Vigilantes by Kristine Kathryn Rusch Read Free Book Online Page A

lawyers on the Moon (and there were lots at the moment, since many of the Peyti clones had run law firms) had conflicts that prevented them from representing the clones—provided the attorneys wanted to. Of course, most of them didn’t want to.
    Zhu wouldn’t have either if his colleagues had died in a room where the environmental system had shifted to Peyti Normal because another colleague wanted to blow the entire building to smithereens.
    Zhu tried not to be empathetic about that, too. He tried not to think about it at all.
    If he had done what he had intended when he traveled all the way back to the Moon a month ago, he might have been one of those attorneys sitting in one of those rooms, dying as the oxygen fled and the poison atmosphere fell around him.
    Or he would have lost friends or acquaintances at least. Colleagues. That was the word. He would have lost colleagues.
    At least the clones weren’t his clients. His client was the government of Peyla, the Peyti home world. Already, in the week since the Crisis, Peyti had been denied admission into Armstrong’s port. Each Peyti had had a different reason for being refused, but the pattern was pretty clear. And it was starting to happen all over the Alliance.
    Since Peyla was part of the Alliance and had actually been one of the early members of the Alliance, the Peyti government was taking quick action. Even though everyone knew that Peyti lawyers were the best in the business, the Peyti government had hired S 3 , a well-known human law firm, to take this case.
    The Peyti were incredibly smart. They didn’t use their own to fight this battle; they used troops that they knew could win.
    Zhu was rather proud to be part of those troops. Or maybe he could attribute his good mood to the fact that he’d walked past Sevryn’s and managed to start his day, without bodyguards.
    He’d conquered his fear, and that was always the first step toward getting anything done.
    Even if he had gotten a bit of mediocre coffee out of it.
    He debated tossing away the coffee. The new place simply didn’t have as good a brew as Sevryn’s—probably because it didn’t use Earth-grown beans—and he would miss that. But the cream-cheese-and-orange bagel he’d bought was a delicious new treat, one he’d have as often as he could.
    He’d already ordered lunch for the crew upstairs. The new place would deliver.
    Yeah, he was proud of himself. He saw that short walk as one of the first steps toward accepting how hard this job would be, and how much intimidation would be built in.
    “Torkild Zhu?” a male voice asked behind him.
    “Yes?” he asked as he turned, half-expecting to see some young lawyer clutching a tablet loaded with resumes and recommendations. Instead, he saw half a face and the blur of an arm.
    Then something hit him on the side of his head. The sound cracked inside his skull, and his vision went white for a moment. There was no pain, but he knew that would only be temporary. He’d hit his head before and—
    A foot hit his stomach, a kick so hard that his breath whooshed out of him. Then another something—an arm? A fist? A weapon—hit his back. His kidneys. This time, he felt the pain, ripping through him.
    It would have taken his breath away, had he had any breath left.
    He sent something—a scream, maybe?—through his emergency links. Or so he hoped. Because his brain felt odd, warm, and his right eye was closing even though he had been hit on the other side of the face.
    He wanted to say, Don’t. Don’t hurt me. Stop . But he couldn’t control his mouth. He toppled forward.
    Someone kicked his side, and someone else jumped on his back. If he could fall through the sidewalk, he would have, but the ground kept him in place. So his bones gave instead, cracking and snapping.
    A hand grabbed his ankle, pulled it toward his head, and more bones snapped.
    Voices said something about horrible deaths, about clones, about paying for what he had done, but he