Star Vigilante (Vigilante Series)

by T. Jackson King

  “Understood,” his symbiont whispered, her cloud-like presence in his mind receding a little as she gave full attention to the minisats, planetary broadcasts, and scores of spy-Remotes they had spread around Halcyon.

  Feeling vaguely uneasy, Matt stepped down into the Interlock Pit. Alone on the Bridge, except for . . . . he pushed away his feelings for Eliana. Instead, he dwelled within the whirlwind fury he still felt at what had happened to her.

  Only once did he wonder if more than fury now drove him.

  Just once.

  But he didn’t count the number of times he wished her uninjured, whole and gazing at him with honest appreciation.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Seventy kilometers north of the Stripper, Matt and Mata Hari encountered the machine’s outer Defense perimeter. It consisted of surprisingly low tech balloons, outfitted with passive sensors. The helium-filled balloons held station by means of simple hydrogen peroxide attitude control jets. This was an innocuous picket line, meant only to alert the Stripper to the approach—and movement past its perimeter—of significant weaponry or assault craft.

  Matt moved Mata Hari back a few kilometers, took Hover station, and reviewed the microwave signals tightbeam-relayed to him from his crawler-jumper miniProbes. Those Probes had earlier penetrated the perimeter, crossed seventy kilometers, and now lay within a few hundred meters of Stripper—so far undetected. The miniProbes owed their success to stealthy carbon-composite fiber construction and to energy provided by miniature photosynthetic power cells. Their physical shape resembled flowers. And since the Stripper ignored normal flowers, Matt had guessed it would ignore crawling flowers. Matt went to gestalt perception. Multiple views filled the downlinked screens of the Pit and the forward holosphere, painting for him a picture of the local terrain and of his opponent. Sitting in his glass chair, with chin resting on one palm, he took in the images.

  This part of south continent was a semiarid upland. On the west it was fringed by avocado-green scrub forests, mud-brown prairie grass, and wind-carved buttes. The blood-red buttes reached for the pale blue sky like sentinels praying before the gates of antiquity. His combat Plan required water, lots of water. Nearby, a deep blue creek trickled downslope, passed under the ship, and became—seventy kilometers further southeast—a small river that disappeared into the front maw of the Stripper. It failed to emerge from the machine’s rear—industrial processes always require water. Only to the east, at the seacoast that bounded this coastal upland, did water move freely.

  Sad. Matt thought the upland possessed a stark beauty all its own, in the way deserts and arid wastelands on many planets always show beauty. Life on the cutting edge of bare survival can be beautiful. But in arid lands, life is always stressed, and so . . . this part of Halcyon must already be dying—thanks to the Stripper. Eventually it would move further north and eat the Derindl settlement of Mother Tree Xylene. The forest-city lay just a few kilometers beyond him and starship Mata Hari. With a tight stomach and sour mouth, Matt forced himself to look more closely at the Stripper. At a machine. At something that resembled a black widow spider sitting in a furrowed web of destruction.

  Something obscene.

  The Stripper hulked six kilometers wide by six klicks long. It rose a kilometer high. The hull was red steel, boxy in form, and flat on top . . . except for a central pillar that looked like a giant wart. Lights blinked all over its armored hull, in no particular pattern. Matt blinked, bringing on-line telescopic views from the miniProbes. The Stripper’s hull enlarged. Tiny beads became scores of weapons pods. Pods outfitted with lasers, cannons, and chain-guns. On the central wart-pillar, antimissile and attack-missile launchers covered its skin like hairs on a warthog. Lower down, but still above the upper deck, the pillar’s four sides sported over-the-horizon and ozone backscatter radar panels. They glimmered matte black against the dried blood color of armor plating. A bit lower down, where the central pillar spread its skirts onto the machine’s upper deck, the square blocks of pressor, tractor and deflector beam projectors hop-scotched across the upper deck. They stood ready to provide Local Defense, ready to intercept nuclear warheads incoming on hypervelocity missiles. But the upper deck image wavered.

  Matt focused on that image.

  Yessss. The wavery heat exhaust image offered, for the first time, a way inside the Stripper, something he could use as the spearpoint of his plan to defeat the alien machine.

  He watched intently as heat-plumes rose from several grilles set into the top deck, casting off noxious gases and waste heat from reduction and oxidation furnaces. That figured. This Stripper—any Stripper—literally melted its way across a planet, extracting minerals down to a depth of seventy meters. It processed them internally, then dribbled heavy-metal contaminated waste-slag into the blackened, smoking furrow it left behind. A ka-chunk sound emitted by the Stripper startled him.

  A hundred meter long sausage of shining red metal had been ejected from the Stripper’s rear. The tube arced through the sky and clunked down next to the waste furrow. Waiting to be picked up, he would bet, by a Halicene Conglomerate robot freighter. No doubt the freighter would approach, provide a code for defense perimeter access, enter, load the raw ore tube using tractor beams, and then depart outsystem for the industrial processing plant that no doubt lay inside the Halicene MotherShip. It was still distant from them, over 1,200 AU away, where Legion and his kind now ravished the asteroid belt that circled the F5 giant star.

  “An impressive device,” Mata Hari said, breaking the Bridge silence.

  “Quite so.” Matt sat back gingerly in his glass chair—his neck felt sore where the cable connected. “Too bad it relies on Nullgrav repulsion plates for hover and forward movement—well-placed mines can blow off tractor treads.”

  Mata Hari laughed softly. “That’s probably why it doesn’t use them. And tread segments need to be replaced now and then.” In his mind’s eye, Mata Hari’s persona-image reappeared as the amber-skinned Mata Hari spy dressed in a lacy white dress, one hand touching her cameo pendant. It seemed the software glitch had been repaired.

  Matt rubbed his chin, felt bristles, and didn’t care—Eliana wasn’t around to notice. “Think we could bury a few atomic mines ahead of its route . . . and wait for it to run over them?”

  The Mata Hari persona frowned thoughtfully as she too sat in a glass chair, dressed in a two hundred year-old Victorian-style pearly lace dress, her narrow chin resting on her pale palm. Mata Hari held silent a moment. “It could be done,” the persona said musingly. “But look at the Pit’s left side repeater screen. The one for UV light. See?”

  Matt blinked and rotated nanoware UV lenses in front of his contacts. Ah. Now he could see it. Collimating beams raked the ground in front of the Stripper, out to a distance of two kilometers.

  “Damn. It uses linear accelerator beams to induce re-radiation of gamma rays and neutrons from buried thorium or uranium.” Even as Matt worked, he wished Eliana could be with him now. “It’s a nice two-for-one technique—they detect buried atomic weapons at the same time the Stripper prospects for transuranic ore in the soils and rock.”

  “Exactly so,” Mata Hari said. In his mind, over the PET relay, Matt watched as the Mata Hari persona-image laughed delicately, then took 3D form in a holosphere above the Pit. “Perhaps we could redirect a nickel-iron asteroid into orbit about Halcyon, de-orbit it, and let it impact atop the Stripper?”

  “What size did you have in mind?”

  “About twelve kilometers across. That is large enough to vaporize the ecotoxins stored in the Stripper.”

  Matt shook his head. “That would generate an explosive yield of more than 10 million megatons. Yes, it would certainly destroy that armored beastie out there—along with half the planet. You’d induce nuclear winter, fill the atmosphere with enough fine particulate matter to block the photosynthetic cycle, and end up killing every Mother Tree on the planet. Along with most higher life forms—like the Derindl.” The SQUID implants in
Matt’s scalp hummed minutely as he thought-imaged very graphic pictures. “A bit too drastic of a solution, Mata Hari. We’re here to save the planet—not destroy it in the process of freeing it.”

  “But it would work,” she protested, sounding irritated.

  He sighed, rubbed fatigue from his eyes, and allowed his onboard nanoDocs to feed him some caffeine and mega-vitamins. “Mata Hari—refer to human history, subtopic the Roman War against Pyrrhus of Epirus, around 279 B.C. Subject—the ‘victory’ of Pyrrhus at Asculum and its cost. Some victories humans can’t afford.”

  “You asked for a solution!”

  “So I did.” Matt turned to a different Interlock screen. “Mata Hari—show me the spectrographic readout for the Stripper’s surface composition. I want to know what it’s made of.”

  “Complying,” she said, looking peeved. The screen filled with scores of vertical lines that peaked, then held steady, showing the Stripper’s constituent elements. “This is passive spectroscopic monitoring, based on reflected light—as in stellar spectral analysis. The interior hull—as seen through those exhaust heat grilles—is a titanium, beryllium, bismuth, chromium, molybdenum, and high-carbon steel alloy. It is bonded to an overlying yttrium-rich ceramic coating that is probably superconductive. And atop that is an ablative coating of carbon-carbon—identical to what we use on our own hypervelocity warheads to protect them during atmospheric reentry.”

  Matt grunted. It was pretty much what he’d expected. “What about an active-scan of its innards? Got any ideas on how we can look inside this beastie? Without setting off ecotoxin release, of course.”

  Above the Pit hovered the holosphere of Mata Hari. The late-Victorian Mata Hari sniffed, as if he’d insulted her. “Despite my asteroid option, I do understand human organic parameters. Now then . . . well, we could detonate a three-megaton thermonuclear device at an elevation of ten kilometers above it—or better yet, to a side opposite us, out over the ocean. With the Stripper sitting between us and the fireball, Ship’s neutrino detector could then tell us whether the Stripper’s fusion-bottle power plant and core memory units are shielded by collapsium or neutronium.” On another Pit side screen, an image appeared, illustrating his partner’s scenario. “As an additional benefit, we’d also get x-ray fluorescence and accelerated neutron activation ‘pictures’ of the Stripper’s interior architecture. Even down to things such as how much silicon and germanium are present in its CPU memory units. What do you think?”

  A novel solution and very promising. “How much would the nuke’s EMF pulse disrupt Halcyon planetary communications and their optoelectronic devices?”

  “There would be little disruption,” Mata Hari said firmly. “All commercial comsats are hard-shielded from x-ray and neutron irradiation, while most Mother Trees are too far away for their microwave communications to be affected. Fiber optic comlinks are immune to such effects. Only the nearby Mother Tree Xylene, located behind us, would be affected. The fusion light flare would scorch some young buds and branches, but the tree’s leaves would survive the jump in stellar radiation levels. And the local Derindl could replace scrambled solid-state circuits and datacubes within days.”

  “Good Option, partner.” He grinned mentally. “And by the way, the real Mata Hari dated from the World War I period of human history, a good fifteen years later than that pink Victorian outfit you’re wearing.”

  “Thank you for the fashion opinion,” she sniffed, “but you know nothing of Margaretha Geertruida Zelle, a young Dutch woman who married a violent alcoholic Captain of the Dutch army, traveled to Java with him in 1897, had two children by him, divorced him in Paris, and then reinvented herself as an exotic dancer, courtesan and French spy.” Mata Hari paused in her prim reproof, then continued. “This lace filigree dress is modeled after a 1902 photograph of her, and it fits the sophisticated clothing that a woman spy would adopt for a party with generals and diplomats during World War I.”

  “Really? Show me!”

  Mata Hari did so, her image now holding a black and white postcard that depicted the famous woman wearing exactly what the persona wore. “Believe me now?” she asked sternly, her image turning thin-lipped and aloof.

  Amateur historian that he was, Matt knew when he was outclassed. He nodded. “I’m convinced. But tell me again, why is she a . . . role model for you?”

  Mata Hari’s persona image brushed back a wisp of black hair, appearing unmollified by his concession. “Well, because she was tall, slim, and beautifully formed, with dark eyes, black hair, and amber skin. She later claimed to have been born on the Malabar Coast of India, became a devotee of the Hindu god Shiva, and took the name Mata Hari, or Eye of the Day, to entrance her rich male admirers. And while she worked for French counter-intelligence, she never betrayed secrets to the Germans—as her espionage trial claimed. She faced her firing squad at Vincennes, in October 1917, without blindfold and with admirable courage. I like her.” His symbiont then blanked her holosphere persona-image.

  Well!

  Matt decided it was better to focus on the AI’s plan to ‘sample’ the Stripper, rather than debate persona choices.

  The negatives of the plan were that the explosion of a hydrogen warhead near the Stripper would undoubtedly be FTL-reported to the Halicene MotherShip—and Legion, the Mican griffin-bird. As for the Stripper, he doubted the blast would activate full-scale ecotoxin release. That would happen only upon all-out attack from thermonuclear warheads and orbital beam weapons. The secret of exactly what else the Stripper would do lay within its hard-shielded software. But the Halicene weren’t stupid. They knew Halcyon could complain to the Anarchate provincial base, just twenty light years away, if the Stripper overreacted. The Derindl would allege interference in Halcyon’s affairs by another planet. That would be a lie, of course, since the Conglomerate was neither fish nor fowl in the classic sense of a planetary society. But such an alarm call would at least embarrass the Conglomerate. Far better to say to any Imperial inquiry—“We were only defending our industrial machinery!”—than to face down a Nova-class Anarchate battleglobe in its own backyard. A Nova tended to ask questions after Local Decimation—not before.

  He grinned suddenly. “Hey Mata Hari, you ever poked a stick in an ant pile? Just to see what happens?”

  Silence. “Noooo.” His symbiont felt puzzlement, her persona playing hide-and-seek at the edge of Matt’s mind like sunbeams breaking through the clouds. “Why? What relationship does investigating the Stripper have to do with irritating the communal lives of an Earth-evolved insect population?”

  God, if only Eliana were here. She’d understand. “Plenty. Thermonuclear option approved. Ready for Orders?”

  “Ready.” No persona-image filled his mind as the AI sulked over his failure to provide details about the utility of poking a stick into an ant pile.

  “Launch one of our hypersonic missiles—with a three-megaton warhead set for atmospheric detonation at ten kilometers altitude. As you suggested, aim it to the southeast of the Stripper, at a near-horizon angle that will allow us to intercept the neutrinos after they pass through the Stripper.” Matt paused, thinking furiously. “Hold on! Give the Administrator of Mother Tree Xylene a two-minute warning—we don’t want the Derindl blinded by accidentally looking at the fireball. Understood?”

  “Understood,” Mata Hari said, her voice tone sounding mollified now that he’d adopted her tactical suggestion. More sunbeams broke through the cloud. “Later, you must share with me the thought processes you used to reach this decision.” Mata Hari’s amber-skinned face peeked out from the cloud, peering hopefully at him.

  Inside, Matt smiled at the return of his partner’s persona-image. Would a “hunch” qualify as a formal thought process? Over the PET relay, he felt his partner go rooting through the databyte nanocubes stored in his prefrontal cortex, looking for a definition of hunch. “Patience, Mata Hari, you can analyze human intuition modes at a later date.” The Mata Hari face sighed dramatically. He chuckle
d. “Execute on my mark. And Mata Hari—don’t put through to me any appeals from Autarch Dreedle—before the detonation. But I will take comsat-relayed calls afterward. Clear?”

  “Understood. Complying.” Matt’s skin, his ship skin, shuddered as part of itself sped away, clawing for a ballistic arc and a point lying eighty kilometers southeast of them. “Mark, one minute, fifty-six seconds and—”

  The Spine slidedoor opened behind him. From the Pit, Matt glanced back.

  Eliana wobbled in on weak legs, dressed in halter top and shorts, her right shoulder encased in a plastifoam Healpak. She jerked to a halt, inspected him bleary-eyed, then made her way over to the accel-couch. She fell into it, gasping with pain. “What in Hades happened back there?” she asked through clenched teeth. “And can’t you even protect your Patron?”

  Damn. Too soon came the moment of truth, the moment he’d both wanted and feared. Matt climbed out of the Pit, reached down for the Samoan lavalava skirt that he cinched around his waist, then walked over and stood by Eliana’s couch, looking down at her pale, drawn face. Sweat beaded her brow. “I’m a piss-poor one,” he said. I’m very sorry. It won’t happen again.”

  Her mouth quirked into a half-grin. “Can I have a written guarantee on that? Or doesn’t the Vigilante Guild give guarantees?”

  “Our Guild discourages such guarantees. And I did save your life by getting you to the Biolab.” Hands clasped behind his back, Matt smiled down at her.

  “Well . . . .” The pain-irritation left her. She looked him up and down, noticed the bright colors of his lavalava, and smiled. “Verbal guarantees are still nice.”

  In his mind, a sotto-vocce countdown continued as Mata Hari gave them privacy. He thanked her for showing empathy, then focused on his Patron, a woman who was becoming much more than just an employer. “The best guarantee I can give is this one—I promise to put my ship, my body, and my life between you and harm’s way.” Her emerald gaze turned soft and caring. “For as long as I live, or as long as the contract lasts. Acceptable?”