Star Vigilante (Vigilante Series) (25 page)

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 mitochondrial 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.

From a hundred meters overhead, in the clear blue sky, there sounded a great whooshing, then a caress as feathers rode sun-heated thermals. An avian hunter, perhaps a scavenger? His Library research had mentioned a buzzard-like creature of great wingspan, an avian that haunted the dry canyons and high cliffs of the Meloan Desert. They were rarely seen due to their low numbers and the long time it took the juveniles to reach full plumage. The avian had seen him and circled high above, perhaps wondering whether he would leave behind parts of a meal it could scavenge. Matt smiled. It would have no luck this time. All he sought was water, shade and coolness. Blinking, calming his inner heart, he pressed both palms to the boulder surface he squatted on. Eyes closed, he listened with hands and feet . . . for distant vibrations.

Anything large made vibrations that could be detected miles away—if you listened in the right way. Clearing his mind, centering his spirit, Matt sought calmness. Solitude. In a meditation remotely similar to that practiced by Zen Buddhist monks sitting
zazen
on Earth of ages ago, he reached out with more than just his five senses. He felt and listened in a special way.

Thump-thump. Thump
. Three thumps in a row.

Where?

Far to the north, moving away. He decided this land predator did not know of him, had not smelled his strange scent on the wind, and did not seek his blood. Matt opened his eyes and looked down at the pool.

The water resembled a black mirror, one which reflected only his shadow, and that due to sideways lightbeams that bounced off nearby boulders and lightened the darkness beneath the giant boulder. He could not see his face in it. Nor did it speak to him, like the ancient sorcerer’s mirror in a story he’d once read at home, with his parents, before their capture by the genome harvesters.

His throat tightened, tears suddenly appearing.

Memories!

Roughly, he wiped away the useless tears. Turning around, he looked out past the overhang at the sere landscape of the Meloan Desert, thinking and feeling too many things. He sought escape.

This desert was not typical for Halcyon.

The Mother Trees filled most of the planet. The arboreal forests were indeed the dominant plant lifeform. But here and there, local geography and meteorological fluctuations created something different. The Meloan Desert was different. Once the bottom of an ancient seabed, it had been lifted up to prominence as ancient tectonic plates rubbed, scraped and squeezed each other. Then, with high rocky mountains formed to its west and northwest, it had fallen into their adiabatic rain shadow. The high rainfall trees and grasses had died out, grazing animals left, and only those lifeforms able to subsist on sparse water, survive lashing heat, and endure a wide temperature range as the nights turned frigid, only they stayed behind. Here in the Meloan Desert, multicolored mesas, boulders and V-shaped canyons scarred the planet’s surface . . . much like a plow furrows a farm field. Like back home.

No!

Pushing away the memory pain, Matt focused on enjoying the naturalness of his environment. This desert was a special place, as important to the planet’s lifeweb as any other ecotonal niche. It had its function to fulfill. Just like him, Eliana and the Derindl.

He tried again, looking out from his hideaway.

Pink flowers bejeweled the cacti-like plants. Pale green leaves lined the salt-resistant bushes that spotted dry mesa flanks. Stunted, dark green trees much like ancient Earth junipers covered the northern flanks of the mesas, running like a furry carpet over rock, gully and slope. They grew little on the southern flanks, where the winter rainfall was less. And all across the desert, in places like this, deep within the cool shade of the boulder overhang, the beauty and untouched naturalness of the desert sang to him. Reminding him. Reminding him of the Promise, his pledge to
her
memory that he would use his new abilities to help those in need, to bring some justice where none existed, to be more than a tool of others, to—

Helen!

Finally, he cried. There was no escape. The tears flowed freely.

Eventually he reined in his feelings and shut away her memory. Turning around, Matt cupped hands in the
tinaja
pool, brought them to his lips, and drank. Thirsty, he drank his fill, until his belly bulged with water, taking up every space except that occupied by the tube-sack. Washing his face, combing back his hair with trembling fingers, Matt finished his simple ritual. Stepping out, he blinked, adjusted vision, and stood on a low parapet. He looked southeast toward the Stripper.

Duty. Honor. Obligation. The Promise
.

He repeated his protective mantra over and over and over again.

It was poor armor against his feelings, his memories, his desires, his hopes for Eliana and himself. But it was all he had. Putting away the memory of Helen, and carrying before him the image of Eliana, Matt climbed down the boulder and resumed running in a long, easy, marathon-like stride.

Dimly came one memory he welcomed.

Once, aboard an alien freighter, he’d bought a history cube on the peoples of Earth. Never having been there, never having had much formal schooling, he had wondered about the home planet of his race. In the bookcube he’d read about his grandmother’s tribe, the Apache Amerindians of the White Mountain Reservation. They inhabited a forested upland of ravines, ridgelines, mountains and ponderosa forests not far from the wasteland called the Mohave Desert. Both places were located in the southwestern part of a continent smaller than the one called Asia. Perhaps the nearby Mohave Desert had been like the Meloan Desert. The Apaches had been tall—nearly two meters tall, with a high forehead, black hair and a legendary endurance. It had been written that they could track any other human, even those with tech aides, better than any other tribe. It had been written they were feared fighters who belonged to Clans named after respected animals of their homeland--bear, coyote, eagle and panther. They could go without food, water or rest longer than any other tribe--it had been written. Riding horses captured wild and from Spanish invaders, the Apache had joined with the neighboring Pueblo tribes to throw out the Spanish invaders. The bookcube had labeled the event as the Pueblo Revolt of A.D. 1680. But long before the coming of the Europeans, the Apaches had lived in unity with their land, learning from it and cherishing it.

Was he human enough to do as well? Did the blood of his Apache ancestors still run deep in him? Could he run forty miles—or seventy kilometers—in one day? Matt decided to find out.

Long past nightfall, he ran. Not tirelessly, but still he ran.

His heart labored a bit. His lungs drew in air with long, shallow inhalations. Dry lips had long since cracked, but he felt no pain. And he’d long ago passed the lactic acid “barrier” that cripples most human muscles, forcing the runner to either stop or take in more electrolytes. Matt’s bioupgrade had solved that problem. Still, he felt tired. He’d covered at least sixty kilometers in about twelve hours of zigzag running. Running over broken ground, across talus slopes, atop mesas filled with dark-green trees, and then down again, always following his inner map, always aiming for where that map said the Stripper lay.

In darkness lightened only by the stars, he saw his way forward, following red heat blobs as the land gave up its daytime heat. Absent one of Halcyon’s two moons, it was not an easy job. There was no trail, and he bled from cacti scratches and a few rock cuts on his ankles and shins. Blinking, Matt talked to his nanoDocs. They dumped more Human Clotting Factor into his bloodstream, stanching the blood loss. He wished he could as easily heal the bruise on his right hip. He’d fallen against a boulder when the talus rocks shifted under him, throwing him off balance. Still, he persisted. Still, he ran. Sweat cooled on his back, leaving behind milk-white salt streaks. Muscles twinged, yelling pain. Feet ached, seeking relief. His shoulders and arms swung rhythmically, working as stride-pumpers, leaving joints sore. His cyborg upgrades did not make him immune to skin cuts, fatigue and soreness . . . they just healed him faster than human-normal. So, he endured more.