“Maeve, your mother and brother are safe and are being taken to my shuttle. How are you doing?”
The blond-haired teen, sitting naked beside the jumpsuit clad O’Toole, showed a pink flush in her pale face, arms crossed under her breasts, and the muscles in her legs tensed as if preparing to jump away from O’Toole. The question froze her in place. “Uh, as well as can be expected. Had a drink and some food earlier.”
“Yes,” hissed O’Toole, his right arm moving to press the hidden knife firmly against Maeve’s back. “I’ve been taking care of her. That should count for something. Right? Mr. Whomever you are.”
“The Anarchate knows me as Matthew Dragoneaux, freelance Vigilante who recently destroyed one of their Nova battleglobes in a fight inside the Sigma Puppis star system.” O’Toole gaped in disbelief. “I hail from a Second Wave colony. And yes, your taking care of Maeve does count for something.”
In his mind Matt PET image-thought his helmet pressors into tight-focus, then hit O’Toole with
two invisible force beams. They hit both shoulders and forced the stocky man back against the metal wall, his knife hand banging loudly against the metal.
“Maeve, please
get up and move behind me.”
The girl smiled suddenly,
jumped up, stepped two paces away from her former captor, then turned and spat a globule of wetness into the man’s face. “Bastard! You are evil!”
In his mind, Matt tachlinked to Mata Hari as she helped George escort the last group of captives into the front airlock and aboard
Ariadne
. “Lady of the Sword, please join me at this location. Dressed in your chain-mail look, if you please. I am sure George can handle the last stragglers.”
Maeve looked around, seeking his AI companion. She went “Oh!” when
she saw Barbarian Queen Mata Hari standing in the hallway, just beyond the room’s entry. Even as Matt kept his pressor beams fixed on pinning O’Toole against the back wall, he smiled as Maeve stood straight, gave a respectful nod to Mata Hari, then stepped aside so his partner could enter. He wanted Mata Hari here. There was a need for a record to be made of his judgment.
“
Conand O’Toole, in the name of humanity and by my right of battle, I condemn you to death. You will be—”
“Wait!” screamed O’Toole. “I have data. I can tell you stuff about the Anarc
hate. I can—”
“Tell me about the upcoming rendezvous of fellow genome harvesters just outside the Alkalurops system? Or the fact that the Anarchate provincial Combat Command accepts quarterly bribes from you and those like you in order to not capture or destroy you?” Matt said, giving thanks to Mata Hari as she stood beside him, her sword pointed toward O’Toole. “We know that already. Your computer and your datapads are leaky.”
O’Toole’s pale brow began to sweat. “But, but this is illegal! We are not on a planet. We—”
Matt released the pressor beams holding the man against the back wall. He slumped forward slightly, then looked up with
fear in his brown eyes. “What—”
He PET thought-imaged his working shoulder pulse-cannon into narrow beam focus, then ordered it to fire a yellow beam at the man’s right shoulder, just beyond where the arm joined the shoulder socket.
“
Owwwww!
” screamed O’Toole as he watched his right arm fall to the floor.
Matt
PET thought-imaged again. The man’s left arm similarly fell to the floor.
Amidst louder screams, Mata Hari looked at
Matt in real time and in his inner mind. Her face showed a hawk-like glare and her black eyes were as remorseless as Matt felt. “It is very necessary, Matthew,” she said both aloud and in his mind.
“O’Toole, I will leave you still alive before I depart this vessel. In return for you leaving Maeve alive.” Matt grinned at the man’s bloodshot eyes as spittle fled from his screaming mouth. “But you do not require any kind of mobility in order to live.”
More PET images saw to the slicing off of the man’s feet just above the ankles. “And O’Toole, if you can hear anything beyond your screams, think of the pain you and your crew have inflicted on defenseless babies in the last six months that you have been hunting living beings for cloneslave use. As you think of that, consider me merciful. This laser cauterizes each cut, thus preventing drastic blood loss. You will have enough blood left for your brain to operate and perceive. For a little while longer.”
Blinking me
ntally, Matt raised his shoulder laser to cut the man’s legs off at the knees. A follow on beam cut the man’s thighs off.
“You know,” Matt said with a booming voice to overcome the shrill shrieks of the treasonous human. “You don’t really need a bowel or kidneys to keep your brain working. Just your heart and your lungs and enough blood to keep you alive for a half hour. There, I think that is enough trimming away of your residue.”
Shock held O’Toole’s eyes open as the half-man lay collapsed against his bunk’s wall. Lacking arms, legs, hips and anything else below his rib cage, but bleeding only slightly, the man O’Toole was indeed now just a brain, a pair of eyes, a fount of constant pain, and a mind able to perceive Matt’s final solution to the journey of this genome harvester ship and crew.
Fifteen minutes later, Matt sat naked in the Interlock Pit of
Mata Hari
, its forward holosphere showing the front of the harvester starship. To his left sat Eliana, freshly arrived from getting Leader Sarah to water, feed and clothe the Morrigan captives. To his right shone the holo shape of Mata Hari, now wearing her Victorian outfit, her gaze still dark and deadly as she looked at the abomination that had stolen people in order to sell cloneslaves into future lives of suffering and pain. “Is the axial accelerator ready, Lady of the Sword?”
“Yes, my Matthew. Range is just fifty kilometers.”
In his mind, Matt linked into the fire controls of the T’Chak superweapon. In the ship’s bowels rumbled superconducting magnets as they activated the two-kilometer long axial plasma tube.
Fire!
he thought over his lightspeed neurolink with starship
Mata Hari
.
At the nose of
the starship there gaped a two hundred meter wide mouth, its upper and lower halves sporting crocodile teeth. It was an affectation of BattleMind that Matt had come to like.
A glowing ball of purple plasma shot out, aimed at th
e stationary genome harvester starship. On board it were the six living aliens, locked in their cabins but able to see their doom approaching via a live wallscreen. In O’Toole’s cabin, one of Mata Hari’s sensorBeads had injected the man with enough drugs to wake the dead. The man could now see the approach of a purple plasma globe that would instantly vaporize him, the starship and all matter near it.
“Mata Hari, you are sure the plasma globe will vaporize
all human cell residue? I do not want an Anarchate ship able to scavenge anything that could be used to create cloneslaves.”
“I am
sure,” she said quietly, awaiting the judgment of Matthew Dragoneaux.
“Matt,” whispered Eliana, “this is the right thing to do. I realize it now, after seeing your family and other memories.” She sighed. “What a horror is this universe we live in.”
“Yes,” Matt said, sending a prayer to the spirit of Charlotte as the purple plasma ball ate the harvester starship whole, leaving behind only whisps of plasma gas. “But beyond is a planet of good, living people. Let us return the captives to their home . . . and smell a real park and trees. I for one need a taste of clean water to purify me.”
“Me too,” said Eliana.
“And also me,” murmured Mata Hari.
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
In the central park of Lisdoonvarna, Matt stood in Suit with his helmet pushed back, enjoying the smell of grass, pine trees, fruit bushes and fresh water that flowed nearby in the park’s creek. Overhead, the yellow-white star Dagda warmed his face. And the sounds of happy voices came to his ears. He felt . . . almost normal, as if this were a summer day on Thuringia. Before the slavers came.
He smiled as Eliana raced across the centra
l grassy area, playing a game of socball with refugee teens and some local Morrigan youth. On the outer edge of the park rose pink tents that sheltered piles of food, beer kegs, scotch stands, racks of colorful clothes, displays of shoes and boots, while personal electronic games, datapads, AllCall units and memoryslates gleamed atop tables set up by local merchants. Some refugees dipped a hand in the metal cask that held the 50,000 platinum Standards which he and Mata Hari had contributed from their prior Vigilante earnings. But the governor and militia general would not allow him, Eliana, George, Suzanne or Mata Hari to pay for anything.
Enjoying the sight of his starship hanging
in Colossus Mode above the giant park as four pressor beams supported it a hundred meters above them all, he gave thanks that BattleMind still focused on their next combat target, rather than materializing in the midst of the organic ‘infestation’ that had greeted their landing and off-loading of the fifteen Rathfriland captives. The appearance of 152 other humans from Omega had turned the formal welcome into a summer picnic party.
In his mind, Matt stored the images of Omega children playing with captive children and local children of all ages. Children should have no cares other than running, playing hide-and-seek, arguing over slices of pie, sneaking up on each other, and skipping flat stones across the blue water of the small lake at the far side of the park. And overhanging the hundreds of people moving across the park
came the sound of a musical favorite of Sarah Vasiliades. An antique folk song it was. Something called “You’ve Got A Friend” by an ancient songstress named Carole King. Matt had never heard the like, but since everyone here spoke standard English in addition to native Gaelic, the song was clearly enjoyed by most of the crowd.
“Is this kind of celebration what you hoped to see for your Omega refugees?” asked the stocky, middle-aged woman known as Governor O’Davoren.
Matt did not mind Airmed O’Davoren’s interruption, or the presence of militia general Balor O’Clery at his left side. They had understood early on that formality was not Matt’s style. And putting on a party for welcome guests was an ancient custom of the
Tuatha De Danann
, as the settlers of Morrigan called themselves. It seemed all of them hailed from ancient Earth’s island nation of Eire, lying in what archaic geographers called the North Atlantic Ocean. They were a friendly people, made even more so by his, George and Mata Hari’s rescue of their kidnapped citizens. He smiled at Airmed.
“Governor, this is exactly what I hoped for. Except my life has had so little experience of this kind of . . . people celebration that I could not have imagined such beauty, wonder and friendliness without first visiting here.”
“Good that you did,” rumbled Balor, his close-cropped grey hair glinting under Dagda’s yellow-white light. “Our corvette could not have caught the harvester ship. Our people would have been truly lost. Again, we thank you for your . . . bravery and service to our honor.”
Airmed rested a pale white hand on his armored right arm. “And your gift of a new Tachyon Pylon
along with your orbital placement of a Defense sled will guarantee no future slavers will visit us.” The woman, dressed in a finely threaded blouse of blue fabric and a red dress with embroidered dragons, turned to meet Matt’s eyes. Her pale blue eyes did not show tears. But her high cheekbones were flushed red, as deep emotion filled her. “We welcome your human refugees, especially George O’Hussey and his Suzanne. All of your people will enrich our world, and their children will enjoy learning our Gaelic. It is a language made for song and poetry,” she said, a half-smile filling her face. “But what of you and your Eliana? Can we not tempt you two to also settle here? The parliament will gladly gift you land for a homestead and—”
“I wish it were possible,” Matt interrupted the governor’s third repeat of an offer made upon their landing. He licked dry lips, thinking it had been a long time since he had drunk beer of any sort. Or played a game of backgammon with another human. “But I have taken on a . . . a
geis
duty that I promised to the souls of my family and my dead love, Helen Trinh, before they all died thanks to the lawless rule of the Anarchate. You know about the obligation of
geis
, I believe.”
Airmed O’Davoren nodded tightly. “We do. Our hero Cuchulainn honored one
geis
only to violate another
geis
laid on him. But we all remember him. We all honor him.”
“And,” Balor murmured, “honoring the
geis
laid on you by this woman, pursuing battle to save souls from slavery while bringing justice to worlds in need, is the highest duty any man can carry out. Whether you overthrow the Anarchate, or merely save the lives of millions, your name will be long remembered among the human and alien worlds.”
Airmed patted his arm. “Your
geis
has already shown its power. By the track you follow, you have delivered refugees to a welcoming home and have returned captives of that home to their families. Short of bringing new life to our world, I can think of no better deeds than what you have already performed.”
Matt blinked, telling his onboard nanobots to reabsorb the tear moisture. A big man does not need to show tears to feel deeply his . . . feelings.
These two leaders of this world had accepted his calling for what it was. As Eliana accepted him and loved him. As Mata Hari accepted him and . . . felt something like love for him, based on her expressions during the battle aboard the harvester ship. He looked out across the busy meadow, seeing the approach of George with his Suzanne, the two holding hands much the way he and Eliana often held hands. Beside them walked the full-size holo of Mata Hari who wore an outfit similar to that of Airmed. Feeling happy that his Vigilante partner was growing in her emotionality, he reached out with both gloved hands to lightly clap each companion on the shoulder.
“Governor, general, this day is a reward beyond any I could have imagined.” He paused as his three approaching friends pointed at the Morrigan version of butterflies. “But I have my
geis
duty. I have my comrades at arms. I have my starship. And we have further battles to pursue before we head for the Small Magellanic Cloud, the home of the makers of the starship above you. Going there is a promise I made to the . . . AI mind aboard her, after being rescued from my lifepod. A duty greater than simple Vigilante work awaits my efforts.”
George and Suzanne stopped in front of Matt and his two companions,
with Mata Hari standing to the right of O’Hussey. Mata Hari gave Matt the first smile he had seen since arriving at Dagda’s heliopause. She gestured to her left, to the couple.
“Greetings, Governor O’Davoren and General O’Clery. Matthew, these two folks need a word with you.” She gestured reassurance as Matt’s two companions made to move away so he could have privacy. “Stay, hosts of Morrigan. Their issue relates to your home world also.”
Matt nodded, said in his mind
You are happy about something, dear partner
, then focused on intent George and serious Suzanne. “George, my armsman in honor, what do you and your lady wish to discuss?”
“Going with you on your future battles,” George said bluntly. He hugged Suzanne closer. “We’ve discussed this. I shared with her the images of the place we found the captives, your loss of your family to genome harvesters, and how this pirate crew operated with the permission of the Anarchate military
. . . so long as they paid their bribes. While this is a wonderful world, Airmed and Balor, we feel it our duty to go with Matt and Eliana and Mata Hari to battle for freedom, justice and the downfall of the Anarchate. By whatever means it takes.”
“Right,” said Suzanne as she pushed a blond lock out of her eyes. “Mata Hari has given us some background on the Task of this BattleMind, on the Vigilante work you have done over the years, Matthew, and how too many planets fall victim to the conglomerates, like Eliana’s home world. I support George. And with my IT background, perhaps I can help Eliana in her research on finding a cure for your slow virus infection.”
Matt felt surprise that the two knew of his ‘gift’ from the Mican griffin-tiger Legion, but he realized Eliana’s easy-going nature was the opposite of the ‘operational security’ that he had long followed. And his on-again, off-again ailment could use an extra mind to help Eliana and Mata Hari. His lover was feeling stumped by the way the virus activated one hereditary disease, then changed its outer protein appearance to avoid a retroviral killer drug, only to reappear later with new camouflage as it bit into a different part of his genetic heritage. The rheumatoid arthritis had faded due to monoclonal antibody treatments and healing done by his onboard nanoDocs. But something else would hit him, sooner or later. He focused on George.
“Armsman of Eire, if I take you and Suzanne onboard, it could
be years before this battle reaches a conclusion. Are you two prepared for long months stuck inside my starship?”
“Yes,” George said, a small smile creasing his black beard. “There are now plenty of empty roomsuites. Suzanne wishes to learn Tavli from Eliana. And I would seek . . .
some kind of cyborg upgrades from Lady of the Sword Mata Hari. Upon Suzanne’s approval, of course.”
Matt reviewed his long-term plans. When they made it to the
Small Magellanic Cloud, even if all the T’Chak were dead as galactic rumor had it, there should still be other starships like
Mata Hari
. Perhaps they only needed the proper code signal from BattleMind to awaken? If he could lay hands on several more Dreadnought-class starships like
Mata Hari
, then he could return to the Milky Way and really make an impact on the Anarchate. He smiled at George.
“Are you willing to
work with a starship AI, George? And learn basic piloting?”
The man brightened like a young star. “Yes! You mean you will take us?”
Noticing Mata Hari’s happy smile, Matt understood his first partner approved. And no doubt Eliana, now playing with Rebecca and Rafael’s four children, would welcome other human company. Perhaps they could even enjoy a few deluxe meals during Translation! Assuming they could acquire a few boxes of wine and several kegs of beer.
“Yes, George. And Suzanne, it does. Welcome to the crew of starship
Mata Hari
.”
“Yes!”
Suzanne yelled.
“Great!” said George in his deep baritone.
Balor and Airmed clapped their hands and then moved to hug and congratulate his new battle comrades.
Matt inhaled the fresh air of Eire Park. It was time to open a beer keg, stomp a few dance steps, and lift some kids high in the air with Suit’s help. Surrounded by happy and grateful people who thronged the park, Matt felt almost safe for the first time in years. Perhaps, after he had completed his
geis
to Helen, he and Eliana and George and Suzanne could return to Morrigan, buy land, and build homesteads not far from each other. Then, perhaps he and Eliana could have children of their own. Her need for children after the loss of Calyce’s companionship was something Matt had long understood. But bringing a newborn to life in the middle of his battle to overthrow the Anarchate was not wise. And anyway, Matt needed to learn more about how to care for more than himself and Mata Hari. He thought Eliana liked his . . . normal self. She loved his loom and his weaving. And swimming in the ship’s large pool was a luxury they both had discovered after the end of the Halcyon battle.
“Shall we all go and get drunk?” he said to Balor, Airmed, George, Suzanne and Mata Hari.
Their happy laughter convoyed him to the drinks tent.
Sarah Vasiliades watched George and Suzanne walk up to Matt the Vigilante and present their proposal to join his battle. It was a matter the two of them had discussed with her, since the three of them had long been friends. While she hated the loss of Suzanne’s
IT skills, and George’s good humor, she knew that Matt felt the loneliness of his crusade against the Anarchate. Having comrades in battle would help balance Matt. While Eliana would no doubt love having another woman onboard the starship. And George’s personal sense of honor was something he felt intensely.
Sighing with resignation, Sarah walked up to Rebecca as s
he watched Eliana play the LifeGame with Anabelle. “Becca, I think it’s time we two talked with Eliana. About new friends, new duties and how to cross-stitch some of your embroidery designs!”
The laughter of her friend moved Sarah away from her worry for Matthew.
He was a grown man. A tough man. And a man who loved children, judging by the way he had let kids ride on his missile backpack even as his shoulder pulse-cannons stayed locked in place. It was clear he fought for the freedom of future children, not just for vengeance. And that made her happy to count him as a new friend.