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

  This one seemed to be custom-designed from stem to stern. The cockpit was separated from the rest of the ship by a secured hatch, but the telltale seams that identified a ship module were absent. The ship’s narrow, arrowlike profile made it too small to fit modular dimensions. Hah, he thought, rather uncharitably, her repair bills must be astronomical. For a custom rig like this, he wasn’t even sure there were more than a handful of starship mechanics in the whole system who qualified to work on the thing.

  Yet the ship was beautiful, he would freely admit. The main bay had been kitted out with a tiny galley and a desk, whose chair space he occupied. In fact, if his legs hadn’t been stuck to the wall, he could have shifted his hips and sat on the desk. The opposite wall held personal storage lockers and a thumbprint-secured weapons rack. Next to the lockers, he spotted a bank of emergency gear pods—exo-suits, atmospheric rebreathers, survival and first aid kits. These, at least, appeared to be the standard that any civilian was trained to recognize and drilled to use properly.

  But everything else about the ship was different. Even the floors didn’t have the same deckplate pattern. He knew this because he’d counted the hexagonal depressions in the anti-slip texture about a hundred times before the Jump klaxon echoed through the ship. He was on his fourth section of deckplate when he spotted a tiny white ovoid caught in one of the depressions. Treska’s medication.

  Her earlier episode returned to trouble him. No wonder she was incorruptible. She’d been conditioned so severely that she couldn’t afford to question her training or her objectives. And that, he realized, would be the largest flaw in the plan.

  Her incorruptible self stalked into the hold. “We’re Jumping again.” She double-checked the cargo lockers, the emergency gear, and the galley cabinets. From the medical cabinet, she pulled another tube of those pills she always reached for.

  “I thought drug use was one of those Vices the Prime Minister always lectures against in his morning pontifications to the faithful.”

  Treska frowned. “It is.” She secured the tube to her utility belt.

  “So the law is for thee, and not for me, is that it?” He tilted his head, as far as the neuro-collar would allow. “I can’t enjoy a glass of Tenrayan wine, but you can—”

  She tightened her lips. “These aren’t recreational,” she snapped.

  He knew this, from their earlier encounter. She shouldn’t act so defensive, but her temper was there, just under the surface, waiting to break through the New Morality’s training. Her reaction confirmed that she considered the medications a weakness. He wondered if she’d always been a hothead, or if her anger was a function of her conditioning. “Dependence is weakness, and weakness is danger.” He put just enough scorn in his voice to show what he thought of the Prime Minister and his cult.

  She touched the place on her belt where the tube stayed secure. “They help me fight weakness.”

  He tilted his head again, this time to relieve some of the tension in his arms and neck. Showing her his vulnerability. “What are they for?”

  She pulled a plastiform cup from another cabinet and opened the drawer that housed the water dispenser and basin. “I was on Capitol when the attack happened. I was found in one of the hardest hit areas, nearly dead. They did what they could, but even the Union’s brightest can’t fix everything.”

  “I’m sorry.” He truly meant it. The morning of the attack, before the Marauders had come, he’d begun a quest to return to Ursis Amalia, compelled back to the monastery. In spite of disgrace—he shied away from the memory. No use in dredging up old pains.

  She held the cup of water up towards him. “No tricks. No funny business.”

  He put his lips to the edge of the cup. “I promise, I won’t mistake it for human kindness.” He swallowed quickly, before the water could dribble down his chin and cause another mishap like the first cup. When she drew the cup away, he took a deep breath. “Where are we Jumping?” At her skeptic’s glare, he responded. “I just want to know how long I can expect to experience Jump-dreams, and if I can cite any interorbital transit laws that grant prisoners the right to put their arms down for a rest in between Jumps.”

  She stepped back. The unexpected kindness of water seemed to be her limit with him and she regarded him with the usual suspicion. “We’re Jumping to Fumaru so I can bypass Cetares. I’m not taking you anywhere Civilized.”

  Treska left the main hold with his smirk burned into her brain. She really didn’t understand how the psypath mind could find humor in incarceration, or how he could affect her so profoundly that she’d told him as much as she did about her inhibs.

  She assembled yet another amended flight plan and sent it to the station—at this rate, everybody in the whole star system would know who she was, what she’d captured, and the last time she’d sneezed.

  Before she entered the piloting couch, she crunched down on an inhib. Thank the stars she’d left before promising him some relief for his arms. It had been on the tip of her tongue to promise. And the thoughts begging to know what harm would come to them in the middle of nowhere if she did relax his restraints. It wasn’t like he could pilot the ship.

  She glanced back towards the main hold, aware that those thoughts could not possibly be her own. The neuro-collar might be active, but somehow, some way, some small trickle of his power was getting through and teasing her mind into feeling compassion for him. She tipped the bottle back on another inhib and Wenn DiVrati’s face came to mind. He’d claimed to only want to leave Union space forever. But he’d broken out of a secure facility, and the nightmares he threw at her mind were some terrible things, indeed, cementing her conviction that he was dangerous. Only a mind truly warped and broken could engage in such creative horror. Her minor uncertainty had burned away in the assurance that putting him down had been giving him peace.

  As she slid into the molded cushions of the couch, the hide warmed to her body temperature almost instantly and her skin registered the smooth sensuality. Before the hood snapped closed, she popped a third.

  Maneuvers & Machinations

  The duty officer on Galladance station turned when the comm chimed. “Amended Jump plan from the Needle’s Eye, sir.” She logged the plan and set it for upload. She was about to activate the transmission when a clawed hand descended over hers.

  She gasped. Hot breath tickled her neck, the stink of freshly-killed animal meat burned her nostrils with a coppery stench. The urge to hunch, to flinch, to protect her soft, mammalian underbelly was too strong for even military training to overcome and she curled in on herself.

  Only after several motionless seconds did she dare turn her head—slowly—to confirm the fear that watered her insides.

  Sharpclaw peeled his lips back from his snout, exposing the daggerlike teeth used to tear creatures like the soft mammal in front of him into easily digestible chunks. Although the fear-stink was intoxicating, the descent of his clawed hand to her vulnerable torso only delivered a datapadd instead of a killing blow. “Transmit that information to this datapadd, then destroy it, tender morsel, and you may yet live to be hunted another day.”

  Her eyes flicked to her commanding officer. The man knelt, hands up on his head, flanked by a pair of Riktorians. “You’ll never get away with this.” His voice trembled, betraying the falsehood in his words. “The Union is powerful. The Union is as One.” His eyes slid towards hers. “Don’t make that transfer, Comm. Security will be here any moment.”

  One of his captors emitted a gravelly laugh and motioned to the viewport. “Right about that.”

  The duty officer turned her head again, until she caught sight of the viewport and the bloated, gray-suited bodies floating into view. She jerked her head back towards the commander. The horror on his face told her all she needed to know. She keyed in the ‘Transmit’ command before her training kicked in and made her refuse. Sometimes the right choice was the thing you did before thinking. “N-no need for f-further v-violence.”

  The
Commander’s jaw tightened and he sent her a glare. She avoided his gaze. It wasn’t like the Riktorians would be unable to hit the “Transmit” command themselves if the rest of the station were dead. “Y-you g-gentlebeings can g-go about your business, now, right?”

  “Comm, it is a direct violation—” He was cut off by a small chuff and a bright flash from the zapgun in his captor’s clawed hand. He slumped forward, a new hole in his skull, as the stench of burning flesh overrode the stench of Riktorian.

  Her insides quavered as the zapgun raised, barrel now pointed directly at her. For the life of her, all the New Morality training, all the assurances of unity and peace and harmony and oneness felt like meaningless noise. Yet her lips formed around the familiar words, the mottoes of the training and oaths she’d taken creeping in to command her attention in spite of the very real, very imminent threat facing her right now.

  A commotion came from the open doorway and a curly-haired human stuck his head around the corner. The open grin on his face froze when he took in the Commander’s slumped body. “Can’t you idiots control yourselves even a little! It was bad enough spacing Security, and now you’ve gone and blown the Station Commander into the Void! Do you want the whole Union after us? ‘Cause I signed on to make bank, not to make trouble.” His words stopped sounding like meaningless bravado when he stepped fully into the doorway, a large laser rifle gripped in his hands.

  His eyes lit on hers. He grinned. “Did our new friend here give us what we need?”

  The Riktorian hovering over her snarled. “The Huntress’s amended Jump plan.” Air sacs beneath his jaw inflated and rumbled with his anger. “Perhaps this time, Ironskin will not be the lazy slug that waits for prey to fall into its maw.” To emphasize, he snapped his jaws shut, the audible clicks of his teeth echoing in her ears along with her too-fast pulse.

  The human took the padd, glanced at it, and looked back to her again. “Fumaru. That’s no place for such a small and helpless craft to be all alone.”

  She looked away. She remembered the craft well. Everyone in the tower had had something to say about the unusual-looking craft, and something to speculate about its unknown capabilities.

  “Then we’re done here. Let’s clean up.”

  The lizard-man breathing down her neck hissed. “I give the orders to this crew!”

  The human pirate’s charming voice was oddly comforting. “Do you want to make money, or fight about whose sperm-delivery system is more efficient?”

  “Finish this.” A bead of spittle landed on the lapel of her uniform, discoloring the fabric. Eventually, it would eat through the uniform, as well as her skin. She would have preferred a death by the human’s rifle. Quicker, and less…digestive. She closed her eyes again, sure that this time would be the last time.

  Not so. He prodded her with the barrel of the rifle. “Hey.” He whispered.

  She cracked one eye open. He still wore the smile, as if they were sharing a secret. He motioned with the rifle for her to get up out of the duty seat. “I—I can’t.” She licked dry lips, terror making her voice hoarse. “Th-the command station senses—if no one is in th-the chair, the Jumpgate will shut down.”

  He offered her a smile. “Good girl. You’ll get out of this alive.” To the Riktorians, he said, “See? You lot wouldn’t make it out of this orbit without me. Back to the ship.” To the two behind him, he growled. “Leave the body. Be civilized, for stars’ sake.” He smiled again. Turned back to her. “Thanks for the honesty, sweetheart. You’re going to take a little nap now.” He glanced around, eyes bright. “Sorry about the mess, but—you know. Cost of doing business.”

  Her terror sent her out long seconds before the stun bolt did.

  The Jump klaxon sounded its final warning and he closed his eyes. Everyone experienced Jumpspace differently, and psypaths even moreso. He usually enjoyed it. For him, Jumpspace connected him back to the universe and everything else in it. He lost his sense of self and became one with the cosmos. He could test the limits of his mental powers with other psypaths. The faint candles that were other psypaths became shining suns, and they were able to share thoughts and impressions and experiences.

  This time, Jumpspace held that same expanding sensation, the connection to the Cosmos, but it was a cosmos of one. Instead of joy, he found a yawning loneliness, and the memories in which he traded were only his own.

  “Your order is all but extinct. Why volunteer to take down the Huntress now?” Instead of a vision or a dream, he found himself inside a memory. The lord of House Samedi faced him in the back room of a waystation automat.

  The room wasn’t really made for more than one person to catch a short nap and a sonic shower—it rented by the hour and the access hatch for the cleaning bot was broken, so Micah would not have taken chances on the shower. “I don’t want to take her down. I’m the best means you have to get into the government plaza.” He regarded Bran with as much suspicion as the Noble gave him. “It’s hard enough getting to the Capitol through all the security, the scanners, and the patrols that measure your molecules against a list of interdicted elements on the bloody Periodic Table. The only way someone gets into government plaza is if they want them in there. And they want me in there very, very badly.”

  “What’s in it for you? Why risk yourself, the remnant of your order, your very life, to aid the Restoration’s efforts? You don’t even work for us. When you’re not digging through old graveyards for thousand-year old legends, you work for the Hathori high priestess.” Bran confronted him with the misinformation Micah had been careful to cultivate.

  That they came from the same class worked both for and against Micah. The other man’s assumption that he was controlled by the Hathori was supposed to be an insult…but Lord Bran did not understand the nature of his relationship with the Hathori, or the fact that, in spite of his birth, his class restrictions had precious little hold on his pride. But the assumption that he was a controlled element of the Hathori made him appear much less threatening than the wildcard of a psypath with no strong loyalties in play. Like it or not, he needed the Restoration as much as they needed him, whether they knew it yet, or not.

  Micah lifted his head and regarded Bran with a frank stare. “Secrets. We all want secrets. You want to understand why the New Morality has such a stranglehold on the inner orbits.” He folded his arms and circled around the other side of the surface of the dank room that could act as a table or a cot, if one wished to risk going prone or consuming food on it.

  “And what is it that you want? What hides in that labyrinth that you’re willing to risk your life by becoming their willing prisoner? What secrets do you seek?”

  “Lost Hathori. There are records of the early days in the re-education camps.”

  Bran’s face, behind the bio-mimetic mask, shifted into disbelief. “You’ll throw your freedom and your life away for old data for that high priestess? I don’t think so.”

  Micah’s expression shuttered. “I have my own reasons.”

  “And they are?”

  “Reasons that don’t concern the Restoration.” Micah met the other man’s eyes. “Psypath reasons.” He exerted just the slightest amount of pressure, forming the kata for Suggestion with his hand.

  Bran buckled. Micah didn’t bother to hide the kata and the other man’s gaze, fixed on his hand, turned nervous. “Keep your reasons. But know this. If your capture puts the Restoration at risk, we revert to the original plan. Strikes against the Vice Hunters. Raids on the frontier orbit garrisons—”

  “And a lot of dead Restorationists. I get it.” Micah flipped the hood of his cloak up. “You know an infiltration is the best chance you’ve got. You know that if this were just politics, the Restoration movement would have built support years ago. You know the Hathori would not have voluntarily quarantined themselves.” His chest heaved. “As I know the psypaths would have never offered ourselves up for slaughter.”

  Prime Minister Vakess sat in a plain chair in his windowle
ss office and stared at the reports flashing across the surface of the unadorned desk. The simple lines and the bare functionality of the furniture soothed him when the information did not. The blank walls provided an unobtrusive backdrop to the flares and waves of data in his mind. With a swipe of his hand, he sent the information from the desk surface to the wall in front of him and rose.

  The only adornments in the private office of the most powerful man in the Civilized Worlds were a large holographic portrait of himself that the security team insisted on placing behind his desk—as if people needed reminding about whose office they visited—and the holographic realtime map of the star system, with the Jewel burning in the center, and each of the orbits circumscribing it in shifting, vibrant colors. Icons for the inhabited worlds glowed softly. A brush of his finger would reveal more data about each planet—local season and time, Union forces garrisoned on the planet, a selection of the active nano-spy networks.

  Icons for each orbit’s Jumpgates glowed as well. There was a setting that would light up the Jumpgate every time a ship entered it, but Vakess turned it off when they made his headaches worse with their near-constant flickering. Corresponding maps existed in System Sec, Special Affairs, and the Department of Inter-Orbital Transportation. Entire teams were devoted to keeping track of the Jumpgate activities outside of the actual personnel manning the stations themselves. We will not be taken by surprise again.

  Vakess had been a junior member of the old Star Empire’s Parliament when the attacks had come. His life, overnight, had had its comfortable indolence burned away, leaving only harsh truth and darkness. He saw, with blinding clarity in the weeks that followed, that the loss of his eyesight opened him to a far greater vision.

  As his burned eyes healed themselves, in darkness he had seen the pattern in the Marauders’ attacks. The Hathori Temple. The Amalian Consulate. The Cabochons, the dome-topped arcologies that were home to the Noble families’ main estates, including his own family home. He had seen the beacons coming from the most iconic symbols of his society’s decadence, and the way the Marauders had zeroed in on them. They came for us because we lured them.