Anarchate Vigilante (Vigilante Series 4) (3 page)

Forty milliseconds
passed in the outside world, Suit informed him.

With a
PET thought-image both his shoulder pulse-cannons fired at the steel grey oval of the Combat Mech, the two green laser beams set for metal-punch. Metal glowed yellow-white at their contact, then hissed away as his beams entered and fried the inner workings of the Mech. It shot off one red laser beam that hit the ceiling as its Nullgrav lost power, dropping the Mech onto the gravplate floor. The Spelidon Guardian began to turn its head toward the three of them even as the rat’s combat suit CPU turned a belly laser toward them. Electronic senses moved so much faster than normal organic thought. Which was why he’d taken out the Combat Mech first. Now Matt, Eliana and Suzanne fired on the Spelidon.

Six hundred milliseconds
lumbered by.

The rocket bagpipes
on the biceps of each suit fired a volley of Fire-and-Forget Nanoshells, already programmed for the infrared signature of the Spelidon, each shell able to twist and turn in flight as miniature vernier jets steered them after every dying twitch and jerk. They were relentless. They were deadly. They would arrive within a second.

The Tactical CPU of
Suit flashed ultrasonic beams against the black fur of the Spelidon, causing internal organs to liquefy as the resonance frequency for its flesh was reached and maintained by Suit’s feedback system.

Faster than the Nanoshells
and ultrasound were the shoulder pulse-cannon lasers. At two per suit, that made for eight beams of coherent green light that hit the silvery combat harness of the black-whiskered Spelidon. The beams burned circular holes through the rat’s furry body and splashed against the metal wall behind it. The Spelidon’s combat belly laser shot a red beam at Matt and Suit. It impacted on his gut but splintered into thousands of fractured red beams as the sapphire crystal coating of Suit broke up the incoming beam.

One and a quarter seconds
moved ever so slowly.

Matt’s helmet emitted a pressor beam that tossed the Spelidon against the hallway’s metal wall, knocking it unconscious.
In that brief time the rat’s hairy skin erupted with miniature borers, carried by the Nanoshells, borers that systematically penetrated its body like drill bits through wood. Biogel poisons specific to carbon-based lifeforms also poured out, overloading a dying heart system. Electronic white noise overwhelmed the Spelidon’s own combat exoskeleton programming—using miniature emitters carried by the Nanoshells—thus stopping any effort by its Tactical programming to carry out preprogrammed offensive actions despite the death of its organic host.

Finally, with a flare of red light, the organic shell of
the Spelidon rat imploded inward as the nanoware energy-seekers made contact with the Alien suit’s power sources and overloaded them, burning up hardware systems and their organic host at the same time. Two flashes of green laser light drew Matt’s attention forward.

“The Combat Mech is finished,” said Eliana as she floated toward the slidedoor that blocked
access to the captives’ cell. She held her Magnum laser gun, which now sketched a molten line across the central dome of the fallen Mech. “But Suzanne and I sense the issuing of orders for other Combat Mechs to head for us, despite the distraction you provided with the air loss in the top dome. Can Mata Hari block internal communications from the Control Station to its Guardian lifeforms and Mechs?”

Matt arrived just as Suzanne used her Magnum to cut through the slidedoor controls. She kicked the metal door, bending it inward and out of alignment.
Their Swede battlemate used her own suit to put two Spy Eyes into the room even as her gauntlets gripped the slidedoor, pulled with the Herculean strength of her combat suit, and ripped open access to the cell. All at slow organic speed even though each of them thought and fought at
ocean-time
speed. Matt cursed his lack of foresight.

“Yes! Mata Hari, please do as Suzanne
says.”

“Complying, Matthew,” said the black-suited form of his AI as she joined the three of them at the entrance to the cell. “Shall we enter and see how alive these captives are?”

Two seconds since ocean-time entry
, reported Suit’s cyberclock.

In slow human speed
they entered and saw three lifeforms who occupied a small, cold, dark and damp cell. Matt, still in mind communion with George, Eliana, Suzanne and Mata Hari, saw a seated male Human look up as they entered, his blue eyes blinking from the sudden light even as his emaciated body shivered from the cell’s coldness. Near him lay a black-furred Meligun bear, its elf-like ears twisting to their noise even as its two pink eyes squeezed tight against the light emitted by their helmets. Just behind the two bipeds stood a four-legged Orko hippo, its four yellow eyes wide with some kind of emotion. Thinking fast Matt had Suit’s external Talker address them even as each suit cast a tractor beam to a captive, lifting them and pulling them along behind Matt and the two women as they exited the cell and headed back toward George as he stood guard at the down ramp.

“Captives, we are friends! We hate cloneslavery and are rescuing you from labor slavery or death
from the cloneslavers!” said Suit in neutral Belizel. “Water, food and shelter will be yours once we gain our shuttle and then our ships.”

“Ships?
You have ships?” grunted the middle-aged Human male in Gaelic-sounding English. His bass voice sounded weak.

Two seconds,
312 milliseconds
, said his cyberclock.

George waved at them as they all arrived to the loud sounds of many lifeforms being deeply sick at the nearby refectory. Banging sounds came from the locked sleeping quarters. Matt answered the man even as the four of them flew down the rampway on Nullgrav, their exit from the inner parts
of the base happening at flight speed.

“
Our ships,” said Suit in Matt’s voice. “My name is Matt Dragoneaux, a Vigilante. These are my battlemates. George, Eliana, Suzanne and the AI Mata Hari in the black vacsuit. Now be quiet while we fight our way out of this base!”

Mata Hari’s vacsuit shimmered as a red laser beam passed through
the holo image. “Combat Mech ahead!” she cried, her mind passing to them an image of a grey ovoid coming up the rampway from Level Three.

Matt’s Suit belched out titanium penetrator darts even as the rocket bagpipes of three other suits shot Fire-and-Forget Nanoshells at the hovering Mech.
Swift as thought were the eight green laser beams emitted by the shoulder pulse-cannons of Matt and his combat mates. The Mech exploded in a yellow flare of metal parts that bounced off the front of their combat suits even as their tractor beams pulled the captives along behind them. The Orko hippo bellowed with fear while the Meligun bear raised its four arms to shelter its blocky head. The darts and Nanoshells smashed into the Mech’s fragments.

Two seconds,
500 milliseconds and 14 picoseconds
, reported his cyberclock.

“Mata Hari, activate
Ariadne
and have it blast its way through the landing dock archway,” Matt said.

“Activating and arming her lasers!”

If they could make it to the Level Two Arrival Hall the shuttle would be awaiting them. Its armor would give extra protection from any combat-suited Guardians and Combat Mechs that might find them. Meanwhile, he sensed the Control Station of the asteroid coping with power shutdowns, escaping air and false alarms triggered by Mata Hari’s limpet complinks as they latched onto the Control Mind of the base. Matt hoped lightspeed confusion would disorient the base’s security forces as the four of them flew down the debris littered rampway, turning toward the Supply tunnel that connected with the Arrival Hall.

Slaver
s scattered away from them as Nanoshells and Offense Remotes preceded them, ready to attack any organic or Mech that sought to block them. Suzanne pulsed him a precog warning.

“Two Guardians in combat suits await us just inside the tunnel to the Arrival Hall,”
she said in his mind.

“Understood!”

Matt PET thought-imaged to Suit. It launched an anti-personnel rocket toward the tunnel ahead, followed by napalm rockets from the backpacks of George, Eliana and Suzanne as the Tactical CPUs in each suit coordinated a combined attack.

Yellow flame burst from the tunnel as the crack of the AP rocket shot pellets and razor-disks into the Guardian lifeforms that a loitering Spy Eye said were
a Mican griffin-tiger and a black-furred Spelidon rat. The Guardians began dying from napalm incineration even as their lungs were cooked from inhaled flame. But their combat suit harnesses were not yet dead. They shot back attackBeads at Matt and his allies even as the four of them flew toward the tunnel.

Pressor fields from the
ir four combat suits intercepted the attackBeads and pushed them back onto the crisped bodies of the Guardians. White noise Nanoshells followed the pressor fields and overwhelmed the CPUs worn by the Guardians. Penetrator darts thumped into the burnt bodyshapes. In milliseconds Matt and his allies entered the smoky tunnel as the flames died out. Mata Hari spread her holo form around the three captives, sheltering them with breathable air thanks to the miniature tractor emitters that made her holo shape a controlled cloud of black that hid Alien blood and body parts from the view of the captives. Ahead loomed the silvery metal of
Ariadne
, floating inside the Arrival Hall.

“
Three seconds since our attack,” cried Mata Hari in the shared minds of Matt, George, Eliana and Suzanne. “The shuttle’s lasers will take out any Combat Mechs that appear in the landing dock. But we must hurry before the base Control Mind regains access to the dock’s own tractor and pressor fields!”

The Arrival Hall was nearly empty except for a dozen lifeforms fleeing down the other two hallways. None of the lifeforms sought the vacuum of the hallway leading to the landing dock.
It was a hallway blackened from the shuttle’s fusion pulse drive. The shuttle hovered before them on Repulsor power. Their suits aimed them at the midbody airlock. It opened at Mata Hari’s signal.

“Inside!” Matt said as Suit’s All Surround vision perception
highlighted a laser artillery Mech entering the blackened hallway from the dock side. It carried the long tube of a thousand megawatt laser. Even as he watched the slow movement of the Mech, his mind gave orders. “Mata Hari, fire at that Mech with the shuttle’s starboard laser! George, Eliana and Suzanne, dump your captives into accel couches and brace yourselves for some wild maneuvering.”

Coherent yellow light reached out from the shuttle to impact on the grey box of the artillery Mech. The device quickly turned white hot, then began melting in place
. By the time the shuttle passed over the molten Mech its laser tube had bent to floor level. In the spacious landing dock the shuttle rotated ninety degrees, aimed for the open exit portal and shot into black space. Matt began to hope they would all live to tell this story and get drunk over some Morrigan beer.

Three
seconds, 700 milliseconds and 36 picoseconds
, murmured his cyberclock.

“Matthew,” said Mata Hari in his mind even as Suit used onboard pressor and tractor beams to stabilize him as the shuttle jinked from side to side, up, down and at angles as it dodged laser fire from an Offense blister that lay on their side of the asteroid.

“Yes!”

“Look at this image I retrieved from the Control Mind of the base. Do you recognize this person?”

Matt jerked his mind away from the Weapons Activation status of his starship as the Dreadnought prepared to fire on a cluster of genome slaver starships. He pushed to one side the mental images of his lover Eliana, whose expression showed concern. As did the pale Nordic face of Suzanne. George’s full black beard and grey eyes fixed on Matt as they each stood together within the Park habitat of
Mata Hari
, dressed in normal clothing. In mind communion, there are no lies and no pretense is possible. Why were his fellows looking concerned?

“What!”

Blinking mentally, Matt focused on the image of a forty-something woman. A woman with grey-streaked red hair, a reddish Polynesian skin tone and Apache cheekbones. Shock filled him. It could not be. Could it?

“Mom! She’s alive? Where? How? What does this—
”

“It’s real, Matthew.”
In the Park habitat mind communion, Mata Hari’s dark eyes fixed on him even as she gave him a slow, happy looking smile. “Your mother survived the kidnapping of your family on Thuringia! This is a ship record of a captive the ship captain sold into labor slavery. After the slaver ship visited the Flesh Markets on Megil, at Alkalurops C star. She was sold . . . sold to an Anarchate merchant who was visiting Megil. Long before your attack on the markets. The merchant left for parts unknown. But fifteen years ago, your mother was alive!”

Matt swallowed hard, his mouth dry. His heart beat too fast, faster than his cyborg nanoDocs could control. His eyes  . . . his eyes blinked faster than normal. Wetness filled them. Through the blurriness of his vision he saw Eliana, dear Eliana of
the obsidian black hair and eggshell white skin, she walked up to him and gave him a mental hug.