Eliana, to her credit, bit her hand rather than break her silence. But her bare shoulders shook and one hand clawed the air, grasping for Spyridon’s eyes. Yes, she would be a good comrade in arms. Focusing his attention on Spyridon, Matt smiled hungrily.
“Spyridon, the definition of an animal lies in who eats whom!” He thought-blinked, uplinking to the man a deep space image of the Halicene MotherShip. “Old man, this is your true enemy—it will eat Halcyon. Then the next planet sunward. Then it will enslave you all—for sale on the Flesh Markets of Alkalurops.”
“Never!” Spyridon cursed, spittle flying from his lips. “The crossbreeds are the key contaminant! Without them, I could rally the Pure Breed and—”
“Idiot!” Matt said, breaking the man’s tirade. “You would melt before the Halicene weapons like snowflakes on hot steel. Good day.” He blinked, cutting the signal.
“Matt,” Eliana said softly. “Why do so many people want me dead, injured or out of the way?”
He rested a moment, watching the blinking lights of incoming calls that demanded his immediate attention. Matt finally gave her the answer she deserved. “Patron, you believe in a principle—the principle that people are more important than a contract. Too many of your fellow humans, and some Derindl, carry a business contract inside of them, rather than a soul.” He turned and met her appraising look. “Surprised?”
Eliana shivered with the nearness of the danger that sought her out. But then she canted her head, her look mischievous. “Matt, do you think AIs have souls?”
“Woman—have you no brains?” scorned his alter-ego from the ceiling. “Of course we do!”
Eliana looked up challengingly. “Prove it!”
“Ladies!” They both shut up and turned to him. One sat nearby, with alluring soft eyes, and one filled his mind with a scalding hot image. That was the trouble with neurolink pain—you couldn’t flinch away from it. “Mata Hari! Stop.” She did. Eliana looked puzzled, glancing from him to the ceiling and back. “Ladies—I don’t need you two fighting on this Bridge. Please, some silence while I take this call?”
Eliana still kneeled on the deck plates, her expression silent but determined. His partner growled and moved to predatory alertness. The Mata Hari persona-image appeared in his mind, sharpening a looong knife at a grinding wheel. Sheesh!
The holosphere glimmered, glowed, then assumed the reddish hue denoting a many-times downlinked Vidcast signal coming from a far distance. Far enough away to develop a redshift shadow. When the image steadied, Matt beheld the calm, three-eyed stare of the Mican griffin-tiger known as Legion.
“Vigilante, we will assert a repair lien against you for any damage done to our mining machinery by your recent intemperate use of a thermonuclear sampling device on the surface of the planet Halcyon.” Legion flapped its brown-feathered wings slowly, calmly.
Interesting. The Mican’s use of such formal, temperate phraseology indicated it was recording this conversation for later replay to the Anarchate provincial base—in case it needed the help of a Nova-class battleglobe. Matt feigned surprise. “My apologies, Prime Dominant Three, called Legion.” He blinked, uplinking an image of the blast and the undamaged Stripper. “As you can see, your strip-miner is completely undamaged by my sampling device. However, I cannot say as much for the planetary scar your Stripper has left behind despite the frequent complaints of contract violations by the local Derindl—” Matt stopped when the Mican waved its needle-studded tail. “Do I assume you’ve now shut off your recorders?”
“You may.” The Mican studied him. “Little monkey primate, you irritate me. I wonder if that useless tegument you call skin has enough nerve endings in it to feel the impact of a neurowhip? One so powerful it feels like you stepped into a plasma torch.”
“You’ll never know.”
Legion opened its muzzle, displaying canine incisors that would have made a tiger proud. “Overconfidence comes before a mighty fall.”
“I agree.” Matt now smiled back toothily. “Which is why I wonder at your negligence in not assuming I sent a few Nanoshell packages your way, upon system entry, before we braked down from lightspeed?”
Legion’s tail whipped the dark air of its office aboard the Halicene MotherShip. “Did you?”
This was almost fun. He laughed. “Come, come, Director—your Tactical CPU and your Strategic Advisors must somehow earn their drugs and their retirement pay!”
Legion snarled, pacing around its office. “They are! By alerting me to your idiotic nuclear blast. You are aware the Stripper will decimate the planet’s ecosystem if you attack it from orbit?”
Matt rubbed his hands together gleefully, ignoring Eliana’s strange look, doing his best to confuse the alien’s expert system algorithms that sought to explicate human behavior. “Yes, so I assumed. I wasn’t trying to destroy it. I was ‘sampling’ it. It’s some toy.”
The Mican stopped pacing and settled down on grey metal deckplates, resting its snout on heavily clawed forepaws. It growled. “How much do you want?”
“Are you offering me a bribe?”
“Call it a payment for services rendered—you have shown me the need to increase our maintenance payments to certain Servitors.”
Matt looked quizzical. “Do you mean Despot Nikolaos? I thought he owed primary allegiance to Autarch Dreedle? Or perhaps you mean Despot Ioannis? I think he’s figured out that your promise of increased Trading visits from Agonon-Thet Starline and from Halicene freighters will disappear once Halcyon becomes a wasteland.”
Legion’s needle-tipped tail lashed out, throwing a spatter of needles against a side wall. “How do you manage to irritate me so? Must I hire a Grade One Enforcer to rid me of your presence?”
“It will take more than that to eliminate me.” Matt turned deadly cold. “And if you try a Nova-bomb strike on my ship, be aware that we have the capability of forcing the F5 itself to go nova—thereby blasting your precious asteroid mining operation into the far Oort clouds.”
“You lie!” Legion snarled, its purple eyes glaring at him.
Matt blinked, making his pupils widen. “I don’t lie. See this star image I’m sending via uplink? I believe you’ll find your MotherShip in the upper left quadrant and the F5 in the lower right quadrant.”
Legion looked aside a moment, then back, needle-tail waving slowly. “So. You do have an instrumentality in this system. It will be found and destroyed.”
Matt nodded calmly. “Probably so. But how do you know it’s my only Probe?”
Legion just glowered, its feral image a mix of grinding canines, purple eyes, and scrabbling claws.
He shrugged nonchalantly. “No matter. Just bear this picture in mind any time you are tempted to Translate into this system on a weapons run against my ship.”
“Your price,” Legion said, its voice like a horse being strangled. “How much?”
“I refuse all bribes when I am under Vigilante contract.” Matt heard Eliana sigh with relief. “Nor do I turn aside from my Target. Conglomerate Halicene may wish to cut its losses and retrieve its Stripper before your machine becomes . . . non-useful.”
“Good-bye,” Legion said and canceled the downlinked signal from its ship.
“Damn!” Matt breathed out shakily, then glanced over at patient Eliana.
She smiled approvingly at him. “Did you dispatch Probes to the F5 giant when we entered Halcyon system?”
“No.” Matt pulled off his kimono robes and flung them across the deckplates. “That is, not until our departure from Zeus Station. Aren’t subversive imports the purpose of freighters bearing the logo of Halicene Conglomerate?” He grinned at her. “The last three to leave Zeus Station have carried my Probe emissaries out to the F5.”
Eliana stood up from the Bridge floor, walked back to her couch, sat on its armrest, and looked at him thoughtfully. “That’s efficient. But Legion will still backtrack your Probe . . . maybe through parallax triangulation analysis of the image. Won’t he?”
<
br /> God. She talked technology while he noticed her near nudity except for the shorts and halter-top, the movement of her breasts as she walked, the rose scent she . . . Matt looked away as he ordered his body to not respond to her and his feelings for her. “It’s unlikely. The Probe is no longer in the place where the picture was taken—and anyway, photonic images can be reflected great distances through space without a Probe having to be exactly at the parallax center.” Inside his mind, Mata Hari the spy shook her finger at him, disapproving of his emotional response to a woman he found very, very attractive. “It’s called relay signaling.”
“Matt?” Eliana said tenderly. “Why won’t you look at me?”
He opened his eyes slowly, only too aware of how quiet his symbiont was being—considering her competitive inclinations. Then again, Mata Hari knew, and felt, nearly everything he felt. She seemed to understand this was a time to keep quiet. Matt looked at Eliana. “Patron, I am tired.”
“No!” she said abruptly, her expression intense. “No . . . you . . . don’t! No more lying—I get too much of that.” Eliana eyed him as he sat in the Pit. “Do I arouse you?”
“Yes!” Matt growled. “You walk around here in skintight jumpsuits like a working woman on her first holiday, trying to make men notice her. Don’t you realize what that kind of behavior does to men?”
“Of course I do. And you’re the only audience I care about.” She blinked quickly, her emotions clearly on edge. “Matt, did you ever stop to think that this whole search for a Vigilante has been my first holiday—ever—away from my genoi. Away from my overprotective uncles? Away from Clan approval or disapproval? And it’s not easy for me to talk like this!”
Was she crying? She’d looked away at the last and Matt wasn’t about to spy on her via his ship senses. “Eliana, I like you too. More than I should.” She inhaled sharply. “And I hadn’t realized how suffocating your social life has been.”
She rubbed at her face, then turned to face him, her albino face flushed light pink and her eyes red-swollen. Eliana looked at him, at the whole Matt. “I’ve been doing you a . . . a disservice, treating you as just a Cyborg. Haven’t I?”
“Yes.”
Eliana breathed deep, then eyed him hopefully. “Matt, how long has it been since you made love to a woman?”
“Too long.” Matt looked away. Then he looked back. The veins in Eliana’s slim neck beat more rapidly than usual. He didn’t need a biosensor to see that she was both interested in him, and somewhat afraid. Of what?
She stood up, resolution showing in her face. “This is a very dangerous assignment for you, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” he husked. “Others have been rough, but Halicene Conglomerate would not have been my first pick of enemies.”
She cast down her gaze, as if she were making a difficult choice. “Do you . . . would you like to visit my stateroom? We could share many pleasures, and tell each other the things that men and women share with each other.” Eliana looked up, her expression vulnerable.
Blood rushed through his head, dizzying him. Mentally, Matt cursed his fate. “Thank you. The offer means more to me than you can imagine.”
Eliana’s hopefulness faded away. “But?”
“But . . . it’s hard for me to share love with a woman who still carries a wound from my negligence as her protector. Perhaps, when you’re fully healed, we can . . . explore our feelings for each other?”
Eliana nodded stiffly. “Perhaps. And you should know that I do not throw myself at every man I meet.” She paused, shivered as if pulling back from a dangerous precipice, and eyed him differently. “What will you do now?”
Matt turned away, forcing himself to stare into the white-speckled star space that glowed in the forward holosphere. It reminded him of the emptiness in his life, the lack of closeness with any living human, and the dangers of caring too much.
“Destroy the Stripper. That’s what you hired me to do.”
Eliana gasped. “So soon?”
He let his foreboding show. “That will be only the beginning of this Job, I’m afraid.”
Eliana stepped away from the accel-couch, heading for her stateroom, but turned to ask a last question. “How do you mean—the beginning?”
Matt did not look at Eliana. He did not need to since the lightbeam pulses of the Pit carried her worried image directly to his retinas. Sitting up straight, he answered her. “Eliana, did you really think this Job would end without you, and me, showing scars—and perhaps worse—as a result?”
“Not really.” Her soft voice no longer sounded provincial. “Will I have to . . . to die in order to save my planet?”
“I don’t think so. But you’ll never again be the same.”
In his mind, new tears glittered in Eliana’s eyes. Hurriedly she wiped them away, held her chin high, turned, and stalked toward the Spine slidedoor, leaving him one last thing to consider. “Matthew, if I change, so will you.”
In his heart, Matt cried.
If only she knew how much her promise had already come true! For he yearned to take Eliana Antigone Themistocles in his arms. He yearned to kiss her, make love to her, and care for her. As a lover cares for his love and his heart’s promise.
But he couldn’t.
Such things are unwise to a Vigilante on the Job. Such things belong only to true humans. And he . . . he was just a Cyborg. So said all the universe.
Except for Eliana . . . .
CHAPTER TEN
Six days later, Matt sat in the Pit. Mata Hari hovered off-stage in his mind and Eliana reclined nearby in her accel-couch, friendly of manner and fully recovered from her shoulder wound. She, like him, was totally absorbed by the drama in the holosphere. It’s not every day a planetary ruler tries to rule you. And in the holo, Autarch Dreedle was doing her imperial best. She stood alone in her Trunk office, beautiful as usual in a sheer robe, her red hair lustrous, with slender, pointy-nailed fingers tapping absently on an AllCall datapad beside her desk. The Autarch looked frustrated.
“But Vigilante, payment is due! Our industrial process trees have produced what you ordered—4,000 liters of a thermophilic bacterial plasmid with an embedded retrovirus.” Dreedle leaned forward, her manner seductive. “Information might offset some of our costs. Tell me, why is this plasmid heat resistant? Is the retrovirus programmed to self-destruct after a certain period in the biosphere? How will you use this material? Where? Why? And—”
“Enough, Autarch.” Matt waved his hand through the holo pickup field, enlarging it so the Autarch saw Eliana in addition to himself. “Two of my Defense Remotes are leaving. They will pick up the culture tanks from your landing field. Don’t interfere.”
“Arrogant cyborg!” Dreedle screamed dramatically as she changed tactics. “You must do—”
“Nothing!” Matt yelled, a bit too loudly for proper effect. “No one gives me orders on this planet. No . . . one. Understood?”
Dreedle reversed tactics. She shrugged, causing her robe to fall off one shoulder and expose curves he remembered only too well. “But . . . but surely you understand. I have a duty to protect my people. I must—”
“Dreedle—it’s not working.” His comment did not stop her seduction efforts. “Autarch, everything I do is for the welfare of Halcyon. Be assured—your planet will hardly be affected by my actions. Now, be patient.”
The Autarch slumped down onto her grass floor, petulant and still unmolified. Finally, she looked up at him with soft, soft eyes. “Vigilante, I fail to understand True Breed humans like Nikolaos, even though they can be . . . entertaining. I wonder if a cyborg like yourself . . . . ”
“We’re not all that different.” Matt played along, letting the Autarch’s poignant silence stretch out. Nearby, Eliana glanced away from the holo and over to him. With a dry mouth, he added more fuel to his counterploy. “Nor are your crossbreeds all that different from pure humans.”
Eliana tensed as if he’d rubbed salt in an old wound, then looked back into the
holosphere. She knew he watched her every reaction through the repeater screens . . . even though she didn’t like the monitoring. Nor had she liked the last six days aboard ship, in the background as he and Mata Hari planned the destruction of the Stripper. Now, forced to face her Autarch, the woman who ruled the Derindl society she hoped to join as a full member, Eliana showed divided loyalties. That was clear even to non-human eyes such as those of Mata Hari.
Autarch Dreedle also noticed. She turned her attention to Eliana. “Vigilante.”
“Yes, Autarch?”
“Have you made love to your Patron yet?”
Brief anger hit him. Soporifics in his bloodstream calmed him. “Nope. Not yet. Anyway, it’s against the usual rules while I’m on a Job.”
“But afterward?” Dreedle leaned forward even more, allowing her robe to slip and show a red-nippled breast. “You know, Autarchs make their own rules, Vigilante. Why not come and visit me before your ship leaves? We could . . . explore the limits of interspecies sexuality.”
Matt wished his body wasn’t so hormone-sensitive. “You’re very kind. And considerate. Perhaps later, after this Job is completed, I’ll visit. If you still rule Halcyon.”
“Bastard!” Dreedle pounded the grass floor with both fists. “Whatever possessed my ancestors to share our planet with you humans is beyond me!”
“How about survival?” Eliana said tersely. “History shows Derindl society has been more innovative over the last eighty years than in the last six thousand. We pay our way.”
His contact lens flashed, showing a Remote status update: the culture tanks had been picked up. “Autarch, I’ve got work to do.” Dreedle turned her attention to him. “Thank you for the cultures. They will serve your planet well.”
“And my payment?” pressed Dreedle, her manner now that of a central bank accountant.
Matt grinned. “Send your processing charge to Despot Ioannis at Zeus Station. The Greeks hired me, after all. Thank you for your cooperation. Out.”
The holosphere blanked, cutting off the image of an imperious alien woman who wished she could control him—and his ship—as effectively as she controlled Derindl culture. He blinked again.
Star Vigilante (Vigilante Series) Page 17
