“It is passing the orbit of planet seven, which the local humans have named Beag, after a minor Celtic goddess known for having a magic well.” She reached up to unloose her black hair so it fell like a waterfall over white shoulders. Her look became that of a Barbarian Queen. “Its vector is just twenty degrees off of our incoming vector, and in parallel with this star’s ecliptic. At our current speed we will reach it within ten hours.”
“How soon before it detects our presence?” Eliana asked, duplicating Matt’s own thought.
“Well, it is already aware of us from our gravity wave pulse due to Translation entry. So it knows our location and incoming vector, in general terms, as do the authorities on Morrigan,” Mata Hari said, adjusting the bronze bracelets that now appeared on her wrists. “But the harvester’s normal light telescope cannot resolve our form until we are within two light hours of convergence. Assuming their ship is an upgraded corvette with the usual two domes of directed energy weapons.”
Eliana looked at him. “Matthew, why are you going to free the captives? This ship’s sled Remotes could do the job, the same way they rescued you and me from my brother’s space station, after the blast that disabled our transit car.”
His memory pain made Matt feel raw inside, but he could not lash out at his lifepartner. Perhaps a memory image or two would educate her to why he had to do the rescuing. Personally. In Suit. So he could see directly the looks of relief of the captives, and the terror on the alien visages of their kidnappers. Hopefully some of the alien crew would be able to exhibit some version of terror. He knew that he planned to extract that emotion before killing them all.
“Mata Hari,” he said aloud. “Please take these memory images from my life . . . before the harvesters came to my planet fifteen years ago. And this one from afterwards. Convert them to moving vid, encode them into a memory block, and present the block to Eliana for her viewing whenever she chooses.” He turned to his organic partner.
“Eliana, my dear, I am sharing with you my memories of my Mom, Dad, my three younger sisters and my oldest sister, Charlotte. You have heard my story of their kidnapping by genome harvesters who got away and likely sold them to the cloneslavers of Alkalurops. Perhaps after viewing the memory images you will understand why I must do this in person. And Eliana?”
“Yes, Matthew?”
“Thank you.”
She dimple smiled. “For what?”
“For giving me this opportunity to stop the same horror from occurring to someone else.”
Eliana’s smile grew somber. Then she noticed Mata Hari’s final change into her Barbarian Queen persona, this time with a sharp saber in one hand and a chain-mail outfit covering her black-skinned body from neck to knees. The AI’s appearance matched the unrelenting determination of Matt. Which was only proper since Mata Hari had experienced Matt’s memory pain as he transmitted the visual memories of his family via neurolink. His AI partner had long known his motivation for becoming a Vigilante. Now she better understood the emotions underlying his choice. He gave thanks that this AI had gained a level of emotionality that no other AI he’d ever encountered could match. Today, Mata Hari acted with the inner sense of a true Barbarian Queen out to avenge a horror done to her clan family. In truth, she had become an Amazon.
Eliana lay in the accel-couch as Matt fell into ocean-time linkage with the starship and with the battle-clad Mata Hari. She held the small cube of the memory block that held the family images of Matt’s past. When he had been a normal human male of sixteen years, about to head off to the colony planet’s Port to buy parts for their soybean harvester and potato excavator. The time before he’d been orphaned and left to find any kind of work for alien task masters. The time before he’d first felt the touch of a neurowhip. She shivered.
Knowing they had ten hours before combat would occur, with plenty of time for her to visit with Leader Sarah about the alteration in plans, she pressed the cube into a reader slot of the accel-couch, reached back to place the neurolink circlet on her head, and closed her eyes as she began the alpha rhythm that would activate the memories.
“Matthew, come inside for dinner,” called his mother’s warm voice.
Young Matthew left the hillside grain shaft and his six-legged groundhugger pet to hide as best it could, hoping his father Benoit would not find his pet. He walked to the earth-walled homestead that his mother Kristin had made into a warm, welcoming and cozy place for him and his four sisters. His Dad worked him too hard, but he understood they had to grow their own food and extra food to sell for platinum Standards. So they could buy machinery parts and pay for vidlink tutoring of him and his sister Charlotte in school stuff. Sometimes he wished there was a live tutor in a school house with other live students, but homesteads in this rural part of Thuringia were too far apart for students to gather in a group. And vidlink education had been the standard teaching mode since humans had left Earth for the stars. Or so his parents told him.
“Hi Mom,” he said as he entered the kitchen. Moving to the sink he washed his hands under the attentive look of his father Benoit. His brown-haired sister Charlotte was focused on a datapad filled with a homework assignment. His other three sisters were already seated, playing a game of Rock and Scissors.
His Mom Kristin looked away from the microwave cook unit to him, her face pink from the heat of the radiant stove that kept their four room homestead warm despite the thunderstorms and winter gales that buffeted them this time of year. She brushed a strand of black hair away from her high brow, smiled at him, then nodded at a stack of plates. “Matthew, will you lay out the plates for everyone? And bring a pitcher of lemonade from the cooler? Thank you son.”
Matthew did as asked, then sat at the round table, with his father to his right and Charlotte to his left. His younger sisters Melody, Janine and Sally sat close to his mom.
“Favorite, favorite,” teased Charlotte under her breath.
Matt ignored the latest tease line of his twelve year-old sister. She knew he was almost an adult at sixteen, and she could not stand the fact that their Dad had tasked him with the job of buying machine parts at Elios Port, using the groundskimmer to get there. It was a five hour journey down the peninsula and over rolling flatlands, and he knew that Charlotte wanted to ride with him. But Matt had not invited her since he understood his Mom wanted to teach needlework embroidery to Charlotte and her younger sisters, while his Dad worked the potato excavator to bring in the last bushels of potatoes before the ground froze winter solid. So he changed the subject.
“Having any luck with your trig lessons?”
She turned upset brown eyes his way. “Who said I was having any trouble!”
Matt just smiled, enjoying how his years in the family had taught him the art of reading what worried other people. Doing bad in math was his sister’s pet peeve. So, he let the dig lie and looked up as his Mom laid down a platter of roast groundhog, then sat herself.
“Shall we say grace?” asked Kristin Dragoneaux.
Matt bit his lip, knowing his Mom was lightly teasing their Dad, who preferred the Old Catholic grace to his Mom’s Unitarian praise of the Spirit of Life.
Together the seven of them said grace to the Spirit of Life, each of them happy to be with each other.
Eliana blinked her eyes, pushing away the wetness she felt. This family scene was soooo like her own times at home with her older brothers Ioannis and Konstantinos, her Mom Beatrice and her Dad Andre. So normal was this memory of Matt’s. And so soon to be his last memory of his family together. Did he regret not inviting his sister to ride into the Port with him? She would not have been kidnapped by the harvesters if he had taken her with him to Port Elios. She sighed to herself. Every person had regrets of the past and hopes for the future. As she had hopes for herself and Matthew, once this Anarchate crusade was finished. They should be able to find an out of the way colony world where they could blend in with fake names, buy a homestead or craft shop, settle in and begin a family. Children.
She so wanted children. And she so hoped that her crossbreed nature would not require them to use an artificial neonatal placental unit. In her mind, a new image took shape from Matt’s memory sharing. This image was not of his family.
Matt winced from the lash of the neurowhip on his bare back, did not strike back at the six-legged Malidon creature who ran the cloneslave vats for an absentee owner, and reached into a small metal vat to haul out a cloneslave fetus now seven months old that belonged to the rat-like Spelidon species. It lay inside a clear cylinder that served as an artificial placenta since no normal female Spelidon would willingly give birth to a baby that would be mind-encoded for obedience to any sapient that paid enough platinum Standards to possess the ultimate in a personal Servant. Or personal toy for sadistic torture. Or worse. Matt tried not to think of what the wrinkled fetus with two eyes, a long hairy tale, three-fingered hands and a rat-like snout would think of its existence.
A life he would not call it. Not when its brain was subject to neurolink spasms that would fix a Work Equals No Pain engram within its deepest identity. It would expect to feel pain if it was not working. Whatever that work might be. The Master would define the work and the cloneslave would perform. Tilting the glass cylinder, he uncapped the sensor plate that had monitored the alien’s growth and mentation. Placental fluid ran out to disappear through slots that pierced the delivery bowl. Putting a dry towel onto the metal bowl, he laid the newborn infant onto the towel, squeezed its chest to expel fluid, and waited for the gasp and squall of birth awareness. Blinking wetness from his eyes, Matt knew that his cushioning of the newborn fetus with the towel was the last kindness it would know. Biting his lip, he renewed again his vow to escape the job of being a cloneslave decanter and to move up in the work castes of the Anarchate. Perhaps to something with some chance of personal choice. Like being a Protector of an alien owner.
The Spelidon baby squalled its first breath. Its forearms reached out for a hug.
Matt turned away, moving down the line of cloneslave fetus tubes, each in a small vat, preparing to decant another life into slavery. Any effort to comfort the tiny creature would only bring another lash from the supervisor’s neurowhip. And he had learned that mental pain from a neurowhip was far more intense than simple physical pain. Sighing, he looked away from the squalling Spelidon and focused on the next tube.
It was a job. Just a job.
“Nooooo!” Eliana wailed inside herself.
Blinking her eyes open, she reached out, lifted the memory circlet from her head and pulled the memory block from its slot. Her mouth felt dry. Her eyes were too wet. Her mind was filled with firsthand knowledge of an Anarchate horror she had only read about. As something that only happened rarely, to those sapients who violated an Anarchate Rule. She knew better now. She knew it happened whenever some rich sapient wanted a life Servant or an organic play toy. She knew, now, it was a routine part of living in the Anarchate. Eliana looked aside.
Matthew still sat below deck level in the Interlock Pit, only his head showing above its laser flashing depths. The fiber optical neurolink cable was attached to Matt’s neck, just below his skull. So. He was still in ocean-time, communing with Mata Hari and feeling this starship like a suit of clothes.
Now she understood why taking an alien AI as a mind partner was a minor bother compared to being a cloneslave decanter. How it was far down the list of bothersome things that Matt had experienced in his life. She had thought, as a molecular geneticist who sometimes saw the sad results of an uncorrected hereditary disease, such as Tay Sachs Syndrome or Downs Syndrome, that she had seen the harsh side of life.
She had not. Thinking again of why she loved Matthew, she gave thanks again that her people, the Greeks and the Derindl, lived not under the heel of the Halicene Conglomerate. She suspected that any survivors of their eco-destruction of her planet would have been taken off planet only upon signing a bondServant contract, or worse. As for the children of such refugees . . .
Eliana shuddered, put the memory block into a storage alcove of her accel-couch, and got up to go see Sarah, Suzanne, Knut, anyone who was a fellow human like her. Not someone of the Anarchate. Not an Owner of lives.
George O’Hussey looked away from the wallscreen vidcast that said they were diverting from landing at Morrigan in order to rescue humans kidnapped by a genome harvester starship and met the green gaze of Suzanne.
“Milady, I want to help the Vigilante free these people. He needs a battle companion, someone to help in the human way, beyond what his combat suit can do for him,” he said.
His newfound love reached up to her blond curls, twisted a few around a finger, showed a grim expression, then nodded. “I understand, George my love. You Irish have always been the romantic warriors who hear the call to freedom and honor.” She smiled. “Or so I learned those times on Omega when you talked about how the O’Hussey line of Fermanagh were warrior poets respected in this Earth land you call Ireland, or Eire. I thought it exciting at the time.” She bit her pink lip. “Now, I worry for you. After all the violence we have seen while being aboard this alien starship, I worry that the love of my heart may not come home to me.”
George stepped to her and held her warmness close to his chest, cherishing the feel of her embroidered dress, the apple smell of her hair, the smoothness of her cheek. It felt right. It was the closeness he’d needed in all the long years he’d worked for an alien Owner as the Repair manager. And like Suzanne, he too feared losing her. But people descended from the Tuatha De Danann had always understood the pathway of honor. And courage. He cupped Suzanne’s freckled chin and looked deeply into her green eyes.
“My love, I will come back. In one piece. With as many of the kidnapped people as we can find.”
Suzanne half-smiled, then gestured with her head toward the wallscreen at their side. “But this Mata Hari AI says no complaints or inquiries will be accepted. They are preparing for battle in ten hours or less. How do you get this Matthew’s attention?”
George had worried the same thing. But seeing the embroidered spring dress of his love gave him an idea. “Sarah. Sarah Vasiliades can always get the attention of Matt’s lifepartner Eliana. If I can convince her I am serious, she will put me in touch with the Vigilante.”
Suzanne nodded, then slowly stepped out of his embrace. “Then go, dearest George, before I use my IT wiles to seal the slidedoor!”
He smiled at her, hearing her jest and hearing also her heartache. George turned, tapped the exit patch, and stepped out into the Spine hallway. He turned and headed for the roomsuite of Sarah Vasiliades. Being Greek, she would understand the call of honor. She would help. Or so help the Great Goddess, he would . . .
Sarah looked up at the buzz of the slidedoor’s admit intercom. She motioned to Gatekeeper the AI to stay on the far side of the table where they had been calculating likely costs for settlement housing, food, transport, the cost of a common dormitory versus solo apartments, and a million other details related to helping all her people. Her fellow humans. Most of whom needed a job and all of whom needed to feel safe from the roaming violence of life within the Anarchate.
“Gatekeeper, I’ll get it and send whomever away. Then we can head for the commissary to discuss these issues with everyone who worries about our settlement. Okay?”
“Of course, milady Sarah,” it said in a warm bass tone, the status lights twinkling in a pattern she knew indicated its amusement at the human need to separate tasks versus its choice of assigning mindsegments to match multiple tasks.
She tapped the admit patch. The slidedoor opened. George O’Hussey stood there in his Repairs jumpsuit, hands clasped behind his back and a determined look on his flushed face. “George, something wrong?”
Nope,” he said lightly, but keeping the serious look. “I came to ask your help in contacting this Mata Hari AI so I can offer my combat aid to Matt Dragoneaux the Vigilante. When he goes to rescue the kidnapped people of Morrigan. A second gun and an extra pair of ey
es are always useful. And I used lasers in my work. I won’t get in his way.”
George’s offer surprised her, especially in view of his and Suzanne’s announcement of being a Committed couple. But she knew his determination to do a job right from the time she had first encountered him seven years ago, not long after his arrival. While stubborn, he got any job done right the first time. And made sure his workers, alien or human, did the same. And George had always been focused on personal honor. Like Matthew.
“Well, come in George so we can discuss this.” She turned away and headed for the cushion chair opposite the two meter globe of Gatekeeper. “You know Gatekeeper. He was helping me figure out the types of supplies and options we will need to pursue once we land on Morrigan.”
“Gatekeeper, good to see you,” George said firmly, then stood to her side and looked down at her. “Will you call this Mata Hari into holo appearance here? So I can make my case?”
“George, of course I will help you as best I can. But are you and Suzanne certain this choice is right . . . for the two of you?”
He nodded stiffly. “She understands my heritage. My family may trace back to South Boston on old Earth, but our heritage is based in the land of Eire. And we follow the traditions that descend from our Celtic ancestors. Fighting for the right has always been the way of honor for them, and now for me. This cloneslavery thing is an abomination. I want to help save the captives from that evil.”
Sarah thought of her own family’s Greek heritage and how a long ago ancestor had fought in Greece’s war of independence against the ancient Ottoman Empire, before Earth’s first world war. Her parents and grandparents had kept this ancestor’s black and white flat image in a place of honor on the fireplace mantle. And had taken it to the dinner table when Greece’s independence day was celebrated once a year. No matter that their colony was a Second Wave one located forty-six light years away from Earth. Tradition and memory were what mattered. She sighed.
Vigilante Series 2: Nebula Vigilante Page 14
