Read Online Star Vigilante (Vigilante Series) by T. Jackson King - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: T. Jackson King
Ads: Link
your brother Ioannis, and consider Options.” He looked deep into the forward holosphere, seeking the truth behind a rainbow tracery of vectors and readouts, pushing his hopes for her out of his mind. To the side, Mata Hari’s holo-image disappeared. Perhaps she too was tired of illogical rationalizations.
“Options?” said Eliana, sounding frustrated. “Why don’t you just go directly to Halcyon and destroy the Stripper from orbit? This ship has the weapons. Do you lack the courage?”
Matt did not look up. “Eliana, what if the Stripper contains mutant retroviruses genetically tailored to block the photosynthetic action of your Mother Trees? What if an obvious attack on the Stripper yields only the total despoliation of your planet?”
“Oh!” she said with surprise. “I hadn’t considered that. Matt, I’m sorry—”
“No more apologies,” he said firmly, turning around in his glass chair to meet her face to face. “You know nothing of this ship, of its capabilities, of my link with Mata Hari , or my personal ethics. Now please, be quiet. I have work to do.” He turned back.
Ocean-time flowed over him with almost a gentle caress.
Three hundred milliseconds .
Leaning forward, his skin rippled autonomically, sending off signals to all parts of the ship. Time to work. Time to move in-system, to launch Remote probes, and to Dock with Zeus Station. Data flooded into him. Dimensions enfolded him. Strange senses caressed him.
But far, far away in a closed part of his mind, Matt considered Eliana. Deep inside, at the memory pain level, something whispered that maybe this beautiful, well-educated albino woman knew something he didn’t. Knew how to be a real human, knew how to feel like a human ought to feel . . . even if she were half-alien.
Biting his lip, Matt concentrated on the work at hand. Work always helped. Work cleared his mind, usually. But locks never stay locked. Like an ocean tide, emotions washed over him. Emotions from a dark, distant time. A time when he had not been a cyborg. When he’d been just a man . . . a man loved by a woman who cared for him.
Seven hundred thirteen milliseconds .
Zeus Station loomed large in the holosphere.
It didn’t look particularly hostile. Just a long cylinder pockmarked with Dock ports and sporting seven different bioenvironments, each with their own artificial gravity regimes. Docking went smoothly and normally.
Matt left Mata Hari encased in the bulky shell of Suit, its CPU updated with datafeeds on all the species resident in the station. Eliana walked ahead of him, striding down a narrow Dock corridor dressed only in a vacsuit and a troubled attitude. She’d chosen to make the vacsuit appear silvery, using electrocharge control to rearrange the suit’s molecules. Like a human mirror she stalked along the corridor, reflecting back the weirdly distorted images of nearby sapients, bar/dives, pumps, airlock control panels, and the red slashmark letters of Belizel, the Anarchate language. Nothing came into her suit and no sign of her personality left it. He wondered if she had always been so defensive, so wary of connecting with others. What was she afraid of?
They stopped before a large pressure lock leading to the Transport tubeways. The winding tubeways pumped people and packages from one end of the station to another like blood cells in a circulation system. With gravity fields generated as needed and bioenvironments tailored to specific requirements, a kilometers-long Trade Station like Zeus functioned like a very complex organism. Matt watched as Eliana touched a wall datapad and tapped in a coded sequence.
Above her head, a flat vid-display imaged on. A grey-haired man with a saturnine face scowled down at her. “Yes?” he said in demotic Greek, which Suit’s comdisk quickly translated.
“Grandfather Petros! It’s Eliana—don’t you recognize me?”
The man slowly smiled. “Eliana? Is it you behind that mirror? We had
“Options?” said Eliana, sounding frustrated. “Why don’t you just go directly to Halcyon and destroy the Stripper from orbit? This ship has the weapons. Do you lack the courage?”
Matt did not look up. “Eliana, what if the Stripper contains mutant retroviruses genetically tailored to block the photosynthetic action of your Mother Trees? What if an obvious attack on the Stripper yields only the total despoliation of your planet?”
“Oh!” she said with surprise. “I hadn’t considered that. Matt, I’m sorry—”
“No more apologies,” he said firmly, turning around in his glass chair to meet her face to face. “You know nothing of this ship, of its capabilities, of my link with Mata Hari , or my personal ethics. Now please, be quiet. I have work to do.” He turned back.
Ocean-time flowed over him with almost a gentle caress.
Three hundred milliseconds .
Leaning forward, his skin rippled autonomically, sending off signals to all parts of the ship. Time to work. Time to move in-system, to launch Remote probes, and to Dock with Zeus Station. Data flooded into him. Dimensions enfolded him. Strange senses caressed him.
But far, far away in a closed part of his mind, Matt considered Eliana. Deep inside, at the memory pain level, something whispered that maybe this beautiful, well-educated albino woman knew something he didn’t. Knew how to be a real human, knew how to feel like a human ought to feel . . . even if she were half-alien.
Biting his lip, Matt concentrated on the work at hand. Work always helped. Work cleared his mind, usually. But locks never stay locked. Like an ocean tide, emotions washed over him. Emotions from a dark, distant time. A time when he had not been a cyborg. When he’d been just a man . . . a man loved by a woman who cared for him.
Seven hundred thirteen milliseconds .
Zeus Station loomed large in the holosphere.
It didn’t look particularly hostile. Just a long cylinder pockmarked with Dock ports and sporting seven different bioenvironments, each with their own artificial gravity regimes. Docking went smoothly and normally.
Matt left Mata Hari encased in the bulky shell of Suit, its CPU updated with datafeeds on all the species resident in the station. Eliana walked ahead of him, striding down a narrow Dock corridor dressed only in a vacsuit and a troubled attitude. She’d chosen to make the vacsuit appear silvery, using electrocharge control to rearrange the suit’s molecules. Like a human mirror she stalked along the corridor, reflecting back the weirdly distorted images of nearby sapients, bar/dives, pumps, airlock control panels, and the red slashmark letters of Belizel, the Anarchate language. Nothing came into her suit and no sign of her personality left it. He wondered if she had always been so defensive, so wary of connecting with others. What was she afraid of?
They stopped before a large pressure lock leading to the Transport tubeways. The winding tubeways pumped people and packages from one end of the station to another like blood cells in a circulation system. With gravity fields generated as needed and bioenvironments tailored to specific requirements, a kilometers-long Trade Station like Zeus functioned like a very complex organism. Matt watched as Eliana touched a wall datapad and tapped in a coded sequence.
Above her head, a flat vid-display imaged on. A grey-haired man with a saturnine face scowled down at her. “Yes?” he said in demotic Greek, which Suit’s comdisk quickly translated.
“Grandfather Petros! It’s Eliana—don’t you recognize me?”
The man slowly smiled. “Eliana? Is it you behind that mirror? We had
Similar Books
