The Chase (Huntress of the Star Empire Episodes 1-3) Read online

  About The Huntress

  She always gets her man…

  Ever since she was found in the aftermath of alien attacks, Treska Sivekka has been trained to one purpose--to hunt down threats to the security of the Union that gave her an identity. But when the Union's biggest threat inspires desire, and not fear, it’s going to take all her training to protect her principles against his persuasive onslaught.

  The Huntress's neuro-collar and repulsor cuffs may keep Micah bound to her mercy, but they can't stop him from challenging her convictions, and the lies she's been told about his people. But when the secrets surrounding her own missing memories begin to reveal themselves, he may be the only one she can trust.

  Pursued across the star system by the Huntress, helpless as his psionically-talented brethren were brought down one by one, Micah Ariesis must sacrifice himself in a sketchy revolutionary plot aimed at the Union’s heart, but the mystery surrounding his pursuer's mysterious origins puts danger to a much closer heart—his own.

  Huntress of the Star Empire is a sci-fi romance serial adventure. For more about the series, visit www.athenagrayson.com/huntress or sign up for the newsletter at bit.ly/AthenaNews and receive notification of new releases right to your inbox.

  Find Athena: athenagrayson.com | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads

  The Chase: (Episodes 1-3) Huntress of the Star Empire

  A Sci-Fi Romance Series Adventure

  by Athena Grayson

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright Notice

  © 2015 Jen Sokoloski. All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Published by Uncharted Worlds Media. unchartedworldsmedia.com

  Cover Artwork: © Jennette Marie Powell Heikes. All images licensed and used with permission

  Huntress of the Star Empire

  The Complete Season One

  Binge-read with the Bundles:

  The Chase (Episodes 1-3)

  The Snare (Episodes 4-6)

  The Catch (Episodes 7-9)

  The Release (Episodes 10-12)

  Episode 1: Hot Pursuit

  Prologue

  The tiny Starhopper craft bobbed and staggered down the spacelanes leading to and from Capitol, the central orbit of the Civilized Worlds of the Jewel star system. It darted in and out of inbound and outbound lanes like a much more agile craft than the old hulk it actually was. The ragged man at the controls wiped sweat from his eyes and checked the readout from the rear sensors.

  Quiet and green. Still, he did not allow himself to relax. His senses—the ones he trusted above the delicate technology of the hijacked spacecraft—told him differently.

  He was being followed.

  He flipped a switch to turn the subspace link newsfeed to audio. A voice blared into the cramped cabin. The news cycle still attended to the morning “morality is security” speech by Prime Minister Vakess. The pilot resisted the urge to spit when the PMs name emitted from the speakers. He settled for a mental curse in order to avoid a potential short-out of the ancient craft’s systems.

  But the newsfeed soon cycled through to local events. Just before the announcer spoke the headline, his psy-senses jangled alarm. He juked the stick down a bare nanosecond before the target-lock klaxons began to sound from the rear sensors. He shut down the noise with a mental command and the announcer from subspace began speaking of the detention center break and subsequent apprehension of the dangerous criminal by the heroic efforts of the Vice Hunters.

  His readouts lit up as four craft of an indeterminate make flared into existence. The viewscreen showed their sleek profiles, and maneuvers that defied logic. They’re beautiful. An ache blossomed in his chest. If only—

  The viewscreen whited out as the first of the blasts vaporized his outer shielding. Seconds later, his inner shielding failed, and the cabin shuddered with the impact of a docking clamp, the clunk of talons closing on his hull a period at the end of a long sentence. He reached for the makeshift shiv that had gotten him this far, and opened a comm channel low enough on the subspace band to be ignored as simple feedback.

  “My name is Wenn DiVrati. I am a trained psypath. I follow the code put forth by the holy monks of Ursis Amalia. To serve all civilization. To be at peace with myself and with the universe. To master myself and my talents.”

  The laser cutter’s whine preceded the steadily brightening glow of a section near the back of the cabin. He rose from the pilot’s seat and balanced the shiv lightly on his fingers. “I’ve escaped the Theta rehabilitation facility on the Capitol. Don’t believe the subnews reports—it’s no rehab.” He ran his free hand over his bare scalp, shorn even of the topknot of his holy order, his fingers finding the pits the diodes left from where he’d ripped them from his skull. No more pain. No more blindness of the mind. Ever. “This vital information must reach the Restoration effort if psypaths are to be saved from extinction. The Vice Hunters are not ordinary trackers. They—”

  The hiss of escaping pressure accompanied the groan of peeling metal and the first Vice Hunter stepped through. The man pointed a zapgun at him and fired. The crimson flash lit up the cabin and DiVrati flung his free hand out, his mind arrowing to a pinpoint of focused concentration.

  The sensation of connecting to the universe again filled him with joy. At last! Free again to feel, to be, to sing in the universal song that coursed through all things. Such ecstasy, even as the energy blast burned his palm, singeing the skin from muscle.

  The pain from his hand paled, though, compared to the shrieking that bounced around the inside of his skull. The bolt’s force dispersed, but the effects of the rehab facility had done their damage. He fell to one knee, his good hand clutching the shiv.

  The Vice Hunter failed to take the advantage, staring at his zapgun and at a second energy bolt hanging in mid-air, suspended by DiVrati’s abilities. Perhaps a chance? DiVrati thought.

  “Please,” he said. “I mean no harm to you or yours. I harmed none in my escape. I seek only to leave Union space.” He put the force of all his willpower behind the words, weaving the energies of conviction around them.

  The man’s shoulders shifted, his internal tension ratcheting down a notch. Hope stirred in DiVrati’s heart.

  The Vice Hunter stumbled forward and a woman emerged through the opening. “Healix!” she snapped, shoving him hard. Her movements belied a grace he hadn’t seen in ten years, ever since the New Morality swept through the Civilized Systems. “It’s a mindsnake!”

  DiVrati sought to keep control of the situation. “Wait,” he said, sending a burst of will through the words in spite of the pounding in his head. “I don’t want to hurt—”

  Her beautiful features twisted with scorn, her blue-green eyes freezing cold. “Mindsnake,” she repeated, the force of her own convictions slamming into his. He staggered with the sudden and strong sense of wrongness from her. Abomination… His control faltered, and so did his will.

  She brought her arm up and pointed it at him, showing the cuff wrapped on her wrist. She curled her fingers into a fist and squeezed. The darts flew out of their launch tubes, too fast and too close for him to stop with his abilities, depleted as they were.

  Twin spikes of pain dragged a swiftly spreading numbness through his limbs. “You don’t mean to hurt,” she said, leaning in close so he could hear over the buzzing in his ears. He struggled for breath against the paralysis creeping through him and thought he smelled flowers. “But you do.”

  The wrongness crawled t
hrough him, centered on the woman. The interior walls of the ship wavered, and he thought he saw billowing silks and clouds of incense. But the temples were closed now, and the Hathori scattered or quarantined. He tried to shake his head.

  “You’re a mindsnake, and you can’t help being what you are.”

  She rose and turned away from him. “Get the body. We’ll need it to collect the bounty.”

  “They wanted him alive,” the Vice Hunter protested. DiVrati felt his jaw locking up and fought it as long as possible. The connections he felt with the energies of the universe flowed through and around him, except for the woman. In her, they turned, reflected back on themselves and distorted beyond recognition. She doesn’t fit.

  “He’s still alive. It’s a new stasis-poison I agreed to test-run.” She leaned back down and DiVrati stared up at her face. Such a lovely face. What was it about her?

  In spite of the pain, he kept his eyes open and looked hard at her, with both his eyes and his extended senses. Her features blurred and shifted, revealing a different face beneath her own. No less lovely, but tinted the blue of a summer sky. “So beautiful…Im-possible,” he stuttered. “You—the Union—wears the—face of—Hathor?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “See, Healix? Mindsnakes are liars with no morals. They can’t even see what’s in front of their faces. Who’d confuse me with a Hathori?”

  DiVrati’s consciousness began to fade, and the tiny core of him panicked. The sterile whiteness of the detention center filled his mind. I can’t go back there. I’d rather die.

  Most sentients, when faced with these circumstances, would wake up to find themselves in the hell they would give all to escape from. Psypaths were not most sentients, and DiVrati was a desperate man. Pain warred with the paralysis as he forced his mental abilities down neural pathways and into muscle and blood. His eyes rolled back in his head with the effort of focusing on and slowing the throbbing muscle that was his heart. He would not go back to that place. Death was preferable to the living undeath that place held.

  Hear my voice, he thought, his eyes fixed on the silent, blinking amber light of the subspace comm. He shoved his last bit of willpower towards that comm, in the vain hope that the message would reach the right ears, and someone would know not of his life or his death, but merely of his existence. I am, and that is what matters.

  The gray crept forward, drowning out even the yellow light. I am.

  The buzzing in his ears slowed to silence. No more.

  His heart beat its last.

  Huntress and Prey

  The hooded stranger drifted through the marketplace in the dusty spaceport, stopping here and there to examine the junk traders’ wares. Inside the rough homespun cloak, his fingers absently sifted through credit chits, seeking by touch those that were small enough in denomination to use when he settled on a purchase.

  Alas, there was not much to buy. Tenraye was a poor world these days, and the galaxy was sadder for it. He remembered his first taste of Tenraye-grape wine as being the highlight of one of his father’s endless social functions, back in the days before the New Morality came sweeping through the Civilized Worlds and excesses as mild as wine-drinking had become crimes against safety.

  The Civilized Worlds once prided themselves on being the most advanced of the solar systems in the Nine Sisters star cluster. But when faced with the threat of invaders, they’d knuckled under to the fear. It was easy to believe that if only the Civilized Worlds had not flaunted their wealth, their decadence, their opulence, then the Marauders would not have targeted them for conquest. After the strike on Jewel, what had once been a fringe belief became a full-fledged cultural shift, spreading like a cancer through the entire solar system. Citizens of dozens of worlds, moons, and colonies frenzied themselves to denounce all forms of Immorality. As more individuals embraced the concept, more practices were sacrificed on the altar of fear. As if the Marauders cared whether or not we drank wine, he thought. Their dreadnaughts had come from the remote outermost Jumpgate in the system, straight to the heart of the Capitol, with no more than moments’ notice, and no reason why.

  But the train of thought was one he’d ridden many times in the past decade, and there was no use in wasting anger on it now. Especially when he had to be alert. He drifted through the stalls, picking up a red plate here, a cobbled-together power cell converter there. Most of the traders at the shabby spaceport were dealing in either starship parts or selling off the leftovers of the formerly vast vineyard-estates where the wine was no longer pressed.

  Dusty boxes of what used to be family heirlooms littered half a dozen booths…the accumulated status and wealth of families who no longer had a place in the New Morality. Those who could had left Tenraye years ago, either re-inventing themselves to fit in better with the new state of things in the Core, or striking out for the outer orbits. Those who couldn’t, had to stand and watch while Militia ships landed and troops spread out to seize and destroy the winemaking machinery. And speaking of the Militia—a pair of distinctive red and silver uniforms were coming his way, no doubt out and about in an attempt to squelch any threat to security that an un-smashed bottle of wine might generate.

  In a subtle movement, he brought his hands out of his cloak and to his hood, drawing it up over his head to hide the tawny hair that could be an identifying descriptor, were he compromised. The militia men passed him, and if he stretched his senses, he could hear their low chatter.

  “—Due for patrol in Sector twenty-two, Southwest vineyard…heard there might be an illegal still in operation.”

  “Heh. Too bad grapes are fruit, otherwise we could just turbolaser the whole crop and not have to worry.”

  “Or sit back and let the Marauders take it.”

  Micah dropped his interest in their conversation when a stall owner turned abruptly, and placed a blue vase on the counter with an audible thud. He shifted his direction towards the blue vase. “Lovely home for a flower, friend,” he murmured.

  “Eh? The sturdy blooms’ll grow in an old jar,” the grizzled old shopkeeper muttered back.

  Micah set a cred-chit down next to the vase. “All the same,” he said. “A lovely home is a reminder of the nature of flowers.”

  The man looked up at him. Behind the milky iris of one badly-scarred eye, Micah could just see the red pinpoint of an ocular implant flaring to life. The man’s hand shot out and snatched the cred-chit. “Mind you clean that thing before you use it. Wouldn’t want your flowers gettin’ dirty.”

  “Thank you, kind sir,” he said, nodding his head. Yes, even in the middle of a dust-ridden slum, he could never forget the manners practically encoded in his DNA. He scooped up the vase, carefully wrapping it in a fold of his cloak.

  The sun was beginning to burn off the early morning cool, and he found some shrinking shade in the lee of a building. Once in the relative dimness, he was able to more firmly secure the vase under his cloak, and tip the contents of the slender-necked vessel into his waiting hand. A keycard tumbled into his palm, with the hologram-logo of the spaceport flophouse etched into one side. And a note scrawled on a scrap of flimsy in sharply-cursive script. “Bring food,” was all it said.

  Having no way to argue, he complied. He spent another of his cred-chits at the vegetable stall on scrawny-looking succulents, some tubers, and a foil-sealed self-heating quarter cut of roast cluck-bird. “Guaranteed Non-Imitation,” the package declared, which probably meant it was.

  He spent more cred-chits at the fruit stall on a large bunch of plump Tenraye Blacks, the only fruit that didn’t look as if it had already been sitting in the dehydrator all day. Tenraye black grapes used to be found in their legendary black wine, the rich vintage a joy to the palate and a delight to the senses. It also tastes wonderful when lapped from a nude female body.

  Next to him, a kerchiefed woman stiffened and looked around suddenly. He stepped away abruptly, hasty in securing the grapes and mentally cursing himself. Did you forget everything you were taught?
>
  He couldn’t close his eyes to meditate, but he could control himself in other ways, and did so now, counting the measured treads of his footsteps as he made his way to the end of the market. He breathed in time with his footsteps and concentrated on reining in his thoughts and emotions.

  The effort became easier after he crossed the market threshold. The long breezeway leading to the spaceport was only sparsely populated. When there weren’t so many others attempting to repress themselves and their own thoughts, it was easier for him.

  Being a psypath was becoming more and more of a curse each day.

  He reached the hostel and consulted the keycard, then found the corresponding number. He slid the card into the lock, ignoring the faint twinge of sense-warning at the back of his mind, and pushed the door open to step inside.

  He was grabbed by the wrist, spun around an entire turn, and shoved up against the wall. “You’re late,” a voice hissed in his ear.

  The air in front of him wavered, indicating someone in a stealthsuit.

  “I brought fresh grapes,” he muttered back. “The good kind. Rich, globular,” he dropped his voice to a whisper and drew out the next word. “Sssucccculent.”

  “You tease,” she said, burrowing an invisible hand inside his robes. When he slapped it away from his pack, it went for the front releases of his undertunic. Seconds later, he felt cool, feminine fingers on his skin.

  Tightness pulled low in his gut and he dropped the pack with a clatter. His own hands reached out to the empty-looking air in front of him, fumbling and finding her curves. He dragged her against him. “I never tease,” he said.

  Her fingers turned hard and she dug her nails into his pecs, dragging them roughly over his skin. “You’re right, you don’t,” she said. “And it’s a damn shame, too. People will think I never taught you anything.” Invisible hands shoved his cloak aside. Invisible lips pressed against his bare flesh. Invisible teeth nipped at his skin, and the low tightness beckoned. He leaned carefully back against the wall as she moved lower, down to his abdomen. He sucked in deep breaths, her scent carrying to him, heating his blood. Ahh, Hathori, he thought. The galaxy’s a sadder place without them.