Star Vigilante (Vigilante Series)

by T. Jackson King

  “Record now my Hearing Decision! You, Autarch, demanded my presence. You, Prime Dominant Three called Legion demanded a Hearing.” The Spelidon blinked slowly. “The Halicene Conglomerate has attacked a ship of the Anarchate within Sigma Puppis B system. Their ship has been destroyed. Halicene Conglomerate is forever interdicted from further commercial business within the two-star gravity well of Sigma Puppis! All contracts are forfeit. All surviving personnel of Halicene Conglomerate are to hold themselves ready for questioning by my Investigator. The Hearing is finished.” It paused. “Does anyone object?”

  Matt and Dreedle kept silent. Eliana breathed a sigh of relief. Legion looked ready to argue, but said only “I will hold myself and my Trade staff available for your inspection, Commander.”

  The Spelidon sat down. “Autarch, tend to your planet. I will visit you after my inspection of the Halicene wreckage. And ship Mata Hari, hold station or you will be destroyed. You are a puzzle I will solve after visiting the Halicene and the Derindl. Someone will wish they had never called me away from base!” His image blanked out.

  The images of Legion and Dreedle stayed on line, obviously receiving Mata Hari ’s carrier signal. Both tried to talk at the same time. Legion overrode the Autarch’s signal, forcing her to standby and listen. The Mican smiled a toothy, foul-looking smile.

  “Vigilante, I underestimated you. But you also underestimated me! Look!”

  Into the image marched the bruised and bleeding figure of Eliana’s Grandfather Petros, his arms bound. She cried out, reaching forward. Petros shrugged her way. Dreedle looked puzzled.

  Legion flared its wings expansively. “Do you know what this puny human being is?”

  “He’s my Grandfather!” screamed Eliana, spitting at the holosphere image of Legion. The Mican acted indifferent to her and unfazed by the loss of its MotherShip. Why?

  “He is also,” purred Legion as the alien looked Eliana up and down the way an elephant inspects an insect, “your colony’s Genetic Primary Carrier! The future of you crossbreeds and the colony lies within my grip!” On-screen, a filthy brown wing laid itself over the Petros’ shoulders; the old man shuddered and tried to move away, but seemed held in place by a tractor beam. “I offer a Trade, Autarch Dreedle, Mistress Themistocles. Your brother’s station and the colony’s Genetic Primary Carrier . . . in exchange for Vigilante Dragoneaux. Do you accept?”

  Coldness filled his heart. The heart, once, of a man who had dared to hope, dared even to love again. So . . . there would indeed be a high Price to pay after all. Not looking at stricken Eliana, Matt answered before anyone else. “Accepted, Legion. You realize of course I will enter Zeus Station fully armed?”

  The Mican chirp-laughed. “I would expect no less. Let us see how good you are at finding us. Out!”

  Matt shuddered.

  Eliana cried out, beating at the deck plates. Autarch Dreedle spoke reassuringly. But all about Matt—in space, down planet, and within the station—something sought his life.

  He would not give it up!

  Matt cut off Dreedle, turned away from tearful Eliana, ignored Mata Hari’s worried concern, and sought his Suit, which stood at the back of the Bridge.

  Suit was his solace. Suit was his friend. Suit protected him from anarchic chaos. And Suit cared for him as no other cared. With it, Matt could destroy starships or space stations. He knew he could. But how useful was such power deep within a riot-torn Trade Station where, his nanoSensors told him, the forces of Despot Ioannis fought on in half the station, while Legion’s forces controlled the other half?

  He would just have to find out.

  Matt and Suit. Suit and Matt.

  Together once again.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Leaving starship Mata Hari behind where the Anarchate commander had ordered it to stay, Suit approached Zeus Station in the clear, unstealthed, so that Legion and Ioannis could see Matt coming. He wanted that. But just before station entry, he would emit an EMF pulse to disrupt local monitoring devices. He did not want the Mican to know exactly where he was. Seconds before station contact, he reached for ecstasy.

  Matt ordered Combat Alert. And once more, gestalt perception enveloped him.

  This time, he gloried in it.

  Faceplate’s Eyes-Up display showed three different graphic displays in the left, middle and right quadrants. At chin level, a virtual reality graphic rotated a holo image of the station cylinder itself, showing power sources, entry ports, Docked-in starships, and outgasing from violent interior combat. Matt looked up slightly. The middle quadrant showed the station’s inner levels, as uplinked from one of his advance Nanoshell Remotes. He’d shot off scores of them, each one programmed to Seek and Find the sweat-signature of Petros, Ioannis or Legion, or all three.

  While he did not trust Ioannis, Legion was his first concern. The sparkle he’d seen earlier must have been the Mican leaving his ship as Mata Hari rounded Halcyon, to prepare a fallback position on Zeus Station, where he now held the colony’s Genetic Primary as the ultimate bargaining chip. Despite his warnings to Ioannis to move Petros to the planet’s surface. Such a prime reservoir of all the DNA encodings and variations of the Greek humans would be worth billions of barter trade credits to a genome harvester or DNA clone master. Perhaps enough barter credit to insulate Legion from the irritation of its bosses at Upsilon Carina. Perhaps not . . . .

  The thought of Legion being in trouble with Halicene Conglomerate almost made him ignore the warning signal from his onboard Tactical CPU. Buzzing harshly and throwing up images against his contact lenses, it warned Matt that his Nanoshells were being attacked by Legion’s own CounterShells. The Mican certainly had resources to spare.

  Feeding back his real-time observations to Mata Hari, he asked for the last help he could expect from his ship. “Mata Hari, any sign that the Anarchate Commander has left his ship for the downplanet visit with Autarch Dreedle?”

  “No,” said a new male-sounding voice. “The Anarchate sets its own schedule. My analysis of your sensor feeds indicates that the battle between Ioannis and the Mican’s forces rages on the far side of your position. Will you enter here?”

  “Yes. And Mata Hari —please take all actions necessary to protect my Patron, while also complying with the orders of the Anarchate commander. I hope to be finished here before the Spelidon returns from the planet. Understood?”

  “Understood,” said the gritty-sounding male voice.

  Where the hell was the AI’s Mata Hari persona? It was a persona the ship AI had chosen seven years ago, to his amusement and her growing interest. Now, as had happened several times recently, the AI had switched both persona and gender. Why? Was it due to battle damage, or some strange influence from the Restricted Rooms? He would definitely have to run a full Systems Diagnostic on his symbiont’s persona software when this was all over—he much preferred the old Mata Hari persona to this dour battle-warrior persona.

  “Punching through now,” he broadcast to his ship partner. The ship downlink to him vanished in the contesting currents of outgassed plasma, debris, and combat com-chatter.

  A preplanned EMF pulse blossomed invisibly from a white noise Nanoshell.

  With a thought Matt’s backpack ka-chunked and spat out a thermite-tipped rocket. It dove straight into the metal hull of Zeus Station. A spot not far from where a taxi tubeway passed close by the station’s outer hull, according to his earlier inertial mapping of transport tubes. Yellow light flared violently.

  His submunition carriers led the way, filling the space between him and the thermite blast. They were Fire-and-Forget Remotes, each an independent Threat-seeking vehicle with a powerful CPU capable of fine discrimination and independent judgment. They would take care of any freefloating or powered Nanoshells, limpet mines, Hunter-Killer Remotes or anything else that happened to be in his vicinity when he entered the station. Once inside, only quick movement would prevent Legion from concentrating all of its resources on his and Suit’s position. Matt sm
iled, relishing the challenge.

  Suit dove through the glowing, red-rimmed hole at thirty klicks an hour. A slow speed, but fast enough to dodge any seed-lasers missed by his submunition Remotes. .

  Matt double-checked his weapons systems.

  On both shoulders the laser pulse-cannons whirred, seeking Target Lock-On. Each bicep vibrated as HEDS shells cycled into miniature rocket-guns. His left gauntlet tingled as fingertip lasers tuned up for aluminum, steel, gold, chitin and flesh-punch. His right gauntlet touched the Magnum lasergun embedded in his thigh holster. On his chest, the pulse-Doppler radar whined on. Millimeter-wavelength radar pulses ranged out over the darkened, smoke-filled tubeway he’d just entered. Hard against his spine, the rocket backpack autocycled, ready to unleash Local Decimation or Generic Lifeform Extinction. The waistband VX nerve gas dispensers trembled eagerly, speaking to him—“Now? Can we go now?” It continued at the speed of light. Pressors. Tractors. Ultrasonic vibers. Backup MHD power units. Nullgrav boots. “We are ready!” they all screamed.

  Like a woman screams. High, shrill and with surprising strength.

  Matt told them to shut up. Blinking, he ordered flexarmor inserts to engage at strategic points of Suit. Thought-imaging to his online Tactical CPU, he ordered Suit’s gas spectrometer to sample for air contaminants, while an onboard analyzer scanned the samples for airborne viruses or biospores. It did all that and more. Suit’s skin danced eerily with adaptive optics reflections, while it fed holo decoy images of him to the right, left and rear. The decoys were not very good, but they would make an organic hesitate. And a second of hesitation is a lifetime to an onboard Tactical CPU.

  With eyes attuned to the UV, IR and yellow light spectrums, he grunted as the Nullgrav plates in his boots kicked him down the twisty, curving tubeway. Nothing touched him, not even stray wisps of vaporized Nanoshells or smoke not yet exhausted by the ducts. The dust and haze were pushed aside by an all-surround pressor field emitted from his helmet. Matt blinked and focused on the holo-feed from his inertial-sensor. On faceplate’s middle quadrant, a worm’s nest view of the Station, its tubeways, and various places he could go now took shape.

  On a hunch, he blinked and ordered Suit to take a randomized path to the deserted tubeway dock where first he’d met Legion. It was as good a place as any to start. Suit rotated on its gyroscope, fired rearward at an approaching sensor-bed Remote with his left shoulder laser, then plunged through the tubeway wall—thanks to a new hole cut by his right shoulder laser cannon. Startled aliens hiding under tables watched him fly by overhead, then disappear into a main hallway.

  Smoke filled this section of the station.

  His faceplate displays changed to infrared and heatmapping while his pulse-Doppler radar painted the enclosure, outlining in sharp microwave detail everything that sighted people could not see.

  No Threats, but there was sparking from disrupted power cables. And the bodies of both humans and aliens floated in weightlessness. The independent gravplates for this section had been destroyed by the fighting. Turning sharply, Suit swung him up to the ceiling, then through a ventilator grille that disintegrated to the touch of fingertip lasers, and into a wide ductwork tunnel. On Matt’s faceplate, a small red dot moved closer to the Mican dock.

  Reacting to the unnatural stillness about him, he stretched out his left hand, ready to play each fingertip laser against a different Target. Should one appear. Matt grabbed his Magnum lasergun from its holster and searched for a short-range target. In his backpack, a napalm rocket stood in queue, ready for launch. On both hips, his backup magnetohydrodynamic generators fed surge-power to his laser pulse-cannons. Each bicep ka-chunked as HEDS shells launched out of the rocket gun tubes, preceding him, moving on Fire-and-Forget tracks in Loiter-Mode . . . ready to kill. But where was the Mican? And why hadn’t he seen any active fighting?

  The ductwork ahead blew up.

  Suit strengthened the pressor field and deflected incoming shrapnel, as it also moved sideways through a wall. The wall tore like paper. An incoming vid signal wavered in one corner of his faceplate. Legion!

  “Welcome, Vigilante. I await our rendezvous. In the meantime, don’t get hurt!” The alien laughed insanely, chirpy voice rising in frequency until Suit shut it off.

  The Mican knew where he was. What could Matt do to better the odds?

  He smiled, feeling fierce. Legion was at an unknown location, yet to be found by his sweat-searching nanoSensors. But he hungered to fight some Halicenes. Any Halicene would do. Hmmm. What better way to irritate Legion than to give the forces of Ioannis a helping hand? And maybe it would bring the Halicene chieftain to him.

  Blinking, Matt reset Target vectors to sidestep the dock and head for the most active area of fighting. There he would find Ioannis. Suit moved to his will.

  They rounded a hallway corner. Proximity alarms shrilled loudly in his helmet. They’d entered a cavernous room which flared with coherent laser beams like a free-fire zone.

  Suit thumped instantly to Options status, then to multiple Lock-Ons. Matt fired back, twisting in mid-air like a freefall ballet dancer, his fingertip lasers unleashing a rainbow of many-colored beams. The Magnum lasergun jumped in his right hand. Bicep rocket guns thumped out scores of HEDS shells. Laser pulse-cannons burned like green tiger-eyes as they impaled Targets right and left. Targets were not a problem. Determining who was a Halicene confederate and who wasn’t made for a bit of a problem, although for now Suit and he fired at anyone who showed aggression toward Suit.

  A VR holo of the combat zone filled the middle quadrant of his faceplate.

  It was a warehouse district of blocky buildings, power cables, and transmission towers, half-gutted by fires and explosions. On the ceiling, he now saw, partisans of Ioannis fired down into the warehouses, aiming at moving clusters of laser-firing Remotes and strange-looking aliens who either advanced, withdrew or took cover. Suit emitted an IFF signal to the Ioannis humans, while his leg tractor fields ripped off a nearby sheet metal roof. Placed before Suit, it stopped incoming solid projectiles quite nicely. Moving out, Matt dropped it on a squad of alien squid-beings. They died messily.

  Napalm flame guttered all around him as his backpack spit out more liquid incineration, fit a new warhead to a rocket body, fired again, and repeated. Faster than he could have thought the order. Matt thought quickly enough to order a Hold on any more rocket firings—the backpack carried only twenty missiles, and half were already gone.

  Adrenaline overwhelmed him. Interface feeds flooded him with status reports, Targets found and Decimated, Lock-Ons, Active rangings, reports from his Intelligence and Tactical CPUs, uplink feeds from his brain’s databyte nanocubes, weird radar images of building interiors, heat maps that flowed and ebbed like something alive, the gruesome yowls from his waistband nerve gas dispensers as—at last—they escaped his custody to seek out Target organics, and more. So much more.

  This was what a true cyborg could do!

  In that inattentive moment Matt took an HF laser hit on his left hip. He rotated and changed course in time, forestalling punch-through. He thanked instinct and he thanked Suit’s sapphire beads and adaptive optics skin. “You’re welcome,” they squealed back at him like little electron bees. Backtracking the beam track, he fired both pulse-cannons, destroying the combat-suited alien. It fell down the pop-up floor hatch through which it had appeared.

  Somewhere deep inside him, something told him these were living beings he now killed by the half-dozen, their hand weapons badly outclassed by Suit. Beings who bled, screamed and felt fear. Perhaps later, he would regret the carnage. But now, survival was uppermost. You do not get picky about combat etiquette when a single lucky shot can hole even the best combat armor. But already it was coming to an end. The troops of Ioannis advanced behind a shield of hoverRemotes, their heavy laser cannons laying down an incinerating barrage that swept all before them. Good! Maybe Legion would now come to Matt.

  Suit’s comlink crackled to a signal, rep
ortedly from Ioannis. He blinked, throwing it onto his left faceplate, and ordered his reply stepped-down to human normal. Cyborg he was, cyborg he would stay—until Legion was dead. Matt dropped through a hole blasted in the floor by one of his laser cannons. Ioannis’ miniature image looked shocked, worried and smoke-blackened.

  “Vigilante—is that you?”

  “It’s certainly not Athena Parthenos. Speak quickly, I’m busy.”

  Ioannis grinned lopsidedly. “Thanks for the help. We’re driving them back in most areas except Bonded Warehouse Districts Five, Seven, Twelve and Thirteen, and a drydock repair facility directly below it. Can you help further?”

  “Yes.” A virtual reality graphic highlighted the areas Ioannis had named; they weren’t far away. “I’ll make a fast penetration there within two minutes. Your troops should follow, prepared to take advantage of my blitzkrieg impact.”

  “Blitzkrieg?” Ioannis asked, looking puzzled. “No matter. We’ll follow.”

  “Have you seen Grandfather Petros?”

  “No!” Fury darkened Ioannis’ face. “I didn’t find out about his capture until your battle with the Halicene globeship. No one but me knew he was the colony’s Genetic Primary. But Legion arrived in a shuttle, attacked us and captured him in the confusion. I haven’t seen him or the Mican since.”

  “Acknowledged. Out.” The relayed Vidcast blanked out. Matt shook off the step-down effect of organic communication.

  A massive steel wall loomed before him like a granite cliff. Faceplate showed the wall separated him from the warehouse area named by Ioannis. At high speed, he dove for it. With a thought and a blink he fired both shoulder pulse-cannons, cutting a large hole. His backpack then launched a couple of three-kiloton nukes through the hole.

  “Counting down,” murmured Suit’s Timer voice, sounding much like Eliana. “Time to blast: two seconds. One—”