Star Vigilante (Vigilante Series) (39 page)

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 glar
ed 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 human 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.

“Matthew? Please talk to me.”

“What for?”

She bit her lip. “I love you. No matter what has happened to you, I love you, care for you, need you, want you, and—”

“Will you still want me when I lose all body control?” he said acidly. “Will you still want me beside you at night, when I become a true cyborg, able to move only due to some bioelectronic implant? Will you—”

“Matt! Stop talking nightmares! I am good at what I do. This ship’s Biolab is better than anything I ever saw. Together, your . . .
Mata Hari
and I, we will cure you! We will decipher the nature of this slow virus and exterminate it!” she said, her tone lacking the hope implied by her words.

Unable to watch the woman he loved, Matt looked around the Biolab. He hadn’t been here in a long time, though it was a place where Eliana should feel at home. Strange devices crowded the walls, floor and ceiling, like the dream of some mad scientist in an ancient vidpic. Something undreamt of by Paladin or The Lone Ranger.

They were surrounded by bioengineering consoles, tanks of L-broth, atomic force microscopes, Kamakura gene sequencers, high-speed centrifuges, PCR vats, white frost-covered Gene Banks, and gene transplant remote manipulators. Like spider legs the manipulators hung from the ceiling, or crouched within BioHazard areas that were self-contained pressor-fields encompassing optical matter workrooms. Little transparent boxes littered the cavernous Biolab, each one dedicated to something eco-deadly. And miraculous. These devices were the tools of Eliana’s trade as a molecular geneticist, and the familiar parts of
Mata Hari ’s
Biolab. Other things lurked in the corners, hung from the ceiling, or surged out of the flexmetal floor like frost-heaved soil lumps. T’Chak devices. Transgenic modulators. Immune system regulators. Clone vats. Virus vector chambers. Other things for which Matt had no name and for which only Mata Hari
knew the purpose.

Lightbeams caressed his skin. Optical neurolinking could not be escaped, not even inside an isolation chamber. The group identity of
::
still coexisted with him, within him. He sighed and called out to his symbiont. “How bad is it, Mata Hari?”

Eliana turned his way, hope flaring as she saw him reach out to something. Even if it was a computer. “Can she help you, Matthew?” Eliana said. “Can you . . .
Mata Hari?” his Patron asked, for the first time addressing the AI with respect. Like a person.

In his mind, over the PET relays, he felt his partner hesitate. “Matthew, it is very bad. Look.”  A holosphere took form between him and Eliana. In red and yellow light it displayed a Gordian Knot nightmare image—the retrovirus that had infected him. “Your body is sick. The symptoms are tiredness and weakness, overlaid by connective tissue swelling and an autoimmune inflammation of your joints. It looks like mononucleosis combined with chronic fatigue syndrome. Those we can treat and even reverse. But the real damage is at your immune system level—and the neuron level.” His symbiont paused as Eliana bit her knuckles, her forced calm barely holding. “Your biochemistry pathology is terrible. You show elevated levels for your macrophages, T-cells, white blood cells and lymphokines, even with the
nanoDocs chasing the byproducts of the slow virus. Succinctly, you have one hell of a systemic infection. But more serious is the damage done to your stem cells.”