Two hundred ten milliseconds.
A single bipedal lifeform sat inside, unmoving. Matt blinked again. A bicep rocket shell erupted, sped forward, and penetrated the domehut’s thin plastic skin. The Probeshell took Hover station and fed back to him a CCD videocam image of the occupant and the domehut interior.
One second.
An old man sat in a wooden chair, in a cabin-like hut. He was white-haired and still in trim physical shape. At the moment, he read an antique paper book by the light of a battery-powered lamp. His clothing was the standard backcountry dress of a sweater, coveralls, insulated boots, and a belt knife.
Two seconds.
The old man looked up at the hovering Probeshell, a silvery sausage that contained many instrumentalities. He put down the book slowly, folded hands in his lap, and spoke.
Three seconds.
“I am Theodoros Deliyiannes Spyridon. May I speak with you, Vigilante Matt Dragoneaux?”
Five seconds.
Outside, he and Suit landed on bare ground just ten meters upwind of the domehut. The Probeshell relayed Matt’s stepped-down answer. “You may. Leave your enclosure. Come out with both hands empty. Then remain still while my Probeshell active-scans your body interior.”
Nine seconds.
Spyridon complied, stepping outside and stopping with his hands palm-open.
The Probeshell checked out the old man with its magnetic resonance imager. It confirmed the man held no plague viruses, had conscious control of his body, and contained no plastic explosives built into his bones.
Fifteen seconds.
Matt stepped forward in Suit, drawing to within eight meters of Spyridon. With a thought-image, he dumped Defense algorithms into Tactical and told Mata Hari to stand by overhead. Within Suit, proximity alarms keened, Weapons Readiness showed nominal, Threat Status glowed in the left biosensor quadrant, and mechsensor Options scrolled down the right quadrant of the faceplate. He blinked-thought. Both shoulder pulse-cannons Locked-On and the Tactical CPU went Active. Targeting radar squealed into tightbeam focus, ranging lasers measured every inch of the man, and his rocket backpack ka-chunked as it loaded a napalm shell. Just for the sake of overkill and because he liked using them, Matt raised his left gauntlet, keyed on the fingertip lasers, and set them for flesh-puncture.
Fifteen and three-quarters seconds.
“State your purpose,” he said through Suit’s external speaker, his recorded voice slowing down to standard Human speech mode.
Seventeen seconds.
Spyridon eyed him grimly. “I would like to talk with you about your job assignment for Clan Themistocles. And I am glad you left that crossbreed woman behind—she is a threat to you.”
Fifty-four seconds.
Should he relax? Should he ease the Alert and Tactical modes, leaving Suit to handle things on auto-Defense? But then, Spyridon’s voice tone had been venomous when he used the word ‘crossbreed’. What the hell . . . in life, you took chances.
Matt blink-imaged a thought, declined Mata Hari ’s protestations, and waited until organic reality shimmered to a slow crawl in front of his cyborg eyes as he left ocean-time. He answered the man in normal, human mode. “Let me guess. You are from the Pericles group?”
“I am Pericles!” Fury shone in angry grey eyes. “What’s left of it. I and a few others. Only we hold to the Pure Breed. The rest . . . .” The old man sighed, looking infinitely tired. “The rest have succumbed to the lure of offspring, even chalk-white albinos with tails!”
“How is she a threat to me?”
Spyridon reached for a coverall pocket. “Here, let me show you—”
“Freeze!”
Suit’s booming speaker-voice startled Spyridon. He froze, one hand half-lifted.
Inside, in Suit, Matt worked furiously to dampen down Suit’s autonomic Defense subsystems. They’d almost blasted Spyridon with double pulse-cannon blasts. Still, hair-trigger reflexes were better than dead reflexes. He blinked. His chest-pack Utility dispenser emitted a miniature gyrocopter Probe. It whirred over to Spyridon, extracted the flat optical disk from his coverall pocket, returned halfway, hovered, and awaited instructions. Matt spoke for Spyridon’s benefit.
“No sudden moves. Or next time, I might not override my suit systems. Understood?”
Spyridon nodded slowly, now a bit rattled by all the ferocious weaponry focused on him. “Understood. Sorry. But I thought you’d want to know . . . the disk contains true images of the crossbreed woman meeting with Halicene Conglomerate emissaries—prior to the Stripper emplacement. It shows her grandfather Petros acting as an intermediary. It shows a credit worth five neonatal placental units being posted to her account at Lyonnaise Central. It shows—”
“So what?” Matt interrupted. “It shows many things that could easily be faked digital videos, bank transactions that imply corruption . . . but were made without her knowledge, and she held the post of Emissary during the early negotiations of Clan Karamanlis with the Halicene Conglomerate. Before the contract went sour.” He cleared Suit’s faceplate, wanting the man to see his eyes and his expression. “Elder, you waste my time with insinuations. Do you have facts or useful hypotheses for why this planet is about to die from ecoshock overloading of its biosphere?”
Spyridon swayed a bit, his face pale. “May I sit on the ground? At ninety years of age one enjoys resting.”
Matt waved his gauntlet. “Sit. Speak. Educate me if you can.”
Spyridon sat down and looked aside at the beauty of a summer day. A cool, brisk wind fluttered the needles of scrub-pine analogues, amphibians croaked in the nearby stream, and avians whistled high overhead as they circled, hunting for a meal. The Greek sighed. “This was once a beautiful planet. It still is. Only the humans despoil its promise. . . by not remaining faithful to the Pure Breed.” The man’s gaze shifted from scenery to him, to his eyes. “Vigilante, I care little if the Stripper despoils this planet, kills the Derindl, and enslaves the crossbreeds. But I do care to save the possibility that sometime, in the future, a new generation of Pure Breed humans may rediscover their ancient heritage, claim the land due to humans, and found a new colony faithful to the memory of Pericles of Athens, Leonidas of Sparta, and Alexander of Macedon.”
“What does all that have to do with the Stripper?”
“Everything.” Spyridon smiled like a merchant offering a used guarantee. “When a human loses his honor, he loses his resistance to corruption. To lying abed with abominations. To making deals for short-term gains.”
“Go on.” Briefly, Matt checked his outlying Remotes, making sure no other sapient approached while he was occupied with Spyridon—although Mata Hari would be covering those fronts in back-up mode.
“Are you going to meet with former Despot Nikolaos Telemachus Karamanlis?”
“Yes.”
“Then be alert.” Spyridon stood up slowly and brushed dirt off his coveralls. “He is a sly one. He fornicates with Derindl women—three of them at once! And he is the one who made the deal—so he could have a male heir.”
“So what?”
“So if you destroy the Stripper, or force its withdrawal, the nine hundred neonatal placental units he bought with his devilish contract will be forfeit to the Halicene Conglomerate. Though he now has a son, he would lose the chance to have more children. And the infant male is sickly.” Spyridon grimaced sourly. “Would that not give him a motivation to obstruct you?”
In Suit, Matt watched Spyridon’s every move, much as he would a poisonous snake. “It would. Except that destruction of this planet’s lifeweb assemblage will affect all of Olympus Colony, including him.”
“If he were still on-planet,” Spyridon whispered, smiling dead-flat.
Ahhh. “And just where would he and Clan Karamanlis go?”
“You might ask that question of the Halicene Conglomerate,” Spyridon called back as he turned and made for the domehut. “You might also ask that crossbreed woman whether two crossbreeds are mutually fert
ile—or if they too require a neonatal placental unit to birth their abominations!”
Matt watched as Theodoros Deliyiannes Spyridon walked inside.
An angry, embittered, hateful old man he was, but a man who still cherished one small ember of hope. The hope that, once the crossbreed humans and the unmodified humans of Olympus colony destroyed themselves, he could walk in, pick up the pieces, and build a society to his liking—one of Pure Breed humans with nary a tinge of alien genome contamination. Assuming, of course, that the Stripper left behind a habitable planet. But would Spyridon mind it if the Stripper destroyed several dozen Mother Trees and greatly weakened Derindl society, thus allowing humans to dominate Halcyon’s biosphere? Matt doubted Spyridon would mind that at all. He might even consider it . . . the just revenge of the gods.
On his return flight to Mata Hari, two Probeshell images plagued him.
One image was of an unopened book lying beside the old man’s chair inside the domehut. Its title was The Republic. Its author was Plato. The second was of the book Spyridon had been reading. Its title was Mein Kampf, by one Adolfus Hitler of Linz, Austria.
Why did a man who believed in the philosopher-kings of Plato, and a firmly ordered, top-down society, pay attention to the racist paranoid meanderings of a long-deceased Austrian infantry corporal?
Whatever the meaning, Matt was convinced that Spyridon and the Pericles group would be formidable opponents. For their own reasons. And, strangely, perhaps an ally. Picking when they would be one or the other would be the test of his strategic instincts.
CHAPTER SEVEN
On the Bridge, in the forward holosphere, Matt’s next landfall shone bright as Athena’s shield. Olympus. He leaned forward, drinking in the view.
The Greek colony sat in the middle of the rugged Tharsis Plateau, surrounded on all sides by white-capped peaks. Below the snowy peaks, scrub-pine forests shimmered jade-green as they undulated over the foothills, their symmetry rarely broken by a bald spot. And in the flat bowl of the plateau, agricultural fields planted with hybrid Earth-Derindl food stocks looked newly shorn, with only brown stubble left behind by an early fall harvest. In the valley’s center, within the white stone walls of the urbus, there flowed a meandering snowmelt stream that brought good cheer to baker, merchant, mechanic and software writers alike. As a city design, it was basic. Simply white stone blocks, yellow wood beams, and silvery steel arches arranged in a checkerboard scatter of domes, towers and living blocks.
But in the middle of the urbus, like a diamond broach set at the throat of a highborn woman, rose the spearlike tower that housed Clan Themistocles. And Ioannis’ younger half-brother, Kanstantinos. It was the current seat of Power, but that was not their objective. No. The Meeting Hall of Clan Karamanlis lay elsewhere. That was a geodesic dome of steel, glass and wood, erected on the edge of Olympus’ warehouse district. Its placement far off the normal route of hoversled traffic harkened back to the dirty wharves of Piraeus, the early seaport of Athens. It also suggested a loss of Clan status due to their recent misadventure with the Halicene and the Stripper.
Light flared, drawing Matt’s attention.
A ground-to-space shuttle took off from the far side of the city, steam pouring from its exhaust throat as ground-based lasers beamed heat energy into its base, turning on-board water fuel into superhot steam. It was powerful steam, especially when confined by an exhaust nozzle, and strong enough to push the shuttle nearly to orbital speed. High up, at the hypersonic threshold and just at the boundary of sky and space, the shuttle would ignite its liquid hydrogen fuel and rendezvous with Zeus Station.
Closer to home, between Mata Hari and the shuttle port, only cargo-carrying hoversleds moved. The richness of personal Remotes found in Mother Tree Melisen was not yet present in the rough and ready Human colony. Here, people walked. Or rode bicycles. Or took the maglev bustubes that whooshed through rings of superconducting metal. All in all, it was a city layout common to most human colonies.
Except for the sky. The turquoise-blue sky of Halcyon, where avians flew in wheeling clusters and the honey glow of Sigma Puppis B filtered down through milk-white clouds. It was beauty pure and heart-rending to one plagued by memory pain.
Behind Matt, the Spine slidedoor opened. Eliana entered the Bridge, dressed in an attractive black and green-checkered jumpsuit. Moving stiffly, she took her seat in the accel-couch. From inside the Pit, he nodded at her. She nodded back but did not speak—apparently still upset that he hadn’t called her immediately after his return from meeting with Spyridon. Eliana expected him to confide everything in her. After all, she was his Patron. Matt felt otherwise and usually kept his own counsel. Since she was too proud to ask him for news, she simmered. But there was an overlay to her expression he couldn’t quite place.
Well, this was silly. “Patron, we go now to see your cousin Nikolaos Telemachus Karamanlis. His office just confirmed my appointment.” Matt stepped out of the Pit, walked back to Suit, entered, locked up, and cleared his faceplate. “Are you ready for our meeting?”
Eliana looked back. “No, I’m not.”
What now? “Explain, please.”
“Explain?” She watched Matt as he walked up to her accel-couch. “Well, I’ll try.” The stiffness left her face and, once again, the honest friendliness of her earlier discussion with him shone through. “Matt, this is the first time I’ve been home in over a year. Remember my school? The Kostes Palamas School for crossbreeds? My only niece goes there. Calyce. She . . . she means everything to me. Can we detour and see her first? Before seeing Karamanlis?”
Matt considered the request. It had cost her a lot to swallow her pride and ask him, rather than order him, like an employee. Well, at least the request would screw up everyone’s schedule. But she still needed to do better at sharing with him. “Why, Patron?”
Eliana looked haunted. “Because I’m afraid. I’m afraid this battle with the Stripper will cost me my life. Traveling in the Anarchate taught me how little human life is valued by aliens.”
A good reason and the beginning of wisdom. “Why see your niece then, rather than your half-brother Konstantinos? Or your parents?”
“My parents are both dead, including my Derindl father—as you probably already know. And Konstantinos cares only for business.” Eliana looked down, black hair waterfalling over her brow as the haunted expression turned to one of overwhelming need. “My niece Calyce is the only grandchild of grandmother Miletus, Petros’ wife. I owe something to her memory. And Calyce, she . . . she reminds me of when I was her age. Her earnestness. Her drive. I never had a sister. In a way, she’s like my younger sister. Can you understand that?”
“Yes, I can. Once, too long ago, I had four sisters--before my family was killed by genome harvesters.” Eliana winced, then showed sympathy for his loss. No surprise, though. It was clear that her bravery in leaving Sigma Puppis to find a Vigilante had not only shown her the cheapness attached to life by some species, but had also educated her to the value of a talented employee, like Matt. Would she learn to feel something for him, something beyond employer to employee appreciation? Had she already found something in him to care for? “However, I’m under time pressure here. We’ve been attacked steadily since you found me. Visiting this school may put the students in harm’s way. Do you really want that?”
Eliana shook her head. “No—of course not! But no one would expect us to visit the school. It’s not a political place or anything. And I fear I may never see Calyce again. Please?”
Matt sighed, reluctant but willing to act illogically. It was a human talent that Mata Hari didn’t understand, but which complemented well his cyborg nature. He ignored his symbiont’s unspoken skepticism. “Patron, we can visit your school if you don’t call ahead. Surprises and all that. Agreed?”
Eliana smiled now, innocently happy. “Why, why—all right. It’s in the southwestern quadrant of the city. That building there, in the park.”
He turned to the holosphere, b
linked, and enlarged the school’s image. Kostes Palamas School was a white stone rectangle with red tile roofs, glass skylights, and a hollow middle that contained a green-carpeted atrium. Bordering the atrium’s four sides were long lines of Doric columns, in a Classic stoa portico design. The design allowed interior rooms to open out onto the atrium, with its garden and central pond.
The back of his neck twinged at the socket connection as his AI partner PET-imaged her frowning disapproval. Too bad, I’m the Boss, he thought back. “Mata Hari, will you enclose us in a pouch, then set us down in the atrium of the school? Next, advise Karamanlis’ scheduling AI we will be late for our appointment.”
“As you direct,” Mata Hari said. Her disapproving tone carried the suggestion that once more he was letting hormones rule his decisions.
Was he? Right now he didn’t care to analyze his feelings about Eliana Antigone Themistocles. Instead, he reached out to her. “Patron, please take my hand. The tractor beam will be gentle in setting us down, but the passage there can be windy. As it was at Mother Tree Melisen.”
“Of course,” Eliana said. She stood up and walked over to him, her gaze sincere. “Thank you, Matt. This means a lot to me and, and . . . darn! I’m not very good at this. Like I said earlier, growing up among Greeks teaches you to keep secrets, show a cool persona, and confide in few.” Her eyes caught his with a wondering look.
Matt could understand her fumbling for the right words. Being around other humans always did that to him. “You’re welcome.” He smiled at her, then addressed his symbiont. “Mata Hari, pouch us out and transport.”
The floor’s flexmetal sagged into a bowl, became a dark pouch, then opened to blue sky. The ship tossed them at the school, like Prometheus thrown down from the domain of the gods. No tractor beam guided their fall. My! An AI temper tantrum! Not bothering with a reproof, Matt had Suit’s Nullgrav impellers land them in the atrium garden.
Star Vigilante (Vigilante Series) Page 12
