Anarchate Vigilante (Vigilante Series 4) (16 page)

“Folks,” Matt said, giving each mind-image a welcoming hug, smile, wave or nod, “our sensors are speeding ahead of us even as we slow down from a quarter lightspeed. They will soon move beyond the corona of Antares A and thereby give us a normal light image of Working, the gas giant beyond it, and the planet one Mercury analogue. The other planets of this system lie to either side of the star or behind us, on an orbital path
that puts this supergiant star between them and Anarchate sensors on Working.”

Sarah squinted, her expression distracted. “Matt, before we do anything, my Welsh passenger Gareth Davies is getting . . . a bit antsy. Wants to do something. Plus, he seems bothered by me sitting naked in my Interlock Pit as I commune with you folks and with
Imperial.”

Ben frowned. “Sarah, being naked for optical neurolinking with our ships and with everyone here is normal.” The young Aussie reached over and held Sarah’s hand. “I’m willing to take him onboard my ship. Maybe being around another guy will teach him patience until we return to Morrigan.”

Matt felt a touch of amusement at the growing romance between Ben and Sarah, but none of his pilots needed interference when they were in mindlink. “Sarah, have Imperial confine him to his stateroom. Then flood it with sleep gas. Once we are done here we can rendezvous near Antares B and transfer him to Ben’s ship.”

In his mind and in the shared mind communion, Mata Hari the Spy, dressed in a late Victorian sheath dress, raised her hand. “People, a report from my Seek-Identify and tachlink remotes. They’ve cleared the corona. Here is an image of what they see about planet Working, and beyond.”

A holo took shape above the open grass that filled the circle of pilots. Matt saw the system’s various planets, then Working. Ninety-three Supply Tubes, Commerce passenger and Courier ships filled the low orbit space just above a grey-clouded Working. Beyond lay the four Nova-class battleglobes that provided normal security to the system. No sign of any Anarchate fleet or unusual number of offense techs like the Thermonuke sleds and Assault Asteroids that Yorkel had used in his battles with Matt. There was also no sign of a Courier hanging close to the Antares star, ready to induce a nova. Which would make sense given the large population on the planet. Suzanne looked at him through the haze of the holo.

“Matthew, I precog sense that your solo trip to Working will arrive unnoticed by Anarchate officials,” she said even as Eliana left her own distracted look.

“Thank you.” He shrugged. “As these two ladies have seen, I plan shortly to head for Working by way of my Dark Energy stardrive. Which will not leave a gravity wave pulse when I exit the parallel universe that one travels through while in Dark Energy mode. And I will be invisible, in stealth mode, thanks to our flat Alcubierre shields.” Matt looked at swarthy skinned Rafael. “My friend, hold onto our ‘surprise’ weapon in case it is needed. The rest of you, please stay in stealth mode on this side of Antares A as I go hunting for my Mom. If I need help, you will hear my call over our tachlink communion.”

Eliana squeezed his mental hand, her closeness a physical feeling thanks to the months they had spent in mental communion. “Matthew, I do not foresee any danger, in the short term, from your trip to Working. Good luck!
”

Kristen Dragoneaux’s knees felt beyond sore. She felt like she’d crawled ten kilometers, when in reality it was close to a kilometer. Now she faced the vertical
shaft that allowed for fiber optic cables, thick power cables and small deliverybot globes to serve the various levels of the skyrise. Far below lay the basement level with its recycle vats and maglev transport that linked this skyrise with neighboring skyrises. She eyed the red spotted darkness below, knowing she could not use a Nullgrav elevator. Those were all monitored by Spy Eye seeds, let alone tracking sensors that interrogated the ID disks which everyone carried. In a high tech world like Working, authority knew where everyone was at any time of the day or night thanks to such automated systems. Except for the few labor slaves like herself, who were not considered important enough to monitor. They were considered pets owned by the owners. Each of whom used a version of a tracking pellet to discourage escape. Well, she had escaped. Now she had to move beyond this skyrise, which would go on automated Seek and Identify mode once her owner found her tracking pellet in the liquid waste recycling vats.

Kristen reached out and touched one of the wrist-thick power cables that brought up power from the fusion reactors far below. They were insulated due to the free flying delivery bots. Taking a plastic rope from her shoulder bag she looped it around her waist, then made a figure eight loop around the nearest cable. She wedged her laser handgun in the power cable loop to act as a brake, then she stepped off and wrapped her legs around the cable.

Dropping downward at an increasing speed, she pulled with one hand on the handgun to provide friction while her walk shoes pushed against the cable. Judging by the speed of on-off-on light glows from access vents for each level, she was dropping at fifteen kilometers an hour.

In her ear buds she heard the Spelidon rat
yell over Masterful’s loud snarling.

“Well,
can you at least show me this unique Human who is so vital to your career?”

The snarling stopped. A thud sounded as her Mican master fell onto his forelimbs from the back-leg jump position
. She watched via the Spy Eye seed as her owner’s two feathery wings pulled tight about its muscular body. He and the Spelidon rat vanished from her neurolinked image as they headed down the habitat hallway. “Yes. She is in this bedroom of my habitat. As you will see—”

“Where?”

“Gone!” screeched Masterful in harsh Belizel. “Where could she have gone? She was here moments before your arrival. Her rest platform is there. Clothes are in the closet and on the floor.”

“You d
o not watch her with a ceiling monitor?” called the dry tone of the Anarchate rat-being who called himself Medun. “What about the usual tracking pellet? Surely you implanted one in this biped long ago?”

“Yes!” scr
eeched Masterful. “The monitor eye in the room we were in covers all approaches to the only exit from my habitat. And yes, let me check my datapad for her location.”

As Kristen slid down to the basement she imagined her griffin-tiger owner looking at its personal datapad
, blinking all three purple eyes several times, then snarling with frustration.

“This shows her location as just below Level One of this skyrise. Perhaps she sought private time with another biped. The data on her species say they are infected by a
cycle-round sex drive.”

“Really?” said the imperious voice of Medun. “How strange. No wonder they seek colony planets. Their world must be massively overpopulated.”

She heard Masterful grunt. “Not under her sleep platform. She must truly be just below Level One. I go to fetch her and teach a lesson about obedience!”

“But how did she exit your habitat if she was in this room upon my arrival?” Medun said in irritated Belizel as the two of them emerged back into the view of her Spy Eye seed.

Masterful’s wings flared widely. “It seems I was mistaken over her location. She called me over her datapad saying she was in her room preparing to take a cleansing bath.”

“Assumptions,” said the black-furred Medun as its shiny tail twisted up to lie over
on one shoulder. “They afflict every being.”

As the two exited the living room of her habitat, Kristen heard Masterful snarl again. “Yes. Like your assumption I would of course sell you a unique possession like this rare biped?”

Kristen smiled to herself. She had another fifteen minutes for her escape efforts before Masterful learned her tracking pellet now lay in the recycling vats just below Level One. By then she had to be on a supplies maglev and headed for the next skyrise over. It was a place under the control of Melikark Conglomerate, unlike her owner’s skyrise that had been funded by the Halicene Conglomerate. Maybe the Melikark people would refuse to search for her, just to tick off the Halicene merchants. She had heard the Melikark combine was on some kind of Anarchate ‘disapproval’ list for actions that had upset some high official somewhere. She did not care. Every moment took her away from someone who wished to buy her and take her away from this world.

“Matthew,”
she whispered softly. “I’m coming. Somehow, I’m coming.”

Matt sat in his Interlock Pit, feeling the hugeness of his ship, its millions of components and the strange golden glow of the Dark Energy stardrive given to him by his Bogean allies on their return trip from the Small Magellanic Cloud. The stardrive glow stopped and Mata Hari appeared in his mind, now wearing the chainmail overshirt
and leather skirt of her Lady of the Sword persona. The AI’s dark eyes fixed on him.

“We are in low orbit about Working, at tw
o hundred kilometers elevation,” she said over their neurolink. “Commercial space craft and the Commerce Station are well above us at around a thousand kilometers. I launched two Offense sleds, tachlink Remotes and several nuclear warhead armed KKVs just after our arrival. We are invisible behind our Alcubierre shields. And . . . my monitoring of planetary communications among all emitters has detected mention of a Human labor slave that has gone missing.”

“Mom?” he thought mentally as, to his right, the giant holo shape of BattleMind took form. The true master of starship
Mata Hari
fixed his red-eyed attention on the forward holosphere, which depicted a city of fourteen skyrise habitats that occupied a high plateau in the northern continent of the world.

“Perhaps,” Mata Hari said as she also took holo form on his right. “The emissions are not encrypted. They are in standard Belizel. And there are two speakers, one a Spelidon named Medun
and the other a Mican named Masterful. The Mican was listed as the owner of your mother in the slaver base records. And in the Core of Captain Markel’s ship.”

Why was his Mom on the run? Why try to escape now? Maybe she had seen
a galactic tachnet broadcast about him as an enemy of the Anarchate? There was no way she could know he was now just two hundred kilometers above her. Wherever she might be.

“Mata Hari, send down
two Offense Sleds to the skyrise where this conversation is coming from. I’ll use one to find and evacuate my Mom, while the second sled can provide combat cover.”

“Surely, Matt.” In their shared mind Matt felt and saw the two sleds drop down into the grey clouds of Working, their entry on Nullgrav allowing for a straight down descent. The skyrise that was the source of the
radio chatter glowed green against the red of the thirteen other skyrises. Each skyrise showed an ID icon. One of the icons he recognized.

“Is that icon the one
for the Melikark Conglomerate?” he asked Mata Hari, indicating with a mental arrow the suspect icon.

“Yes,” said Mata Hari as she enlarged the
city holo to bring each of the skyrise pyramids into detail view. “It is next to the radio chatter skyrise. The chatter skyrise is owned by Halicene Conglomerate.”

“Damn!” he muttered, feeling intensely angry at once more having to d
eal with the ferocity of Micans. His long ago encounter with Legion the griffin-tiger had infected him with a slow virus that dealt him lots of pain until Eliana had precognitively located the virus and killed it with a virus tailored for its ‘jumping gene’ complexity. “Of course, her owner Masterful is a Mican. So it makes sense his habitat would be in the Halicene skyrise.”

“Just so,” murmured Mata Hari as several of her Spy Eye floaters and Seek-Identify sensors entered the Halicene skyrise. A similar cloud of sensors entered the nearby Melikark skyrise. “We should gain real-time reception of the frustrated sounding talk between these two persons, Matthew. And some of my Spy Eyes can infiltrate the utility conduits that thread through each skyrise. Also, I am sending a limpet complink to each building’s Core computer. The Cores are not self-aware like me and BattleMind, but they are highly diverse. The Cores receive images of all organics,
the common spaces, the underground maglev transports, each elevator module, and the name and ownership registry for every habitat in each skyrise. We will find your mother!”

Matt hoped so. Hanging low in orbit just above the prime industrial city of Working was not a great place to be, even with the advantage of Alcubierre invisibility.

“Matthew! I’ve located your mother!” Mata Hari said excitedly. “Or at least, a bodyheat form that matches her records.”

“Show me the sensor image.”

In his mind the skyrise landscape was replaced by a three dee holo that showed the land underneath the two skyrises and the threads of maglev transport tubes that connected all fourteen skyrises. The one linking the Halicene skyrise with the Melikark skyrise showed a purple dot just where the maglev entered the Melikark basement. Reading his mental wishes, Mata Hari enlarged that point and then gave him an infrared and normal light image of a food supply maglev car that was slowing to an automated distribution zone within the Melikark skyrise. On top of the car lay a two-legged, two-armed humanoid form partly covered by a heat reflective tarp. But his Mom’s head lay outside the infrared covering. Shoulder length hair of red streaked by grey showed. His Mom had always had red hair. Like his sister Charlotte. It was her!