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

  “So we’ve got cloak-shields now.” He stepped out of the necessary cubicle.

  “That, and an actual laser cannon that can blast a ten-kilometer asteroid to dust.” Xenna was stretched out on the room’s narrow bunk. Still naked, but with the contents of his pack spread out beside her. She was popping the succulent grapes between her teeth with relish. “Mmm…too bad Tenraye doesn’t make wine anymore. But the grapes are a consolation.”

  He crossed the room and bent down to kiss her, using his tongue to steal the grape from between her lips. “Only a small one, love.”

  She pulled him down onto the bed next to her and he fitted his body alongside hers, then selected a grape and set it in the hollow of her navel. “Did you confirm contact?” In between light kisses along the plane of her stomach, he noted that her hipbones stuck out more than usual.

  “I didn’t,” she said. “But I have it on good authority that you’re—being tracked.” Her voice caught as he found a ticklish spot.

  “Whose?”

  “The authority of the almighty credit.” She stretched, and the grape rolled down into the crease of her thigh. “I couldn’t bribe my way further into the landing queue, which tells me there’s something governmental going on.”

  “And that leads you to believe I’m being tracked?” It had been work, the past few months. Hathori outside their homeworld required permits and special clothing to travel. Universally distrusted due to their pheromonal abilities, and downright reviled by Union loyalists, there weren’t many places a Hathori could fit in the Civilized Worlds. He glanced over at Xenna’s pack, at the golden face-mask she wore in public, beneath a hooded cloak with a thin inner layer infused with chemical neutralizers. If the cloak didn’t give her away, the lush hue of her deep pink skin marked her as an enemy of decency and an automatic target for the Vice Hunters.

  Far more than elite bounty hunters, Vice Hunters were trained in the cradle of the New Morality, some said by the architect himself, a person only known as Vox Unificus—the Voice of Unity. Micah couldn’t keep scorn from turning up his lip. The whole system speaks with one voice, and it’s his. And the Vice Hunters were his weapon. Vice Hunters trained specially to hunt down the biggest threats to the new government. Able to move about the worlds with impunity, and armed with the best technology and ships from the Capitol, Vice Hunters rarely bothered with conventional transgressions like interdicted luxury goods or illegal gaming rings. Vice Hunters set their sights on the highest-level threats to the New Union. But only one name gave pause to those who could read thoughts and bend the universe to their will.

  Several other Restoration agents had also enjoyed that unfortunate honor. Eight years out from the first reported sighting—along with eleven Restoration spies who’d fallen to her—confirmed her existence, and then her identity, culminating in the plot for which he gladly volunteered himself as bait.

  “Not only that,” Xenna made a low purring noise in the back of her throat when he bent his head to go after the grape. “The out-system checkpoint’s logs held records of a Singularity-class transport skiff entering the system forty-five standard hours ago.”

  He breathed in the scent of her skin and burst the grape with his teeth, letting the fruit juice touch her bare skin before responding. “Truly? A real Singularity-class? They’re only a myth, officially.” He darted a glance up to her face as he extended his tongue to lick the grape juice from her thigh.

  She smiled lazily and sighed deeply. “Officially, a myth. That doesn’t make them any less real to government sensor logs.” She chuckled. “Our little huntress is here,” she said, “and she’s hunting you. Are you prepared to be caught?”

  A warning chose that instant to sound in the back of his mind. “Funny you should say that,” he muttered, rolling to the side and off the bed. His senses told him what he needed to know. “Three,” he said softly. “Armed with stun-weapons and greed.”

  Xenna’s lazy smile vanished as she folded her limbs under her in a defensive crouch. “I can take them.” She slid an elegant pink hand under the pillow.

  “Zap gun,” he whispered back. “You’re a naughty wench, aren’t you?”

  She grinned, more feral than humorous. “It’s my nature and my right as a sentient being, and damn any sanctimonious twit who tries to stop me.”

  His eyes unfocused as he reached out and clouded the minds of the three individuals making their way down the hallway outside. “They’re hoping for the standard reward for immoral activities. But how—”

  “One of us must have been observed,” she said. “The jammer wouldn’t have tipped them off—their spyware is low-grade and clunky.”

  “Their powers of observation are not,” he retorted.

  “We’re at a dilemma, then, aren’t we?” A half-amused smile sliced across her face. “Two of us, but three bodies to hide.”

  “Or,” he said, “one of us, with the ability to craft a palatable story and avoid detection of our true nature.”

  “Which do you think they could identify first? A Hathori, or a psypath?” She arched an eyebrow and reached for a robe.

  He rubbed his temple and sighed when the robe covered up her generous curves. Since the New Morality swept through the Civilized worlds, too many things of beauty had been covered up and hidden away, to be replaced with other views, like the hard chill in the former priestess’s eyes. “Either way, violence isn’t the answer. There’s too much risk in tipping off the Huntress that something isn’t right.”

  Xenna reached for her mask. “Go.” She fixed the golden-hued lumisteel covering to her face via the skin-activated adhesive. From behind the carefully stylized features, her voice rang hollow. “The Huntress is after you,” she said. “It’s your face that’s on the nets as the last wanted psypath.”

  He nodded and stepped forward. Outside, he could hear footsteps approaching. He lifted her mask to look into her eyes one last time and they were as blank and hard as amethyst jewels. “Be safe, Xenna,” he said. “Don’t—” forget who you are.

  She lifted a fuschia finger and put it to his lips. “Don’t you worry about me, Schoolboy.” She replaced her finger with a quick press of the mask’s cool mouth. “Now get out of here.”

  He pulled energy around himself and jumped. The leap carried him up to the high grille of the transom window and he nudged it aside. Below him the door opened and Xenna turned, pulling her hood up.

  He pulled the grille back in place and paused for a second. Just long enough to hear her say, “There was a man here. He thought this was his room. I sent him away. I am calling for my escort now.” Then he reached out to the overhang and pulled himself up, feet first, onto the roof before their sensor-sweep revealed his presence.

  Micah fought the disorienting hollowness that told him he was overusing his talents and shoved more of his will into the tenuous thread connecting him to Xenna. Believe. He aimed the thought towards the planetary officials questioning her.

  His muscles burned from holding on to the narrow ledge above him, but the physical pain came in a distant second to the headache he was developing.

  “I’m sure you’ll be hailed and lauded for your bravery,” Xenna was saying. “Two of you against one of me—your courage will be sung in songs across the planet detailing your riddance of the Hathori Scourge that plagues this dump.”

  Xenna, please, he begged her silently. Just keep your head down and get out of there. The growing feeling of unease swelled more in him, creating a distracted buzzing in his ears that just wouldn’t go away. Xenna, just go! The sense of urgency put pressure on him and it was all he could do not to crash back in there, fists flying.

  “You mutants are all alike.”

  He froze at the deadly, feminine voice behind him. Why hadn’t his senses picked her up?

  “Turn around slowly.” He felt a zapgun barrel against his temple. “You always seem to forget the rules of the slip-dance.”

  He did as he was told—not even psypath reflexe
s could avoid a blast at point-blank range—and turned around. Slowly.

  Her hair was a shock of bright red above skin so pale she might never have seen a sun. But he couldn’t mistake her for anyone but the fabled Huntress, even without the wrist tattoo she flashed at him. “It always takes two to slip-dance.”

  Her use of the vernacular made him raise his eyebrows. By all accounts, the Huntress was not only the best and most feared Vice Hunter in the entire Union, but also the most incorruptible. The worst kind of hunter—a zealot who truly believed everything she stood for. Regrettable, since her lithe, lean-limbed body looked made for pleasure—slip-dancing, so to speak—rather than its extermination.

  “Not necessarily,” he said. “Sometimes it takes three or four.”

  Her lip curled up in a snarl. “Pervert,” she said. “I expect nothing else, coming from a mindsnake who keeps company with the scum of the galaxy.”

  He was grateful for Xenna’s absence in that moment. The Hathori would have gone for the Huntress’ throat at the insult, and he may very well have to contend with a dead Xenna. A universe without Xenna in it would be unconscionable. “One man’s perversion is another’s pleasure. It’s only kinky the first time you try it.”

  “Shut up.” Was that a blush staining her cheeks?

  “I believe the Union’s arrest procedure still merits the condemned a modicum of free speech,” he parried, simply to keep her talking. Distracted from the subtle movements of his left hand, moving in a modified kata pattern designed to focus his telekinetic gifts towards relieving her of the utility belt at her waist.

  “You believe wrong,” she said curtly. “Vice Hunters are authorized to preserve the safety of Union citizens against the threat of psypath activity with extreme prejudice.”

  Almost…there. The belt loosened from around her hips and slid soundlessly to the ground. “Extreme prejudice seems to be your specialty,” he said, rolling his eyes upward, to where the zapgun still rested against his temple.

  She dropped her hand to her hip. “I do what I have to—” Her attention shifted to her belt—or lack of one—and he took his chance.

  He dove forward, folding his body to duck under her arm. He hit the ground with one shoulder and rolled over the utility belt, coming up with it in his right hand. With his left, he motioned through the kata for protection with barely enough time to escape the hot blast of radiation from her zapgun. The heat dissipated against the invisible wall of kinetic energy. The monks who had trained him found the technique difficult to describe, but once learned it was very simple—he focused his telekinetic abilities in a fixed area and concentrated on pushing everything that occupied that area away.

  His ears popped at the sudden decrease in pressure—his talents pushed away everything—and he rose onto the balls of his feet. The belt banged against his thigh when he pulled his arm under his cloak and started running for his life.

  Sonofa—He was halfway to the hangar before she caught up with him. Treska’s blood boiled at her own stupidity. Her arm came up again, only this time, she didn’t waste energy shooting the zapgun. Energy weapons were useless against psypaths. First rule was to never let a psypath hypnotize you. Second was not to waste your charges shooting at one. She was damn lucky he hadn’t reflected the charge right back at her.

  As her feet pounded the hard, pitted surface of the spaceport hangar, her mind catalogued the do’s and don’t’s of what made her a successful Vice Hunter and tracker of the dangerous criminals known as mindsnakes. Never let them into your mind. Never let them out of your sight, if you planned on keeping them. And never, ever, ever trust a damn word any of them said.

  Psypaths had gifts that laid open the minds of others before them. A mindsnake could make you think and do anything it wanted, all the while leaving you believing it was all your idea. Only the most rigorous mental discipline could resist a mindsnake, and even then—you’re better off shooting before you lose your mind to their will.

  She stopped running and turned her outstretched arm. Closing one eye, she sighted down the length of her limb to the wrist-dart strapped there, and with a flick of her fingers, sent the dart whizzing towards her quarry.

  The slender dart flew true. Just prior to the faint, watery flicker of the psypath shield he’d put up, the dart slowed, delicate vanes stretching out to spidery contact points whose ends overloaded the kinetic energy field and broke it down. The vanes ejected the dart’s center in a silent puff, and the tiny, bright-hued tip buried itself in the back of the psypath’s neck.

  Poison Dreams

  Micah felt the whisper touch of something on the back of his neck at the moment his kinetic shield faltered. Seconds later, a cold, narcotic rush flooded his bloodstream, making his eyes blur and his stomach rebel.

  Damn! He wove between crates of goods, repulsor carts, and parts piles with no particular destination in mind. A personal atmospheric craft loomed closer in front of him, and he clenched his left hand in the kata for Lift and leaped for it.

  The power behind his focus should have propelled him up to the top of the craft, but already his body awareness told him that his fingers wouldn’t form in the right configurations, and the buzzing in his ears was growing louder. Nevertheless, he reached for the bottom rung of the ladder leading to the access hatch and swung himself up.

  He had to keep calm. The Huntress, as she was known, had to have a reason to be incorruptible. Just a glimpse was all he needed. What built that wall of confidence in purpose around the fabled Huntress? He had to find out.

  And then he’d tear it down, brick by brick.

  Treska forced herself to slow down. Too many Vice Hunters allowed themselves to be distracted by the chase, forgetting that at the end, the most dangerous prey still had defenses. She swung her head this way and that—aha!—he hung upside down from an atmo craft.

  That poison should be working any minute. The new formula, the one they swore wouldn’t kill the target. After the last botched bounty, she’d made her anger known. A dead psypath brought in only a fraction of the money a live one did. Heavy on the narcotics and light on the neurotoxins, the lab said. This better work, she thought. I need him alive. And unconscious.

  The unconscious part was more important than she let on. Since the last job, she didn’t want to have to deal with shoring herself up from mindsnake tricks. And ever since she’d started really researching them—not in the official government annals, but in the undercities of legend and anecdote, she’d heard some things about psypaths that made them all the more frightening, to her at least.

  There was an old woman, for example. She lived in one of the lowest levels of the metropolis that covered the entire surface of Capitol, down in the levels where the sun never shone, and where the people were forgotten—and had no care—about what went on “up there.” Their lives remained the same no matter if Union, Restoration, or Marauder claimed the capital planet. “A psypath can kill you with a thought,” she’d rasped. “Or worse.”

  “What could be worse?” Treska had asked.

  “A psypath can also see your deepest desires…and make them come true.”

  She’d dismissed the old woman’s story after she wheezed a hoarse laugh at Treska’s expression, but the doubts were there. Other denizens of half a dozen worlds confirmed the notion. Psypaths could read minds—your deepest secrets, and your darkest desires.

  She took careful aim at the man’s hanging body and fired her zapgun.

  Micah’s leg muscles were screaming with the effort of hoisting himself up the ladder to the access hatch. He didn’t need to see her to sense she was behind him and closing fast. He shoved the belt end into his mouth and gripped it with his teeth to free his right hand. He hoisted himself awkwardly a few rungs up the ladder, while his left hand formed another kata, one infinitely more familiar to him than the attack and defense formations.

  Having a gentleman’s upbringing sometimes left him at a severe disadvantage. He would never dream of confronting a
n opponent with anything but the sword or energy pistol—it wasn’t honorable. So he’d gravitated towards the lesser disciplines in his brief training at the monastery—towards the disciplines of empathy and misdirection and disguise. Through the buzzing in his ears, he focused on projecting an image of himself two rungs below his actual location. Time was running out and he needed to catch his breath before that ran out, too.

  He looped his arm around the ladder rung and closed his eyes. Think. Control. Focus. Open. Without the distraction of vision, he could hear the subtle hum of machines all around, feel the slowly warming metal of the craft looming beside him, and sense the living sentience of the Huntress approaching him.

  He trod on dangerous territory at that moment. The knife-edge of his consciousness pressed against the natural barrier of self that existed for every self-aware being. The instinctual knowledge of the difference between Self and Other tended to be a clear line, until the right kind of pressure was applied. Sometimes, that pressure came from religious experiences, other times, philosophical leaps of understanding. With increasing rarity, that pressure came from a talented psypath.

  His inner sense of honor rebelled at the thought of even approaching that limit. It simply wasn’t done. One did not breach another’s privacy—it was a code among Noble houses in the old government. And a taboo among psypaths—intruding uninvited on another’s thoughts was a transgression. Forcing one’s way into another’s mind was grounds for termination. The skill was only taught to prevent unconscious triggers.

  But the days of House rule were long since past, and the days of psypath honor—if they ever existed—counted for nothing. It came down to survival. He pressed forward with his mind and the barrier between her mind and his became fluid, malleable. His perspective shifted, blurring between where he knew he was and where he thought he ought to be, riding her mind.