Free Vigilantes by Kristine Kathryn Rusch Page B

tack, one he’d come up with just the day before.
    He was going to go after a money trail, like he had done with Anniversary Day. Only the Peyti Crisis trail had threaded through a series of criminal enterprises and ended up, of all things, with the name of a human who had high security clearance in the Earth Alliance.
    Even though he’d reported the woman’s name to DeRicci, he considered that trail a dead end—at least at the moment. He could hack into the Alliance, but at that high level, there was a good chance he would leave footprints.
    He’d been thinking of other ways around that particular problem when he realized he had a prime financial trail to follow.
    He needed to track the education of the Peyti clones. Most of them had been lawyers until the day of the bombing. That meant they had gone to reputable Alliance-sanctioned law schools.
    And law schools were nothing like the Earth Alliance. The security in the average law school was child’s play for a man like him.
    He’d been up since Dome Dawn. Ever since the Peyti Crisis, he’d been having trouble sleeping through the night. His brain was too busy. Plus he was worried about Talia. She just wasn’t herself.
    This morning, she had come out of her room, face blotchy as if she’d been crying. He knew she wasn’t sleeping either. But the expensive penthouse apartment they had purchased at Talia’s urging had soundproofing between the rooms.
    He had to be near her room to hear her cry out, something that worried him. She thought it unimportant. She believed no one would get into the apartment with their level of security.
    She didn’t think that he’d want to comfort her from a nightmare or simply hold her when she sobbed. She only seemed to believe he wanted to hear if someone attacked her.
    The longer her depression lasted after the Peyti Crisis, the more his concern turned from outside attacks to interior ones. Talia was falling apart, and if she called for help in the middle of the night, he wouldn’t be able to hear her.
    He had taken to staying up for hours after she went to bed, and a couple of times, he had fallen asleep on the couch—a place from which he knew he could hear her if she was in distress.
    He had taken her to a psychologist at the urging of DeRicci’s assistant Rudra Popova. The therapy felt like a last ditch effort. Besides, Flint wasn’t sure how honest Talia could be with the therapists, given that she was a clone.
    He told her she could decide whether or not to reveal that information about herself. But he hoped she didn’t.
    Both major attacks on the Moon—attacks that had destroyed life as all of the residents had known it—had used clones as the primary means of delivery. In many respects, the clones—both Peyti and human—had been weapons in and of themselves.
    Now, inhabitants of the Moon—no matter the species—hated clones and saw them all as evil.
    Flint didn’t care how open-minded the therapists were. He was terrified that they wouldn’t be able to get over their gut reactions to Talia’s origins.
    He ran a hand through his blond curls and felt some dislodge. He looked at his fingers. His hair was starting to fall out. Baldness did not run in his family. He wondered if he was losing hair due to stress.
    Then he decided he didn’t want to know the answer.
    He couldn’t think about Talia, at least right now. The best thing he could do for both of them was find out who had financed the Peyti clones and stop another attack.
    He had promised himself that whenever he was here working, he could concentrate on work only.
    He had left Talia at the United Domes Security Office for just that reason.
    If he were being honest with himself, though, he had left her there for other reasons as well. He didn’t want her to be on her own. He didn’t think she was emotionally stable enough for that.
    He decided that if Talia couldn’t be with him, then the Security Office was the safest place he knew. He had installed