The Snare (Huntress of the Star Empire Episodes 4-6) Read online

  He lifted his head and for a nanosecond, his eyes flashed a luminescent blue of the psypath. He blinked. “Zara? What—?” His eyes focused on her. “You!” He sprang away from her as if she’d set him on fire.

  Feeling insulted over his quick reaction to her was just a stupid thing to do. Especially when he was the one clutching his robe to protect his bare chest and she…didn’t know where her shirt had gotten to.

  Her gaze darted around the cavern. They’d started the night cycle with half the room between them and somehow ended up meeting between their respective bedrolls. Grit and tiny rocks bit into her skin. Micah was staring at her like she’d just kicked his pet gralx. The green light on the neuro-collar blinked erratically. The blue glow faded from his eyes and his panicked expression dulled. “Oh. That again.” He shook out his cloak, no longer protective of his state of undress. Right down to the jut of his obvious arousal.

  As if aware of her eyes on him, he glanced up. “If I told you there was a connection between us, would it matter?”

  She steeled her spine and avoided his gaze under the pretenses of looking for her shirt. Trying not to let her face burn, and feeling the abrasions on her back stung with every move. “Not one whit.” Her words were punctuated by the crunch of her last two inhibs. She should conserve, but while her heart raced like this and he had some strange influence over her dreams, she needed every defense.

  “Right. If I told you I’m equally mystified by it, our circumstances wouldn’t change in the least.”

  She found her shirt and pulled it over her head, securing the built-in breastband and trying not to think about the fact that the spot between them where the adjuster fastened was the same spot where his lips had left a searing brand. “Not in the least.”

  “And in a matter of days, when you’ve sent me into the dungeon hell of your government’s prisons, you’ll also be losing your only hope of understanding it.”

  She found her jacket and pulled it on, the familiar hide armoring more than just her skin. “I can live with the mystery.”

  Micah knew his mental state was deteriorating fast, but with the thrice-damned neuro-collar cutting into him, there was little he could do to mitigate his weakness. The dust from the crystals disoriented him in Treska’s hostile company. It tore down the walls in his mind and let the compartments of past and present, memory and perception, bleed into each other. and the churned-up memories of Zara troubled him so much, he still saw the ghost of his first love in random flashes when Treska moved a certain way or turned her head.

  The first time it happened was when they were refilling the canteens at the tiny stream in the corner of the cavern after they’d packed up their bunkrolls. Treska scooped water into the filter from the stream. She tilted her head to sniff the contents coming out of the drainage valve and suddenly, Treska became Zara, lifting her head with joy on her face as she observed a plant he’d brought back all the way from Shakti orbit. He’d been so taken aback that he fell flat on his face, reopening the cut on his forehead. After her irritated huff and another shot of syntha-skin, she frowned into his face. “I shouldn’t care who she is, or what she means to you.”

  He avoided her gaze, even while she held his face to keep him still while the syntha-skin dried. “You’re right. You shouldn’t. You might start thinking of me as a person, and your Union can’t have that.”

  They traveled through the day—or at least, a number of hours that aligned with the moon’s daylight cycle. Micah took small comfort in the fact that this section of the tunnels inside the mountain range had been mined completely dry of crystals. The walls in here, at least, no longer whispered to him. They traveled steadily downward, Treska’s padd indicating that the exit to the mines was several thousand meters below the altitude of the high plain on which they’d left the ship. After several hours, Treska called for a break. “I’m exhausted.” She dropped her pack against the wall of a wide part of the tunnel.

  Micah agreed, but the last thing he wanted to do was fall asleep. “Why don’t we sleep in shifts?”

  She eyed him with wariness. “Won’t you be bored, stuck here in cuffs?” Her pointed glance told him he hadn’t earned much in the way of freedom. She set up perimeter balls in both directions and activated their repulsor fields. His disappointment must have shown on his face. Her lips tightened and she looked away, muttering, “In case of cave-pigs.”

  “I was a monk, you know. We know how to be still and contemplate.” He arched an eyebrow. “I’m more concerned about you.”

  “I do just fine on my own.” But she unrolled her bedroll against the wall and turned her back to him.

  Micah sank down into a meditation pose best suited for a man in repulsor cuffs. Thoughts of Zara lurked at the edges of his consciousness and he spent much of the break building mental walls against them. He didn’t want to relive the dream, or the nightmare that followed. Stars knew he’d spent enough time in those early days drowning in self-recrimination and guilt. He might have been the first psypath to surrender to the Union, rather than the last, if Xenna’s desperate message hadn’t made it out of the re-education farm and the trickle of rumor hadn’t begun about the Union’s post-attack activities. The Hathori temple he’d been ready to betray for Zara’s sake became his penance after her loss.

  After two hours, he woke Treska with a soft call of her name. In his mind, it sounded as if he had to remind himself who she was.

  Her response was immediate. She jolted up, ready and awake as if a switch had been flipped, and surveyed the room before settling on him. She sighed. “Might as well eat before we have to press on.”

  While he pulled rations from the gear, Treska tossed rocks into a pile between his pack and her own against the wall in a cove. She pointed a small cutting laser at the pile.

  “Wait.” He understood what she was about to do—use the laser to heat the rocks, rather than choking up the cavern with smoke from a carbon-based fire. “This is Guerre.”

  “Yeesss?” Her slow drawl indicated she wasn’t impressed with his statement of the obvious.

  He held up a chunk of stone. “Those rocks have Guerre crystal in them. Superheated, unrefined Guerre crystal dust is a great way to turn human lungs into pudding, but not so good if you’d like to continue breathing.” Inside, the crystal glimmered in the light of their glowtorches. And whispered unintelligible things to him.

  “Oh.” She dropped the laser in haste and helped him sort through rocks and discard crystal. “I’ve already had my lungs rebuilt at least once. Don’t need that again.” They ended up with a much smaller pile of rocks. “How do you know so much about Guerre?”

  He debated how much to tell her of his knowledge, but figured a little couldn’t hurt. “Before I became a wanted man, I was a scholar.”

  “You?” She lifted an eyebrow. “Your dossier says you were a smuggler and a grifter.”

  He tried not to be offended. Of course the Union would paint his activities in illegal light. It made him easier to hate. “I was no such thing.” He edged away from the rock pile as she aimed the laser again. “I was—”

  “What?”

  He looked away. “I was a librarian.”

  She burst out laughing. The hum of the laser heated the rocks and he told himself the heat on his face was from that. “You? A librarian?”

  “Is that so hard to believe?” Now he was getting downright annoyed. “What’s so ridiculous about being a librarian?”

  She shook her head, a wry grin twisting her lips. “Your incredible mental powers, your ability to command the obedience of sentients, pull their fears and desires from the depths of their minds and compel them to do your bidding, and you hid out in an archive somewhere?”

  Heat crept up the back of his neck. “I didn’t, uh, hide out. The Order put me there.” The Order put me there when no one stepped forward to guide me in mastery of my training. The Order was already under scrutiny. Pressure from Noble Houses and the civil government to either offer or d
eny their services encouraged the Order to withdraw to the point of xenophobia. The fact that he’d been born into a Noble House made him even less appealing to train, due to a conflict of interest with his heritage. All very polite words to sugar-coat a rejection. It’s not what you know, kid. It’s who you are, one of the monks had told him. Nobody wanted to fully train a psypath only to have his Noble House sue to return him to their custody for use to their own ends.

  Never mind that was exactly what had happened, training or no. He cleared his throat. “Anyway, that’s not important. I spent my time searching for artifacts from back in the days before psypaths became monastic. I was hoping to find clues to our origins. Learn why psypath talents pop up in random individuals in the population; why talents only show up in the human and near-human races. I wanted to discover new techniques in mastering the talents.” He shot her a glance. “Ways to better help people and fulfill the oath I took when I underwent training in the first place.”

  “Very noble of you.” She sat cross-legged on the other side of the glowing rocks and portioned out a fresh pack of rations. “Here.”

  He bit down into a trail nugget. “Mmm. Interesting texture. Let’s try the rocks and see if they’re a little chewier.”

  “You’d rather have protein cubes?” She laughed at the sudden horror in his expression. “What did you find on Guerre?”

  He glanced upward, finishing his ration with an audible crunch. “Same thing the Union found. Crystals. They’re used in starship building, and—” He broke off. Telling her a tuned crystal headband would magnify his talents didn’t seem like a wise thing to do. He coughed. It wasn’t a fake thing, considering the way the rations sucked all the moisture out of his mouth. “There’s an old ruin of a psypath archive here. They used the crystals for data storage.” Not a complete lie, just not the whole truth, either.

  “If the Union finds it, they’ll turn it to rubble. You know that, right?” She didn’t look at him.

  His eyebrows went up. “You sound as if you care.”

  She set her jaw. “I don’t. I just—” She broke off, and spent several minutes packing the last of the gear and checking their water supply. “Needless destruction makes me tired.”

  Still wet from the water spray, Xenna blew a kiss across a clothing disc and donned the silk robe that unfolded with it; this one green and shot through with silvery filaments. The wet silk clung to her lush curves as the seal on the outer airlock popped and another door opened, leading her to an anteroom.

  Wherever she’d been sent, it certainly wasn’t long on the luxury appointments. Broken furniture and cast-off appliances made for a passable reception room in these times, given the lack of welcome her people enjoyed. A moment later, another airlock door hissed open and in strode half a dozen large humanoids. Garbed in heavy protective gear made of rubberized fabric, thick boots, head coverings that covered their heads and the lower half of each one’s face, and thick, multi-spectrum goggles, they ranged out in a circle around her.

  Xenna’s eyes narrowed and her chin lifted. The room filled with the sound of their breathing. Their heads moved up and down as their gear forced them to take her in with exaggerated movements. As one, they closed ranks around her, looming over her. The scent of rubberizer filled her nostrils with acrid chemical that made her eyes water.

  Her nostrils flared and one corner of her mouth curled up in a sneer. “Is this the respect you pay to the ordained avatar and servant of your goddess?” She threw her arms out and shoved the two massive males in front of her to either side, striding with confidence towards the third door.

  The panel hissed open. On her way over the threshold, she let the robe slide off her shoulders and down her legs, pausing to kick it off as she descended a long, serviceable stairway which opened into a much more finely-appointed room below.

  The underground-cool air swirled over her bare skin, ornamented only by the holographic inkings of her station and a handful of delicately filigreed chains around her waist and neck. The room was lit by oil lamps glowing from wall brackets, in between hand-carved panels of bas-relief images of the goddess in forms that even Xenna held in only passing familiarity. As her eyes traveled over the images of the goddess in her divine righteousness, her inner confidence wavered.

  Behind her, the six stood on the stairs. She turned to them and gathered every shred of daring, every shred of longing she’d never been able to fully explore, and every understanding she’d only grasped hints of.

  As one, they unsealed their heavy coats. Each male took the coat of the man in front of him and removed it, leaving it hanging on pegs placed along the stairwell, the last man handling his own coat. In coordinated movement, they stepped out of their boots and peeled off their hoods. Off came the goggles and face masks and Xenna had to dig her fingernails into her palms to keep her fear in check.

  Six Hathori men stood before her, their skin the midnight-hued counterparts of women. Where Hathori women shone like jewels in shades of violet, sapphire, emerald, and Xenna’s own riotous pink, the men bore the mark of their goddess’s darkness. The midnight shades of twilight, the fires of sixth hell, primal jungle of night in the islands near Hathor’s equator. Hathori men were born into clutches—twins or other multiples pheromonally linked to one another so their movements, their very thoughts, even, were as synchronized as if they shared one mind. Breaking a clutch was a rare and challenging thing, only done for a religious calling or a death of one of the members.

  Like her sisters, Xenna’s strength lay in softness and curves. Everyone in the civilized orbits knew the legendary desirability of Hathori women. Their temples graced most of the civilized worlds at one time, and in their halls, comfort and sensuality and companionship were celebrated with sacred abandon.

  But the civilized worlds only knew the Hathori in the temples. The devotees of the goddess in her beneficent aspect were mostly women, but a small number of male Hathori answered the calling. Those men and women outside the homeworld who didn’t serve in the temple proper acted as diplomats and negotiators loaned out freely to any request, but never permitted loyalty outside their contracts.

  Those were the Hathori known to the civilized worlds. The shadow temples on uncivilized worlds and on Hathor were a different story. For the dark face of the goddess was one of harsh vengeance, and she blessed her sons with the ability to carry out her darker will with quick, sleek, and deadly silence.

  Hathori men were the best assassins in all of known space.

  Their eyes tracked her every movement in unison. Xenna inhaled, knew it was a mistake, but breathing couldn’t be helped. Their pheromones mingled with the close, oil-scented air, encouraging fear-response in their prey at the same time the heady narcotic slowed its reflexes. Xenna’s own pheromones warred with theirs—her body recognized potential mates. If she wasn’t careful, she could find herself pheromone-bonded to their clutch. As much as she appreciated their peak condition, her vows prevented her from seeking. She’d never yet encountered a mate, as it was a rare thing outside the homeworld, but a pheromone-bond here would be more than an inconvenience, it would be a threat to her entire homeworld.

  “Be welcome to the Web, Lady. Goddess has not graced us with her benevolent face in an entire season on this world.”

  Xenna nodded. “Worship first, then.” This world’s seasons lasted several standard years. If she were going to keep her part of the plan moving with Hathori help, she’d have to work for it. Without the advantage of her pheromones over a non-Hathori.

  Still, she had a job to do. A benediction to grant. As formidable as these Hathori males were, they were still deserving of their goddess’s love. She trailed her fingers down her midsection into the folds between her legs. They watched her, six moving as one, as she plunged her fingers up inside her cleft and found the small vial hidden there. It was not the safest way to smuggle Emera, but it was a wholly Hathori way. She held up the vial. “Gentlemen, I bid you welcome. This is the sacred place of the god
dess, and the tears of her essence are ours to share in pleasure.” She opened her arms to the clutch and they moved as one to embrace her.

  Role Reversal

  “Here we are, then,” Micah said. “Shiba City.” The worst of the dust had died down, thanks to the lake between them and the dry plain, but the winds kicked up by the Jovian rise’s effect on the moon’s atmosphere whipped the loose ends of their clothing around them. The Jovian gave Treska a vague feeling of light-headedness, though that might have been partly caused by the lack of real food.

  After emerging from the caves, they’d found civilization in the form of automated mining transports, one of which Micah hacked with Treska’s padd. She still shook her head at his temerity, and the way he shrugged at her reaction. “Transport is transport. As long as we jump off before they enter the anti-microbial fields, all our molecules should stay where they belong.”

  They hopped off a short distance from the main gate of the city. Shiba City was surrounded by a high wall. Inside the wall, Micah told her, the main crystal processing and tuneworks took up the lake side of the city, while worker housing and administrative buildings took up the leeward side. “It’s one of the few decent trade centers in this and its neighboring orbits.” He pointed to the satellite receiver on top of the tallest building, rising a little above the wall’s height. “It’s the only place on the whole moon with a boosted connection to the Union net and the Undernet. It stays up even when the Jovian’s in the way.”

  Treska strode up to the city gate. “Come on,” she said. “I’m cold, hungry, and I need a bath in the worst way.”

  The guard at the gate addressed the line of people waiting to enter without bothering to look up as he checked and stamped. “Visitors and emigres must pass through quarantine and customs. Proper documentation is required. A holding area is provided for your convenience. Please do not push or shove. Thank you for your cooperation.” His avian features marked him as a Guerran native. The peculiar trill to his speech made even his drone sound musical.