“Mata Hari, assume Departure vector for south continent. Seventy kilometers northwest of the Stripper. Now.”
“Complying, Matthew,” said his partner. In the background of his mind she worked, not saying anything about what had just transpired. But she disapproved of his emotionalism. That, he could tell. Logic should guide him, as it guided her.
Eliana stood up from the accel-couch, beautiful in a green tight-clinging jumpsuit that was silky-sheer. Her right shoulder now healed, she walked over and looked down. Half-smiling, she squatted down by the edge of the Pit, rested elbows on her knees, and stared at him as he sat naked under the lightbeams. He met her gaze, then let his eyes roam over her body. Under the sheer fabric, her breasts were full and rounded. An aroma of roses drifted down to him. Finally she spoke. “You puzzle me, Matt.”
Damn. Double damn. “It’s intended. A defensive tactic, Patron.” Matt climbed up out of the Pit and stood on the side opposite her, aware of how silly he looked. A Vigilante trying to protect himself by keeping a hole in the floor between him and his Patron.
She stood up with him, then glanced down at his waist. She met his eyes again, her look as smoky as an incendiary bomb. “Don’t pretend formality with me, Matt. I am not easily distracted.”
Only Mata Hari’s cloud-presence in the back of his mind saved him. “Nor am I easily sidetracked from my Target.” He turned and headed for Suit, standing patiently against the rear flexwall. He could hide in it.
“When?” she asked sensuously.
He didn’t have to ask what she meant. “After I’ve disabled the Stripper.”
“Soon?”
“Sooner rather than later . . . my lady.”
Matt stepped into Suit, shutting off Eliana’s warm voice, denying the fire it stoked inside him, in his heart.
No! He must not lose control! Not again. Losing control led to weakness. Weakness led to defeat. Defeat led to death. And death meant never being able to live up to his Promise to long-dead Helen.
That Promise still lay at the core of why he was a Vigilante. It gave him purpose, it gave meaning to his life. The Promise was all he’d needed—until Eliana had come into his life. She was someone as different as he, as much an outcast as he, and with a need as great as his. She was someone he could love. Did he already?
Damn! He must not love again.
It might weaken him. And in Sigma Puppis star system, he had many enemies only too willing to use any weakness against him.
Shivering inside and unwilling to talk with Eliana, Matt stepped through the Spine slidedoor, heading for the Weapons Lab . . . and Work.
He had a planet to save.
Half an hour later on the Bridge, Matt waited for Eliana to question him. He was once more in control of his emotions as he stood unclothed before the ship’s lightbeams, communing in optical neurolink as they took Hover station above the Meloan Desert’s wild, untamed forests and dry uplands. She was dressed now in a simple brown peplos tunic as she too watched the forward holosphere. Besides being smart as a whip, she was persistent. She would want to know why they hovered here, seventy kilometers northwest of the Stripper, just outside of its Defense perimeter. She would want to know his Plan.
In a way, the Plan was a little like a game of Go. Matt enjoyed playing Go against the ship. He always lost, but the game relaxed him and its indirect nature was far more entertaining than standard chess. Going to gestalt perception, he avoided ocean-time but took in everything else. The whisper of ship air against his skin. The sound of Eliana’s soft breathing. The shimmer of sun-heated air on the high desert floor. The movement in Mata Hari ’s cargo holds as the tanks holding the special viral and bacterial agents were set up for aerosol dispersal. The other preparations for Step Two in his Plan. Matt shivered suddenly, even though it was bloodwarm on the Bridge. Eliana noticed. She stepped over and laid a cool hand on his bare shoulder. His heart beat faster. Work! Only work could engage his emotions now.
“Matt—what’s the matter?”
More and more, she called him by his personal name, rather than by his tradename. He sighed. “Nothing.”
“Matt!”
He tried to say it, but couldn’t. Mata Hari stepped in. “Patron, Vigilante Dragoneaux is afraid. He fears what he must now do as part of his Plan to defeat the Stripper.”
“Afraid?” Eliana looked up at the ceiling, her expression curious. “Computer, why is he afraid? Nothing has been able to harm him yet.”
Matt closed his eyes. But the optical neurolinks bathed him in fiery, incandescent senses. Senses that reached to the outer planets of the star system. Senses that brought him the whisper of stellar winds rasping against orbiting minisats, the ground-thump of miniProbes crawling and hopping over the desert sands, and the cyclopean image of the kilometer-high monster called Stripper. Too many inputs. Too many senses. Too many datastreams. Still, even though his intellect held firm, his spirit trembled with the knowledge of what he must do.
“That is correct, mistress,” Mata Hari answered Eliana. “But he’s always been protected by me, or by Suit. Now, he must walk naked on the surface of Halcyon. Without machine or mech device or anything artificial—and make his way across seventy kilometers of desert to the Stripper.”
“Ohhhh.” In his mind’s eye, Mata Hari fed him a multiplexed view of Eliana’s dawning wonderment. She turned and stared worriedly at him. She licked lips that, a biosensor told him, were indeed dry and human-warm. “Matt, have you ever gone anywhere without your Suit?”
He answered with eyes still closed, struggling for control. “Never since . . . since I joined with Mata Hari. And only inside the ship.” He opened his eyes and looked her way.
She smiled sympathetically. “Matt—I hope I understand. This must be like when you’re first decanted from your placental unit, the first time you face the outside world. Without its comforting warmth, without the recorded beat of your mother’s heart, and without her voice murmuring to you.” Eliana looked him over with tender empathy. “Or like a Pure Breed’s birth from inside your mother, never before having left her body?”
“You don’t understand,” Matt said raggedly. “But I thank you for trying.”
“Why?” she said, her expression puzzled. “Why go to the surface unSuited?”
He sighed. “Because if I approach the Stripper in Suit, it will attack me. If I approach it looking civilized in any way—as with a power pack, fabricated clothes, and weapons—it will attack me.” Matt thought-imaged a command to Mata Hari. “In Step One of my Plan, I must trek the surface of Halcyon, alone, with only my biogenetic upgrades and onboard nanoware senses. If I took anything else, I’d not pass the Stripper’s sensors. I would not be able to imitate a wild animal.” Underneath him, the deck trembled. “Eliana, the only chink in the Stripper’s Defense software must be an instruction that allows non-sentient parts of this planet’s Lifeweb to enter the Defense zone. Anything else will trigger its defenses—as the Derindl Aggressor Caste troops found out.”
“Why must there be a Defense exception?” she said musingly, her intellect acute, her beauty terrible, his need overwhelming.
“Corporate cheapness,” Matt said dryly. “It would use up too much laser energy, solid projectiles, anti-air missiles and bombs if they knocked out every sparrow, every rodent, every crawler and every animated lifeform within a defense zone 140 kilometers wide.” Eliana nodded her understanding. “There must be a discriminator circuit and software that inventories all zonal lifeforms, determines if they are sapient and a threat, or just part of the local animal, insect and avian lifeweb. I plan to be innocuous.”
“What’s Step Two?” she asked, squatting on the deck as Mata Hari made the floor sag downward, preparatory to pouching him out and spitting him down to the surface, supported only by a tractor beam.
“The ship will rendezvous with the creek now being crossed by the Stripper—again just outside its Defense perimeter sensors—and aerosol deposit the viral and bacterial agents
in its water. The water will flow downstream to the Stripper. The Stripper will take the water inside itself for industrial processing.” He smiled at her puzzlement. “Sucking up streams is more efficient than purifying the nearby sea water.”
Eliana lifted an eyebrow. “Won’t the Stripper just sterilize the water by turning it to steam?”
“Yes. I’m counting on that.” Matt looked up to the Bridge ceiling. “Mata Hari —drop the abdominal sack.”
A grey tube-sack fell from the ceiling. He caught the rubbery tube just as his head came even with the deck plates. Eliana watched him, intrigued by the Problem as much as he, and able to appreciate his Plan. She pointed. “What’s that?”
“Part Three of the plan.” Lifting the tube-sack up the way a sword swallower might raise a sword, Matt pushed its narrow bottom into his mouth. Relaxing his throat muscles, overriding the gag reflex, he swallowed. He swallowed again, taking the sack—and its liquid contents—into his gullet.
Eliana gasped. “That’s disgusting! What are you doing?”
He did not answer her, being unable to talk. Matt swallowed, not rushing it, knowing he didn’t need oxygen for several more minutes. Cyborgs do have some abilities that come in handy. Gradually, helped by its slick outer surface, the tube-sack slithered down his throat and came to rest inside his stomach. Only a thread protruded from his mouth. He tied the thread off against a tooth, burped, and inhaled normally.
“See you in a few days, Patron. Until then, please do as Mata Hari requests. This is all part of the Plan.”
“Matt! Wait a minute. I’ve—”
The flexmetal deck closed over his bare, unSuited head, cutting off Eliana’s objections. Now was not the time for debate. Now, he must carry out the Plan. And discover what it was that terrified him when he went abroad without Suit. Exposed to the wild winds, scouring grit and hot sun of a planetary ecosystem. The natural world. Something that could reach out and touch him, contact him, make him feel things. His stomach quivered and not just from the presence of the tube-sack.
This was all a gamble. A calculated gamble.
Could he land naked on the surface of Halcyon, trek seventy kilometers southeast to the Stripper and seventy more back to pickup by Mata Hari. . . all before any Monitor satellites spotted him, alerted his enemies, and dispatched a Hunter-Killer robot to terminate his meddling? He would be easy prey if such caught him before he made it back to Suit and Mata Hari.
Darkness enclosed him. In his mind, Mata Hari said au revoir to him in her Mata Hari persona, her feminine face looking calm and supportive. He spoke to her directly, partner to partner, mind-to-mind. Privately.
“Keep her safe, partner. She means . . . she means a lot to me.”
The Mata Hari persona mind-image nodded slowly as his partner sat in a rocking chair on the porch of a Victorian house with gables. “Will do, Matthew.”
She would not fail him.
But would his own body fail him? Would his own physical resources be inadequate to his plan? Would his fear overcome him?
Matt didn’t know. It had been years since he’d depended solely on the senses and abilities he’d been born with. He honestly didn’t know if he could prevail. That very uncertainty made the Hunt more exciting, more real than almost anything he’d ever done.
Light flared.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
On Halcyon’s windswept surface, sunrise greeted him.
Matt stood below a stone mesa in the middle of the Meloan Desert, drinking in the purple-hazed horizon. Beauty shook his heart, filling him with the rainbow colors of a sere landscape stripped bare by erosion. All that was left were these pillar-like mesas, their upper flanks banded with yellows, reds and browns, while their lower flanks hid beneath dusky green bushes and scrub trees. The flat-topped mesas marched off into the distance like soldiers in a fossilized war. He breathed deep, filling his lungs. The scent of cactus-like plants tickled his nose with an acrid odor, released upon the morning warmth in some elusive effort to attract a flying spore carrier. A quiet wind echoed lonesomely, except for a faraway whoosh as starship Mata Hari left him alone, bound for her own errand. The morning chill always present in the high desert cooled his skin, raising goose bumps. And hard against his cyborg-tough feet bit the round teeth of pebbles. Pebbles glittered everywhere, lying atop the sand, the rock and the desolation.
Mata Hari’s errand was simple. She must release the manufactured retroviruses and bacteria into the creek waters that fed the Stripper’s giant maw. It would take at least a day for the currents to carry his bioweapon to the Stripper. And it would take him a little longer than that to cover seventy kilometers. The first of his problems. Shivering, Matt ran both hands through his hair, reveling in the feel of facing reality bare-skinned, unarmored, nearly unprotected. Like an aboriginal hunter-gatherer of an earlier age. He smiled, wondering what the bushes, stunted trees, rock-huggers, flyers and local predators would think of a naked, brown-skinned human set loose in their midst.
They would probably wonder if he tasted good.
Matt grinned to himself. Humans were not food. Especially not humans of Apache heritage. Humans made a meal of others. As part of surviving. All humans are good at surviving. And survival was something that Matt had always been good at.
A rock moved, about twenty meters away. He blinked, bringing telescopic nanoware lenses into play. In simple yellow and infrared light, he inspected the sound source.
Something one meter long, fat-bodied, sluggish and cold-blooded had moved on the rock-strewn slope of a nearby mesa. Something like a snake. Its infrared heat signature was minute. It showed no awareness of him. Instead, it moved in search of the sunrise’s warming light, until it warmed enough to hunt. Unlike Earth snakes, this land predator was a day hunter, rather than a night denizen. Matt filed away its characteristics in his forebrain’s databyte nanocubes. But survival stayed uppermost in his mind. Was he hungry? Should he hunt the snake, dry it, and save it to eat later on?
No. He’d stuffed himself with high-energy cakes that morning. He’d drunk plenty of water. And his cyborg bioupgrades reprocessed waste urine in vitro in his third kidney, reducing fluid loss to one-tenth of Pure Breed human normal. As a result, he could go three days without water and eight days without food. So said Mata Hari years ago—after “fixing” his inefficient human design. With bioupgrades exotic she had given him the strength of ten men, the skin toughness of someone who’d never worn shoes, the hearing of an owl, the smell-sense of a canine, and the visual acuteness of a hawk. But . . . she had been unable to cure his feelings of loneliness, of feeling worthless—until he’d made himself the Promise. After his rescue by Mata Hari, when he could not live with the nightmares of Helen’s death, Matt had pledged the Promise to her memory and to himself. The nightmares had ceased.
Time to work.
He began running, lightly and loosely.
By sun angle, by the lay of the land, and by memory of topographic maps impressed into his mind, Matt ran toward the Stripper.
And marveled at the sheer feel of what he did.
Bare feet pounded firmly against the sand, the hard-packed dirt, and the pebbles littering the desert floor. Impact shocks quivered up his thighs, thence into his back, and finally up to his neck. Like the marvelous shock-absorbing mechanism it was, his human spine of cervical, thoracic and lumbar vertebrae flexed, torqued and absorbed impact stresses. Energy flared as Krebs cycle reactions fed ATP energy to his leg muscle cells, matching citric acid to glucose and oxygen. Oxidation burned inside him like the Promethean fire. The Krebs cycle was the great secret of all animals—it fed their bodies twenty times more efficiently than the ancient fermentation energy mode used by anaerobic bacteria. And the cyborg upgrades added polish to an ancient design.
As lactic acid built up in his muscles, gene-implanted nodes of alveoli oxygen superseded the old anaerobic lactic acid fermentation process, augmenting directly the work of his lungs. The nodes fed oxygen directly across the mitoc
hondrial membranes, thus increasing cellular electron transport and augmenting the ATP carried by his bloodstream—like oxygen feeding a blowtorch. That blowtorch effect did raise his body temp a bit as endothermic oxidation produced heat, and exertion moved blood outward to his skin. Capillaries expanded. His skin reddened. Heat radiated away into the morning and the cool air that filled his lungs felt like an elixir. It intoxicated him and expanded his senses.
Matt angled left and followed the twist of the cinnamon-brown valley as it curved around a high mesa. Breathing easily, in sync with a natural rhythm of long stride, thump, long stride, and another thump, he reached outward with his natural senses.
With his eyes open, ears attuned, skin alert to wind currents, and his nose sampling all the odors of a living desert, Matt tasted the air. Tasted the dry dust held suspended in the rising wind as the sun warmed the cold land, making thermals rise. He ran with all senses wide open, in tune and in touch with reality.
True, it was a puny Alert mode compared to Suit.
But it felt human. It felt good. And, for a moment, he could enjoy it. Until something tried to stop him.
Or until he reached the Stripper.
At midday he stopped beside a tinaja waterhole, a sunken rock pit shaded from solar evaporation by an overlying sandstone boulder. The smell of water had come to him from over a kilometer away. Blinking, Matt adjusted his vision to the shadowed darkness as he left the hot, skin-scorching midday heat of Sigma Puppis B. He squatted down beside the water pool, joying to the feel of its coolness against his palms. His tongue scraped dry lips, but he did not drink. Instead, ears alert, he listened.
From ten meters away, in a jumbled pile of sandstone boulders, there sounded minute squeaks and whistles. The voices of a groundhugger colony as they went about their business making nests, foraging, seeking water and avoiding predators. Stilling his breath, he listened more intently.
Star Vigilante (Vigilante Series) Page 18
