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

  Curious…he felt almost a sense of peace, when confronted with the stark absoluteness of her mind. Her convictions were firm, well-traveled pathways of luminous thought. Most of the time, thoughts were jumbled, tripping over one another, looping around themselves, doubling back over some nagging point of conflict or intense opinion. But the thoughts of the Huntress hung on a structure, a solid progression from A to B to C, illuminated so strongly in the mindscape that they may as well have been beacons. Hypnotic, really.

  He pressed forward, hating himself. This is what the ancient masters warned us against. Peering into another’s mind, even shallowly like this, carried a voyeuristic thrill to it that was addictive. Past the ordered thoughts and into the deeper, emotive impressions that served as “gut feelings” convincing her that her mind was made up, and that she was in the right.

  He peeled back the layer of surface thoughts and burrowed deeper, where the thoughts became more fluid, random, disordered. He prepared himself for the maelstrom of deep thought and—

  Ran headlong into a wall.

  Treska shifted her arm a fraction and prepared to take another, better shot when a wave of dizziness swept over her, along with the sinking, familiar feeling that came just before the Voice.

  She squeezed her eyes shut tight, as if that would stop the Voice from sweeping into her consciousness like some horrible, omnipotent confessor that saw each and every unclean thought that crossed her mind. She squeezed off the shot just before the Voice drowned out everything else.

  ENEMIES OF THE UNION ARE DANGERS TO THE CITIZENS OF THE UNION! THE VICE HUNTER ELIMINATES THREATS TO THE SAFETY AND SANCTITY OF THE UNION WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE! THE VICE HUNTER DOES NOT HESITATE! THE VICE HUNTER OVERCOMES THE LIES OF ENEMIES OF THE UNION!

  Her feeble mental protest died a premature death. I didn’t hesitate! She fumbled at her utility belt for the cylinder containing her inhibs and cursed—the bastard had her belt. I’ll kill him, she thought. I’ll do it with my bare hands, and find some creative way to do it, bounty be damned. White hot fury blanked out the screaming Voice in her head until it subsided.

  She set her jaw in a stubborn line and fired a third shot. She tracked the dart with her eyes and knew—like she knew with the other two—that she’d hit her target.

  So why wasn’t he on the ground, out cold and ready for capture?

  Fool, her mind answered. It’s because he’s not actually there.

  The clang of the hatch of the atmo-plane closing confirmed her suspicion. She ran a few half-hearted steps towards the access ladder before giving it up for futile. Even she couldn’t stop a ship.

  She veered off towards the southern end of the hangar, where her own ship was berthed. Fortunately for her pride, the control chip to remotely start the damn thing was in a pocket of her jacket, rather than clipped to her belt. She thumbed the code sequence while she ran, and by the time she made it to the gangplank, the ship hummed quietly. She paused a bare nanosecond to admire the leashed-predator thrum of finely tuned engines before she dashed down the corridor and flung herself into the piloting couch.

  Praise the stars that his body knew what to do in a fight or flight situation, because if he’d been driven by his shell-shocked mind, he’d be lying immobilized on the hangar floor instead of in the pilot’s seat of the old-fashioned atmo-plane.

  He flipped three switches, turned a lever, and activated the engines. Pre-flight checks in these antiques were thankfully short and relatively automated. They just didn’t make ‘em like they used to.

  The vertical liftoff engines flared to life with a depressurizing whump and he gently guided the plane upwards, ignoring his lurching stomach. The readouts on the sensor array spun up and out from the tri-D projector, skirling out from the central point indicating his present location. Electronic signatures lit up where the other craft were berthed, and real-time cameras sent monitor projections beneath the bright dots and lines of solid objects.

  His viewscreen brightened as the walls of the spaceport sank away, revealing the bright blue-violet skies of Tenraye. He rose fast, and the dusty wasteland of the spaceport gave way to slender fingers of green in the distance. He picked one and turned the plane’s nose towards it.

  The plane’s controls were sticky, compared to what he was used to. He wished Xenna were here—she’d love to fly this thing, as she loved to fly anything with wings or a hyperdrive almost as much as she loved sex. She’d have something suggestive to say about the way he handled the stick, too.

  His struggle with the controls took all his attention for a few minutes, but once he had the plane pointed the right direction, he could no longer keep the shock from creeping back in. He wiped sweat off his face and flicked the cabin’s air circulators to high. His left hand formed the kata for Self-Control in an attempt to slow the poison’s progression through his system.

  How had a Vice Hunter developed an impenetrable shield around her thoughts? A steel wall around her mind? He resisted the urge to drive the memory completely out of his mind, knowing he’d need to analyze his failure if he was to prevent its repetition.

  She must have been trained, surely. But that didn’t make any sense. The Union focused on termination of psypaths, without exception. From the first disappearances to the all-out police actions, the Union sought to remove the psypaths altogether.

  Oh, the public word was that, like the Hathori, the psypaths were quarantined from the general population on reservations—interdicted locations safely removed from the well-traveled spacelanes and populated planets in the system.

  But the psypaths knew the truth. Perhaps too late. The New Union wasn’t interested in talking. One by one, the other echoes—other psypaths whose presences he felt no matter their distance—faded and silenced, leaving Micah alone.

  Wenn DiVrati’s decayed last transmission was the only thing that suggested anything but quick extermination. He couldn’t comprehend a situation where a psypath would be willing to train anyone in the Union’s forces in defense tactics. He couldn’t comprehend a situation where a psypath would be permitted to do so, even if he or she were willing.

  Some of the sparse inhabitants in the outer orbits were rumored to have resistance to psypaths—likely because their brains were so alien to the human and near-human races who bred psypath traits. But the Huntress was no alien.

  His prox-alarm blared and he focused on his display. Nothing lit up the diagram, but the real-time camera showed that something was on his tail. He stretched his senses to their limit, focusing his conscience on what streaked behind him, narrowing the gap between their two craft at an alarming rate.

  The ship was sleek. Too sleek for sensor readings. Damn! He moved the stick and juked sharply to the left, reducing his altitude along the way. The green vineyards below gave way to browner ones. Behind him, she matched his maneuvers. With the skies as clear as they were, his chance of shaking her was slim. Unless—

  He jammed the stick forward and the plane leaped, slamming him back into the worn seat. His ears popped just as he breached the sound barrier with a deafening boom. The prox-alarm fell silent, and he shifted his course, making for the mountain ranges to the north. It was a long shot, but the mountains might give him a place to hide.

  He hugged the ground whenever possible, but his senses jangled again in minutes, just in time for him to kill the prox-alarm, and there she was, riding his tail like a stubborn parasite.

  If he couldn’t shake her, maybe he could shut her down. He increased altitude and formed his left hand into the kata that would allow him to extend his consciousness. He floated out of his body with a disorienting jerk, and searched for the other consciousness that should be the Huntress.

  She burned like a beacon, the flames of zealotry advertising her presence, and he arrowed towards her. Stop, he projected towards the surface of her mind. You don’t want to do this. It’s dangerous and you could get hurt. You can track him later.

  He withdrew from the surface of her mind just in ti
me to yank the stick up and keep himself from shaving the top off of a jagged peak, but the move cost him. Spots swam in his vision and he reached for the auto-piloting switch.

  The mindsnake didn’t do too bad of a job flying that old tub, she thought. But he was no match for a top-of-the-line Singularity-class needleship. Treska relaxed in the piloting couch, the couch’s hide molded to her body. Small movements of her limbs controlled the ship’s systems, and a virtual-reality HUD kept her informed of everything going on outside, making the ship a true extension of her body. When he juked, she skipped. When he dove, she tumbled and cartwheeled after him with the exuberance of a child. The Huntress enjoying her chase.

  So when the thought pressed against her mind that it might be too dangerous to continue pursuit, she scowled. A little slice of doubt crossed her mind. She could track him from a safe distance, maybe ease off and let him settle into a trap of his own making.

  Or you can get the nine hells out of my brain, mindsnake! Her hands twitched, and two missiles fired from the Needle’s belly gun, straight towards her prey, dead ahead.

  Oh, no she didn’t, Micah thought as he snapped back into himself with an even bigger jolt than he left with, his pride smarting. The targeting alarm shrieked, and he dove the atmo-plane down, barely clearing a high ridge of mountainside. The range gave way towards more gently rolling foothills. One of the missiles blew away a chunk of the ridge behind him, but the other one stayed stubbornly on his posterior.

  He rolled to the right, knowing it was a useless maneuver, when a sudden inspiration came to him. Xenna’s voice—as if she were there beside him—shouted, “Kill the engines, you dolt!”

  He didn’t hesitate. He yanked the control chip from its housing and the entire panel went dead. Eerie silence filled the cabin and his guts turned to water as the plane began a rapid drop.

  The missile bypassed him and detonated a scant few meters off the end of his nose. The blast sent him at an oblique angle to the foothills in front of him. He flipped the switches to bring the engines back online and the cabin hummed back to life.

  Without the engines. Redlines stretched all the way across his field of vision. The old girl just didn’t have it in her. He uttered a curse under his breath and wished for Xenna again. She would undoubtedly know some trick to jump-start the plane. But his training didn’t extend into the realms of the heroic and all he could do was hang onto the stick and divert his will towards cushioning what he could of the old atmo-craft as the ground came up to fill his viewscreen.

  Treska sent the Needle into a dive after the aged craft. Like a raptor after a broken-winged songbird, she caught up to the craft and slid the Needle under it. “You’re not getting away that easy,” she muttered. Her fists clenched and she moved her forearms ever so slightly. The ship responded with its usual sleek grace and she cradled the old craft in her “arms” as the Needle’s anti-grav engines created a cushion of null-g space that allowed both vehicles to bump gently to the ground.

  Or rather, enter into a very controlled stumbling, shuddering, sloppy stop. But one that resulted in the occupants of both craft still among the living.

  She slipped the piloting cowl off her head and rose from the couch, pausing only to grab a spare utility belt from the cargo hold before vaulting down the gangplank.

  The access hatch of the atmo-craft popped just as she was leaping for the ladder. She couldn’t help but notice the way his shoulders bunched and stretched as he pushed himself up out of the hatch. Sometimes I forget they look just like us.

  “I don’t want to have to hurt you,” he said, flattening his body along the top of the craft’s hull.

  She found her footing and scampered up a few rungs. “I’m the armed one,” she shot back as she reached the top.

  He’d skittered away from the hatch, his body stretched out flat along the sloping surface of the aircraft’s wing. She raised her eyebrows. “Are you hiding from me? Because it’s not working.”

  “I’ve no wish to engage you, Huntress,” he said. “I like my freedoms as much as the next sentient being.”

  Her lips twisted. “That’s too bad, because your freedoms put other people in danger. Let’s not draw this out any longer than necessary.” She lifted her wrist to aim her trank-shooter.

  But by the time she’d squeezed off a shot, she realized she was playing right into his plans. He hadn’t been hiding, so much as holding himself in place. His hands lifted from the aircraft’s surface, his body began to slide down the wing, and faster than she would have suspected, he slithered over the edge of the wing.

  Dammit! Stupid, stupid. She took a step and realized that giving chase wasn’t the smartest thing—she’d be flat on her ass in a heartbeat.

  She hustled back down the ladder in time to see his feet hit the ground ahead of her, and hear his soft footfalls in the dust still settling from their landing. Their tangled craft had touched down—or rather, thumped down—on a gently rolling hillside in a snarl of vines that looked dead on first glance. But as she followed his disappearing figure into the lines of framework supporting the vines, she realized that only the top parts of the vines appeared dead. The undersides, and the vines beneath the top layer, were all alive with riotous growth. As her boots landed on the soft loam, she felt the squash of ripe grapes, and the slightly off-balancing slide of burst fruit. A heavy, heady sweet scent filled the air. In other circumstances, she might like to stop and enjoy the lushness of the vineyard. Before busting it for illegal production of wine-making crops.

  In the now, however, she focused on making her way through the tiers of greenery. The wide aisles made it easy to follow him—the old-growth vines were so thickly twined around their frames that it would be impossible to crash through them with the weight of a near-human body alone. Maybe a Treemian could do it, or someone armed with a laser cutter and some time on their hands, but her quarry had neither, and seemed focused on making his way to the structure she saw at the foot of the hill, a squarish structure in the estate-style, whose well-kept grounds had seen better days. Oh, please, head for that building, she thought.

  As if she’d commanded, his steps carried him through the outer gate and into the enclosed courtyard. From her spare utility belt, she pulled five tiny spheres and activated them as she ran towards the courtyard. The spheres zoomed from her hands, zipping out to the four corners of the building, with the last one soaring high overhead. A pyramid of energy flickered to life, terminating behind her, and locking them both inside the abandoned house.

  A fierce grin tore across her lips. You make this almost too easy, mindsnake.

  The stitch in his side sent stabbing pains with every indrawn breath. In the quiet cool of the building, Micah searched for indications of a hiding place or a bolt-hole. Most estate houses had at least one, in the case of an aerial attack from raiders, or planetary emergency—something leading down and into the ground. And if it was a winery, there ought to be more than enough ways into the basements.

  Tremors made his steps shaky. If he didn’t find the bolt-hole soon, then his final destination would be wherever he fell over. Behind him, the halls of the house were suspiciously quiet. Too quiet. She was, after all, the Huntress. His instincts, his senses, his gifts, all told him that the silence was Not a Good Thing.

  He was being hunted.

  He found a niche, carved into the thick walls of the structure—likely at one time a home for a piece of showcase art—and leaned into the smooth curve. He needed to buy a little time. His shaking left hand contorted into the kata of Silence. His mind quieted, and his heart rate slowed, no easy feat considering the poison had kicked his system into high gear to facilitate its own spread through his body. Sweat beaded on his forehead and trickled down the back of his neck, and he could almost hear her steady breathing as she made her way towards his pathetic hiding place.

  Remember you wanted this.

  His arsenal of offensive maneuvers was underdeveloped, at its best. But perhaps a defense—dist
raction and redirection—might work. He closed his eyes, picturing the layout of the house, and extended his senses. She was not far behind him, but close enough to the hallway leading to the far wing. He searched for and found an empty crate in a distant room and braced himself. What he was about to do was risky at best—focusing his consciousness enough to move something that far away meant he’d be leaving his own body open to attack—but the reward just might be worth it.

  He had to twist the fingers of his left hand with his right to form the kata for Escape, but his mind flew free of his body. The landscape changed and suddenly, he was in a cold, dark world, shadows on shadows the only things indicating there was anything around him at all. Small bright spots flashed at the edges of his “vision”—tiny lives of insects or small rodentia, and the quickly fading mental imprint on the box he’d targeted. His mind flew towards it and he wrapped tendrils of will around the object. With a mighty mental shove, he sent the box flying against the wall, shattering its prefabricated polymer structure.

  The act took its toll on him and his focus slipped back towards his body in the darkness, pausing only to briefly observe the location of a great number of tiny life forces at one spot in the wall in the far wing. The bolt-hole. As he pulled back to himself, the space around him grew brighter. He aimed for the brightness of his own body and returned to himself just in time to feel her fingers close around his neck.

  His eyes flew open to meet hers, so close to his own. With his mind still not quite anchored, his consciousness traveled to the contact points of her fingertips against his skin. Once again, the line blurred.