Vigilante Read online

  He hung his head in shame. What could he say? He had become inventive…in the very worst ways.

  “I did whatever I could to see his orders done,” he finished quietly. “Even when I did not agree with them. Even when we were imprisoning people and they were only fighting to be allowed to leave—as we had promised them they could.”

  “I see. And what do you think your punishment should be?”

  “You said the punishment was death.”

  He thinks death will be easier? Shinigami exclaimed. A guided missile is too good for him.

  We agree again, Barnabas told her. He raised his voice. “I see from your eyes that you do not think death is a fitting punishment. I asked what you thought the punishment should be, not what I thought it should be.”

  Gar swallowed. All the memories were rushing back—whippings, long days in the cells, the workers growing thinner and thinner.

  “Now you see,” Barnabas told him softly. “You see that what you did cannot be made right. You see that death would be quicker and far less painful than suffering the same torments you devised for the workers. I expect you to think about that over the coming weeks.”

  Gar looked up at him in horror. What was the human planning to do?

  “Tell me, do you know where all of the mines are on this planet?”

  I could tell you.

  An interesting point. But are you certain which were reopened under a legitimate business model and which were not? There was a pause. I actually wanted to know.

  Oh. No, probably not.

  We go with him, then. Barnabas waited for Gar to answer.

  “No.” The Luvendi shook his head. “I wish I did.”

  “If you were to go back, do you think you could find information on all the mines Lan oversees?”

  “Most likely.” Gar looked wary. “I’ve never been sure if he has others, but—”

  He broke off as Barnabas leaned forward again.

  “You will help me,” Barnabas ordered, “and I suggest you pray that by the time you have finished helping me I believe you have redeemed yourself. You are lucky I need you, Venfaldri Gar. Otherwise you would already be dead.”

  5

  “You mean to tell me you’ve never once played chess?” Shinigami sounded incredulous. Here on the ship she was able to project her voice, as well as a holographic image of herself seated in the chair across from Barnabas.

  “Interestingly, no. I never got around to learning.” Barnabas settled back in his chair and folded his hands over his stomach. “I have, however, read up on the subject. Ladies first.”

  Shinigami narrowed her eyes and a moment later one of the pawns slid forward. The game board displayed whatever game you wanted on its surface, and the pieces were holographs.

  “Why are you staring at me?”

  “You can project the image of a human,” Barnabas observed, “but you do not act like a human.”

  “She often sat like this.”

  “And what did she do while she sat?” Barnabas queried. He moved one of his pawns—the one farthest to the right.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “You look like a statue.” Barnabas focused on her pieces; she could slide her bishop into the space just vacated by her pawn. As he watched, she gave a silent command to the computer and made the move he had predicted. He looked back up at her. “You don’t look at the board while you’re thinking about your next move.”

  “I am looking at the board.”

  “You know what I mean. The holograph isn’t doing the right things. You don’t fidget. You don’t pretend to move the pieces by yourself.”

  “Maybe accuracy isn’t what I’m going for,” the AI snapped.

  “I think it is.” Barnabas advanced the same pawn. “I think you’d like to be mistaken for a human when you want to be. It could be useful, after all. And it would allow you to play tricks on people.”

  “I do like that idea. What’s your strategy with that pawn?”

  “Why would I tell you?” While Barnabas watched her face, Shinigami caused the holograph’s eyes to look at the board. “That’s not bad. Bethany Anne would probably lean forward to look at it, though.”

  “Are her eyes bad?”

  “There is nothing physically wrong with her. It’s just a human mannerism. One tends to lean toward the thing one is examining.”

  “Humans expend energy in the oddest ways.”

  “Says the AI who suggested using a guided missile today.”

  “I still think that would have been a good strategy.” She moved the adjoining pawn from her first one. “He’s not going to help you, you know. I don’t know why you brought him back.”

  Venfaldri Gar was presently sitting in the Shinigami’s tiny brig. Barnabas would have preferred it if the brig had been made solely for humans, since everything would have been uncomfortably short for a detained Luvendi in that case. However, all Etheric Empire ships could accommodate a wide range of species, and therefore the ceilings were high and the benches were adjustable.

  Barnabas had opted to bring the Luvendi back while he planned his strategy.

  “I didn’t want him to run away, and I might need to ask him questions while I formulate my plan.”

  “Make your next move. Even by human standards, you’re slow.”

  “God help us if you ever meet a normal human being.” Barnabas considered, then his mouth twitched and he moved his knight backward one space.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Playing chess.”

  “You can’t move pawns backward!”

  “Are you sure? Because I looked in the rulebook and it doesn’t mention anything about that.”

  “Why would you move a piece backward right now?” The AI sounded pained.

  “I don’t expect you to understand my strategy just yet,” Barnabas replied mildly. “I hope you’ll catch on at some point, though. It would be very boring if I simply trampled all over you. One does hope for a worthy opponent.”

  The holograph flickered slightly, although the human form was as still as a statue. Then she looked up and gave Barnabas a glare.

  “Ah, you’re learning. Good.”

  “I can’t see how within the next ten moves you could hope to—”

  “Then the only way you’ll find out what I’m planning is to keep playing.”

  Shinigami stared at the board from all of the sensors that could see it. She had run ten million simulations so far, and the inescapable conclusion was that Barnabas had made an error in judgment or perhaps misunderstood the rules. Given the ways each type of piece could move, he was wasting valuable time and accomplishing nothing.

  She moved a knight and waited to see what he would do.

  Infuriatingly, he moved the pawn back to where it had just been.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Keep playing,” he told her inscrutably.

  “Fine. And what is your plan?”

  “Do you actually want to hear it in order to be informed, or do you want to hear it in order to tell me it’s foolish?”

  “Probably both, if I’m honest.”

  “You’ve definitely been spending too much time with Tabitha. Very well.” He moved the pawn on the far side of the board. “I am going to approach Venfirdri Lan as a missionary and tell him that I will be able to restore order to his mine. Once I have been able to assess what other mines he might be running, as well as learn more about his connections and the way the mine operates, I will make sure the workers are allowed to leave and that those in charge of keeping them there are held responsible.”

  “You just managed to make freeing slaves sound boring. This is a jailbreak! Have some fun with it!”

  Barnabas frowned. “Who programmed you?”

  “You know that’s not how AIs work.”

  “Well, however it happened, you’ve acquired a very disturbing sense of humor along the way.”

  “I know.” Shinigami grinned, fl
ashing her razor-sharp teeth She did not sound very disturbed. “But your plan is really terrible.”

  “Why?”

  Shinigami echoed his earlier words, “Do you actually want to hear it in order to be informed, or do you want to hear it in order to tell me it’s foolish?”

  Barnabas sighed. “To be informed.”

  “Boring again.” Shinigami, he noticed, was making very cautious moves. She moved another pawn now. Almost her whole line was forward, though he noted that she kept the channels open for her bishops. “But since you ask, what do you really need to know about this? You could go in there and kill all the guards without breaking a sweat—”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I do. I found four enclaves in the surrounding area that might be the mine we’re looking for. None of them have security you couldn’t handle on your own.”

  “I retract my criticism then.”

  “I like it when humans admit they’re wrong.”

  Barnabas raised an eyebrow. “You know I’m not fully human.”

  “Close enough in this case. Your move.” She sank into silence as he considered his options.

  He really was very stubborn. She’d spoken about that with other AIs, none of whom seemed to have big opinions about Barnabas. He’s very quiet, ADAM had said. He’d thought for a long time after that—long enough that Shinigami wondered if he’d short-circuited, but eventually he’d said, I like him.

  TOM had agreed later. He’s very quiet. And very old-fashioned.

  But?

  But Tabitha respects him. And he did win that beer-brewing contest very sneakily.

  Very sneakily, ADAM agreed. They still don’t know about that.

  Shinigami, upon learning the details of the contest, had decided that she might like working with Barnabas. He was making it very difficult, though, being all prickly and honorable.

  “Are you worried about having to kill them?” she asked finally.

  “What?” Barnabas frowned up at her as he made an embarrassingly bad move. He was now blocking his rook with his knight, and his bishops were locked in place.

  If Shinigami’d had a physical head she would have beaten it on the game board in frustration. She had been confident that she would win this strategy challenge, but she had expected it to at least be interesting. Barnabas was, however, making her wonder if she’d overestimated him.

  She made another move. “It seems like the sort of thing humans have qualms over. Killing.”

  “Have you ever met any of Bethany Anne’s people? Aren’t you—”

  “I am, and yes, I have. But I don’t see why you, especially given all I’ve read, are trying to make this unnecessarily complicated.”

  “Everything is complicated,” Barnabas replied absently. He moved another pawn. “In simple ways. It’s one of my favorite paradoxes about the world. Although in this case, well…”

  “What were you going to say?”

  “Say I go in there guns blazing and get to the overseer, and I take all the information I want directly out of his head. The slaves are instantly freed and the slavers pay for their mistakes. Everything is tied up very neatly, yes?”

  “Yeeesssss,” Shinigami drawled cautiously.

  Barnabas gave a pointed look at one of the sensors.

  “I may be limited in the number of simulations I can run on the chess match, but I can go through as many as I want for this mission and that’s a very easy way to—”

  “You only ran them on the mission, didn’t you?” Barnabas raised his eyebrows.

  “Well, yes.”

  “And what we want is to make High Tortuga safe for habitation by our people. We want to know everything that’s happening. We want to know who might come looking for it. Yes, this is one mine with an overseer who deserves to be dead, but what questions have I not yet thought to ask that might hint at bigger issues?”

  Shinigami was silent for a moment. “You always think like this? You were a Ranger.”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “A Ranger sees injustice and goes after it. I thought the job was quite limited in scope.”

  “Nothing is limited in scope.” Barnabas moved his left knight into one of the spaces left empty by a pawn. “That is what I have learned over the years. Do you know why I serve Bethany Anne?”

  “Explain.”

  “Because she doesn’t let things like definitions and laws keep her from doing the right thing. She makes use of them when it’s warranted and does the right thing when they would hinder her. I would never let a narrow definition of the word ‘Ranger’ preclude me from doing what I believe is the right thing to do. I wouldn’t then and I certainly won’t now, when I’m not even a Ranger anymore.”

  “I don’t think I’ll ever understand humans.” Shinigami sighed. “But I like them.”

  “Thank you. I’m assuming that was a compliment.”

  “It was. Are you sure you have a plan for this game?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your moves so far suggest that you don’t.”

  “I have a plan,” Barnabas assured her. “Both for the game and for the mine, although in the latter case it’s more of a structured non-plan.”

  “Have you thought of going into politics?”

  “First you say you like me, then you insult me.”

  Shinigami snickered. “I wasn’t sure you’d notice.”

  “And we were getting along so well. In any case, I stand by it. This is as good a place as any to begin learning what I need to know about this planet, and I have a perfect setup now.”

  “That Luvendi is a coward.”

  “I wasn’t speaking solely of him. I meant having a link both to the mines and to the cities. High Tortuga is shaped now by the fact that many of its citizens didn’t choose to go there; they just wanted to get away from where they were. They got there via the mines, and now they’re establishing the cities. But there’s another level of society: the people who made money off of the workers. If I cultivate knowledge of the mines and the cities, I can gain a perspective on the whole.”

  Shinigami wondered about that. She had run simulations and researched similar places, and she did not think highly of Barnabas’s chances to do anything other than bomb the mines to smithereens.

  After getting the civilians out, of course.

  Mostly she wanted to try out the flamethrower.

  “What do you think, Shinigami?” Barnabas asked. He made another move, apparently not seeing that he was far too late to accomplish anything in this game.

  “I think that the two groups aren’t as separate as you think,” Shinigami told him. “In systems where one group controls power and wealth, the other group is rarely cohesive in its approach. You should expect spies. You should expect people to defend the ones they serve.”

  “That’s a very interesting point.” Barnabas was pleased.

  “One other thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “Checkmate.” Her voice was smug.

  “Well, look at that. I believe you’re right.” Barnabas smiled. “And so you fell for my first trap.”

  “It’s checkmate. There’s no way for you to win.”

  “I wasn’t trying to.”

  “You were playing for a purpose other than to win?”

  “Exactly.” Barnabas switched off the game board and smiled up at one of Shinigami’s sensors. “Lesson One about strategy: make sure you know what your opponent’s goal is.”

  He left Shinigami sitting in incredulous silence and made his way to the brig to explain matters to Gar.

  6

  Gar could not figure out for the life of him what had happened.

  Yesterday he’d been feeling entirely normal. He had done his job. He’d had all his old frustrations and all his old goals. He had enjoyed his foray into the city, of course, but he’d been prepared to go back to work without complaint.

  Then a terrifying alien had chased him through the streets of Tethra, int
errogated him, and even threatened to kill him...and somehow all Gar could think about was that he was deeply, deeply ashamed of himself.

  It didn’t make any sense. It had been so brief a time since everything had been normal.

  Or was that correct?

  He had been pacing around the ship’s tiny cell, but now he paused. No, now that he thought of it, things had not been normal. If they had been normal, he would not have admitted what he had done as if it were a crime. There had been fear, yes, but hardly anything approximating torture. The alien had asked him a few questions and the truth had spilled out.

  For the first time in many years, Gar let himself wonder what his grandfather would have thought of who he’d become. The male had always been supportive of Gar’s studies and his efforts to get off Luvendan.

  He had died several years before Gar reached his majority, which had simplified things. Without him there, Gar never went back to visit. There was no one there he cared to see, and he imagined they felt the same way.

  Ambition was frowned upon on Luvendan. The ambitious few left, giving aliens a rather skewed perception of the Luvendi as a whole. The Luvendi out and about in the universe did not answer to their government and had no desire to go back or enrich their planet.

  For years that had been enough. Gar had looked no farther than the next promotion or the best way to spin an event to his advantage on a resume.

  Now he wondered how many things like this he had done. He had laughed with the others when he’d heard workers complain about the conditions on the transport ships. Had they thought they would get fine hotels and personal chefs? He had been impatient even when his colleagues had complained about the company’s archaic rules. They should have learned those rules and used them to their advantage.

  Even his grandfather, who had supported Gar’s ambition when no one else did, would not have been proud of the person Gar was now. He was uncomfortably sure of that.

  He looked up as the door opened and the alien stepped into the room. Again, Gar was struck by how fragile this human appeared. Perhaps that was why they triumphed so often.