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.
Ahead of him, distantly, a faint rumbling sounded.
Th
e Stripper?
Matt increased his pace, anxious to face his opponent.
Run. Run, run, run.
Later, around midnight, he felt and heard the rumble of machinery quite clearly. Matt slowed a bit, almost winded, but felt the need for caution. He’d made his calculations and cross-checked everything with Mata Hari, but still . . . .
In the darkness, he topped the mesa he’d been climbing.
He saw it.
The Stripper’s blood red hull towered high above him. It reared into the night air, a moving cliff-wall. He stopped, still two kilometers distant, and took refuge behind a wind-sculptured sandstone pillar. Blinking, he adjusted eyesight to infrared, far infrared and ultraviolet. He set ears high, listening for the deadly whistle of a hypersonic projectile. By the time he heard it, it would be too late to react, but habit and training kept him on the Alert.
The hull of the Monster shimmered before his eyes.
The Stripper hulked six kilometers wide, six long, and a klick high. The hull was red steel, the shape boxy and flat on top except for its central wart-pillar. Lights glowed all over its armored hull. Matt blinked, bringing on-line telescopic views. The upper deck image wavered. He focused, seeking the objective of his naked trek into the belly of the beast. Ahhh. Heat-plumes rose from grilles set in the forward and rear decks.
The exhaust stacks fumed forth their malodorous and toxic gases, filling the clean desert air with hydrogen sulfides, carbon monoxide, vaporized heavy metals, and salts. Each of these strip mining waste products could have been cleansed—through filter sacks or settling ponds interior to the Stripper. But doing that would have cost barter-money. Far better, Halicene Conglomerate thought, to devote the Stripper’s full bulk to ore detection, stripping, smelting and ingot forming, with just enough onboard defensive weaponry to defeat the usual military forces. For ultimate backup, the Stripper carried its genocidal ecotoxin weapon.
It was the main deterrent to infuriated settlers who’d found out that contracts could be ignored by those who ruled whole star clusters. The contract was just for form’s sake, to show to the Anarchate provincial base if need occurred. Usually, however, no one could oppose the giant interstellar conglomerates. And many were only too eager to take their bribes, their promises, and their products—so long as they stayed alive afterward.
There was nothing fair about the Stripper, the Prime Dominant Legion, the Halicene Conglomerate, or the trail of devastation it left behind in Orion Arm. But no one cared. At least, no one in a position to do anything worthwhile about it.
Until him.
Stupid him.
Stopping the Stripper should be possible, although it had taken Matt a lot of planning and library research to figure out just how. It was dealing with the consequences afterward that still frightened him. He wished for no Pyrrhic victory.
In his mind, Matt reviewed once more the Stripper’s interior schematics, as revealed by his thermonuclear blast.
At its front, the Stripper possessed a shovel-mouth that took in everything—dirt, gravel, plants, water—and spit them out to either side, leaving the underlying ore rock exposed. Only the water was routed to good use. Flowing over hot interior metal, the water vaporized into steam, cooled the machinery, and was itself sterilized—all at the same time. On the ceiling of the interior hull, a plumber’s nightmare of coolant and collector pipes concentrated the rising steam, cooled it to dewdrops on the collector pipes, and funneled the resulting water into interior reservoirs. These reservoirs fed internal ore reduction vats that separated the raw ore from its surrounding matrix—after the matrix had been crushed in giant hoppers. The water washed clean the ore, served as a convenient “acid” to leach some ores not already processed by cyanide leaching, and—combined with mercury—floated other metals up and away from the ore matrix.
There were many metals crushed, melted, leached, floated, gas-centrifuged and otherwise extracted from the ore body that the Stripper passed over. The transuranics were the most profitable and raw uranium was a sizable byproduct. But platinum, titanium, nickel, niobium, the rare earths and other high-value metals were also sought by the Stripper. They would be ingot-formed and tossed out for pickup by the robot freighter. Other minerals like iron ore would be tossed aside for later pickup by subsidiary contractors. But that subcontracting would happen much, much later—after all life had died on Halcyon. The Halicene Conglomerate cared only for the prime quality metals—the raw, partly eaten bones of the planet would be subcontracted out to some other company and Halicene would move on to a new star system.
The irony of the Alcubierre stardrive was that it made possible the economic transport of things which, with sublight stardrives, would have been prohibitively expensive to move from one star to another. Things like slaves and mass-heavy metals. Like all technology, the Alcubierre Drive was a double-edged sword, used for both good and evil.
Matt shuddered. In a way, the Halicenes sat like a spider at the top of an industrial foodchain light years deep, millennia old, and one integral to the commercial laissez-faire policies of the Anarchate. Good business meant deadly politics in the Anarchate—or at least that’s what he’d always observed. Still, the Anarchate diplomats and administrators had a reputation to maintain. They would destroy an industrial MotherShip—if it violated the Four Rules of the Anarchate. The Conglomerates were incredibly powerful, but no single corporation could stand against the Anarchate. No one could.
Sudden movement jerked him from his reverie. Matt watched as the Stripper ejected a refined ore slug. The slug flew up in a high arc, angled sideways, and came to rest beside the steaming, foul-smelling abomination that was the slag-trail left by the Stripper. There was no reclamation here. Only toxic waste, loss of top soil, loss of all lifeforms, and a sterility of the land more suited to a planet scoured clean by the blast of a star going nova . . . once a Stripper had passed by. Life and the Stripper were incompatible. So far, the Stripper was winning.
Work. Time for work. He could no longer put off the inevitable.
How best to approach it?
The Stripper floated on outrigger pontoons that contained Nullgrav projectors, while its lower body snuggled into the six kilometer wide gorge it had cut into the planet’s crust. The metal sidewalls were not entirely shear, being fringed with claymore anti-personnel mines, fencing, support architecture and armor plating. Matt thought he saw a way up its side—between two laser tubes that pointed downward, at the ground, for cutting rock and ore. But all about the Stripper’s perimeter, dust and steam whirlpooled high as it cut, sliced and ripped through the soil. The sound deafened him, even two kilometers away.
Rubbing his ears, rubbing his nose, trying to get rid of the foul, stomach-turning odors, Matt stood up. On Defense Alert, he scanned the area.
Overhead floated more of the balloon dirigibles he’d seen on the original Defense perimeter. They were mostly sensor stations, carrying over-the-horizon devices for early warning of organized, mechanical attack by the Derindl. Moving more quickly were scores of smaller Remotes, each one a stupid AI brain with but one imperative—Protect against Attack. Backing them up were the onboard weapons pods of the Stripper.
The Stripper had long ago detected him. But it had done nothing to him.
Yet.
Moving along a diagonal track, Matt slowly approached the Stripper, bending down every now and then to pull some bunchgrass from the soil, to shift a rock, to scrape in the soil—any action that would look animal-like, rather than sapient. But more than that, he was counting on the fact that the Remotes were too intelligent, too expert-programmed to recognize him as a sapient lifeform. It was something he’d had to explain to Mata Hari, when she objected that the Stripper would surely match his vid-image to the Derindl, conclude he was a stupid unarmed Derindl, and just kill him. The visual recognition circuits of computers and AIs had long ago improved to the point where they equaled human eyes.
He’d laughed, then pointed out one thing Mata Hari had no
t noticed, being a machine.
He had no tail.
Without doubt, Legion or its functionaries would have programmed the Stripper to detect and kill any approaching Derindl. But humans had arrived so recently—in galactic time scales—that he suspected his people were not encoded in the Stripper as a sapient lifeform. Or, if Legion had encoded for humans, he was certain the Mican would never encode for a naked human without a combat suit. The griffin-tiger would never consider landing on the surface of a planet without the protection of its own combat suit. It was all a gamble, but one Matt was willing to bet his life on. So far, the bet had worked.
He went to all fours when he was within a hundred yards. Moving slowly, his ears overwhelmed by the wailing screech of metal against rock, his eyes lashed by strobing laser beams that crackled into virgin rock, and made lightheaded by exhaust fumes, Matt ignored the Remotes and the lasers and the horrible grating chomp up ahead where the Stripper’s maw devoured the essence of Halcyon. He ignored everything mechanical, everything constructed. Instead, he concentrated on acting like a quadruped, sniffing the ground, moving in an erratic search for plant food.
After what seemed like hours, he ambled into the stinging, biting cloud of dust, sand and rock fragments tossed out by the Stripper as it ate into the ground. Looking up, he squinted and sighted in on the hull bulge, where the laser tubes reached nearly to ground level. Then he closed his eyes, shielding them from flying grit as he stepped onto the Nullgrav pontoon. From here on in, he must rely on sound to guide him.
The flying grit increased as he walked slowly toward where the hull wall hid behind the swirling dust. Something sharp cut into his left shoulder. Blood dripped thickly. A fist-sized rock bounded up, smashing into his gut. He gulped. His head banged something hard and metallic. Standing upright, reaching high over his head, he felt for the sheer wall of the hull.
Star Vigilante (Vigilante Series) Page 19