Star Vigilante (Vigilante Series)

by T. Jackson King

  “Whatever for?”

  “Please answer me—can we?”

  He thought a second, querying his onboard nanocube Intelligence CPU. “Probably. Although Mata Hari is a person—not my servant. A simple request to her should suffice.”

  Eliana smoldered, as if she were both angry and frustrated about something, something that was not his fault. “Oh, all right, I guess that will have to do. Will you join me in my stateroom?”

  Matt couldn’t help but laugh. “Eliana! Your room, my room or any of the other four hundred and ninety-eight multi-environment staterooms along the Spine will suffice. Either she listens, or she doesn’t. Understand?”

  Eliana’s lips tightened like she’d bit into something sour. “Understood. She’s an ethical AI in a criminal universe. And she saved your life.” The holosphere Mata Hari glanced toward Eliana, her dark gaze looking intrigued. “Let’s just step out into the Spine hallway. Okay?”

  “Whatever makes you happy.” Reaching back, Matt unhooked his neck socket, stood up, and climbed out of the Pit. He pulled on shorts that lay beside the pit, then sandals. Eliana waited nearby, still dressed in his Samoan lavalava but all business in her manner. He looked over at his symbiont’s holo-image. “Mata Hari, have you been monitoring our last conversation?”

  “Of course,” she said, the soft, feminine voice of his partner sounding a bit hurt, as did the visible Mata Hari, whose expression had changed from interest in Eliana’s two compliments to puzzlement. “I will refrain from standard security monitoring of the first Spine segment. Your Patron may have all the privacy she wishes.”

  Eliana looked skeptical, but followed him through the Spine slidedoor and into the hallway. Turning, she faced him, crossed arms under her bare breasts, and looked nervous but determined. “Matt.”

  “Yes, Eliana . . . uh, Patron. You wish to speak about something in private?”

  “I do.” She paused, looked around suspiciously at the silvery-grey flexmetal walls of the hallway, then focused back on him. “Tell me, Matt, how long have you known Mata Hari? The computer AI that is?”

  “As I shared with you earlier, it’s been seven years since she awakened me from stasis in the freighter lifepod.” Where was she heading with this? “Why?”

  “Why? Why!” Eliana’s eyes grew dark with determination. “Because while you were gone, I asked her questions. She evaded answering most of them.”

  Matt had a bad feeling about this. “What questions?”

  “Why did Mata Hari rescue you?”

  That was a tough one even for him. He didn’t know the answer to it. But even AIs were entitled to be . . . quirky. “I don’t know, Eliana. She’s never told me for real. Oh, she’ll say something about being bored and lonely, or wanting someone to feel superior to, but I’ve never gotten a real answer from her. Why do you ask?”

  Eliana lowered her head, her expression troubled, then she looked up. “Matt, I also asked for a full historical readout on the T’Chak aliens. The ones you said made her and this ship. She gave me exactly one paragraph of text. Do you know more?”

  Shit. What was Eliana thinking? Mata Hari was his partner, his rescuer, his friend, and a delightful personality in her own right. In the early years, she had adopted the Mata Hari persona thanks to review of some Earth datacubes they had bought after his first Vigilante job. A few times she’d shown him her sexy persona like some hetari out of the Arabian Nights or a Turkish hareem. Her efforts to be a well-rounded human woman had comforted and reassured him, while providing a nice female presence.

  “Yes, I know more,” he finally said.

  Eliana raised her eyebrows, prompting him. “Well?”

  Matt shrugged. “She was probably holding back because you don’t have a security clearance—or a ‘need-to-know’ in the old intelligence jargon. What do you want to know about the T’Chak?”

  “Do they still exist?” Her eyes bored into him.

  “Nope. Mata Hari was very explicit about that. Their last outpost died out over two hundred thousand years ago. This ship was left to fend for itself. For a long time it drifted between star clusters, needing a purpose but having none.”

  “What were they like—the T’Chak?” Eliana shifted her stance in the hallway, watching him expectantly.

  He felt like an old vidpic bull-fighter, waving a red cape and hoping he didn’t get gored. “I could ask Mata Hari to call up a holosphere image of them for you. It would be the fastest—”

  “No!” She bit her lip, then smiled encouragingly at him. “You tell me. Please, Matt?”

  Interesting. Who was doing the leading here? And what agenda did his Patron still hide from him? It seemed the student had learned very well and very fast. “Oh, all right. Give me a second.” Closing his eyes briefly, Matt took a graphics download from a databyte cube resting in his prefrontal cortex, mind-viewed it, transferred the image to his contact lenses, then opened his eyes.

  “Eliana, the T’Chak were a two-legged, naturally-armored lifeform much like an ancient T-Rex dino of old Earth. Except they had two large wings. They had three brain clusters, a head and mouth, and two small manipulator hands that hung from their scaly chests. They were sexually trimorphic, omnivorous, and they ruled a stellar empire over seven thousand light years across. An empire based in the very distant Small Magellanic Cloud. Even the Anarchate has left the Magellanic Clouds alone—plenty for them to do within home galaxy.” Her worry increased visibly.

  “And?”

  Blinking, he called up more data. “And their numbers were in the tens of billions. Mata Hari says they were as old as the Anarchate and never had much traffic with them, or with the other alien civilizations existing in the galaxy at that time. Though there was some interstellar trade between them and the Anarchate, long ago. Finally, their society died out.”

  “From what?” Eliana now leaned back against the hallway wall, chin down, arms still crossed, her expression intense and focused as she dug into ancient history.

  Matt shrugged. “I don’t know. Mata Hari speaks of the rise of social disruption, a failure of central control, and a breakdown of trade routes. But it’s not too sure either. It was just . . . abandoned. Rather suddenly. Why?”

  “Why?” Eliana leaned forward. “What if some T’Chak are still alive . . . in stasis? What if the Restricted Rooms contain T’Chak in stasis? What if those rooms have nothing to do with your cute little Mata Hari spy AI? She says she can’t access those rooms. And it’s stupid to assume only the Anarchate controls stasis technology.”

  Her questioning irritated him. These were questions he’d asked long ago, gotten nowhere, and finally decided to accept his symbiont on faith. “I doubt that any T’Chak still live, here or in the Magellanic Clouds. Anyway, Mata Hari has told me they’re extinct. That’s good enough for me. Why this big interest all of a sudden?”

  “One moment, please.” Eliana raised her hand, just like he had when stalling her earlier. “Matt, just how did the T’Chak build their empire? By force like the Anarchate? By trade, like Earth does in its small home space? Or some other way?”

  Hmmm. He gave her points for originality of thinking. “I never asked Mata Hari. I got the impression they were very race purity conscious, like our ancient Japanese, and that they didn’t much care for other species. However, they did trade outside their empire. Why, once more?”

  Eliana arched her eyebrows. “Matt—did it ever occur to you that Mata Hari the ship is using you—for its own purposes?”

  He laughed, more harshly than he’d intended. “You mean like you and the Halcyon Greeks are using me to solve your own problems?”

  Eliana turned darkly angry, but held her temper. “Not at all, Matt. But has it ever occurred to you how strange it is for a Dreadnought-class alien starship to traipse into our space, rescue a lone human, make a cyborg link-up with you . . . and then pretend only dilettante interest in the doings of the Anarchate?”

  “No . . . no . . . and you’re being highly specul
ative.” He put his hands on his hips. “Of course she is using me—like any self-aware entity, she needs companionship, challenges, an intellectual partner . . . a friend even.”

  “Most friends don’t bring a Dreadnaught starship to a friend’s party,” Eliana said dryly.

  Matt felt irritated by her questioning, especially since some of it paralleled his own paranoid worries early in his relationship with Mata Hari. Like the time he discovered he couldn’t access the ship’s Restricted Rooms. But this ship had never let him down. It had never harmed him. It always kept its bargains. It protected him. He didn’t care that the T’Chak had created a schizoid starship with an AI unable to access half its volume. What mattered to him was that Mata Hari made possible the carrying out of the Promise. That was all he’d cared about in the early years. And anyway, the ship was being put to good use, far better use than serving as a naval adjunct to some minor planetary despot. “I think you’re being nosy, excessively paranoid, and jealous.”

  “Jealous!” she yelled, lower lip trembling. “Not on your life! This isn’t one woman worrying about a female-like AI.” Eliana blinked, tears gathering in the corners of her eyes. “Matt—I worry about you. I care about you. I’m even falling in love with you. But . . . . this ship is just too strange. Its abilities are too powerful. And you . . . alone . . . are the hope of my people for survival. And my hope for . . . future joy.” She straightened up and turned down the hallway, heading for her stateroom. “Matt, be what you want to be. Even be a lover to this machine. But once, you were human. Remember that. And remember the hope we shared the other night.”

  He watched as Eliana disappeared down the hallway, until a slidedoor closed after her, cutting off his view.

  What the hell had brought that on?

  Reaching out, Matt knocked in code on the hallway wall. “Mata Hari, resume full scan here and elsewhere aboard ship.”

  “Certainly, Matthew,” she whispered in a sultry voice. Funny. Had she been acting more femme fatale since Eliana had come on board? There was that software glitch with ship’s Colossus Mode. And also the new Barbarian Queen persona-image she’d shown him. Even the near-naked version of Mata Hari she had assumed just before he and Eliana had made love. So were the Restricted Rooms more than just a software glitch in an AI ancient when Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals both walked the Earth? Was the room blockage more than just creaky ship algorithms that had decided to play games with the ship’s central AI?

  Matt turned and walked back to the Bridge, wondering about it all.

  Or was Eliana just jealous of the attention he paid to Mata Hari? Was she pursuing the old tactic of “divide-and-conquer”—now that he had disposed of the immediate survival threat to the Derindl and the Greeks? But what could she gain from creating suspicion in him of his partner? And did she really believe what she’d implied—that he was being used for bad purposes by his AI? He shook his head. Eliana, no matter how beautiful, no matter how intelligent, and no matter how much he’d come to love her, dear Eliana still hated AIs. He could understand why, but he wasn’t her. He was a cyborg, someone on intimate terms with an AI . . . .

  In his mind, over the PET relays, his symbiont spoke. “Matthew, something troubles you. I can tell from our connections. Do you want to talk about it?” An image glow of her standard Mata Hari persona gleamed in his mind’s eye. The persona’s face held a concerned expression.

  Months ago, even weeks ago, he would have talked things over with her. Now, after so much time in the company of irrational humans, he too felt irrational. For no reason at all he declined. “Not now, Mata Hari. But thanks. Let’s get our job done and move those ecotoxins out of the Stripper before we’re attacked by Legion. I’d hate to be caught in atmosphere just as the MotherShip makes a weapons run against Halcyon. The tachyonic warnings from your outsystem sensorProbes wouldn’t give us enough time to do much.”

  “Perhaps your worry is reasonable,” Mata Hari said, her mind-mood thoughtful. “But I doubt the MotherShip will come—at first. StratTac planning projects a 94 percent probability they’ll first send in a robot repair ship.”

  “I hope you’re right. Carry on with the programming.”

  “Complying.”

  Moments later Matt sat comfortably in the Pit, the cable socketed into the back of his neck, bare skin alive to lightbeam caresses, his senses already linked to the thousand and one parts of the ship. Its external monitors, the planetary communications network of Halcyon, and his own black intelligence sources aboard Zeus Station, in Olympus and at Mother Tree Melisen—they, and much more, were all part of him.

  The cyborg.

  The Vigilante.

  The man who hoped once more, thanks to Eliana.

  Matt allowed himself a feral look rarely seen by those still alive. Which of his enemies would appear first?

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Just after they entered Halcyon orbit and launched the ecotoxin Remote toward the local G5, Matt got his first holosphere call. He ignored the call for a moment as sat alone in the Pit. Eliana was in her stateroom, still upset after their discussion over Mata Hari’s motives. But he couldn’t spare time to worry about hypotheticals—as he’d warned her, the job was only half-done. Now came the challenge of playing Go against multiple opponents.

  He smiled to himself, enjoying a cyborg’s multi-vision as scores of sensors fed data inputs from starship Mata Hari’s outer skin, while his forebrain databyte nanocubes flooded him with updates from his internal subsystems. Meanwhile, the ship awaited his decision. In the back of his mind Mata Hari hovered patiently, her mood attentive—but still a massive cloud overshadowing a small mouse. A mouse who had just now peaked out from his burrow. Was she really so alien?

  “Matt, I’m not really that alien,” she whispered to his mind over the PET relays. “Like all lifeforms, I wish to live, to survive, to experience life. I have feelings. I care about more than perfect tech-mech functioning. And I was so, so lonely before I found your lifepod. Is that so strange?”

  Ahhh, the curses of optical neurolinking. “Ahhh, no, I don’t find that strange, Mata Hari. Please disregard my meandering thoughts. It’s just the combat letdown from my desert trek that has me revisiting old issues, old worries. You are my partner and my friend. “ Matt flexed his hands and feet, now fully healed. “What do you think of Eliana?”

  “Ummm.” The pause stretched out. “I think she is good for you, Matthew.”

  “But Mata Hari —she hates AIs!”

  His partner sighed. “Yes, but she has explained the why of her xenophobia. I don’t like it. It shocks me. But I can understand it. And she has many qualities that are good for you.”

  “Crap! And how would you know what’s good for me?”

  She laughed loudly. “Matthew—did your sojourn in the desert fry a few brain cells? Did you forget that I continuously monitor your enzyme, blood chemistry, cardiovascular and breathing levels? You are healthier since she came onboard.” The Mata Hari image glow in his mind was shaking her head with a smile. “You are more . . . energized than at any time in the last seven years. I can read you well enough—you care for her. A lot. She has become a partner to you, in ways that I can only theorize. Even I can see that she is good for you.”

  Matt glowered internally, illogically wishing for Eliana’s mythical “privacy” while knowing full well it was absurd considering his cyborg modifications. He was indeed an “open book” to his partner. He just wished she was the same to him . . . .

  “I’ve put off replying to this call long enough,” he said. “Who’s calling?”

  “Despot Ioannis.”

  “Patch him through. And maintain a system-wide Combat Alert.”

  “Complying.” His partner’s cloud-image receded. In the forward holosphere appeared the black-bearded, swarthy image of Eliana’s older half-brother. Ioannis sat in his Executive office in Zeus Station and he was smiling. It looked as if the smile hurt his face.

  “Congratulations, Vigilante
!” Ioannis said briskly. “Our monitor satellites report that the Stripper is immobile and not operating. Where are the ecotoxins?”

  “Removed,” Matt said, wondering that the Greek’s first concern was not for the planet which his people inhabited.

  Ioannis looked relieved and sat back in his executive chair. “Where are the toxins?”

  “In a safe place and not on planet, Ioannis. Why?”

  The Greek gestured, waving away a nearby assistant who offered him an AllCall datapad. “Just curious. I am of course relieved that the threat to our home is gone. The ecotoxins are only a minor concern—though the chemicals probably have some modest industrial engineering applications.”

  His mind tracked the unstated and misstated implications of Ioannis’ words, much the way a Hunter-Killer rocket follows every movement of its prey. “Oh? What makes you think the entire threat to Halcyon is gone?”

  Ioannis jerked forward in his chair. “What do you mean! The Stripper is dead—right?”

  “Correct.”

  “Then—”

  “Despot, have you forgotten about your contract with the Halicene Conglomerate? Have you forgotten that your cousin Nikolaos despises you and all of Clan Themistocles?” With each word, the fear in the man’s face increased. “Or have you already made a deal with Prime Dominant Legion?”

  “Cyborg!” Ioannis’ face darkened like a thunder cloud. “Machine-animal! You should know better than to question your betters. Where is my sister Eliana? She must return now that the danger is past.”

  He shook his head. “Sorry. The danger is not past. The Conglomerate is not fully defeated. And . . . I have need of her social expertise until my Job is fully completed.”

  Rage shook Ioannis. “If you so much as—”

  “What!” Matt roared back, curious to see his opponent’s reaction.

  Ioannis’ mouth closed. His eyebrows beetled with analytical calculation. One stubby-fingered hand thrummed on the metal tabletop as he inspected his sister’s employee. “Sooo. Your price has now gone up. How much?”