The Vigilante Chronicles Boxed Set 1

by Natalie Grey

  Yes. One of those lodging houses would take him in, give him shelter. He knew of one on the outskirts that had always looked forbidding, with its heavy metal doors and few windows.

  That one seemed best right about now.

  He shot at me, Barnabas bitched. He was running, rather enjoying the feel of sunlight and fresh air on his skin. He didn’t particularly mind living on ships, but he did miss the outdoors.

  I could take him out. Shinigami’s raspy voice held a note of anticipation.

  With what, a guided missile? He ducked under a heavy basket being carried by two massive aliens. Also, what were those?

  Maybe. And they’re Brakalons.

  Interesting. Barnabas caught sight of the Luvendi’s pale head disappearing down an alley on the other side of the street and rerouted himself with a curse. Those long legs were damnably fast.

  I’m assuming from your silence that you do want missiles. They’ll be armed in ten seconds.

  What? No! No missiles! He hurdled a fruit stand. And since I know you’re about to ask why, tell me how you’re planning to avoid harming civilians?

  Tell me how you’re planning to catch the alien? What, are you out for an evening constitutional? Stop strolling.

  I’m running!

  Not very fast.

  That’s a matter of opinion. You don’t even have legs. This alley was disgusting. There were frogs in it, for God’s sake. And slime. Barnabas was going to find whoever had decided to build in this swamp and make them drink bad beer until they gave up the will to live.

  All right, how about an objective measurement? You’re not going as fast as he is. It’s time to—

  No. No, we’re not doing the red eyes and claws thing. People here don’t know much about humans, and I can catch him without that. Just figure out where he’s going and give me a path!

  You are the most boring person I know.

  I’ll keep that in mind.

  Go left when you reach the main street and go straight until you see the cathedral.

  There’s a cathedral? The Jesuits have always traveled widely, but I’ll be really impressed if they’ve managed to get—

  Cathedral, temple—whatever you want to call it. It has a statue on top that looks like a four-year-old made it. Shinigami considered. And I don’t know why you don’t want to go all red-eyes. It’s a good thing. We want humans to settle here, and we don’t want other people to mess with them.

  I am not talking about this right now!

  Mmmhmm.

  Ahead of them, Gar was running like his life depended on it—because for all he knew, it did. He hadn’t actually seen whether the human survived, after all.

  Actually, it might be good to check that.

  He looked over his shoulder, and for a moment could see only the usual assortment of aliens. Big and broad-shouldered, with the telltale gaps in the crowd where Nekubi were probably slithering around.

  He was still there. The human was still there.

  Shit. Gar started running again. He had the agonizing thought that he wasn’t even going to die because this strange little alien killed him, he was going to die when his hearts exploded.

  They certainly felt like they were going to. Had he ever run this much in his life?

  There was the house. Finally.

  Gar loped as fast as he could go, trying to wring more energy from his tired body. He pushed several smaller aliens out of the way to get to the door and held up an identification chip embedded in his long necklace, and when it opened he crashed inside. He slammed it shut behind him and slid down it, heaving for breath.

  After a moment, aware of how ridiculous he looked and also aware that if anyone asked he would have to say the strange little human-thing hadn’t actually done anything threatening, he got up and made his way up the stairs to the room he had always stayed in while he had been here before. He would alert the caretakers later.

  He was halfway down the hall when he heard a noise behind him and turned to introduce himself to what he assumed was another tenant.

  Red eyes glowed in the darkness of the corridor.

  Gar gave a high-pitched scream and fled, slamming the heavy iron door of his room behind him as soon as he reached it. He backed away, heaving for breath. The human had gotten in. They must have hacked the keypad, which was terrifying enough—how had they faked a Luvendi genetic code?—but this door had no electronic lock. This door was safe.

  But as he had been several times already today, Gar was very, very wrong.

  With a screech of metal, the heavy door was ripped off its hinges and flung across the room. Gar scrambled backward, still screaming, and ended up in a puddle on the floor as the human, now red-eyed, advanced on him.

  When Gar was pressed against the back wall of the room, the human paused to look at him thoughtfully.

  “You didn’t pay your bar tab,” it murmured.

  Gar gaped at him. This was why he’d been chased through the marketplace? This was why he was being confronted by a creature out of a nightmare?

  “I...what?”

  The human smiled, showing teeth that were definitely pointier than they had been at the start of this.

  “Just kidding. Sit down. We’re going to have a chat.”

  4

  Barnabas had noted the way this alien had looked at him when he had come into the bar. The look had been brief and dismissive.

  He understood why, of course. His skin was soft, or at least looked that way, his legs didn’t have the characteristic structure that indicated quick acceleration, and he had no claws or sharp teeth. On the one hand, it made sense.

  On the other, it had been a massive miscalculation on the Luvendi’s part.

  “What…what are you?” The alien was almost whimpering.

  Get ahold of yourself.

  Barnabas tried not to smile. For once, Shinigami, I find I agree with you. To Gar, he said, “I am a human. My name is Barnabas.” He considered this. “You may call me Ranger for now.”

  Shinigami, we need to come up with a title.

  I’ll put it right at the top of our to-do list.

  “Ranger” will serve well enough for now.

  I was... I was joking.

  The nickname seemed strange to Gar, but who could understand what humans called themselves or why? For a moment he half-remembered something—ranger, ranger… Where had he heard that before?

  He wasn’t going to put himself at a disadvantage by asking, but he’d had enough experience with this human already to think it was probably important. He’d have to see if he could get the human to tell him somehow.

  Gar nodded courteously. “I am—”

  “Venfaldri Gar,” Barnabas interrupted. “Get up.”

  Gar stood up, trembling. His hands brushed the loose robes he wore to shield his normal clothes from the mess of travel through the swamp.

  “Sit over there,” Barnabas ordered. He pointed to a chair that had survived his assault on the room. Gar had to walk over the twisted wreckage of the door to sit down.

  He arranged his robes carefully and placed his long-fingered hands flat in his lap, one over the other in a sign of respect. From such a pose, it was difficult to draw a weapon or strike quickly. Thus, it was a mark of respect. He wondered if the human knew that. Anxiously, he then wondered if the human might think it was an insult.

  The human said nothing, however, only stared, with eyes that were fading from red back to brown. It stared, and it waited.

  “Why are you here?” Gar asked it finally. He wanted to ask it how it knew his name, but that sounded like the sort of question someone would ask if they were afraid. He didn’t want to seem afraid.

  “That,” the alien said with a smile, “is a very good question. A very good question indeed. A Ranger searches out corruption and injustice.” He let the sentence hang in the air for a moment. “And cleanses it,” he said finally, and almost pleasantly.

  Gar knew almost nothing about humans, but even he knew t
he tone wasn’t really pleasant at all. He tried not to swallow too obviously. Corruption and injustice, the human had said, and it knew who he was. Somehow it knew.

  The human waited again.

  I could use missiles.

  I’m standing right here.

  You would want to back up, then. I thought that was implied.

  Infuriating. Barnabas prayed silently for patience and waited for Gar to speak. He didn’t have endless patience, of course, but he had quite enough to wait for the Luvendi to figure out on his own that Barnabas was dangerous to him.

  Finally, Gar spoke. “Why do you want to talk to me?”

  Barnabas fought the urge to growl.

  See, he’s an idiot! You won’t get anything out of him. Kill him with fire.

  Not yet. Barnabas linked his hands behind his back and started to pace. “Why do you think I want to talk to you?”

  “I don’t have any idea,” Gar replied. His face was—as far as Barnabas could tell—completely open.

  Shinigami, tell me what you can about his stress levels.

  If he’s lying, you mean? He’s definitely lying. You should—

  Kill him with fire, yes, I know. There was an ominous pause and Barnabas hastened to add, That was an acknowledgment that I’d heard you before, not something you should do.

  He then found out that when an AI grumbled it sounded a bit like an overworked computer.

  He asked Gar, “Has anything that has happened in the past hour indicated that it would be wise to lie to me?” Gar said nothing, so Barnabas smiled again. He stopped pacing and looked directly at the alien.

  And waited.

  This time Gar wisely decided to try a different tack. “Maybe someone has told you that I am a…” His voice trailed off.

  “Do go on.”

  Gar’s mind raced. He could say he was vice-overseer at the mine, but this human might very well know that the mines should have been shut down. Would it count as injustice to him that they remained open and the workers weren’t allowed to leave?

  Yes.

  So he couldn’t admit that. But as the human—the Ranger—had pointed out, it wasn’t wise to lie, either. This really was a mess.

  “Perhaps I can make your choice easier,” the human told him after a moment. Gar looked at him warily, and decided his wariness was clearly warranted when the human continued, “If you tell me the truth and I don’t like what you say, we will have to have a conversation about how you intend to atone—and if you will be given the chance to. I acknowledge that this conversation might be unpleasant, but there may be a chance for redemption—and that’s assuming I don’t like what you say. For all we know, I might. If you lie to me…” he paused, “I’ll rip your spine out.”

  Maybe, Gar reflected, that other human had bested King Yoll in single combat by terrifying it to death.

  Maybe that had been this human.

  “Do you have any other names?” he asked.

  “A very strange question, given the topic at hand.”

  “I heard a story about one of your species who bested King Yoll.”

  “Ah. No, that was Bethany Anne.” The human seemed to find this deeply amusing.

  You should have lied.

  That is entirely incorrect.

  Ray, when someone asks if you’re a god, you say yes.

  What?

  Watch a movie sometime.

  Barnabas ignored that. “Now that we have established I am not the Empress, I suggest you answer my question. Why do you think I want to talk to you?”

  Gar considered this. He was uncomfortably sure that when the human had mentioned ripping Gar’s spine out, it had not been an idle threat.

  “Because of my affiliation with the mines,” he replied finally. He was very proud of his sentence, which did not suggest either past or present affiliation—until he saw the human’s eyes flash.

  Barnabas put one hand on either arm of the chair and gave Gar a very unpleasant smile. “Tell me about them.”

  “Dignitary…” he really wished he knew whether this one was male or female, “this is very aggressive behavior. By what authority are you questioning me? You will find yourself subject to both legal and trade penalties if you insist upon pursuing illegal interrogations.”

  “Oh, Gar.” The human smiled again. “This isn’t even close to an interrogation yet. You have no idea. And since you ask…”

  He stepped back and spread his arms. Power crackled in the air around him and his eyes grew red once more. When he spoke, his voice carried the echo of many lifetimes and more deaths.

  Gar shivered. Almost, he imagined himself back on Luvendan, watching the endless waves and listening to the hiss of the great beasts that circled their submerged homes. He had feared the Essekan all his life, and had fled Luvendan as soon as he had reached his majority.

  This voice filled him with the same primal fear; that nothing he could do would protect him. There would be teeth and claws and the crushing black…

  “My authority stems from a woman whom you should pray you never meet,” Barnabas told him, “and she follows a higher law than any you have ever known. I was the first of her Rangers, and I mete out her Justice according to my conscience. If you were judged now, Gar, what punishment do you think you would deserve?”

  Gar gripped the arms of the chair until his bones ached. His hands were trembling and he did not want to answer, yet he knew it would go badly for him if he did not.

  “I think you would find me guilty of...slavery. I do not know your punishment for that.”

  Barnabas leaned close. “The punishment is death. The Empress has spread the word for many years that slavery would not be tolerated. Your mines were always close to the line, and what I heard in Tethra today tells me that the line has been crossed. Your words only confirm what I already knew.”

  Gar squeezed his eyes shut, but the image of the red-eyed human was seared into his mind. He could not escape it.

  He would not plead; he would not. This human was like the Essekan, and not only in its raw power—how could it do these things?—but in the fact that Gar knew he could not bargain with it.

  He’s doing better than I thought he would. Possibly.

  Agreed. He isn’t pleading for leniency. I like that.

  I’m confused as to why you’ve left him alive this long. Are you playing with your food?

  I do not “play with my food” in any sense of the phrase, and he’s alive because I need him to tell me where the mines are. The fact that no one has gone to storm the one Aebura mentioned tells me that they don’t know where it is—and they probably don’t know if there are more.

  And you think this male will find out what you need to know?

  He had better hope he can.

  Shinigami snickered and Barnabas wondered briefly if her approval meant he was going in the right direction with this. At least she had stopped suggesting guided missiles or flamethrowers as the answer to this situation.

  He turned his attention back to Gar. “Explain to me why you believe I would judge you guilty of slavery when, as I hear it, you are the second-in-command.” His eyes flashed slightly. “But do not make the mistake of thinking I mean to excuse you.”

  “I would not.” Gar’s voice was surprisingly steady. He took a deep breath and looked up. The panic was gone. He was still afraid, but he was calm now. “On the day the mines were freed—or should have been freed—our overseer closed us off from the outside world. I assumed that those were his orders from the corporation., but I was wrong about that. I learned today just how wrong.”

  Barnabas said nothing, just watched Gar carefully.

  Gar straightened his back. If he was going to die, he decided, it would be with dignity. He had a dizzying memory of being back in the bar and thinking of the Ubuara with contempt. Thinking of this human with contempt. He could barely remember himself then.

  He wasn’t sure what had changed, but it was something very profound.

  “Howev
er, I did things that I knew were wrong.” He swallowed. “You speak of a higher law than the one I know, but the law I know is the company’s law. Their rules. Even when I thought I was following those rules, I knew that some of the things I was doing were not right.”

  “Such as?” Barnabas’s voice was silky.

  “I… Well, I put down workers’ revolts. They were angry that they hadn’t been allowed to leave. I imprisoned many of them in our jail and increased penalties for infractions. Lan told me to take care of things, to make sure that everything was the way he wanted it, and I…”

  He hung his head in shame. What could he say? He had become inventive…in the very worst ways.

  “I did whatever I could to see his orders done,” he finished quietly. “Even when I did not agree with them. Even when we were imprisoning people and they were only fighting to be allowed to leave—as we had promised them they could.”

  “I see. And what do you think your punishment should be?”

  “You said the punishment was death.”

  He thinks death will be easier? Shinigami exclaimed. A guided missile is too good for him.

  We agree again, Barnabas told her. He raised his voice. “I see from your eyes that you do not think death is a fitting punishment. I asked what you thought the punishment should be, not what I thought it should be.”

  Gar swallowed. All the memories were rushing back—whippings, long days in the cells, the workers growing thinner and thinner.

  “Now you see,” Barnabas told him softly. “You see that what you did cannot be made right. You see that death would be quicker and far less painful than suffering the same torments you devised for the workers. I expect you to think about that over the coming weeks.”

  Gar looked up at him in horror. What was the human planning to do?

  “Tell me, do you know where all of the mines are on this planet?”

  I could tell you.

  An interesting point. But are you certain which were reopened under a legitimate business model and which were not? There was a pause. I actually wanted to know.