The Vigilante Chronicles Boxed Set 1

by Natalie Grey

  “Good,” Zinqued said decisively.

  “But we need some parts we probably can’t afford to buy,” Chofal finished. She gave him a look.

  “Well, then, isn’t it good we know how to steal ships? Send me a list, and I’ll get us where we need to go to get it.” Zinqued grinned at Dretkalor. “You up for a little search and seizure?”

  “Signed on for it, didn’t I?” Dretkalor looked pleased. He nodded to Zinqued as they left, and Chofal heard his voice filtering back through the hallway. “It’ll be nice to steal something you can pick up and walk away with, you know? Rather than just watching rich people steal bits of computerized data from other rich people all day long.”

  19

  The rendezvous point, as given by Jeltor, was in the middle of an exceedingly empty patch of space buffeted by radiation from a few nearby stellar wrecks. An unstable quasar wobbled nearby, emitting plumes that Tafa and Gar watched from the lower decks.

  Barnabas came to get them, jerking his head toward the bridge.

  “Are you two coming?”

  “To what?” Gar looked around, confused.

  “To the meeting with the Jotun,” Barnabas said. “You’re members of this crew. You deserve to be there, weighing in.”

  When neither Tafa nor Gar said anything, he let his head drop back with a groan. “Oh, come on, don’t leave me in there alone with Shinigami. She’s terrible in meetings.”

  Shinigami appeared, arms crossed. She glared. “I heard that.”

  “Am I wrong? You make trouble!”

  “I say the things you want to say.” She leaned forward with an evil grin. “And by my calculation, it’s going to take you a minute and a half to get back to the bridge. That’s a minute and a half I now have alone with Jotun high command.”

  She disappeared. Barnabas yelped and sprinted toward the bridge. Tafa and Gar heard his voice drift back through the hallways.

  “Don’t. Start. A war!”

  Shinigami’s voice echoed through all the speakers, accented by the sounds of thunder, artfully added, “I make no promises.”

  Gar and Tafa laughed as they followed. Barnabas, panting and flushed, sat in the captain’s chair with a scowl while Shinigami sat at his side, the very picture of decorum. Jeltor stood nearby. He nodded to Tafa and Gar as they entered the bridge.

  “Our team is all present now, Admiral.” Barnabas glanced at Shinigami. “One of them may have to step out for a bit, however.”

  Try it. Just try it, buddy boy.

  Wreak havoc with an entire alien government and you won’t just have me to contend with, you glorified little toaster. Bethany Anne will back me up, and you’ll be managing the sewage system on the Reynolds so fast it’ll make your circuits short out.

  You’re bluffing.

  Just try it.

  Shinigami looked alarmed and decided not to push her luck.

  “As you know,” the Jotun admiral began, not being privy to the conversation between Shinigami and Barnabas, “Koel Yennai threatened to attack a Jotun colony, or a series of colonies, to take four thousand civilian lives. He believes he is owed this.”

  “Point of order,” Shinigami said.

  “Shinigami…” Barnabas began.

  I’m going to behave! “Koel doesn’t believe a thing he says,” Shinigami argued. “He may seem balls-out crazy, but all he wants to do is make us hurt. Really, he wants to hurt anyone who interrupts his plans. For decades, he’s dreamt of taking over the universe. Anyone who gets in his way is someone he wants to torture and then kill. But he doesn’t believe he’s owed those lives.”

  “Is this relevant, Miss…ah…”

  “Shinigami. Just Shinigami. And I think it is. Giving Koel any legitimacy or treating him like a madman is a sure way to underestimate him. We all saw that destroyer come out of nowhere. Koel has built an organization with incredible technology, and he’s absolutely prepared to use that against anyone standing in his way. He doesn’t give a damn if those people are innocent. He’s making the calculated decision that if he can hit enough targets of yours, make it clear you can’t protect your people, you’ll buckle.”

  Barnabas nodded. He had to admit that Shinigami had a point.

  The Jotuns were seriously underestimating Koel. Even after they’d seen his ships in action and seen that he was willing to destroy both human and Jotun colonies—after all, he had destroyed Coyopa, hadn’t he?—they still behaved as though he were a toddler throwing a temper tantrum: Oh, Koel is just angry there are no blue popsicles left.

  In point of fact, he was brutally effective and very dangerous.

  “She makes a good point,” said Commander Jeqwar. “Even though Koel didn’t know we would be there, he came in with part of his fleet cloaked. He’s made sure they’re as dangerous and well-trained as we are.”

  “The question is,” the admiral said, “where will he attack next?”

  “We’ve come up with some possibilities,” Barnabas said. He transmitted the work he and Shinigami had completed over the past few hours. “All of these are relatively undefended colonies.”

  “All of them are Jotun,” the admiral observed.

  “There aren’t many human colonies nearby, and the location of one, at least, is carefully hidden.”

  Beside Barnabas, Shinigami looked down at her hands and tried not to blurt out her fear. She had almost every piece of information there was about High Tortuga, from its atmosphere to the locations of its cities and the way its defensive systems worked.

  Yes, they could get word to the fleet, which would join them to repel Koel’s attack. They would probably win, too.

  But before they won, Koel would have plenty of time to destroy one or two cities—and get way more than his four thousand lives. Somehow, Shinigami didn’t doubt that he’d take as many as he could get.

  Barnabas must know that she had such information, but neither of them had mentioned the possibility.

  She screwed up her courage. We have to find out what Koel actually knows—if he realizes that the information he got out of my memory banks was a lie.

  Barnabas looked at her, surprised. The Jotun officers were debating the relative odds of strikes at various different points.

  Even if he knows it’s a lie, what could he find from it?

  High Tortuga. She looked at him. I was working on a project. You had wanted me to hide it. Well, we’ve all been trying. But that means I had all its facts in my memory banks. I gave him my false data, but some of it was… Look, it was lies—it was the fake file I was building—but what if there’s some clue there?

  Have you been over it to look for that?

  Of course I have! I’ve looked at it over and over and over again, Barnabas. She shot him a look, half-angry and half-scared. But I don’t know with them. I never know what Koel knows. I never know how their systems work.

  Shinigami—

  You don’t understand! You don’t have the first idea what it’s like to go up against someone and realize you can’t even guess what their capabilities are.

  He gave a small smile.

  What?

  Shinigami, do you realize that’s the exact experience of a human speaking to an AI?

  She paused, much struck by that.

  I’ve already told them to be ready, Barnabas told her. And you know there were plenty of people who knew of Devon. It would hardly be difficult for Koel to find High Tortuga. If he does, I’d say it’s million-to-one odds that he found it from anything you gave him. And yes, I am trying to make you feel better with terrible math.

  Shinigami nodded and tried to smile. She knew he was trying to make her feel better, and she had done the best thing she could to throw Koel off the true trail of High Tortuga—letting his engineers think they had the real data.

  But if she had gambled wrong and he did find it…

  There was nothing to be done about it now.

  An alarm wailed on one of the Jotun ships, and everyone looked at the screens anxiousl
y.

  “A carrier is approaching Abassi,” the admiral reported. “It looks as though it will land and deploy infantry. The colony can defend itself for some time, but we should get there immediately. Shinigami, we will rejoin you—”

  “Transmit the coordinates.” It was Gar who spoke. “We’re coming with you.”

  “What?” The admiral asked in surprise.

  “He’s quite correct.” Barnabas smiled. It seemed Gar had faltered for only a little bit before finding his purpose. “No one on this crew is prepared to leave innocent people to die. We will meet you at Abassi without delay.”

  20

  Sandar dek Tor’ven had been with the Yennai Corporation since he finished his schooling some forty years ago. At that time, Koel Yennai was young enough that no one took his ambition seriously. After all, there was always a multitude of ambitious young people out to prove a name for themselves in business.

  Sandar had taken the only position offered, a security guard, and signed a great deal of paperwork he didn’t read. He then worked his way up from there. He’d become a night shift manager, then had catapulted up to head of security after thwarting an attempted break-in. He had gotten stock options but had paid little attention to them.

  Now he was in charge of a landing force for the YCS Hari, and he was richer than he had ever dreamed possible.

  He had also seen everything over the years, from jealous mistresses to protesters for everything under many suns, and nothing fazed him. It was the cornerstone of his reputation.

  When the Hari landed at Abassi, therefore, the soldiers streamed out past him with sharp salutes, ready for anything.

  Sandar followed them, sweating a little in his armor. He wished he didn’t have to wear it, but one had to set a good example for the troops. An undisciplined force was a dead force.

  That was his motto.

  Advance scouts had passed through the small forest outside the city and here at the edge of the trees reported to Sandar that the Jotuns had not tried to advance. They seemed to be fortifying the town in anticipation of the attack.

  “Any idea why we aren’t just bombing them, sir?” asked one of the scouts. He scratched his head.

  “Let me offer you a piece of advice,” Sandar said. “When Koel Yennai orders you to do something, you do that thing to the best of your ability, trusting that he has a plan. That strategy has never failed me.”

  Questioning Koel Yennai was a strategy he had watched fail for many others.

  “Yes, sir,” the scout said hastily. “It’s just… Well, we’d have very little trouble bombing them, but regarding combat, their citizens have those powersuits. We don’t know their capabilities.”

  “Then we’ll have to plan for them to be far more resilient than we’d like,” Sandar snapped.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Sandar sighed. The recruit had asked a very reasonable question. The bombing had worked perfectly well on Coyopa, after all.

  “Your instinct to protect your fellow soldiers is admirable,” he told the scout. “However, Mr. Yennai undoubtedly has a reason for structuring the attack this way.”

  “What you should really ask yourself,” the scout on Sandar’s other side interjected, “is why you’re going along with any of this. You’re killing civilians. Doesn’t that weigh on your soul even slightly?”

  Sandar turned stiffly to glare at the scout. “That is quite enough, soldier. You will return to the Hari at once. Expect disciplinary action at the end of this fight and—” He frowned.

  He’d seen humans before, but he certainly didn’t think there were any in the scout force on the Hari. Sandar tried to keep very close tabs whenever a member of a new species showed up. They often required new allowances regarding food and lodging, and sometimes there were issues with established forces picking on the rookies.

  “Do I know you?” he asked finally. He tried to be as delicate about the question as he could be. “I don’t believe I’ve seen you before.”

  “You haven’t. My name is Barnabas.” He smiled. “You really should order your troops to leave. Carrying out these orders will strip you of any honor you had. The evil you do will not be able to be undone. Innocent people will die.”

  Sandar drew himself up. “I do not answer to you, scout. I answer only to Koel Yennai.”

  “A poor choice.”

  “I assure you that I have done quite well for myself.” Sandar allowed a sardonic smile to touch his lips. “You will not rise very far in Yennai, recruit.”

  Which meant either a lifelong stint in one of the factories or outright execution. But he wasn’t about to tell the human that while he was still armed.

  Even this human’s armor wasn’t regulation. Sandar grimaced and nodded at the carrier.

  “Withdraw from this battle and await your transfer. It should please you not to participate, in any case.”

  “It’s worth noting, you know,” the human continued thoughtfully, “that at no point did I say I was part of the Yennai Corporation. You assumed.”

  “I—” Sandar’s head jerked to the other scout. “He isn’t with you?”

  “I thought he was with you,” the scout was saying as Sandar’s head was ripped from his body and bounced gently into the underbrush.

  The scout shrieked and ran. He clearly thought he had only a few seconds to live, but sheer animal terror drove him onward.

  Barnabas watched him go, checking his Jean Dukes. “You can come out now,” he said to Gar. “They’ll be along shortly.”

  You could have brought the head back yourself, you know, Shinigami said. It’s just laziness, really.

  But he’s doing such a good job. Barnabas craned his head to watch the scout flailing through the woods. He was lost from sight after a few moments, but the sound of his screams carried through the evening air.

  He had to hand it to the Yennai Corporation’s generals. Whatever the scout managed to gasp, which Barnabas was fairly sure was entirely incoherent, the generals responded promptly and with force. A missile hurtled through the trees.

  Barnabas swore and tackled Gar sideways, pulling his coat over his head. There was a moment of searing heat, then the missile finally hit the ground a few dozen yards away. It landed just in front of the city walls and exploded in a shower of dirt and stone.

  The response from the Jotun town was instantaneous. Several cannons belched smoke and fire, and munitions arced overhead. From amongst the trees, Barnabas heard the soldiers roar as they charged.

  “Between a rock and a hard place,” Barnabas said succinctly.

  A mech appeared first, crashing through the trees on a series of heavy, spidery legs.

  Barnabas ran, taking a bounding leap and pushed off a tree to land on the mech’s top. He drew back his fist and punched down with all his might, significantly denting the metal. Still, it appeared that wouldn’t be the best strategy.

  He frowned.

  You could try opening it, you know.

  I’m sure it’s locked.

  Just try it, Shinigami urged.

  Barnabas rolled his eyes and hauled on the handle of the top hatch, which opened so easily that he lost his balance and nearly tipped off the side of the mech.

  Men. Shinigami scoffed.

  A soldier popped up through the now-open porthole with a rifle, scanning around.

  You see, falling off the side was useful. Barnabas clawed his way up, grabbed the barrel of the gun, and used it to haul the soldier out and over the side. He kept the gun. Barnabas pulled out the clip and slammed the gun down through the porthole. Screams and thuds answered the blow.

  Behold the Queen’s Rangers. So graceful. So dignified.

  Listen. I am not going to take these insults from—ow!

  Branch?

  Bullet. Barnabas flexed his shoulder and hissed. The wound had barely broken the coat’s fabric—some of the best tech to come out of Jean’s labs—but there was going to be one hell of a bruise.

  He reached down into the
mech as it fired and bared his teeth at the first soldier he hauled up. “Turn this thing off.”

  “Don’t do it!” the soldier cried dramatically. “Save yourself! Keep firing! For—”

  “Look, if you’re determined to die dramatically…” Barnabas held up the soldier’s body as the mechs behind them started to fire, having finally noticed him.

  The Yennai armor was not quite good enough for the soldier to survive that many direct hits, but both layers of it combined with the soldier’s body were enough to keep Barnabas safe, at least.

  “Thank you.” Barnabas dumped the body off the side and jumped down into the interior before another round of bullets could reach him.

  The mech pilot had his sidearm out, clutched in shaking hands. “I’m armed, and I warn you—we’ll fight to the death!”

  “That is just a ridiculous sentiment from someone who’s trying to slaughter civilians,” Barnabas informed him. “However, since you’re all so damned insistent on this, I will help you out.” He slashed the pilot’s throat with one of his knives, turning the body, so the blood sprayed onto the back wall of the mech. “All right, how do I pilot this thing?”

  There’s probably a manual somewhere. Or, if you’re determined to be manly, I can just let you figure it out on your own.

  Some pointers would be helpful!

  The joystick on the left will deviate you from the pre-set course and the joystick on the right is part of the point-and-shoot display. Also, the body can swivel on the base.

  Excellent. How do I do that? I want to shoot at the rest of them.

  Probably wise. They’re arming missiles. I’d try the toggle switch above your head.

  Doubtfully, Barnabas complied—only for the mech’s body to do a dizzying 360-degree spin. He toggled it a bit more carefully the second time and wound up facing the other mechs.

  They’ve been firing at you this whole time, but their bullets aren’t very useful against the mech body. I’d suggest the missiles. They seem to be saving theirs for a special occasion.