Star Vigilante (Vigilante Series) (5 page)

“Take your pick.”

“Pericles?” she whispered tentatively, raising a hand to her lips.

Ahhh
. “And who is Pericles?”

Eliana frowned thoughtfully. “Was. Actually, more of an organization. Named after an ancient Greek statesman. It is also the name of a Pure Blood human of Sigma Puppis who led the original Third Wave colonists to our new home.” She reached up to twist a few strands of jet-black hair, still avoiding his eyes. “They opposed the Union with the Derindl. But it was our only hope for survival as a colony. They . . . they hated crossbreeds like me. I thought them long dead.”

“Perhaps they are. Why does this attack suggest them to you?”

“Who knows!” Irritation filled Eliana’s voice. She slapped at the accel-couch rim. “You insisted I dwell in the Chaos of memories! It . . . it’s just that the Triune of Pericles prophesied that ‘no good would come of lying abed with aliens’—as he put it.” She focused again on the screen showing Hagonar and local space, now empty of the debris cloud.

“Interesting,” Matt said, then recalled recent human history.

Eliana’s home, Sigma Puppis, had been one of the first Union colonies—places where, mercifully, the native aliens were near one-to-one cousins of humans, and the yellow light of the G5 star suited humans. The Derindl came both male and female, they were mammalian to a remarkable degree, and aside from a bit too much copper in their hemoglobin-based blood, they resembled humans to within ninety percent of similarity. Still, any mating between such differently evolved species would always be sterile—unless the genomes of each species were modified to work together and produce zygotes that held the best potentials of both species. Unfortunately, the crossbreeds always needed artificial wombs to protect the mothers from immune-response reactions to the zygote’s strange blood chemistry. And when they reached maturity, they found themselves Strangers—belonging neither to the pure-strain humans nor the pure-strain Derindl. Such persons were loved by their parents, but they had a long way to go in achieving societal acceptance. Especially in a rigid caste society like that of the tree-dwelling Derindl.

“Eliana, has it been hard for you—growing up half-Human, half-Derindl?”

She looked his way, her expression stark and pained. “No harder than being a cyborg, I suppose.”

“
Touché
.” A direct hit from her sharp mind. But what lay underneath her tough-woman act, her defensiveness? “Patron, if you keep acting distant and aloof, you will get us both killed.”

“I will not!”

Her reply sounded weak even to his ears. “Patron, we were just attacked, for the
second
time. I have questions that need answering if I am to protect you.” She kept her gaze averted, her shoulders stiff as she sat in the accel-couch, as if she’d often endured verbal interrogation that hurt more than physical abuse. Well, there are other ways to appeal to someone as smart as Eliana. “Patron, why you?”

“Why me what?” She said, turning to him with open confusion. “I don’t understand your question.”

Outside, Matt’s ship moved through local space. Inside, on the Bridge, he word-danced with a neophyte to genocide, to wholesale slavery, to the Anarchate—where lives were toys easily discarded. “Eliana, why were
you
picked to find and hire a Vigilante? Why not your colony chief? Why not—”

“Ioannis could trust only me!” she said defiantly.

“And he is?”

“My half-brother. Eldest of two.” With lips compressed, she eyed him the way a mongoose eyes a snake, aware now of how he fenced with her.

“What does this Ioannis do?”

“He is Despot of the colony,” she said matter-of-factly.

Matt nodded agreeably. “He has no other reliable agents?”

She smiled faintly, as if amused by their word-dance. “He has several. They’re all in use down-planet or in the system. Look, I’m your Patron. You’re my Vigilante. This will all be explained to you by Ioannis once we arrive in-system. All right?”

“Sure,” Matt said mildly. “Uh, do you like mysteries?”

“Sometimes.” Sudden guardedness now showed. “Why?”

Matt gestured at the wallscreen. “Well, you might consider the mystery of
why
you were allowed to reach Hagonar Station, alive, and contact a Vigilante. The two attacks prove that one or several parties tracked you to Hagonar. Surely you realize that your brother has powerful enemies. Among the Halicene, at the very least.”

Sharp dismay filled her face. Eliana sat back hard in the accel-couch. “Look, I’ve never done this before,” she said, her tone one of resignation. “I’ve never been off-planet or out-system. But I love my Nest-mates, both Derindl and Human. We need help, badly. We need an advocate. We need someone who can spar and perhaps fight with greedy aliens. So I can see why Vigilantes are expensive. What do you advise?”

Matt admired her ability to be humble in addition to being smart. Yes, she was definitely teachable. “I advise rest, Patron. You just survived two attacks on your life. You’re aboard a strange ship with a strange man. And I doubt you got much sleep on the way out. Correct?”

“Correct,” she said, letting her tiredness show. “Where do I rest?”

“You may occupy the stateroom at the far end of the Spine hallway,” Matt said, nodding to the rear of the Bridge and the red slidedoor.

“Thanks.” Behind him, Eliana’s accel-couch opened up like a clamshell. She stepped out, swayed a bit, then walked over to him. Eliana squatted down at the edge of the Interlock Pit and stared into the cone, appearing both curious and somewhat repelled by what she saw. “I’m . . . I’m sorry to be so sharp with you, Matt. In my family, I’m usually the one who is the most even-tempered, the peacemaker of the Clan.”

Matt wondered at that but then recalled how uncertain he’d felt when first he’d gone into space, after the death of his family. “You mean for a Greek, you’re even-tempered,” he teased.

Eliana chuckled, allowing herself a friendly smile. “Yeah, we Greeks do have a reputation for passionate argument. But I’m half Derindl and they’re pretty mellow, most of the time.”

He wondered again about the native Derindl, a species his data files said were ecological engineers without peer, who lived in giant Mother Trees. Matt folded his hands in his lap and smiled back. “The Derindl . . . did you become a molecular geneticist in order to fit in better with their culture?”

Eliana eyed him warily, then relaxed again. “Their culture? It’s mine too, remember.” She looked up at the forward holosphere and its NavTactical icons, then back to him, her expression now serious. “Actually, I’m a scientist by default and by choice. My half-brothers, like most Greek males, run the Trade side of the Clan’s business. If you’re unmarried, a woman and want your own choices, you do science.” The bitterness in her voice surprised Matt. “But I also studied hard to please my Grandfather Petros and Grandmother Miletus. They . . . they always had time for me.” She stood up abruptly. “Uh, how long before we go FTL?”

Matt blinked, perceived a mind-image, and smiled amiably. “In three hours.” Should he let go the personal sharing and revert to employee mode? Eliana’s distracted gaze said yes. “Also, Mata Hari
tells me no one else threatens us. The incoming freighter has veered away and will dock soon with the station. Hagonar Central Control is overcome with irritation at the mess we left on their doorstep.” She smiled at that. “The outgoing Agonon-Thet starliner is already angling down-ecliptic to set up for its own Alcubierre Drive Translation. And Mata Hari
has finished its repairs from the recent conflict.”

Eliana’s mood changed suddenly, her manner now dark and brooding. “Computers are like that. They think all things can be fixed with new hardware.”

“Why not, Patron?” Mata Hari
 
said in a soft contralto voice, addressing Eliana directly for the first time since she’d come onboard.

Eliana looked badly startled, then glanced up at the ceiling. “Uh, because no matter what a doctor fixes, organics remember the pain!” she said with sharp certitude.

Mata Hari
laughed, her windchime voice echoing off the flexmetal walls of the Bridge. “I remember pain. I recently felt it.”

“My experience is just the opposite,” Eliana said tensely. “And I’d rather not talk about it.” She turned away from Matt and walked past the crystalline pillar forest of
Mata Hari ’s mind, aiming for the red slidedoor that led into the Spine hallway and its hundreds of private staterooms. Walking with shoulders stiff, back straight, and short tail flaring as it protruded from her blue jumpsuit, she seemed the embodiment of a Secret.

Well, she was his Patron after all, and entitled to some privacy. But Matt couldn’t help wondering why she hated computers.

As did Mata Hari, who now connected to him mind-to-mind. Once again she PET-imaged herself as a black-haired young woman wearing a white, floor length chiffon and lace dress with long sleeves and a low-cut bodice, with a large cameo at her throat. It was an image that befitted the historical Mata Hari ’s pre-war identity as the wife of a Dutch diplomat. That was before the real Mata Hari divorced the diplomat, worked in Asia as an exotic belly-dancer, then made her way to Europe and the employ of Kaiser Wilhelm’s Imperial German forces. In Matt’s mind-image, his Mata Hari
sat in a chair on the front porch of an old, Victorian-style house, fingers of one hand tapping the chair arm. “Matt, I think she’s going to be a problem.”

“I hope not.” This Job was shaping up to be a real challenge. And after seven years spent roaming Anarchate space, dealing mostly with aliens, he was intrigued by a Challenge that involved his fellow humans. And Eliana didn’t know the half of his ship’s combat abilities, or his own. Perhaps both sides could learn from each other?

Hours later, Matt awoke in the shadowed darkness of his own stateroom. He felt the touch of cool air currents, heard rasping air pumps and creaking metal flexwalls, enjoyed the blood-warm bed platform on which he lay, and felt a sense of ennui. Of dislocation. Of disorientation.

They’d undergone Alcubierre Translation.

The corollary of being able to create your own pocket universe within which the speed of light was hundreds of times faster than in normal Riemannian space, so you could travel quickly from star to star, is that the passage of time within the ship during the Translation can seem endless. It isn’t, but it feels that way. And something had touched him deep inside, touched that core being who had howled at the moon’s white disk over two million years ago, as the first humans scavenged on the Serengeti Plains of East Africa.

Matt sat up.

He did not need visible light to see his room.

Nanoware vision upgrades imaged it all—his workstation table, the library wall shelves filled with optical disks, the entrance to his fresher unit, three Calder-style mobiles dangling from the ceiling, the acrylic paint easel to one side, his weaving loom with its half-done Hopi Corn Maiden pattern, even his clothes hanging behind an actual wood-slat door. And on the wall opposite his bed hung his collection of edged, projectile and energy hand-weapons, including a feather-tasseled White Mountain Apache spear from his own tribal heritage. Matt saw them all through infrared energy. Energy given off by his body, which reflected back to him from the talismans of his life.

More images touched his eyes. Power sources studded the walls, floor and ceiling, their placement betrayed by ultraviolet sparks. A Navajo Ganado-style blanket hung on the wall like a dead black rectangle, soaking up infrared. Below it gleamed a small aquarium, filled with puffer-fish from the planetary sea of his last Job. The fish emitted their own infrared, but at a wavelength far below his own, and cold water is an efficient heatsink. Criss-crossing the room, like a 3D spiderweb, pulsed the coherent lightbeams of Mata Hari. Emitted by low power diode lasers, the lightbeams touched him from any direction and even followed him into the bathroom, the hot tub, or under the virtual reality helmet and chair resting in one corner of the room. With her optical neurolinking, Mata Hari
would never leave him, never abandon him, and never give up on him.

Some people might think of an insect caught in a spider’s web and pity the poor unknowing creature. Matt saw things differently. He saw himself expanded. He saw himself as the organic-inorganic Interface he really was. Neither solely machine, nor just a simple organic. And even without
Mata Hari, without Suit, there remained his body—his deadly body. Filled with antiviral biounits that protected him from eyes to toes, a cardiovascular bioupgrade for a High Threat environment, an extra kidney that recycled his urine, nylon-wrapped muscles and titanium-plated bones that gave him the strength of ten Heracles, and possessing fingertip lasers powered by a fuel-cell welded to one hip bone, he was a true cyborg. As such, he was used to blink-thought control over his instrumentalities.

Matt called up a vision of Alcubierre Space-Time in his mind’s-eye, then code-blinked. He wished to contemplate the endlessness of Chaos.

Mata Hari
projected a different image into his room. This holosphere showed the end of the Spine hallway and the palm-locked door leading to Eliana’s stateroom. In a blink he was inside her room, staring down from a ceiling point-of-view at the crossbreed woman as she slept on her bed platform. She lay naked atop the sheets. The sprawl of her limbs both hid and revealed, tempting him to linger.