rice for too many people.

“Can you converse?” she asked, attempting sarcasm. “Or do you only sit on that bench like an overweight Bal-lizard, too brainless to do more than posture Threat at anything that comes within your sensory zone?”

“I talk.” Her tone declared her a small frog from a smaller pond who thought herself important. In the Anarchate, of all places. Maybe she was just provincial and parochial. Matt inner-focused on Suit. All readouts confirmed Themistocles as a Derindl/Human crossbreed: sex, female; age, about 30 Sol-years; and with no sign of malnutrition or iron-deficiency diseases. Food must be plentiful on her planet. “Your purpose?”

Eliana started forward. “I am—”

“Stop!”

Matt overrode Suit’s Fire-command to a bicep shell as she reached two meters range, just beyond the alcove’s flat metal table. Eliana Themistocles’ white face tightened over high, aristocratic cheekbones. She seemed frightened now, staring morbidly at Suit as its external systems flashed brightly. Like a deadly peacock.

“Keep your distance,” Matt said through the helmet’s external
speaker. He controlled the sound level—no need to vibe her bones. “State your purpose.”

Shivering, the Patron focused those needful green eyes on him. “Hey—we had an appointment, didn’t we?” He said nothing, just watched; her air of authority wilted a bit. “I—my Clan family that is—we’re looking for a Vigilante. You were listed on the Job Board. So I messaged you.”

“Your problem?”

Eliana scowled. “An off-world Trade conglomerate is breaking the terms of a mining agreement that we and our Derindl Nest-mates signed with them.” She paused, then licked her lips. “May I sit?”

“No.” Around them, other aliens were taking notice of two humanoids in the same room—an unusual circumstance considering the rarity of the bipedal lifeform. Matt did not enjoy being the focus of someone else’s attention. Nor staying in one place so long. But a Job . . . . He extruded a gauntlet knife-claw and touched a pressure stud on the table, then looked back to Eliana.

“Come inside the Privacy Curtain field, but stay at least two meters away from me.”

“What?” Eliana looked puzzled, then irritated as the Curtain turned opaque in front of her. The Curtain had become a one-way transmitter of photons, allowing Matt to see her but blocking the vision of the alien critters that filled
Wiggles
. She shrugged, then stepped through the Curtain’s electromagnetic field and halted on the other side of the table, standing still with both arms at her side, at 1.8 meters distance. Sweat lined the inside of her palms. Suit’s Threat systems keened loudly, unhappy with such a close approach. He slapped his chest control panel, hitting the correct pressure stud the first time—as always.

“Shut up!”

Eliana’s expression stiffened. “Are you speaking to me?”

“No!” The keening died away as Matt reset the size of Suit’s Threat zone. “Just this damned Suit! It doesn’t like closeness—too threatening.”

Still standing, Eliana smiled thinly. “And you? Do you dislike closeness with other sapients? Is that why you’re outfitted like a miniature battleship?”

Matt braced his gauntleted hands against the tabletop, as if he could push away the memories.
Did
he fear closeness? After Helen? Hey—he could be close! What other human could claim the unique meeting of the minds shared between him and the self-aware entity that was starship
Mata Hari
? A symbiosis they were, quite rare in the records of space-faring peoples. But sometimes, very rarely, an organic could bond with an inorganic and know a life too strange for words. The two of them roamed a galaxy where for most the only purpose was survival. But when he, Mata Hari the AI, and the starship
Mata Hari
became one electro-optical entity, became
::,
they did more than just survive—they sought to bring Justice to those in need. He looked up.

“None of your business, Eliana Antigone Themistocles.” From her eyes, pity came. Then she stared at him with a different look, using those little girl eyes on him. Eyes that touched him, made him feel . . .  made him wish . . . . “Explain your Purpose further.”

Eliana blinked, abandoning deeper thoughts. “As I said, we seek a Vigilante. The Trade group has employed a strip-miner the size of this station to rip out our minerals without regard to the local environment—all contrary to the contract terms. When our people approach, they are killed. We have few ships. And the MotherShip of the Trade conglomerate refuses entrance to our envoys. Our only alternative is destruction of the MotherShip or the Stripper.”

“The group’s name?”

She looked rueful, ivory teeth biting her lower lip. “The Halicene Conglomerate.”

Shit!
Matt cared little who he fought, and only a little more who he helped. A Job was a job. He and
Mata-Hari
seemed well-suited to fighting hopeless causes, righting wrongs, helping the weak, and in general getting in the way of evolutionary survival.
Kill or be killed. Be smart or be dead. Be alert or be enslaved
—so he had learned while roaming the Anarchate. The rules of natural selection worked at the galactic level too, in addition to planetary ecosystems. But it gave him some purpose, fighting lost causes. However, fighting the Halicene Conglomerate wasn’t a cause, it was stupid. Just plain stupid.

“The Halicene Conglomerate controls half of Orion Arm. How could you people have been so stupid as to hire them?”

“Bastard!” Eliana trembled with fury. “No one else would give us credit! We needed full spectrum neonatal placental units to serve as wombs for our crossbreed zygotes—so we could bring them to full-term.” Tears flickered in her jade green eyes. “The survival of the colony was at stake.”

Matt closed his own eyes, feeling very weary, yet secure in the knowledge Suit would alert him to any Threat. What to do? He needed a Patron. But not a credit-poor Patron. And not one so incredibly shortsighted. He needed a Cause, but not one equivalent to walking into a plasma torch. However, he was tired of hanging around Hagonar Station, a distinctive target for any genome harvester willing to take a chance on harvesting his DNA for sale to the highest bidder. Like the overconfident crab alien. Still . . . . Matt opened his eyes.

“Eliana, I wish I could help you but—”

“
Threat!
” screamed Suit as subsonic klaxons and pulsing red lights filled his Eyes-Up display.

Beyond his faceplate, movement occurred under the dim orange light of
Wiggles
.

Against the far wall of the dive moved something like a giant praying mantis insect, but loaded down with body armor, a tubular weapon, and a glass-globe helmet set atop a toothy head that sported too many eyes. This something had just lumbered upright. Its own pulse-Doppler radar now ranged his alcove, penetrating the Privacy Curtain like tissue-paper. A laser rangefinder sought entry past the Curtain, defeated only because of the Curtain’s opacity setting. Options scrolled over Matt’s faceplate.

Eliana leaned forward, her look anxious. “Dragoneaux, will you—”

“Drop!”

She dropped under the table.

In sync and on-line with a super-strong combat suit that feels like your own body is wonderful. It’s ecstatic. And so very dangerous to one’s opponents.

Matt stood up so quickly his armor bent the table’s edge. Nullgrav plates in his boots shot him up towards the ceiling. Both shoulder pulse-cannons whirred On Target. The lightspeed link with Suit that he called
ocean-time
flooded his senses. He thought fast. Faster than humanly possible. Picoseconds blurred past. Nanoseconds zipped along. Milliseconds ticked by, slowly.

Forty milliseconds
passed in the outside world, Suit informed him.

Mr. Threat reared backwards, squalling something, a midbody chitin-arm lifting a weapon tube towards Matt.

Two hundred milliseconds
stomped along.