The Vigilante Chronicles Omnibus

by Natalie Grey

  “As for the others…” Tafa examined each in turn. “I’d say five and eight are the most likely so far. Show me more on five.”

  “Five? Really?” Shinigami was surprised, but she wiped the other information and put up a map of energy signatures, intercepted transmissions, and a slowly-rotating 3D map of the facility.

  “They’re taking great care to make the output look like it’s a manufacturing plant, but I don’t buy it.” Tafa shook her head. “The shape of the windows is odd. I’m actually not sure those are windows, and those transmissions make no sense.”

  “They’re probably in code.”

  “Or they’re gibberish,” Tafa said. “And if you haven’t cracked them already, I’m guessing that’s what they are.”

  “Ohhhh.” Shinigami studied the data with new appreciation. “Organic life forms are so sneaky. All the data here are fake. They mean nothing. I hate that.”

  Tafa smiled. “Unless you find any more, I’d say five is our best bet.”

  “I say we just go, and if it’s not that, we try another one.” Barnabas had come onto the bridge while the two of them were talking, and now he adjusted his collar slightly as he studied the screen.

  “Nervous?” Shinigami asked.

  “Yes,” he replied flatly. “Yes, I am. Jeltor has been missing for a week, and I have no idea how long he can hold out.”

  Shinigami watched him for a moment. If they went in and found the wrong facility, they risked alerting the committee to their presence and losing valuable time. But Barnabas wasn’t stupid. He already knew what he was risking, and he didn’t often allow emotion to overwhelm him.

  She noted the faint dilation in his pupils and the way his pulse was beating quickly in his neck. His motions had the faint, too-quick undertone that came from adrenaline and cortisol. Yes, he was certainly experiencing strong emotions right now.

  She looked at Tafa. “How sure are you that this could be the research facility?”

  Tafa looked back at the screens for a long moment. “Very sure,” she said, with a nod. “This facility isn’t what they say it is, that’s for sure, and it is the most suspicious of the lineup you gave me.

  Shinigami nodded to her and Barnabas.

  “Take us down, then,” he said. He looked at the screens. “I’m guessing you’ll have to go through that canyon directly?”

  “If we don’t want to go blasting in the top, yes.”

  The building lay at the end of a canyon with spears of rock jutting up to make landing almost impossible. The only clear way to get in was down the length of the canyon, which was narrow and filled to the brim with sensors and turrets. Landing on the roof of the facility, while it was probably possible with the Shinigami’s maneuverability, would almost certainly alert the guards to their presence.

  “What about a Pod?” Barnabas asked.

  Shinigami considered this. “No good. Remember, I want to both destroy each defensive device and replicate its signal, and I can’t do that from a Pod. If I send you down and it turns out that the signals I’m sending don’t keep us invisible to their tech, we’ll have a problem I can’t easily solve, and the people in the facility will be alerted.” She gave him a reassuring smile. “But I’ll get us through that canyon quickly, I promise.”

  Barnabas’ lips tightened, but he gave her a nod. “I know you will,” was all he said, and Shinigami knew he was reassuring himself. As worried as he was, and anxious to have this over with, he wouldn’t take it out on them.

  Barnabas, Gar, and Tafa watched from the bridge as Shinigami descended through the atmosphere and approached the canyon. It was close to a mile long and was housed on one of the larger islands in the planet’s southern hemisphere, part of a volcanic archipelago that was remarkably inhospitable to life.

  “That’s another thing,” Tafa said. Everyone looked at her in confusion, and she smiled self-consciously. “Sorry, I was still thinking about why I’m so sure this is the place. If anyone escaped from that facility, it would be almost impossible to get out. The Jotun captives would have no water to swim through and the other species would have to climb straight up and out of the canyon, which is impossible, or take their chances going through the whole mile with all the turrets. Even if they’d killed everyone in the facility the automated defenses would still work, and once they got out of the canyon…they’re in the middle of nowhere, with no edible plants or freshwater. My other top choice was in a much more hospitable place.”

  Everyone nodded. Given the committee’s penchant for secrecy, this location made a lot of sense, and Shinigami was pleased with Tafa’s analysis. It could be frustrating to watch organic life forms make huge leaps of logic, but she had learned that what they called “instinct” often produced well-founded conclusions, and they simply could not articulate the reasons yet.

  She was already working to include Tafa’s latest leap in her own algorithms, identifying every factor she could and trying to replicate the technique on other data.

  ADAM and ArchAngel II were correct—working with organic beings was equal parts rewarding and insanely frustrating.

  She moved her holograph to sit in the captain’s chair as she guided the ship into the canyon. She had finished putting on her armor and decided to join the rest of the people on the bridge. Briefly, she wondered what it must be like only to do one thing at a time.

  It sounded terrible.

  The first part of the alert system had not seen them yet, and Shinigami created a map of every piece of machinery she could find on her scanners. A network sprang up on the screen, overlaid on the video of the canyon.

  As she had guessed, each sensor fed information to the others, which allowed the sensors to move the turrets into place before any ship was even in range. Moreover, it looked as though the turrets were programmed to track any ship down the length of the canyon, whether or not it was tagged as an enemy.

  That was smart, and Shinigami hated it when her opponents were smart. One wrong move and they’d be dealing with a veritable hailstorm of projectiles. She sighed and analyzed the first sensor’s outgoing signature. Then she copied it, launched a set of pucks at the sensor, and began broadcasting its message so that there was not even a blip in the signal when it was destroyed.

  Everyone on the bridge held their breath—except for Shinigami, who had no breath to hold. The doors slid open for her to walk in and she went over to the captain’s chair and settled into it, melding almost perfectly with the holograph.

  Her hair was always better in holograph form.

  Next up was the first pair of turrets. At first, Shinigami thought they only received signals, but she realized a millionth of a second later that they also sent signals to the other turrets about their tracking speed and pinged other turrets when their target went out of range.

  Because they did not seem to have noticed her yet, she was able to take them out without alerting the others. There was no data stream to interrupt.

  She proceeded through the canyon carefully, destroying each sensor and set of turrets in turn and replicating all of the signals. She did not stop them as she set the ship down and began the process of preparing the airlock.

  “The air is inhospitable here,” she reported. “I recommend helmets for you two.”

  “You as well,” Barnabas said immediately. “We don’t want them to know what you are if they catch sight of you.”

  “Smart.” Shinigami stood. “One other thing.” She panned the camera sideways to show a Jotun ship waiting outside the building.

  “There’s a ship?” Barnabas said immediately.

  “It hasn’t been used in some time,” Shinigami said. “Its systems are in a ready state of a sort, but it’s mostly dormant. The Jotuns are very good with quick activation times on their technology. I’ll see what I can figure out about it while we’re all inside.”

  “Good call.” Barnabas nodded to Tafa. “Stay here with the bridge sealed,” he instructed. He’d been careful of her feelings before,
but there was no equivocation now. “Until we determine if it’s safe, I don’t want you to take any chances. Is that clear?”

  Tafa nodded, swallowing.

  “As long as you’re aboard, we’ll put you in charge of opening the doors,” Barnabas added. “That means if anyone passes all of the automated checks somehow, they’ll still have to contend with you. For verification…hmm. Just ask anyone who tries to get in for a piece of information that only the three of us would know.”

  “Okay.” Tafa gave the Yofu version of a thumbs up: her two inner thumbs linked together, and the two outer ones pointing straight out to the sides.

  Shinigami responded with the “rock on” gesture, and Barnabas snorted.

  “All right,” he said as the assault team left the bridge. “Let’s go get our friend.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Shinigami went first as they approached the doors of the facility. That made Barnabas nervous, but she was indubitably the best one to disarm the doors and disable any alarms. She laid a palm against the door and thought for a long moment before nodding decisively. The door slid open.

  Silence. No alarms. Barnabas nodded, and they crept inside.

  They were in a pleasant antechamber that must be the receiving room for whatever dignitaries came to visit this place. As was the case with many Jotun spaces, water featured prominently: little streams ran along the edges of the room, providing a soothing sound and sending light bouncing off the stone walls.

  It was clear that no one used this room often, however. The air carried the faint scent of a fountain that hadn’t been cleaned, and the whole place had just a bit too much dust.

  Barnabas and Gar kept their guard up as Shinigami scanned the room and walked the edges of it. In the end, instead of guiding them through the big doors at the center of the back wall, she went to a smaller door on one side of the room.

  Which was when they heard the crying.

  It was only the faintest sound, but it was enough to make Barnabas’ heart twist in his chest. It wasn’t in a human register, but there was no mistaking what it was: a keening wail that held no hope.

  All three of them looked at each other, faces echoing the despair they were hearing. Then Shinigami turned back to her work with renewed determination and wrenched open the door to the side corridor. She strode inside without looking back, and there was no mistaking her expression.

  She was ready to kill whoever was doing this with her bare hands if she had to.

  Barnabas exchanged a quick glance with Gar before running after her. He caught up with her partway down the hall and was pleased to see she was slowing, drawing to one side of the corridor so she could check one of the rooms inside without being seen.

  She wasn’t going to let her anger get the better of her, then. That was good. She exchanged a look with Barnabas.

  Do you want to do this? You’re probably better at it.

  Barnabas gave a quick nod and was just taking his place when the door came flying off its hinges and a Jotun was thrown out of the room to slam against the wall and slide down it.

  It didn’t notice them as it staggered to its feet, and a moment later, another Jotun came running out of the room, one arm raised for a punch. The first only just made it out of the way, and the punch caught it on the arm. It leveled a strike at its attacker, but weakly.

  It was clear within seconds that one of these two Jotun was trained to fight and the other was not. Barnabas held an arm out to keep Shinigami and Gar back. If one of these two was not trained in combat, they were probably the scientist—which meant the facility was under attack, and that meant…

  He narrowed his eyes. Should they break this up?

  Shinigami, if the scientists are dead, do you think you can get into their results and undo what they did?

  Depends on how good they were about keeping records, Shinigami said drily. She leaned back as the stronger Jotun lifted the weaker one off its feet and slammed it into the wall.

  Which was when the strong one noticed the three of them. It pulled the weaker Jotun away from the wall, slammed it into the wall once more, and turned to face them. Everything about its movements conveyed a threat, and Barnabas shifted to the balls of his feet.

  “What’s going on here?” Shinigami asked before anyone else could speak. Barnabas had to hand it to her; she had the command-voice down. She spoke like she should be answered, and to his amusement, the Jotun obeyed without thinking.

  “He attacked me while I was in the records room.” His mechanical voice grated; something must have gotten knocked out of place in the sound box. “I suspected that he wasn’t one of the real scientists, and I was—”

  That was all he got out before the water in his tank began to foam and the biosuit staggered to its knees. He’d made the mistake of taking his eyes off his opponent, and the other Jotun had managed to reach up and jam something into one of the weak points between the plates of armor.

  Whatever he’d done, the stronger Jotun died quickly, and the weaker one hauled itself to its feet.

  “Who are you?” it asked without preamble. And then, strangely: “Are you Barnabas?”

  “I’m Shinigami,” said Shinigami. She jerked her head at Barnabas. “He’s Barnabas.”

  “My apologies. So the smaller humans are the females, then?”

  “Mostly correct. The standard height of a male human—”

  “Shinigami,” Barnabas interrupted. “This is not relevant.” To the Jotun, he said, “Who are you? That seems to be the big question.”

  The Jotun looked down at its opponent for a moment. “He was right. I’m not one of the scientists. I’m part of the Jotun Interplanetary Intelligence Agency, and my partner and I infiltrated this facility a month ago.”

  “So how did the guard not know who you were?” Gar asked.

  “It’s complicated,” the Jotun said evasively.

  “All right,” Barnabas said. His tone was just a touch too pleasant, and he saw both Gar and Shinigami step back a bit so as not to be in the metaphorical line of fire. “Here’s the deal: we’re here to find Captain Jeltor. You seem to not be on the committee’s side, so hopefully, you’ll help us find him. That would be good for you. What would not be good for you would be to get in my way.”

  “You have a way to get out of here?” the Jotun asked. “Because if you can get Jeltor out, I will gladly help you do that. I’m Gil, by the way.”

  “Barnabas. That’s Shinigami. That’s Gar.”

  “A Luvendi wearing armor,” the Jotun murmured. “Will wonders never cease!” A moment later he was back to business, however. “There are three more guards, all with suits like this one. My partner Wev is on another floor. We’ve been trying to isolate the guards all morning to kill them one by one. They were sent by the committee to ‘assist,’ us and they’re close to blowing our cover. We were going to steal their ship to escape.”

  “Let’s keep moving while we talk. But first—” Barnabas pointed. “All the records are in that room? All the data on the conversion process?”

  “Yes.”

  “On it,” Shinigami said at once. She strode into the room and groaned. “Hard copies?”

  “The scanner in the corner will allow quick digitization of the files,” Gil told them. “They were worried about someone being able to access the computer systems, so all the systems here are self-contained and the data is regularly transferred to hard copy and wiped.”

  “I hate competent people,” Shinigami said with feeling, yanking down a file and going over to the scanner. “I hope you’re okay with this room being a mess when I’m done because I’m not going to take the time to put everything back.”

  “Be my guest.” Gil sounded amused. “You showing up here is a stroke of luck, quite frankly. We knew we needed to get the data out, as well as Jeltor and as many of the experiments as we could, and we needed to kill the guards. I sense you’ll all make those objectives much easier.”

  “That sounds correct,” B
arnabas said simply. He hoisted one Jean Dukes Special. “Shall we? Jeltor first.”

  “Ah.” Gil set off, but his tone was worried. “I have…bad news about Jeltor.”

  “What is it?” Barnabas heard himself ask. In the records room, he heard Shinigami stop moving as she strained to hear. Gar had gone pale.

  “One of the guards seems to have decided to try to hurry things along,” Gil said. He led them to a junction and turned. “This way. We’ll be going up two flights. You see,” he said, returning to his explanation, “a week or so ago, Jeltor was delivered to us for conversion. We had spent the past few weeks before that trying to rehabilitate the other experiments, and we hadn’t had much luck. We strung things out as much as we could. We weren’t sure what they could see on the security feeds, so we had to pretend to work on Jeltor, but we weren’t really doing the whole procedure. The problem is, that soldier did do it, and I’m afraid Jeltor is partially gone.”

  The elevator arrived with a little ding and Gil went to step into it, but Barnabas grabbed his arm.

  “You can undo it, though, right?” His voice was dangerous.

  Most people would have quailed in the face of Barnabas’ anger, but Gil was not one of them. “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “I’m not a scientist. I sincerely hope that with this data, a way can be found to undo the damage—but I cannot be certain of that.” When Barnabas said nothing, Gil continued softly, “I wish I could.”

  Barnabas released his arm and stepped into the elevator silently, aware of Gar’s comforting presence at his side. His mind was whirling.

  He only vaguely heard Gil say, “What worries me is that the conversion process creates certainty, and certainty is very seductive. Extremism, for instance, takes hold even when there has been no chemical conditioning like there is in this case.

  “What does that mean?” Barnabas asked wearily.

  “He means that to be certain of your worldview is something people desire,” Gar said unexpectedly. “The world is uncertain, and people want it to not be. They’ll subscribe to ridiculous beliefs just so they can feel more secure.”