Star Vigilante (Vigilante Series)

by T. Jackson King

  Faceplate blackened. Matt folded up in Suit, an armored ball that now hurtled through the hole in the steel wall. Suit’s shielding would protect him from the nuclear blasts.

  “Two.”

  Double minisuns flared like high noon.

  Just a thousand meters ahead.

  Matt hardly felt the blast pressure. Nor did the heat-pulse hurt him. What they did to the cavern enclosure was something else.

  The minisuns completely blinded the waiting forces of Legion, destroyed six warehouses, scrambled all tactical communications, and gave him the advantage of shocked surprise.

  Faceplate clearing, Matt sailed into the radioactives-dusted warehouse district, his rear-looking butt radar telling him that Ioannis and his Greek forces followed, cannon floaters out front. Matt went back to gestalt perception.

  Suit was him. He was Suit. Together, they were . . .

  A horror.

  Three aliens wearing Gorgen-model combat suits appeared suddenly on the far horizon of his Defense Zone, each painting him with radar despite the crackling disruption of the remaining EMF pulse from the atomics. Targets! Suit hungered. He hungered. The little voices of Suit hungered.

  Suit’s onboard Defense algorithms hunted through Options, rejected thousands, and threw Matt down toward the roofs of the warehouse district. From all sides, coherent light blasts flared as ground combatants fired at each other. But the combat-suited ones focused just on each other. Only another suit was a worthy foe. His submunition carrier Remotes followed him down like a flock of friendly hawks—about to gut three pigeons.

  The aliens fired first.

  In mid-space, Suit’s laser beams slashed back at incoming hypervelocity HEDS shells. Helmet’s pressor beam narrowed focus to deflect a kiloton atomic, tossing it back at his attackers where it Safetied without exploding. Suit’s sapphire-coated skin flexed, warped and reflected incoming HF and CO2 laser beams as he rotated, twisted and dove behind the momentary shield of building walls. Behind him, walls exploded from blast-pressure overload as shells, laser cannons or tractor beams clawed after the Vigilante known as Matt Dragoneaux. Flying now on his back, he flared his left gauntlet, fingertip lasers taking out a flock of Hunter-Killer Nanoshell Remotes. They’d been fired by two of the aliens—just as his Magnum lasergun fired in the opposite direction, defeating an ugly-looking Remote that mounted a heavy proton beamer.

  Matt played with them.

  Like a cat plays with a mouse.

  He enjoyed it.

  He blinked.

  Waistband nerve gas dispensers ejected shells to clear unsuited opponents from his local area. From helmet to boots Suit flared—for a few precious moments—with a high-gauss electromagnetic field. A field strong enough to deflect any incoming charged-particle beam weapons. Setting his boots on Colossus Mode, Matt stood up suddenly, stance frozen at ten meters above ground level. Invisible tractor beams shot down and Locked-On to metal deckplates, buttressing him. Then, from his helmet, multiple pressor beams reached out and uprooted whole warehouse blocks. Like a child’s game of pick-up-sticks, he tossed the warehouse blocks at the three aliens. The debris barrage blocked a new offensive wave of shells, beams and fields. His backpack ka-chunked. Once. Twice. Thrice. Four times.

  A napalm warhead rocketed out at his enemies.

  A tremendous fireball blossomed halfway between him and them. Then, through the flaming ball, sped three armor-piercing Plasma Shells. One for each opponent. Only antimatter is more destructive than plasma.

  Purple light flared three times.

  “Ka-booommm!”

  The expanding napalm ball was pushed aside by three more violent explosions as the plasma shells enveloped alien powerplants, fried them, set off onboard munitions and carried minute fragments of flesh and gristle into all parts of the warehouse district.

  It was over.

  At least, any serious opposition from those forces of Legion who commanded Suits similar to his was over. Idly, Matt fired fingertip lasers at two spacesuited aliens trying to retreat from the incredible flares of atomics, napalm and plasma. Over the comlink sounded a cheer—from human throats. He ordered comlink signal step-up.

  “Well-done!” Ioannis yelled over the comlink, as Suit confirmed the mop-up combat maneuvering of the Greek’s own forces. “Will you—”

  “Alert!” Suit intoned, displaying a holo overlay showing two new Threat signals. Scrolling datastreams ID’d them as downlinks from his forward-searching NanoSensors, the ones programmed to detect Legion. They had picked up the unique sweat-odor-pheromone air trails of Legion and also Grandfather Petros. Yes!

  “Ioannis—consolidate!” he yelled back as the Greek approached in an armored combat floater. “Legion is now my Target!”

  Suit launched forward on the air trail, twisting and weaving to avoid solid projectile shots from not-yet-dead Mican allies. It easily deflected back the few laser beams that made brief contact. Matt did not fire. He was low on reloads for most systems and the battle was not over until Legion was dead!

  He dove into a low-roofed cargo transitway, Suit sensors alive to concealed limpet mines or EMF-activated explosives, anything that the Mican might have seeded in its hasty retreat. The odor trail turned left, grew stronger, passed through an airlock into the drydock area below the warehouses, then wafted toward a small freighter. The freighter’s engine compartment had been undergoing a refit. Holes gaped where hullplates or sensor pods had been removed to allow interior access. On his faceplate, the heatmap showed a cold powerplant. But minor traces of plasma-driven power units suggested a combat-suited someone had passed this way.

  The Mican?

  Matt dodged a hypervelocity HEDS shell that erupted suddenly from one of the hull-tears. His left shoulder pulse-cannon flipped over and incinerated it. Before he could fire again, faceplate showed the attacker had gone on Stealth-mode and disappeared into another part of the ship hull. BackTrack analysis of the HEDS shell debris showed Halicene manufacture. Legion!

  Matt floated just outside the freighter hulk, feeling uncertain.

  If it were just the Mican, he’d have long ago tossed a plasma shell into the hulk and vaporized his problem. But Petros and the future of all Sigma Puppis humans was held hostage in there. Whatever his feelings about the greedy, patriarchal Greeks, he would never let any alien escape with sufficient human DNA data to force-grow human cloneslaves. Never that!

  Dodging here and there, using intervening drydock buildings and machinery for cover, Matt entered the freighter hulk at its nose. He found only darkness.

  His IR and UV senses flickered on, painting a heat map of the interior that augmented his millimeter microwave radar image. He could have chosen echo-sounding and sonograms if he wished or were under water, but these two sufficed. He moved rearward, knowing he did what the Mican wanted. But the Mican, like himself, would not set off a plasma charge under his feet. This had become too personal for both of them.

  On his faceplate, an incoming Vidcast flickered.

  “For a monkey primate,” Legion snarled, “you have some minor talents.”

  Near Legion, the bound figure of Petros lay next to the clawed feet of the Mican. Petros seemed dazed, perhaps drugged, certainly not himself as Matt remembered him from Eliana’s first call to her grandfather. But for an old man with a gag over his mouth, he seemed to have held up to the Mican’s abuse.

  “Legion, let the Greek go. You know only one of us will win. If you do, you can always reclaim him.”

  “No.” Legion’s needle-tipped tail lifted sharply. “It amuses me to torture him. And to use him as bait for you. Advance, Vigilante—you will not be harmed . . . until we are in direct line-of-sight of each other.” The image blinked out.

  He cursed. The Mican was undoubtedly lying, but how much?

  Moving for the freighter’s outer hull, Matt read off the Vidcast BackTrack from his onboard EMF expert system. It confirmed as suspected that the Mican had used microwave bounce-signaling, from microwav
e rebroadcasters seeded into scores of ship nooks and crannies. The signal origin was untraceable. Fine. He blew out the freighter’s hullplates and emerged into the open air just outside.

  If the Mican expected him to follow after it through booby-trapped hallways, he would disappoint it.

  Nullgrav plates shot him forward.

  Airspeed climbed.

  He approached supersonic, though he had but three hundred meters to cover. The freighter’s stern loomed suddenly. Matt dove in through a hullplate hole, twisted, changed angle, and dove again. Toward where the ship’s powerplant had been emplaced, but was now removed. It was the only big space in a ship like this—other than cargoholds—and he preferred a lot of space between him and the Mican.

  Matt flew through ship hallways in total darkness, the cave-like blackness illuminated only here and there by random UV and IR emissions. Then, his microwave pulses showed a large opening up ahead. The engine room! Preceded by Nanoshell sensor Remotes and submunition carriers, he entered.

  A shadow moved.

  Three hundred megawatts of hydrogen-fluorinelaser struck him square in the chest. The Mican’s combat exoskeleton had found him!

  His chest radar pack burned off before Suit could rotate and reflect back the beam. Healing the blast-scorch as he dodged sideways, Suit fired back at the beam source, just missing the Mican when it dove behind a large metal housing. From there came Petros’ hoarse scream. Damn!

  Flaring his fingertip lasers in the general direction of the Mican, forcing it to stay under cover, Matt dove up toward the ceiling, a Plan in mind.

  Halfway there, four angle-turning HEDS shells erupted from the Mican’s hideaway and rushed at him. Laser pulses fired by his submunition carriers took them out. One carrier burned up as the Mican used its HF laser cannon against it, then dropped down out of direct sight. In the gloom, his cloud of Nanoshells hunted for the alien, hungry to taste its sweat-odor. But each one suffered vaporization or pressor beam deflection when it got too close. Then again, there were hundreds of them. They distracted the alien’s onboard Tactical CPU, and maybe its Defense algorithm. His biceps vibrated and shot back a half-dozen HEDS shells of his own. Matt hoped no shrapnel hit Petros. Unfortunately the Greek limited his own Strike Options and the Mican knew this full well.

  Finally, Matt reached the ceiling.

  Rotating, with head down and feet braced against the engine room ceiling, he ordered Colossus Mode to legs and boots. They clamped tight to the ceiling.

  He blinked. He thought.

  Helmet pressor beams grabbed the obstructing engine mount that sheltered Legion. Like a bull, Matt swung his thick-muscled neck. Servos whined. The engine mount ripped clear of the deckplates.

  Legion stood revealed.

  Just meters from Petros.

  Fast as thought, he impelled the tons-heavy engine mount at the Mican, but clear of Petros. It crushed the Mican against the rear wall.

  Griffin-tiger screamed.

  It was an unearthly scream that echoed off the walls of the dark engine room. Yellow light flared as Suit emitted magnesium flares. Three million candlepower illuminated every nook, cranny and corner of the cavernous room. In its light, he sought out Legion.

  Only a dirty, brown-feathered head stuck out beyond the crushing weight of the massive engine mount. Even now the feathers jumped like something alive as his Nanoshells and nanoborers entered the Mican, penetrated its body systems, disrupted any hard-wired Command and Control connections to the remains of its combat suit, filled its body with penetrator viruses, and set off miniature thermite explosions throughout his enemy’s organic shell.

  Matt watched.

  Little bits and pieces of flesh and feather scattered in all directions, much like a wooden housedome under attack by millions of termites.

  The alien’s mouth opened. Chalk-white canines showed. Dark green blood trailed out. The Halicene still thought, still hated as three purple eyes glared at him. His foe still lived--for a few moments longer.

  As did Grandfather Petros.

  Powering down, Matt lowered on Nullgrav and stopped next to rope-bound Petros, watching carefully the death throes of the Mican. Then he turned to Eliana’s grandfather Petros.

  Reaching out with his left hand, Matt patted the man reassuringly. The Greek lay just meters away from Legion, who lay to Matt’s left. The man’s eyes bulged with fear and loathing as he looked over at the Halicene Prime Dominant Three. The gag on his mouth prevented Eliana’s grandfather from talking. Holding Petros still with his left hand, Matt’s right-hand gauntlet-knife sliced the gag free. As the gauntlet swung outward, Petros spoke with a slur, like he was drugged.

  “Trap! It’s a trap Vigilante! He—”

  “Revenge!” squealed Legion.

  A laser burned ruby-red in Legion’s throat. It reached out and struck Matt’s left hand. Where he still touched Petros’ bare shoulder.

  Fast as lightspeed his gauntlet vaporized as the tightly focused beam cut ablative coatings and through the glove’s metallic fiber, exposing his hand. Exposing bare skin!

  Contact, skin to skin, occurred. Human touched human. And between bleeding hand and Petros’ bleeding shoulder, blood flowed.

  “Revenggge,” Legion said in a deathly groan. “Slow virus! Now you have it! And you will live with pain for a long, long timmmmeee . . . .”

  Legion finished dying.

  Matt lifted up his left hand. Already it gleamed silvery-grey as Suit hurriedly built up a monomolecular armor film around his fingers. Already his nanoDocs repaired the burned tissue and torn ligaments. Too late. Far too late. If what Legion had said had any truth to it. If the Halicene had coated Petros’ skin with a slow virus tailored just for humans. But maybe his onboard nanoDocs were already searching out the invader virus, already filtering it from his blood flow, already healing him from an illness thought up by an alien griffin-bird who hated all bipeds, who called Matt a monkey primate. An alien who had vowed to hurt him bad, during their first encounter. A deadly alien who had once controlled the Sigma Puppis double-star system . . . .

  Petros groaned with pain from the small shoulder wound left by Legion’s laser, shook his head and eyed Matt blearily. “It’s on my skin. He painted it with something. Don’t know what. But you killed him. You are victorious!”

  This was victory?

  Matt tasted sour bile in his mouth. Somehow, in some way, Legion had struck the last blow.

  Well, at least he still lived. The Cyborg human lived.

  That fact—that he was not already dead—told him that whatever virus had bled into his skin was not immediately fatal. No nerve poisons. No heart blockers. No neuron disrupters. No, this was something else. A slow virus the alien had said. Maybe Eliana would know what that meant.

  “Matthew?” called Mata Hari over his Alert comlink as the battle elsewhere in the station faded enough for his partner’s comlink to contact him. “Are you all right? Can I help?” The empathetic feminine Mata Hari persona was back, hopefully for good.

  “Maybe. Ask Eliana to research slow viruses,” he replied, fighting the sense of hopelessness that had welled up inside him with the news from Petros. Well, at least communications had been restored, despite the atomics, the fighting, and the deaths. And perhaps his onboard nanoDocs could find and extinguish the viral chains of the slow virus. He didn’t know. And the unknown frightened him. Shuddering away the What If? regrets for his decision to comfort Petros, to act human to another human, Matt ordered Suit to encase Petros in an emergency vacsuit Bubble.

  The Greek would die too, eventually, of whatever had infected Matt. But Petros had lived a long time. And the pea-sized molecular Library of Greek genetic DNA that made Petros the Genetic Primary Carrier would be safe, protected by an impenetrable shell of neutronium. Only the extra weight the neutronium gave to the organic carrying the Primary could give away the Carrier. Legion must have known this. Somehow, whether through spies, torture or good luck, the alien had picked the one hum
an that Matt must spare in any fight. All to force him into close-up combat with Legion.

  Turning, he towed Petros behind him as he made for Zeus Station’s outer hull and the safety of a Combat Remote that Mata Hari now dispatched—she’d taken a speedburst uplink of all that had happened.

  Outside the station he met Mata Hari ’s Remote. He pulled himself and Petros inside, then waited as the Remote headed for the part of the ship that contained the Biolab and its genetic analysis and gene-splicing machines. He hoped fervently they could analyze his viral infestation and cure it.

  Whatever it was that infested him.

  His mind kept returning to Legion’s threat long ago, a threat to seed him with the human disease myasthenia gravis. Matt did not wish to spend scores of years as a living mind, trapped in a body whose myelin nerve sheaths had been destroyed, unable to communicate, unable to move, unable to feed himself or bathe. And incapable of making love!

  Incapable of doing anything, by his own choice, that made life meaningful.

  Was this to be the Mican’s curse?

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Aboard Mata Hari, in Biolab and safely secured behind the transparent armorglass of a Decontam Chamber, Matt felt numb all over. Numb as he watched a heartsick Eliana turn first to her Grandfather Petros in his own isolation chamber, where he slumped unconscious as nanoDocs healed his shoulder wound, then back to Matt. Her pale face was puffy-eyed and her long hair stuck to her tears, even though she now wore the white dress of a genetics researcher. A researcher who had researched slow viruses—and it appeared that bad news awaited him.

  Standing naked before her, Matt felt no desire, no hope, almost nothing toward dear Eliana. She was just a woman in a white lab-coat. Someone who could be a genesplice researcher in any lab. The other woman he had fallen in love with had been a dream, just a dream. A wonderful dream, a hint of a future possibility that would lie forever beyond his grasp.

  Standing alone within the Decontam Chamber, able to see Eliana but not touch or hold her, Matt laughed at himself. What did he have now to show for all the pain and suffering, other than a slow, very slow death? At least the Promise stood fulfilled—a small solace that. Somewhere, in some distant paradise where the good people went, the spirit of his dead Helen might know he’d kept faith. That he had tried to bring Justice to an uncaring universe. But not here. The Anarchate certainly wasn’t the proper place for goodness. Nor for justice. Least of all, for fairness.