Star Vigilante (Vigilante Series)

by T. Jackson King

  Found it!

  Balancing on the outrigger pontoon, intensely aware he existed in the hot air between two thick laser beams that flared to either side, he leaned over the open gap between the hull and pontoon. His skin shriveled from the heat, his ears were blasted by the shrieking cry of split rock. Reaching up, Matt ran hands over the hull edge, seeking a handhold. He was not a free-climber like Helen had been. He knew just enough rockclimbing skills to avoid falling. And maybe to climb a thousand meters nearly straight up, with only random hull indentations, tubes, support struts and armor plating overlaps for support. Ahhh . . . A handhold! He pulled himself up, chest hugging the hot metal.

  Everything was hot to the touch. The hull. The air. The dust. Would he have first degree burns before he reached the exhaust grilles?

  Turning sideways and feeling with his feet and back, Matt braced himself against the two laser tubes that projected out from the hull. From a distance they had reminded him of a “rock chimney,” something like an open-sided smokestack that rock climbers could climb without pitons or rope. By a process of wedging yourself into the vertical chute of the “chimney” you could use friction and the strength of your leg and back muscles to gradually advance upward. But who’d ever done a free climb raw naked, exposed to heated metal, unable to open your eyes until you rose above the ground-hugging cloud of grit and dust?

  Had Helen ever done this on the resort planet she’d worked on?

  Matt didn’t know. There were so many things he’d never learned about her. And now, would never know or experience or share. But there was Eliana. Maybe with her . . . . Biting his lips, he climbed.

  Bottom foot pushed low as a brace, upper foot rose up for the next step, and his back muscles pressed against the laser tube behind him. Hands flat behind him, Matt pushed down with his legs as he slid his back up the narrow metal chimney.

  Lower foot brace, back slide, back tense, move upper foot, brace again and push.

  Again and again he pushed, slowly moving upward.

  Finally, when the horizon glimmered with a false sunrise in the east, he made it to a hull area where the laser tubes had disappeared, but other projections existed. Opening his eyes, Matt looked around.

  The shadowy dark was lit only by the glow of melting rock around the skirt of the Stripper. Nearby, sandstone mesas rose half as high as the Stripper. Green plants wilted from heat, toxins or lack of water. On the Stripper, fumes rose up, gagging him, but he could breathe, thanks to the wind. Ignoring any damage done to his lungs, he felt joy.

  Who notices a fly on the wall?

  Turning round, pegging his toes and fingers into armor plate chinks, conduit ridges and radiator vanes, Matt free-climbed up the cliff-wall of the Monster that was the Stripper.

  Something scalded his hands.

  He yelled, almost losing his balance.

  Blinking his eyes, he looked up the high metal flank, searching his opponent’s skin.

  Ahhh. The Halicene Conglomerate, always efficiency-focused, had decided to let certain parts of the hull serve as heat radiators . . . as a supplement to the exhaust grilles on top. Why provide expensive refrigeration systems when natural airflow and radiant heat glow could cool your metal monster for you? As a side benefit, scalding hot metal plates would discourage local avians and anything animal-like from nesting in the crevices of the Stripper. Only around the weapons emplacements, the sensor fields and the radar housings would the metal be cold. Or cooler than what he’d touched. Was there a way around the steam-hot metal?

  Infrared sight showed him a checkerboard pattern of cooler plates. Moving sideways, accepting some heat pain in exchange for survival, Matt began zigzagging across the nearly vertical hull.

  Aside three armor plates, up two, down one, diagonal on three, then up three more. In a way, it was like the old childhood game he’d played with his sisters. Called Hopscotch, with numbered squares traced into farm dirt, he’d jumped and counted out the squares with his sisters.

  What a fine time it had been!

  The memory nearly cost him his life.

  “Screeech!”

  A buzzard-like flyer attacked him, batting at him with her wings.

  What the crap? Teetering on the edge, Matt looked up, ignoring the talon cuts on his back.

  Just a few yards ahead of him lay a deep indentation in the hull. It seemed to be a place where some boulder had dented one of the armor plates. Whatever it was, it was not hot with radiated heat. A few sticks stuck out from the overhang edge. From within sounded the squeak of life. Baby buzzards? A nest? The wings whooshed close again, battering his head and upper back.

  “Ouch! Goddamned bird! I’m not after your chicks.”

  The unseen flyer—he could not turn his head to see it, or else it would surely tear out his eyes—was not impressed by his yell. It dove again.

  Moving sideways, Matt grabbed for a red-hot handhold.

  Flesh burned slowly as he took an alternate route, a route that avoided buzzard chicks. Sucking in his gut and leaning out as far as possible, he crabbed sideways—onto scorching hot radiator plates.

  A whoosh. A screech. Another slash to his back.

  He moved upward, climbing, his fingers and toes burning like salt laid into an open cut.

  Matt had no choice.

  Meters later, as even his tough skin blistered, he moved sideways and back onto the cool metal checkerboard trail leading upward to the top decks. And the exhaust grilles. With only a hundred meters more to go.

  Time stretched on endlessly.

  Not like when he’d been running, letting his mind rest in idle, letting all kinds of thoughts well up about him. That timelessness had been pleasant as he let his cyborg body do the running for him, operating on internal autopilot. This timelessness was filled with pain, with sore muscles, with creaking tendons and acid fatigue. They all washed over him. Strangely, he felt no hunger. He felt no thirst. He only felt as if the metal hull was a living opponent, one that went on and on and on.

  Matt grasped a flat part of the hull.

  He was there!

  Climbing up and rolling over onto his bloody back, he stared into the early morning sky, a turquoise blue expanse.

  Overhead, white clouds floated in from the sea, twenty kilometers to the east. Sensor dirigibles moved in random monitor patterns. Remotes whooshed and dove in a complex search pattern . . . a pattern that ignored his presence. Like it had ignored the buzzard nest with its chicks and Mama Buzzard. He was there. Atop the Stripper and still alive.

  Getting up, he stayed on knees and hands. Looking around, Matt sighted the central wart-pillar, its image wavering behind heat plumes like a mirage in the desert. All around him stretched meter after meter of red metal. And also metal cut by long, narrow furrows. The exhaust grilles! Yellow clouds of sulfide-rich gases poured out of them, joined by black hydrocarbon gases, invisible carbon monoxide and other gases he could not see or smell. He coughed, feeling new chest pain. He must not stay long—Mata Hari could not repair massive pulmonary damage.

  Avoiding hot hullplates like his old game of Hopscotch, Matt made his way to the center of the grille field. At last!

  Sitting down, he unwound the thread from his tooth, stuck a finger into the back of his throat, and vomited.

  It forced some of the tube-sack upward. He pulled gently.

  Matt dry-heaved again. Then again. And a fourth time.

  The tube-sack came free.

  His stomach quieted, with nothing left to expel. Wishing for a sip of water, he tore off the tube-sack’s narrow top. Moving carefully, Matt poured its contents down the grille slits, making sure he visited half the grilles.

  When the tube-sack was empty, he stuffed it into a slit, sat back, and rested.

  It would take days for his bioweapon to work. But he’d done it. His human self had done it.

  Now, all he had to do was climb back down a thousand meters of red hot hull, walk another seventy kilometers to pickup by Mata Hari, and wait f
or breakdown.

  In the high, scouring wind of Halcyon, Matt smiled broadly.

  He’d really done it!

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Back in the Biolab on board Mata Hari, Eliana beat on the slidedoor, demanding to see him, demanding entry. Matt spoke. It opened.

  She rushed in, eyes wide and worried—she’d heard from Mata Hari that he’d been injured. Eliana slid to a halt before him as he sat naked on a treatment table. Her pale face turned whiter than usual at the sight of Regen jell plastered all over him. It covered the minor cuts and scrapes. But his burned hands and feet were encased in clear plastifoam Healpaks, like her shoulder had been. “Matt! What happened?”

  “Hey—that’s my yukata robe you’re wearing.” She glowered. He grinned and then answered her, summarizing three days of desert survival. “So, you see, I made it back on board before Nikolaos or Spyridon could dispatch a Hunter-Killer Remote. Happy?”

  “Yes! Of course I am.” Eliana pulled the robe tighter about herself, shivering from the Biolab’s coldness. “So the Stripper didn’t recognize you as a sapient. But what did you do? What will the bacterial and retrovirus agents do to the Stripper?” Folding her arms, she frowned. “And just what was your entire Plan? You can tell me now—after all, I am your Patron.”

  Matt laughed, jumped off the Biolab table, then winced. Eliana reached out to help, but he shrugged her away. “I can make it. Thanks anyway.”

  “Well? What about the Plan? What was Step Three--that ugly tube you swallowed?” She followed him as he headed out into the Spine hallway.

  Walking on feet that felt like round balls, Matt winked at her. “Are all Patrons this curious about a Vigilante’s trade secrets?”

  “But, but,” Eliana sputtered, “I’ve got to know!”

  “Why? Why do you have to know, now, this very instant?”

  Matt headed for his stateroom, needing rest. Mata Hari still held Hover station just outside the Stripper’s Defense Zone, waiting for its inevitable collapse. Then they would have to move quickly. The onboard reservoirs of ecotoxin must be removed from the Stripper—there was no way his starship, even though a Dreadnought, could lift the entire Stripper out of the Halcyon gravity well. Then he must dispose of the reservoirs, all before Legion and the MotherShip showed up in-system. Or before local competitors like Pericles got there first, grabbed the ecotoxins, and held the Derindl to ransom. Human-alien politics were so complicated.

  “Matthew,” called his symbiont in a voice only he heard, in his mind, as he walked slowly to his room. “Can I offer you an alternative to involvement with your Patron?”

  In the back of his mind, Mata Hari appeared as Mata Hari the Spy, but with a difference this time—she was nearly nude. She still wore the somber eyes, black hair and amber skin of her human inspiration, but she had adopted a look patterned on the exotic dancer image of looping crown, beaded bra, Asian arm bands and skimpy waist veil that the real Mata Hari had often worn in exotic photographs as she built her Parisian reputation. Now, his partner’s persona did indeed resemble a votary of Shiva—and she seemed to be enjoying the tempting of him with erotic imagery. What an AI . . . . In his mind, he said “No thanks. And whatever you do, don’t let Eliana see this version of you!”

  Following close behind him, Eliana finally answered his teasing question. “Because,” she finally said as they neared his room. “Just because.”

  Matt looked over his shoulder. “Because? The word ‘because’ is enough?”

  “Matt! Don’t tease me.” She flushed dark red, but she didn’t look angry. Maybe it was leftover frustration from having only Mata Hari for company these last three days. She bit her lip. “How about please?”

  “That’s the magic word.” Matt turned into his stateroom, hobbled forward, and collapsed onto his bed platform. Eliana sat nearby on the end of his bed. Lying flat on his back, with foam-encased hands held out to either side, he smiled at her. “Let me see . . . Your first concern a few days ago was that the steam inside the Stripper would kill the Derindl bacteria and retroviruses. Right?”

  “Yes.” Eliana leaned forward, the blue and white yukata robe clinging to her very nicely. “So?”

  “Eliana, you’re a molecular geneticist. Tell me—is steam heat always an efficient killer of microbes?”

  She looked thoughtful, then brightened. “No! You chose a strain of heat-resistant bacteria. Thermophiles, right?”

  “Right,” Matt said, then raised up a little and leaned on an elbow. “Remember the thermoacidophilic bacteria that flourish in Earth’s hot springs, or in deep ocean thermal vents? I took a transgenetically modified variant of synechococcus lividus, spliced in a high-speed growth hormone factor, and increased its appetite for sulfide byproducts.” Eliana looked at him admiringly. “It’s really a chemosynthetic bacterium that is related to the anaerobic bacteria which inhabited Earth long before the atmosphere became polluted with oxygen. It’s also related to the bacteria that infest the guts of tubeworms like riftia pachyptila—they live inside hydrothermal vents miles deep in the ocean, far away from the photosynthetic lifechain processes.”

  “Nice choice. Steam won’t kill them. And they eat certain chemicals.” Her admiring look changed to a different one. One he remembered from Helen. “But what good are they inside the Stripper?”

  “I’m getting to that. There were also retroviruses in that aerosol spray. Right?”

  “Yes. So?”

  “So some viruses infest more than organic systems.” On Eliana’s face, intellectual interest warred with something else. “Some of them can infest machine parts—like silicon, germanium, plastic and glass. But such pests may have been subject to a routine ‘search and kill’ filter system onboard the Stripper. So I modified them into an inactive mode.”

  Still sitting at the end of his bed, Eliana looked very intrigued. “Good decision. It would be normal to expect some kind of air filtering inside the Stripper. How do the bacteria and the retroviruses relate to each other?”

  Matt closed his eyes, relishing the elegance of his solution. “The heat-resistant bacteria are only transport vehicles for the much smaller retroviruses. The bacteria expand into an aerogel foam—after leaving the Stripper’s steam area—and float everywhere the air circulation and gas ducting system goes.”

  “And?”

  He opened his eyes. Eliana’s beauty shocked him. Sitting there with her breasts half-revealed by the yukata’s open neck, her heart and mind at one with him and his Plan, Matt felt a chasm open up under him. “Within a day they will have multiplied, thanks to the food-rich hydrogen sulfide gas environment, and be everywhere in the Stripper. Everywhere except those Memory Core areas protected by silicon seals or glass encasements. Remember those nuclear x-rays we took?” Eliana nodded, then with eyes intent on him, she leaned back on outstretched palms, aware now of how she exposed herself. His body responded.

  Mata Hari took her leave of his deep mind, acting disappointed, and Matt sought to avoid Eliana’s open sensuousness. “Well, uh, the inner brain and subsystems of the Stripper all have a three-level separation block from the mining parts of the machine. But electrons and photons must communicate with sealed compartments.” He smiled nervously. “That’s where Part Three of the Plan comes into play. Remember the tube-sack I swallowed?”

  “Yes,” Eliana said absently. With a mischievous grin she stood up, stretched seductively, then bent over as she checked his plastifoam-encased feet. She glanced at his other wounds, then looked up, meeting his eyes. “You like stretching this out, don’t you Matt?” Her words were warm and soft as she stood there, hands on her hips, a woman in charge . . . of something.

  “Uh, umm.” Matt ordered his rebellious body to ignore her rose scent, to ignore the bare breasts that now lolled free of the flimsy robe, and to refuse arousal. His body—always so obedient before—disobeyed. Eliana noticed. She drew in a quick breath. He tried distraction. “Don’t you want to hear the rest of my Plan?”

  �
��If you wish.” Eliana caressed his legs, watching him as she did, her look a bare, honest statement of her growing passion. Slowly, she moved up his legs.

  Damn! “Ahhh, does the word ‘firefly’ mean anything to you?”

  That did it—she frowned, her mind now intent on his word puzzle. Her hands held still. “Firefly? I don’t recognize the reference.”

  “An Earth flying insect lifeform.”

  “Sooo?” Eliana smiled temptingly at him, as if she were ready to explore their feelings for each other. Preferably adding hand gestures to her rapid breathing and eager look. Matt accelerated his diversion effort.

  “So, these flying insects are bioluminescent. Their bodies contain the enzyme luciferase, the substrate luciferin, and the activating compound adenosine triphospate. When combined, they emit a ‘cold light’ of yellowish-green color.”

  “And?” Eliana grinned mockingly. Then she moved a slim-fingered hand along his leg, moving from kneecap to just below his groin.

  “Eliana!” He gulped. “Well, my tube-sack carried bioluminescent bacteria whose cellular DNA had been bioengineered to emit light only at specific angstrom levels.” Eliana reached between his legs, now caressing his arousal. Matt shuddered. “Those levels—” his voice trembled “—are . . . the . . . exact angstrom-levels-which-photoactivate-the-retrovirus-chains-carried-by-the-heat-resistant-bacteria. Eliana!”

  “Yes, Matt?” She stopped her seduction efforts, a big grin on her white face.

  “Let me finish!”

  “Better hurry.” She smiled, but did not remove her hands.

  Matt hurried, running his words together. “In three days the activated retroviruses will have spread millions of copies throughout the Stripper, causing it to rot from within! Anything made of plastic, glass, silicon, germanium—anything—will be like a moth-eaten blanket.” She nodded serenely and resumed stroking his groin. “It will appear as a ‘normal’ breakdown—not something caused by external attack. Everything will shut down! “ He quivered to her touch and felt an urgent desire to take her into his arms—but couldn’t, thanks to the Healpaks. “Then . . . then we can salvage the ecotoxin reservoirs and hold off any repair effort. Satisfied?”