Anarchate Vigilante (Vigilante Series 4) Read online

  ANARCHATE VIGILANTE

  Book Four of the Vigilante series

  By T. Jackson King

  King Novels

  Alien Vigilante (forthcoming ), Touch Team (forthcoming), The Memory Singer (2014), Anarchate Vigilante (2014), Galactic Vigilante (2013), Nebula Vigilante (2013), Speaker To Aliens (2013), Galactic Avatar (2013), Stellar Assassin (2013), Retread Shop (2012, 1988), Star Vigilante (2012), The Gaean Enchantment (2012), Little Brother’s World (2010), Judgment Day And Other Dreams (2009), Ancestor’s World (1996).

  Dedication

  To my son, Keith Eric King, Special Agent, Office of Special Investigations, USAF (ret.), who put his life on the line daily during three combat tours in the Middle East and in many other countries around the world which cannot be named due to security considerations.

  Acknowledgments

  First thanks go to my two beta readers, Alicia Solomon and Mia McLeod, for their work on this and other novels. Also, the military SF stories of David Drake, a true veteran of a major war, have been the inspiration for this and other Vigilante novels.

  ANARCHATE VIGILANTE

  © 2014 T. Jackson King

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except for brief quotations for review purposes only.

  Cover design by T. Jackson King; cover image by Philcold/Felipe Frias Jimenez via Dreamstime license; back image of Carina Nebula, courtesy of Hubble Space Telescope

  Second Edition

  Published by T. Jackson King, Los Alamos, NM 87544

  http://www.tjacksonking.weebly.com/

  ISBN 10: 978-1-61720-661-0

  ISBN 13: 1-61720-661-X

  Printed in the USA

  CHAPTER ONE

  The only reason to let genome slavers live is the chance you can free their captives. Human or Alien, Matt would hold his laser fire if he could free even one captive. So far, he and Mata Hari the AI had learned of three captives at an asteroid base where slaver starships came for ‘rest and recreation’, according to NavCore data files they had recovered from dead ships after the Alkalurops beacon battle. Matt and his fellow cyborgs Eliana, George and Suzanne had all donned combat suits and pretended to be a slaver crew from distant Omega Centauri cluster in Norma Arm. This base inside the Ring Nebula M57 lay just 2,300 light years from Earth, at the juncture of the Orion Arm with the Sagittarius Arm. In what the Anarchate called Sector 13. Leaving the shelter of shuttle Ariadne, the four of them marched toward the landing dock’s large archway that gave access to the asteroid’s interior.

  But being among slavers like those who’d captured his Mom, Dad and four sisters made him want to spit. Suit binged at him. “Matthew,” said Suit’s Tactical CPU, “coating Faceplate with spittle will interfere with your ability to perceive in the yellow light spectrum. Please refrain.”

  The thud of Suit’s heavy boots against the metal of the landing dock came to Matt as a reminder of their mission. “Understood. Will refrain from interfering with your precious sensors!”

  In his mind and over the tachlink node implanted behind his left ear, Matt heard Mata Hari chuckle like the ancient World War I spy she pretended to be. The red cloud of her mindsense hovered on the periphery of his mental awareness, along with the mindimages of his lover Eliana, her precog mind-sister Suzanne and black-bearded George of the wrestler’s build, his first combat ally beyond starship Mata Hari and its T’Chak AI BattleMind.

  “Matt,” mused the soft voice of Mata Hari, “the task ahead requires concentration, not emotion. Remember our discussion before we arrived at the heliopause of this nebula and chose to assume a slaver ID for each ship of Hexagon Prime?”

  He remembered. Months after arriving in Morrigan system and dropping off the 131 slaver captives rescued in the giant battle at Intel Base 14 near the Crab Nebula, they had chosen to go after this cloneslaver base in Sector 13. With just eight ships. The other 494 ships of Cloud Fleet had split into ten cohorts and headed off to attack other Anarchate and slaver bases in the five spiral arms of Milky Way galaxy. This asteroid base had been the source for the 11 slaver starships that held the captives at Intel Base 14. Until Matt and his Cloud Fleet had attacked and destroyed every starship, Assault asteroid, antimatter-filled Supply Tube and the thousands of Remotes that Sector Captain Yorkel had seeded in the Intel system. His opponents were now either stellar plasma or minute black holes. While the 131 captives were alive and free. Freedom for every cloneslave and the stopping of cloneslavery and bondServitude were the objectives of his war on the Anarchate. A war that required him to be less emotional than normal for a Human. Let alone a Human who had lost his mother, father and four sisters to a slaver starship 15 years ago.

  “I remember our Battle Council.” In his mind Matt felt the mindsense of his three cyborg battlemates and Mata Hari, the emotional artificial intelligence, or AI. “When do we emit the Spy Eyes, Snoopers and limpet complinks?”

  “After we enter the occupied spaces of this base,” said Mata Hari, filling his mind with a three dee graphic of the elongated spheroid that was the asteroid, its internal levels and fusion reactors highlighted in purple even as the red bodyheat images of nearby lifeforms filled the left quadrant of Faceplate.

  “Everyone, set your suit on Threat Alert, but leave it to me or Mata Hari to trigger any weapon use.”

  “Agreed, Matthew,” muttered George in his Irish brogue, his deep baritone voice sounding tense.

  “Of course,” murmured Eliana in a rich contralto even as her mind-sister Suzanne said “Of course” at almost the same second.

  Matt grinned to himself. This slaver base was used to seeing lifeforms clothed in some kind of combat suit. But two women with the mental ability to ‘see the near future’, as Eliana and Suzanne could, was a surprise he planned to use against anyone who sought to block their mission of finding the living captives. Then they would return to their T’Chak starships for the final destruction of this base and the 22 slaver ships that floated nearby. Sinking into the multi-spectral vision of Suit and its millimeter ranging radar, Matt focused on the Solink avian who hovered in its vacsuit at the archway. The leathery-winged, yellow-beaked and red-crested avian held an AllCall datapad in one of its winghands, its attention focused on their approach.

  “Welcome, fellow Trade beings,” its vacsuit called to them in Belizel click speech. “Your personal comlink IDs? Your medium of exchange for our services?”

  Matt PET image-thought to Suit, ordering it to emit their first names, basic Human bio-data, and the ship name Descartes to the datapad held by the avian. “Data is transmitted to your device, winged one. We crew members of ship Descartes are in need of food, rest, recreation and entertainment.” He paused and gestured for George to lift a sealed bag that had become heavy the moment they all entered the gravplate field of the landing dock. “We bring 1,100 platinum Standards to pay for our . . . requirements. Satisfactory?”

  The brown wings of the Solink avian drew a little apart within its transparent vacsuit. “Very satisfactory, good lifeforms of . . . the Human species.” The avian’s two blue eyes glanced down at the datapad, then fixed on Matt’s face as his Faceplate also turned transparent. “Yours is a Newcomer species, yes?”

  Beside him the white ceramic combat suits of George, Eliana and Suzanne came to a stop as Matt stopped in front of the Solink alien. His three battlemates turned away from the avian and assumed an All Surround battle cordon, their laser Magnums pointed in multiple directions. Their shoulder laser pulse-cannon
s also hunted for targets among the other ships and vacsuited lifeforms present in the dock. “We are a Newcomer species. Our Corporate State is friendly with the Anarchate. We know how to do business. And how to work out alternate business solutions. Do you require a personal reminder of our versatility?”

  The vacsuited avian floated away from the four of them. Until the metal wall of the dock chamber stopped it. Its pointed beak clicked in hurried Belizel. “No reminder is needed! Simply deposit your Standards on the Incoming Pedestal just inside the archway and proceed inward to enjoy our services. Flightless bipeds are as welcome here as are any Solink.” The avian paused as its blue eyes looked beyond at his three combat ready battlemates. “Please?”

  Matt smiled, showing his white teeth. So did George, Suzanne and Eliana as they holstered their Magnums and followed after Matt as he entered the archway, dropped the bag of Standards on the pedestal, then followed blinking ultraviolet light emitters down the ship-wide tubeway. A meter into the tubeway he felt the brush against Suit of an inertial field that kept the oxy-nitro air inside the tubeway and away from the airless landing dock.

  “Now?” he queried Mata Hari.

  “One minute. Emit the sensors just after we enter the Arrival Hall,” Mata Hari said as her mindcloud became a solid holo to his right, portraying a female Spy who wore a black vacsuit similar to that worn by Eliana long ago in Hagonar Station. “My little envoys will find the datalink broadcast emitters, the central Control Mind of the base, and the places where air and water are delivered. The captives are likely held in a place with atmosphere.”

  Eliana’s mindsense expressed anger as they approached a large domed hall that held nearly 50 Alien lifeforms of various species, each moving, walking, flying or floating off on various errands. “Slavers! To think they need R and R! They capture living beings for the purpose of making clones of people for sale on the interstellar market. Matt, I am eager to do violence to these . . . these entities.”

  “Me too,” whispered golden-haired Suzanne as she reached over to hold the gauntlet hand of her lifemate George.

  Matt pushed the memory of his captive family to the back of his mind. “Agreed. But we are here for three reasons only. To free captives from these slavers. To search the base Control Mind for captive vidimages, captive numbers and planets hit by every slaver starship that has visited this base. And to buy food supplies. Once this is done, we depart to our ships, then we wager among ourselves as to who gets the honor of destroying this pest hole!”

  George’s image at one side of his Faceplate grinned, then turned serious. “That is in the future. This is here and now. What next?”

  Matt scanned the mental three dee holo of the base as supplemented by the avian’s ‘map to entertainments’ emitted by his datapad to Suit. At the top of the asteroid there loomed a clear dome that sheltered skyrise towers marked as ‘luxury habitats’, while in the middle were levels for oxy-nitro, methane and chlorine breathers. Those levels held food dispensaries and the Alien version of brothels that were both virtual and flesh-real. The Arrival Hall level they now entered had four side tunnels leading to diverse locations. He pointed at the far right side tunnel.

  “We’re on Level Two. We head for that tunnel to find a supplies merchant,” Matt said, his boots clanking on the gravplate floor of the hall. “Release our Spy Eyes, complinks and Snoopers so Mata Hari can locate the captives.”

  “About time!” muttered George, his brogue sounding impatient.

  A few nearby Aliens, dressed in their own version of combat suits, moved away from the sudden flutter of tiny ornithopters that sped away quickly from the four of them. Their podeyes, sensor stalks and sonar horns focused on Matt’s group a moment, then the Aliens resumed going about their business.

  Eliana moved up beside him as they walked through the crowded hall. “Matt, why is everyone so casual about our combat suits and the release of the Snoopers?”

  He stayed focused on the multiple visual and sensor inputs given him by Suit even as he looked into the beautiful green eyes of Eliana, her albino-white expression visible behind her own faceplate. “First, our ship IDs come from slaver ship records that were destroyed when BattleMind vaporized the Commerce Station in Omega Centauri cluster. So the death of those ships is unknown here. Second reason is greed. Third reason is that everyone is expected to arrive armed for self-defense with little sensor units swarming around as a kind of ‘alert field’.” Putting thought to action Matt had Suit scan the tunnel as they entered, the right side of Faceplate showing red bodyheat images for organics and purple blobs for servebots and active Mech devices. “The avian entry guard did not object to the nuke rockets in our suit backpacks, which tells me other lifeforms here also are prepared for serious combat. So we are just a ‘normal group’ of slavers, by their standards.”

  Suzanne’s armored hand touched his left arm. “Matthew, I precog sense that there will be major violence when we attempt to leave with the captives. And beyond that I sense—”

  “Go no further with your sensing than the next hour,” Matt cautioned the Swedish woman over the suit comlinks. “No need for you to perceive the mind-deaths of hundreds of lifeforms.”

  “Agreed,” she sighed as they left the rampway tunnel and entered a large globular hall with multiple levels that rose to its rocky ceiling.

  “Matt,” called George from the point position of their group. “How about that Supply counter over there?”

  Wishing he could be in ocean-time superfast thinking mode, where his mind split into hundreds of attention segments, Matt turned part of his attention to a low counter that fronted a side alcove crowded with boxes, tubes, sparkly stuff and the bodyshape of a Brokeet alien, its giant ant form taking note of their arrival.

  “That place will do. Let me handle this. The rest of you go on All Surround, please.”

  Their mental agreement came to Matt by way of the tachlink node implanted in everyone, while Mata Hari’s mindsense flowed to him over the fiber optic cable that socketed into the back of his neck. Part of being a cyborg were in-body implants like the tachlink node, nanoDocs, heart upgrades, multi-spectral vision and Herculean strength. With Mata Hari’s mindsense came the all-encompassing ‘feel’ of his two kilometer long starship, a place filled with tech marvels he was still getting used to. Matt looked directly at the globular head of the Brokeet and fixed on its two bulging eyes.

  “Greetings,” he said in Belizel thanks to Suit’s automatic translation ability. “We require DL-chirality food items for delivery to our shuttle in the landing dock. Do you possess animal body parts and the new aphrodisiac known as chocolate? From the Human homeworld?”

  The golden-yellow chitin skin of the two meter tall Brokeet flickered under the chamber’s yellow-white radiators. Its four arms, with one pair at the waist and a second pair at the ant’s version of shoulders, spread wide as if in welcome. “Yes,” the Alien clicked in harsh Belizel. “We have flash-frozen canisters of quadruped animal meat, some with bones in them. The meat is DL chirality sourced.” The Brokeet, who stood on two arthropod legs behind the low counter, gestured with one arm toward a nearby pillar stacked with small grey tins. “The Human food known as chocolate has arrived recently. It is very rare. And very much in demand by most oxy-nitro breathers of DL chirality evolution. How much do you require?”

  Matt’s hunger for grilled steaks had grown the farther they traveled away from the Irish colony world of Morrigan and its herds of heifers and steers. But chocolate was essential for the personal happiness of his women pilots like Sarah Vasiliades, Suzanne and Eliana. On his mental periphery he sensed the intense attention of those strong women. He smiled at the hard-skinned arthropod.

  “Two kilos of chocolate,” he said. “And ten kilos of meat animal body parts.”

  The Brokeet merchant hiss-clicked in what seemed a surprise reaction. “That much chocolate? A kilo of such a popular product is—”

  “How much?”

  “One hundred t
wenty platinum Standards per kilo,” clicked the Brokeet.

  “Outrageous!” said George in Matt’s mind even as his three allies worked with Mata Hari to maintain an All Surround defense while he spent slow human time on food purchasing.

  “Agreed,” Matt said in Belizel to the Brokeet. “The cost for the meat body parts?”

  “Thirty-seven platinum Standards.”

  Matt showed his own datapad to the Brokeet. “Displayed here is my account code for Standards deposited on our arrival at the dock. Copy and deduct 277 platinum Standards from the account.”

  The Brokeet’s lower arm pair lifted its own datapad to vidimage the code. “Your business is highly appreciated. Delivery will be made to what location?”

  “Our shuttle Ariadne, located in the landing dock chamber. Here is the image and arrival ID of the shuttle,” Matt said as Suit told Matt’s datapad to display an image of Ariadne. “And one more thing.”

  “Yes?” clicked the Brokeet as it looked up from its own datapad.

  “If my account is debited for any amount greater than we agreed, I will come looking for you.” Matt ordered Suit to aim his right shoulder laser pulse-cannon at the giant ant, fixing its green targeting laser between the alien’s two large eyes. “My upset will become your . . . departure from the living. Understood?”

  “Understood!” harshly-clicked the Brokeet as it backed away, then stood behind the display pillar stacked with chocolate tins. “Uh, your chocolate and meat products will be delivered immediately. Or sooner!”

  “Good. Immediate delivery is satisfactory.” Matt turned away from the Brokeet after Suit verified the store had no hidden or stealthed weaponry aimed at him and his allies. “Mata Hari, any word on the captives?”

  “Yes Matthew,” she said over their joint mindlink. “Three of my limpet complinks have tied into the fiber optic cables that enter the base’s Control Mind. Up on Level Four. I’ve decrypted the simple encoding. From the data downloaded into the Control Mind by the 22 visiting slaver ships, the three captives arrived aboard ship Medontoktic. One of them is human. They are being held twenty meters above us on Level Four, in a group cell guarded by a Combat Mech and a ship crewperson. A Spelidon ‘rat’, I believe you call the species. Your decision?”