Vigilantes

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

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  Author’s Note

  Starbase Human Sample Chapter

  About the Author

  The Retrieval Artist Series

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  For Dean

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  So many people have made this long project possible. Paul B. Higginbotham helped me design the legal system. I greatly relied on his expertise in this series. Annie Reed makes sure I remain consistent from book to book. Dean Wesley Smith lets me know if the plot falters. Colleen Kuehne monitors the details. Allyson Longueira designs the lovely covers, shepherds the books into production, and keeps track of all the publishing details. I couldn’t do this without any of them. Any mistakes you find, however, are all my responsibility. (And probably result from the fact that I didn’t listen to someone I listed above.)

  I greatly appreciate the support from all of you readers. From the beginning of the Retrieval Artist series to the Anniversary Day Saga, you’ve stayed with me and kept me on track. Thank you so much!

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Dear Readers,

  I got horribly stuck when I reached the middle of the first draft of Vigilantes. Every single character showed up on the Moon with a story. It was rather like the first day of grade school after summer vacation, only the speeches could have been called, “Guess what I did on the way to the Moon?”

  I didn’t want you to guess. I wanted you to know. Because everything these characters did was important.

  Here’s where I need to put in the disclaimer:

  If you bought this book without buying any of the others marked Anniversary Day Saga, then you’re entering book six of one long story. The story starts with the novel called Anniversary Day. You can start there, or if you want to read the first seven standalone books in the Retrieval Artist series, start with The Disappeared.

  If you’ve read some of the standalone Retrieval Artist books and picked this one up thinking it will stand alone, I’m afraid it doesn’t. The Anniversary Day saga is one long story, and it runs for eight novels. I’ll return to standalone novels in the series after 2015.

  What’s happening here is that in consultation with WMG Publishing, I’ve decided to release the remaining six books in the Anniversary Day Saga in the first six months of 2015. Vigilantes is the April release.

  If you had asked me what came next after I finished Blowback, I would have pointed to some of the events in The Peyti Crisis, and some that you’ll find here. You’ll find others in the next two books.

  As I wrote the remaining six books, I started with The Peyti Crisis, and tried to cram six books of material into one novel. So I split it off into Vigilantes, and as I wrote that book, I stalled.

  I got tired of characters reporting on their adventures. I finally threw in the towel when a character walked into Flint’s office and reminded Flint of their shared history, then told a story of explosions and near death. You won’t find that scene in any of the books. At that point, I realized that I, as a reader, wouldn’t tolerate that scene, and I, as a writer, couldn’t finish it.

  Instead, I wrote the sequence which, unsurprisingly, isn’t in this book. You’ll find part of it in Starbase Human (the next book) and even more of it in the final book, Masterminds.

  Once I realized what the problem was, I could solve it. I almost wrote that I could solve it easily, but that’s not true. I had to write entire novels to explain what some characters were doing, and expand some existing character arcs to show what others were doing.

  And, I have to admit, writing the story the way it wanted to be written was so much fun.

  Once I got Vigilantes on track, it proved to be the easiest book to write—and the most enjoyable. I hope you enjoy it as well.

  —Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  Lincoln City, Oregon

  June 30, 2014

  FORTY YEARS AGO

  ONE

  THE GRAY DOOR before Claudio Stott had fifteen levels of protection on it. Stott knew because he had actually studied the manual for this part of the Forensic Wing of the Alliance’s Security Division. Most of the other candidates had downloaded the manual and used AutoLearn to figure out the massive information contained within.

  The problem with that, of course, was that the other candidates gave similar answers to the verbal quiz Terri Muñoz gave them before making her final selection for this job.

  Now that Stott stood in the corridor outside the most secure part of the Forensic Wing, he wasn’t certain he wanted this job after all. The door stood at the end of several long corridors, buried in the center of the starbase, and the first rooms beyond the door were clean rooms. He would have to use both a sonic shower and a shower with specialized liquid before entering and leaving the section, something not mentioned in the manual, because, apparently, it irritated everyone involved.

  Muñoz told him that several employees of the section actually had gotten enhancements to keep their skin moist and to prevent rashes from the four-to-eight-times-per-day showers. The showers themselves sounded like wasted effort. Stott wanted to know why a decontamination chamber wouldn’t work better, one calibrated for foreign DNA.

  Then, even as he had the thought, he realized the problem with his question. The Forensic Wing didn’t care about foreign DNA. They cared about the DNA that every single human being sloughed off through the course of every second of every day.

  The showers, in theory, would prevent the sloughing long enough for the staff to don specially made environmental suits without contaminating the exteriors of those suits.

  He should have known all of that; after all, he had studied the manual.

  He looked at Muñoz. She was slight, her skin tending toward a greenish-olive that made her seem just a little ill. He had seen a holo of her from the days when she was first hired. Then her skin had been a creamy brown.

  So many people looked different as they aged that he hadn’t attributed the change to anything. But now that he was contemplating half a dozen showers just to get to work, take his outside breaks, and eat his lunch, he wondered if that greenish-olive color reflected the beating her skin had taken after decades inside this facility.

  This facility sounded so impressive. Special DNA Collections sounded like something positive instead of something scary.

  He’d gotten past the scariness of it all by reminding himself that this was where the most interesting work in the Forensic Wing occurred. Where real science got done.

  He’d initially signed on to the DNA testing unit right out of university, with a newly minted degree in biological sciences. Because he’d been granted admission under the Alliance Poverty Program, he had to spend at least five years working off the cost of his degrees within the Alliance government.

  He’d almost decided to move into the private sector when this opportunity had come along. The salary was double what he made in the regular DNA testing section of the Forensic Wing, and he got to do actual work, rather than monitor the machines that did the testing almost automatically.

  He once told one of his colleagues that he hadn’t gotten a degree to babysit computer programs and make sure they ran right. Nor had he gotten one so that he could testify in court, verifying the computer’s results.

  He had gotten the degree so that he could learn the secrets of DNA, secrets that—after thousands of years of study—human beings still didn’t entirely know.

  Stott worried about working for corporations. He believed they often acted in amoral ways, particularly when it came to their employees. He knew too many people who had become actual sacrifices for the corporations: sent into newly aligned alien territories, forced to work in uncharted conditions, and then punished for violating alien laws that no human had known about. />
  Some corporations had Disappearance services, which helped employees and their families escape the long arm of alien (and Alliance) justice. But Stott knew from personal experience that the Disappearance services often came on the scene too late and did too little to save lives.

  He shuddered and made himself focus on Muñoz. She was holding a tablet close to her chest. Apparently, the tablet was part of the security system.

  Her dark eyes met his. “Are you changing your mind, Mr. Stott?”

  He straightened. Double the salary. He didn’t have to work with aliens. And he got to do real science. Surely several daily showers and lots of security procedures was worth all of that.

  “No,” he said, then decided his voice sounded wobbly. So he made himself speak more firmly. “No. I want to work here.”

  “Good,” she said. “Because once you go through those doors, you’re not going to be able to change your mind about this assignment.”

  He nodded. He had heard that warning before. It had been part of the application process at every single step. This was an irrevocable assignment, particularly because he would learn things that would be dangerous in the wrong hands.

  “I’m ready,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  TWO

  THE INTERIOR OF the Special DNA Collections Unit was even less impressive than the corridors leading to it. Getting through the fifteen layers of security at the main door had taken ten minutes. Then the showers, which were even more hideous than Stott had expected, followed by the debacle of the environmental suit.

  He was actually timed on how long it took him to put on the suit. Anything over thirty seconds meant that he had to go through the damn showers again. He had missed the first time by nearly a minute, the second time by five seconds. He made it the third time, but by then, his skin was red—and it stung.

  He was definitely going to look for information on the enhancements.

  The environmental suit was a thin version of the one used in the most hostile environments known to humans. The staff had to have freedom of movement—hence the thinness—but they also could not contaminate their environment in any way. So the suit clung to every part of him, and it ran a continual diagnostic. If there was even the slightest breach—something that wouldn’t even kill him in one of those hostile environments—he would have to go back to the clean rooms, scrub down again, and switch suits.

  No one had warned him about any of this, and now it was too late to change his mind.

  Fortunately, today’s suit had no breaches. Yet.

  After he’d put the suit on, he’d followed Muñoz into next part of the wing. Again, he was confronted with doors. And they had another layer of security. The manual had told him why: once he got assigned to one section, he couldn’t move into another section without a promotion or being accompanied by a supervisor.

  These doors were labeled only on the internal links provided to the Collections staff. The labels spread across his vision in red, except for the one he was allowed to enter, which was green.

  He had been assigned to the Dangerous Criminal Division. He would be one step above glorified prison guard here. The Dangerous Criminal DNA needed protection against cloning services. This division stored all of the collected material from mass murderers, serial rapists, and other very famous criminals. Nothing could leave this section because of the rampant identity theft that had started up two decades ago.

  Some cloning companies, both legal and illegal, had started selling designer criminal clones—and not just as fast-grow clones, which couldn’t think for themselves. There was a disturbing trend in creating regular criminal clones and attempting to raise them in an environment that would make them into the same kind of criminal that their original had been.

  Stott didn’t mind starting here. In fact, he was intrigued. Because in addition to his guard duties, he would be studying the DNA to answer a question that science had gone back and forth on since DNA was discovered: was criminality in the genes or was it just a product of environment and upbringing?

  After hundreds of years of study, the answer still eluded everyone.

  Stott took a deep breath, then coughed at the flood of pure oxygen into his lungs. He never used pure oxygen when he wore an environmental suit. He quickly changed the mix to something closer to Earth standard (even though he had never lived on Earth).

  Muñoz watched him. Maybe she could see his hesitation. Or maybe his coughing unnerved her.

  “Are you ready?” she asked.

  Stott was glad she hadn’t asked if he had changed his mind, because he wasn’t sure how he would answer her honestly, not with his skin still stinging from those showers.

  He glanced at the red-labeled doors. Biohazard, Mixed Species, Experimental, and Unknown. Those were only the doors he could see. He knew that another section had even more doors.

  Most of the work on this side was done with 100 percent human DNA except in the Mixed Species area, where experimenters tried to see if different DNA were compatible. Corporations were doing the same thing, and much of the study in Mixed Species was of creatures that were nonviable or had been confiscated from some of the larger companies.

  That division intrigued him, as well.

  “Mr. Stott?” Muñoz asked him. “Are you all right?”

  He nodded.

  She ran through the five layers of security on the Dangerous Criminals door, and then it slid open. She walked in first. He followed slowly, half expecting a temperature change like he felt when he walked into the lab he’d been promoted out of.

  But of course he couldn’t feel one; he worked in an environmental suit now.

  And that was the only visible difference in setup. Work stations spread across the center of the room. Lab equipment was through a windowed door toward the back.

  And the DNA was stored in various compartments built into the walls. The labels were funneled through his links, and all were in red. He was on probationary status: he wouldn’t have access to any of the criminal DNA for another year—unless given to him by a supervisor for analysis.

  The only difference in this entire area from the lab he’d previously worked in was a small, round case built into the center of a pillar to the left of the door. That case had a double helix imprisoned within. He could see at a glance that this wasn’t an artistic rendering of a double helix: it actually belonged to someone.

  “What’s that?” Stott asked Muñoz.

  “A reminder for the humans in the room,” she said. Her answer startled him.

  “There are aliens working here?” he asked.

  “In this division, yes,” she said. “Criminals aren’t just human.”

  “I thought the designer criminal clone phenomenon was human only,” Stott said.

  She shook her head, her lips turned downward. “I wish,” she said.

  Then her eyes narrowed, and met his. She seemed suddenly cool toward him.

  “I know you haven’t worked with other species in your years here,” she said. “Was that by choice or circumstance?”

  This was his chance to get out of the assignment. He had a split second to answer. If he answered honestly, he could avoid the eight daily showers. But he would either be stuck in that lower-level position forever, overseeing and testifying, or he would have to leave and work for a corporation, which was a hell of a lot riskier.

  If he wanted to use his degree—and his brains—he would be better off here.

  “Circumstance,” Stott lied. “I’ve had very little contact with other species since I left school, so I was surprised.”

  Muñoz nodded. He wasn’t sure if she believed him, so he moved the conversation forward.

  “You said this image was a reminder for the humans in the room?” he asked.

  She crossed her arms and moved closer to the pillar. She studied the double helix for a moment, as if it spoke to her. Then she turned to him.

  “You’re inside now, so you get a new level of security clearance. Before
you leave, you’ll get a chip that’ll go in your elbow.”

  “Not my hand?” he asked. That’s where most people wore their chips. The chips were so tiny as to be almost impossible to see (unless someone enhanced theirs as a fashion statement), but people seemed comforted by the chip’s proximity.

  “No one puts chips in elbows,” she said. “So, if someone wanted to steal your security clearance, they wouldn’t find the chip easily—unless they made you talk.”

  He shuddered. That would happen? Someone would try to steal his clearance?

  She clearly saw the question on his face. “No one has tried for nearly fifty years,” she said. “But we remain vigilant.”

  “I asked about the image,” he said, nodding toward that clear case, “and that prompted you to mention a chip.”

  “Because, when you receive the chip, you’ll be able to read all the labels in this room, not just the level-one labels. And this one is of particular significance to humans.” Muñoz touched the edge of the case, as if she could reach inside it. “This double helix shows us everything we need to know about the physical make-up of PierLuigi Frémont.”

  Stott frowned for a moment. The name was familiar, but he couldn’t place it.

  And then he did. He’d heard about Frémont as a cautionary tale. Poor boys, like Stott had been, were considered prime targets for deluded messianic leaders like Frémont. Frémont had committed genocide, eliminating his followers in not one but three different attempts at starting his own colony.

  Stott couldn’t remember if Frémont had been a religious fanatic or not, and doubted it mattered. Frémont was used as an example of the bad things that human beings could do if left to their own devices.

  He wanted to ask if Frémont was truly an evil genius but wasn’t sure how Muñoz would take the question. Instead, Stott asked, “Is there anything in the DNA that later predicted Frémont’s behavior?”