Star Vigilante (Vigilante Series)

by T. Jackson King

  Walking alongside him, Eliana noticed his glances. She flushed again, then looked ahead at Suit. “Who attacked us!” she said.

  “Uncertain,” Mata Hari said as the Biolab’s cold air set Eliana’s teeth to renewed chattering. “The bomb parts show maker marks traceable to a subsidiary of Halicene Conglomerate—a mining explosives company, I believe. But—”

  “Halicene? My brother should know about this. I’m calling Ioannis!” Eliana turned to leave the Biolab.

  “Hold up,” Matt said to Eliana as they stopped in front of Suit. The glass tube rose up, exposing his symbiont. Bending over, he checked out Suit’s armor plating. “First, fabricate a robe for Eliana and deliver it to just outside the Biolab entrance. Second, such parts are common on the open commercial markets. Mata Hari, are there other possible attackers?”

  “Many. The Pericles group for one.” Eliana stopped in the open door, half in and half out of the hallway. She glanced back at him in a respectful way, as if seeing him as more than just a cyborg, as if her earlier concern for his safety had been real, and perhaps a sign of something else. Matt controlled his physical reactions and looked over at the glowing 3D holo-image of his partner as Mata Hari continued. “Clan Karamanlis is another—they might like to see Clan Themistocles fail. Even someone within Clan Themistocles might have done this—not all humans have your motivation to refuse a bribe, Matt.”

  “What motivation?” asked Eliana, still standing in the doorway, her chill-bumps vanishing as hallway heat touched her. A floater arrived just then with a robe for her, which she accepted gladly.

  Matt put his emotional responses to Eliana under tight control. “It has to do with a Promise I once made. And it’s a personal matter, Patron.” He stepped back from Suit and headed for a nearby clothes locker. “Mata Hari, what is ship’s status?”

  “On vector for a low-orbit above Halcyon. Per your initial plans. Your orders?”

  “Who are we seeing first?” Eliana looked at him expectantly, acting more relaxed now that she wore the robe.

  Damn. If he could only think more clearly. His head ached from drugs. His right ear felt bruised. His eyes suffered from a slight diplopia that was already fading. The concussion had only shaken him up, but Matt was determined to make an overdue change in his helmet’s interior padding and webbing—there must be no repeat of his blast-induced concussion. Nearby, Eliana still stood in the doorway. A patient woman. What else was she?

  “Patron, we go to see the new Autarch of the Derindl at Mother Tree Melisen.” Matt reached into the locker for shorts and sandals, then smiled at her. “Will you accompany me to my audience with Autarch Dreedle?”

  Eliana nodded. “If you insist. I would prefer a return to my own Nest-group at Mother Tree Corinne, near Olympus, but—”

  “But the Job comes first, Patron.” Matt pulled on his shorts and then snugged his feet into the sandals. “And it’s time you got completely dressed—your health is also one of my concerns.”

  Eliana looked confused, as if his careful non-reaction to her earlier nudity did not fit what she had expected. She nodded finally. “I’ll be in my stateroom. Call me when it’s necessary to disembark and make the Genetic Donation—my blood type will give you short-term immunity from Tree antigens.” Eliana headed out into the Spine hallway, but not before he caught her thoughtful, inward look. As if she considered more than Themistocles Clan issues.

  “Thank you,” Matt said softly. He turned and surveyed his combat suit. “Mata Hari—is Suit fully decontaminated and repaired?”

  “Yes, it’s fine.” The glowing holo-image spoke in sync with his symbiont’s voice, which carried reassuring warmth. “The nano-units finished repairing the external armor two minutes ago.”

  “Was there interior penetration?”

  “Of course not!” Mata Hari looked scandalized. “This may be an old design, but it has every upgrade available on the market. And several unique to the T’Chak. Now, if a miniature black hole were brought into close proximity to the armor, then it would buckle from gravity tide surges but—”

  “I get your meaning.” Matt closed his eyes, swaying a moment as hunger overcame caffeine suppressants. “I’m heading for the Interlock Pit. Make sure a decent, five course meal—with soy-protein steak—awaits me.” He licked dry lips. “And bring me some Rothschild ‘97 Cabernet Sauvignon. I could use a drink.”

  “Any other commands?”

  Matt grinned at the way Mata Hari’s nearby image managed to convey just the right amount of exasperation—it was nice dealing with an AI partner who paid attention to the small details. “Be patient—I’m sure I’ll come up with some. Such as a request for the entire Lineage history of Autarch Dreedle and her unfortunate predecessor. Are you listening?”

  “Am I never listening?”

  “You tell me.”

  “I can’t—I’d be listening then.”

  Smiling ruefully, Matt shut up. Thinking an image code to his scalp SQUIDs that told Suit to follow him, he exited the Biolab and stalked down the Spine hallway. Verbal repartee was all very nice, but Mata Hari was far from a clone-brain floating in nutrient solution—like those that ran the starships of some spacefaring cultures. Nor was she the engram of a real or artificial personality, impressed millennia ago upon crystalline memory matrices—like the Memory Pillars on the Bridge. His AI ‘lived’ in the pillars, but her presence filled the ship. She was something else, something more than her Mata Hari spy persona . . . and whatever she was, she wasn’t human. Why had she not returned to her T’Chak builders? And had her persona always been a human female analogue—or an alien persona reflective of her T’Chak builders?

  Feeling too sober, thanks to his concussion medicine, Matt reminded himself that despite her excellent human persona, Mata Hari was not even close to human-normal—not when you were built over two hundred thousand years ago by the ancient T’Chak civilization. They were aliens about whom almost nothing was known, other than that they were based in the Small Magellanic Cloud and that they built superb starships. He’d learned that a T’Chak ship is a shapechanging wonder, its flexhull capable of many variants on the current Hull Prime configuration of central tube and outrigger pontoons for the antimatter projectors. The other weapons systems were carried internally, but could easily be extruded when necessary. In between weapons blisters and projector pontoons, the flexhull was covered in laser-resistant adaptive-optics backed up by carbon-carbon ablatives. Internally, strings of fusion power plants ran its length the way a dowager wears pearls. And its powerful deut-li fusion drive had an antimatter overdrive, one that could push them up to three-quarters lightspeed. Inside, and apart from the Spine hallway he now walked, the stateroom walls were made up of transparent optical matter which required only polarizing photonics to either color the walls or rearrange their shape. That much Matt knew. That much Mata Hari had shared with him from the first.

  But what bothered him most were the Restricted Rooms of the ship. They occupied half the volume of the ship, based on his own explorations. They had been placed off-limits to him and to all organic life. For his own good, she had said, explaining the Rooms were harmful to organic life. When asked how they were harmful, she had evaded. Matt didn’t like her evasion about the functions of the Restricted Rooms, and it was a seven year sore spot between them. But it was clear that Mata Hari had her own purposes, only some of which included him. And he would worry less over her evasiveness if she ever answered his first question on awakening from lifepod stasis. “Why did you rescue me?”

  Matt shrugged as he walked down the Spine toward the Bridge. Mata Hari’s other purposes could remain a future puzzle. An AI ancient when Cro-Magnons first appeared had to have had many adventures, many experiences, many encounters with other lifeforms. Since it was clear the ship could outlive any organic lifeform, it had always seemed obvious to him that he was merely her current symbiont. And right now, he had a Patron, a Job, and a conundrum—how do you save a planet without also dest
roying it in the process?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Mother Tree Melisen filled the Bridge holosphere like a forest primeval, something druid-basic, a dark green biome that transfixed Matt. The millions of individual trees, each interlinked via a common root system and shared biochemistry, filled the holosphere as starship Mata Hari swooped down from orbit, aiming for an eventual hover-stop above Melisen. As Eliana stood beside him in a blue jumpsuit, his ship flew herself, not needing him in the Pit for something this simple.

  The vast forest of Mother Tree Melisen stretched over six hundred kilometers long by three hundred wide, and towered a thousand meters high at Top Canopy. Each towering Trunk was supported by dozens of buttressing trunk-arches, much the way a Medieval Gothic church upheld its high roof with flying buttresses. Such was its macro appearance. At the micro level, each Trunk housed a Derindl Clan or an industrial process, and each sported scores of massive limbs covered in a riot of green. In Middle and Low Canopy, flying things flittered and swooped about, conveying alien people called Derindl, and also conveying—at the microbial level—biogenetic codings necessary to the proper regulation of Tree Melisen’s far-flung biosystems. A true symbiotic system that expressed pure mutualism, Mother Tree Melisen took in the solid, liquid, and gaseous wastes of three hundred thousand Derindl, purified and processed them, extracted minerals, nutrients and gases from the land and air, and repackaged them into food pods of many colors, flavors and sizes that provided all the amino acids, sugars, enzymes and minerals needed by the Derindl.

  In return, the Derindl worked among the widespread limbs, leaves, and Trunks of the Tree, nourishing new growth, removing the larger parasites, alerting the Tree to the need for a new Spore, a new Antigen, or a new pathway for the slowly expanding rootstock of Tree Melisen. Much as ancient Earth monkeys groomed the fur of their fellows and extracted lice, so the Derindl “groomed” the foliage-fur of Tree Melisen. And the Tree rewarded them. Rewarded them far beyond the simple food and shelter exchange that had its origins far back in prehistory. Mother Tree Melisen protected the Derindl.

  To the ultimate extreme.

  No animal lifeform was permitted within the forested confines of the Tree—unless it possessed a temporary Immunity granted by a Genetic Donation, or a permanent Immunity acquired by taking within itself minute spores of the Tree. Thus did the Tree recognize “itself,” even if in humanoid animal form. The Mother Tree was not sapient, but it had a degree of autonomous behavior which bordered on the prescient. Only thermonuclear fire could exterminate a Tree—and no Derindl had ever used such weapons on the surface of Halcyon.

  With professional detachment, Matt wondered what would happen when the Stripper met a Tree? For the moment, it ravaged south continent’s Meloan Desert, just south of them, a place of rugged xeric woodlands, harsh ravines and wind-blasted sandstone buttes. Mother Tree Melisen and the Stripper lay here, in south continent, still far away from the humans and other Derindl of north continent.

  The ship came to a Hover stop above the Tree.

  “Why aren’t we landing at the Port?” Eliana asked, turning to him. “I can assure you, the cross-limbs are strong enough to support—”

  “Because I say so,” Matt interrupted, feeling irritable thanks to the lingering effects of his concussion. “You hired me. Now let me do my work.”

  Eliana eyed him speculatively. “My, what a temper. Are we even going to see Autarch Dreedle?”

  “We are. Now be quiet.” The holosphere shimmered as Mata Hari hovered on belly Nullgrav, at 4,000 meters MSL. Matt’s conscience niggled at him—what was it with him and his reactions to her? Did he really fear being close to another human, like her? Or worse, did he fear Eliana’s growing interest in him as more than an employee? Sighing mentally, he tried diplomacy. “Uh, be quiet please.”

  She laughed then, but her eyes bored in on the puzzle of him, his cyborg nature, his motivations, on too many things that felt . . . personal, as if she really cared about him. “You know, you’re strange, Matt. On the way out here, you’re the soul of elegance and sophistication, patient with my naiveté. At my brother’s, you beat him at his own game. Even in the Biolab, you understood my . . . well, you showed understanding of me as a woman.” She blinked slowly, her stare reaching deep into him. “But now, you hold yourself at arm’s-length from me. Why? Do I scare you in some way? And what about simple politeness? Is that something they forgot to teach you in Vigilante school?”

  “Patron, we have no school other than reality.” Matt thought-imaged a command to his SQUIDs, turned and walked back to where Suit rested against the rear wall, wondering why—today of all days—ship’s lightbeams made his skin itch; absently, he shucked off his shorts as he went. Behind him, Eliana sputtered.

  “Hey. Hey! I was talking—”

  “Open.”

  Suit obeyed.

  It turned on waldo boots, bent forward, and split along its backspine, the rocket backpack hinging away as interlocking trapdoor plates opened in Suit’s midback—much like an antique zipper. Matt stepped into the tubular legs and pushed his feet into transducer-lined padding. Mid-calf support struts locked around his shins, then others about his thighs, ready to magnify every muscle twitch into a hyperkinetic kick-jump. He felt strong. From ten to a thousand times stronger than a normal human. Squatting, Matt thrust hands and arms into Suit’s outstretched armor-arms, felt similar struts lock-up, then ducked his head. He raised it inside the helmet and stood up straight. A rumble sounded from his back as Suit closed up, pressurizing its interior.

  Sensors, transducers and padding now touched him everywhere. Flex-struts enclosed his midbody. Waste tubes connected to his penis and anus, while feeder-needles penetrated abdominal Contacts—for nutrient nourishment, drug injection, and blood gases monitoring. Finally, moving along the nape of his neck like a lover’s caress, Suit’s coaxial cable snuggled up. Thousands of optical fiber pins drove home, socketing into his cyborg implant at CV1. The omnipresent mental weight of Mata Hari, interrupted when he stepped out of direct lightbeam contact and into the shielding interior of Suit, returned with the cable connection.

  “Hello, Matt. Feel good?” Mata Hari asked. Her voice sounded normal and reassuring.

  “Good enough,” he said. “Is Suit outfitted for Antigen defense and any local bacterial and viral vectors on file with the Library?”

  “Of course.” In his mind’s eye there materialized the image of a nude, black-skinned woman who smiled sensuously as she relaxed on a golden throne adorned with precious metals, gems, and ancient blade weapons. “Like my new look?”

  Matt shook his head, aware that Eliana was growing impatient with his opaque faceplate and apparent silence, but feeling contrary. “Lurid. Very human. What escapist brain did you eavesdrop on for this image?”

  “A human writer named—”

  “Matt!” Eliana yelled demandingly over Suit’s intercom. She’d found the correct external control panel.

  He blinked, clearing the Eyes-Up displays from his faceplate. She stood before him, her green jumpsuit tight against her curves as she stood with both hands clasped behind her back, looking at Suit and at him with unconcealed irritation. “Yes, Patron?”

  “Are you done communing with that computer?”

  “Just about.” Her mood change from apparent caring for him to distaste for Suit bothered him. And her AI xenophobia needed to be taught a lesson. Matt licked his lips slowly, with relish, making sure she saw him. “Why, this computer gives me a really hot neurolink to my pleasure centers! I just imagined—”

  “Stop!” Eliana’s face darkened. “Before I gag.”

  Matt felt brief guilt at manipulating her prejudices. He switched gears. “Patron, my equipment and I are none of your concern. Nor am I answerable to you for the ludicrous cyborg stereotypes spread about by your Vidcasters. Understood?”

  Eliana looked startled, then guilty. She nodded abruptly. “I promised to try. But I’ve read that cyborgs are always—”
>
  “Jacking in so their pleasure centers get unlimited orgasms, right?” Matt interrupted, still irritated with a Patron who paid too much attention to social stereotypes.

  She blushed. “Yes. But it is possible, isn’t it?”

  “So is overeating to give oneself the sensation of personal security. The fact it is possible doesn’t mean every human does it, just as pleasure neurolinking is not done by every cyborg.” He stared at her a moment, puzzled by her flip-flopping reactions to him. “Eliana, why do you hate AI computers?”

  She looked haunted. Then she turned aside and stared at the holo of Tree Melisen. “Do you have to know?”

  “Yes. It’s the least you can do . . . considering how you keep insulting my AI.”

  “I have my reasons!” Finally she faced him, arms crossed, expression intense, aware of her discourtesy but not eager to admit it. “I detest AIs because of what one of them did to my Grandmother Miletus. She . . . she was elderly, lived by herself in the colony, and the house AI was monitoring her. She had a stroke and would have died—completely normal. But the AI resuscitated her, an aware mind in a body unable to move, unable to talk, tortured by continued pain and existence. For weeks the AI insisted on making her heart beat, her lungs breath, her organs work, with her unable to say stop! It kept on. And on!”

  She seemed close to tears, head now downcast and black mane shadowing her eyes. “It was too stupid to let her die or call the colony for help, but had no orders to shut down. Worst of all, it didn’t care!” Eliana sobbed, a hopeless, heartbroken sound. “I’d stayed at the genelab too long, but eventually I found her and ordered it to shut down.” She looked up, her pain grabbing at him through the faceplate. “Don’t you understand? The AI didn’t know or care that it’s unnatural to keep someone alive after they’ve died. That’s why I hate AIs!” Eliana turned away, her shoulders shaking.