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

  Treska elbowed her way to the front of the line. “Priority clearance.” She held out her wrist with the ident tattoo.

  “Once again, in case I didn’t make it absolutely clear, all visitors and emigres must pass through quarantine and customs.” The gate guard glared down at Treska’s wrist like it had a communicable disease attached to it instead of a government ID tattoo. His vocal trill flattened, along with his crest feathers. “No exceptions.”

  Aggravation made her grit her teeth. She narrowed her eyes and drew herself up. “Where’s your superior?”

  The guard scratched one claw over the feathers at his throat. “Don’t have one.” His beaked mouth couldn’t smile, but the leathery skin at the corners of his eyes crinkled. “Ma’am.”

  The flickering holomonitors spread an iridescent sheen over his pinfeathers. Security alerts flashed up as she leaned in close, almost sticking her head inside the tiny guardroom. “Listen closely, Guerran,” she said. “I represent the Union of Civilized Worlds wherever I go. If you make trouble with me, you make trouble with the Union. Do you want to make trouble with the Union?”

  The guard’s feathers rippled. “It’s the Union who insisted on Shiba City’s security. It’s your facility in there, processing and tuning our crystals. You have a problem with how we protect your assets, you should probably take it up with your government.”

  I do not have time for this. Her hand strayed towards her zapgun. She could probably get away with dropping one low-level, insolent guard in the name of bringing in a bounty like the mindsnake. Just a slip—

  “Thank you very much, sorry to bother you. We’ll return with proper papers, you’ve been very helpful.” Micah’s hand closed over her upper arm and he gave her a firm tug away from the guardbox.

  She turned into the pull and used her momentum to jam the zapgun into his midsection, glaring up into his eyes as she did. “What the nine hells do you think you’re doing?” she hissed.

  “Would you like to give up collecting the bounty on my head, then?” He raised tawny eyebrows. His lips quirked upwards. “I’ll thank you to remove that zapgun from my gut, if you don’t mind. At this range, should you actually pull the trigger, the force of it would likely tear a hole in you, too. I’d much rather mingle my body fluids with yours while we’re both still very much alive.”

  She ought to have been a chofka eel the way she gaped at him. Or a camouflage gryffowl with her face flushed so bright at his words. “Be quiet.”

  “That won’t make it go away, Treska,” he murmured. She shoved past him, fully ready to stalk off back into the wasteland if there was a chance that the wind could scour the memories of last night from her mind. Jump-dreams, she could understand—Jumpspace affected everyone in weird ways. But Micah invading her ordinary sleep-dreams was too much to bear.

  He caught her around the waist. Warmth flooded her body at his touch. “Careful,” he murmured. “If that guard were more attentive to his monitor, he would have seen the Undernet reward for your detainment. Did you forget how we got here?”

  The seductive tone clashed with the harsh reality of his words. “Fragging slag pirates,” she muttered. Sharpclaw and his goons wouldn’t give up a bounty this big without a fight. With a glance back at the guardbox, she sighed. “Maybe going in the front door isn’t such a good idea for us.”

  “You didn’t get a look at the monitor, did you?” When she shook her head, he continued. “Let me ask you—how much is the bounty for bringing me in?”

  “One point five mil,” she said.

  “And dead?”

  “Only half a mil—but it’d be stupid to give up the larger amount.”

  He snorted. “Sharpclaw is an opportunist. He’s willing to let the extra million credits go in favor of the lower bounty on a dead body that he doesn’t have to waste people or effort in guarding.” He nodded towards the monitor. “Not to mention that he can close a significant chunk of that gap with the bounty on your own pretty head.”

  “What?” Her voice rose, dangerously so. “That mangy cold-blood put a bounty on me?”

  Micah yanked her further away from the guard shack, shoving her into the shadow of a wall buttress. “No. He just placed a bid.”

  “What do you mean, placed a bid?” She tried to step around him, to get another look at that guard monitor.

  He blocked her with his body and the wall. “How much?” She stuck her chin in his face.

  He bit his lips. “Treska, trust me when I tell you it’s not a good feeling to know the value of your life down to the credit. It doesn’t help. It won’t bring you peace.” He blocked her each time she tried to side-step.

  “How. Much.”

  He actually looked concerned. She glared harder. If she were a psypath, she would have set him on fire. I don’t think they can do that, the rational part of her mind said. She crossed her arms and waited.

  He closed his eyes. His shoulders slumped. “One hundred-twenty.”

  She staggered. “A hundred and twenty million credits?”

  He gasped, turning it into a cough as a breeze kicked up dust from the queue of entrants and blew it over them. The cough turned to a laugh and he shook his head. His laughs grew and she poked him in the midsection. “What?”

  “A hundred—and twenty—oh, sunspots!” He clapped a hand over his mouth and used his other arm to defend himself from her next jab. Her eyes caught his and his laughter faded. “Sunspots, you’re serious, aren’t you?” He bit his lips again, folding them in under his teeth and looking up in thought. “Oh, how do I put this?” He rested one hand on her shoulder. “Sweetheart, your bounty is currently at a hundred twenty thousand credits.”

  “What?” Shock raced through her. Micah was right. To know your life was only worth about the price of a sun-damned flitter on the Capitol? She realized she was gaping and clamped her lips closed.

  Micah’s eyes turned sad. “I told you it wouldn’t help.”

  Now it was her turn to bite her lips. “I’m the best Vice Hunter in the whole system!”

  He nodded and patted her shoulder. “Yes. That’s your problem. The Undernet puts out a mark and takers bid for the bounty.” His lips twitched. “Sorry to say it, but people are lining up to undercut one another for the chance of taking you out.”

  Something deflated inside her. “And your bounty has only gone up over the years.”

  “It doesn’t make things any easier knowing people will pay exorbitant amounts to end your life, rather than more modest ones.” He met her eyes again. “Merely knowing someone hates you enough to pay for your death is enough to revise your outlook, is it not?”

  “That’s different!”

  “It’s really not.” He started walking west, along the wall protecting the city. “Take comfort in the fact that we aren’t the only ones for whom a grand entrance would be a liability.”

  The feel of his arm around her waist felt—comfortable. Warm. “What are you saying?” She refocused on the conversation with some effort.

  “I’m saying that it’s a universal truth—for every walled city, every gated estate, every quarantined system, there’s always a back way in.” He rounded the corner of the wall and the barren ground opened up to a small, bustling shantytown. The wall created a buffer from the constant winds, and the settlement thrived in scavenged building materials of canvas, plastifilm, and cargo container parts that would have been blown away on the plain.

  “How would you know?”

  “I used to live in one.” His sideways glance held the hint of a smile. “Several, actually. In the monastery on Ursis Amalia, initiates were only permitted to leave it once they figured out where the bolt-holes were. Some of them didn’t even realize there were bolt-holes at all until they were adults.”

  “That’s dangerous! What if children got out and got lost?”

  “That’s learning.” He shrugged. “The real trick was to learn how to recognize the false information the prefects used their powers to Suggest to us.
So we knew how to avoid the traps.”

  He spoke as if the psypath homeworld was like any other place in the civilized orbits. As if it were perfectly normal to invade somebody else’s brain and turn them into mush. “That’s invading someone else’s private thoughts.”

  With the weatherall cloak’s hood up, his face was hidden from the bright and ruddy light of the Guerran day. “It was an important lesson we needed to be taught. A psypath who’s unable to recognize an externally-implanted mental suggestion is a dangerous weapon.”

  Perhaps she’d been too long reliant on the Union shield. The Inner Orbits opened to her, but Guerre wasn’t in the heart of the Union, and it was clear she had precious few friends here. She glanced over at him. “Besides the threat of the repulsor cuffs, why are you helping me?”

  “Shall I make a convincing lie to flatter you, or give you the truth?” He raised an eyebrow. “Would you believe either, coming from a mindsnake like me?”

  She angled her steps away from him just a bit. He didn’t seem at all bothered about her digs at his psypath-ness today. She still remembered his outburst on board the Needle’s Eye, and wondered why he hadn’t done so again. “Maybe you do have the capacity to tell an unvarnished truth,” she conceded. “If you really try.”

  “Big of you to notice.” His hood flipped against the milder wind coming off the lake. “You’re much more motivated to keep me alive than a Riktorian pirate. I’ll take my chances with you.”

  “You said in the cave that wasn’t a motivating factor.”

  “I’ve re-examined my motivations.” He offered her a bright, insincere smile. “You’re much easier on the eyes than a Riktorian with scale-mange and a bad temper.”

  She laughed. “That isn’t much of a compliment, if that’s what you’re trying for.”

  “I can do better. Your lack of fleas makes you more attractive.”

  His words sent a warmth through her she didn’t like. It was a different warmth than the one that made her reach for her now-empty inhib tube.

  From afar, they might have appeared to be a pair of lovers having an intimate moment in the shadow of the wall. Up close, the fire in her belly came not from his proximity—that was a constant to which she was growing accustomed—but the fury of betrayal from the very citizens she was sworn to protect. Isn’t that why I do this? So the people of the Union can go to sleep at night knowing they aren’t tempting bait put out for predators? “I can’t believe they put a bounty out on me. Me! I can understand you, but me? I keep these people safe.”

  “Why? Because you believe the propaganda about me?” His voice hardened.

  She shook her head. “I’ve seen the data. The attacks, the locations of known psypaths at the time—data your own Order gave to the Union! The facts don’t lie!” She knew what she saw. Knew the data and how to interpret it. It was part of her training. The Marauders appeared in the system everywhere communities of psypaths existed. And everywhere but Ursis Amalia, they destroyed.

  “They don’t tell the whole truth either.” He shot her a look. “Like why the bounty on my head is higher for me alive, rather than dead. Why go to the trouble of making you escort me back to the Capitol?”

  “Answers.” She couldn’t avoid the memory of the other psypath. The one who’d called her beautiful and who’d chosen death over a return to prison. “What’s the connection between psypaths and marauders? Why—” here, her voice broke. “Why were you spared and so many others weren’t?”

  Micah’s grip on her shoulders tightened. “You’re a fool if you believe that’s what the Union wants out of us. The Order told everyone time and time again—we were just as mystified by the attacks as every other being in this system. We did no conscious thing that would attract the Marauders! Like everyone else, we had no idea they even existed. Hunting us down and exterminating us will not change that.”

  “Then work with the Union to find the unconscious reason your kind brought destruction to our worlds!” This time, she shoved hard enough that his grip had to break.

  She turned and headed in the direction of the shantytown in the lee of the city wall. Best thing to do was find that actuator and get off this planet, before his words could poison her resolve even further. And before they had to spend another night together.

  “Treska!”

  She turned and held up the remote. “I suggest you keep up, unless you want the cuffs to reset to immobilization.”

  “Hells take your damn cuffs! I lost someone in the attacks, too!” A vein in his neck pulsed, and the set to his jaw could chisel untuned crystal out of the mountains they so recently left.

  He met her gaze with a glare of his own and for the first time, she felt real fear. No, she wanted to say. Don’t say anything more.

  His stormy eyes were empty and cold. “I loved her. She defied everything she’d been taught to love me back, and she is gone because of the Marauders. She was kind and inquisitive and had the most open heart of any being in the entire star system.”

  Treska’s own heart, not so kind or open, clenched. “Zara.”

  Out Of Luck

  They came to the edge of the makeshift village. On a smaller scale, it could have been a twin to the bazaar at Tenraye spaceport. Junk dealers displayed the worn and crystal-scoured parts for sale. Crystal dealers offered shards of inferior-quality crystals rejected from the mines. An aisle set up with rickety tables displayed fresh produce, most of it bruised or misshapen, and certainly not advert-attractive. Nevertheless, her stomach let out a sudden growl that reminded her of how wretched emergency protein rations tasted.

  Guerrans glided along between the tables, rubbing articulated elbows with humans—small and squat compared to the natives—while Urgoti, half-sized, six-limbed bipeds, curious animals found all over the system, but here treated like pets, edged into the spaces vacated by Guerran limbs and human bodies. A handful of other races stood out in the crowd, as diverse as any intergalactic center, especially here in the only city on the entire moon.

  She made to go down the aisle with the vegetables, but Micah had other ideas. “Let’s not fool ourselves,” he said. “Your status may afford you the entry invoked by fear on most of the Civilized worlds, but not on this one. Guerre is not a voluntary member of the Union, and the more you rub that fact into the beaks of the Guerrans, the more attention you will draw to us, and the less chance we’ll have to survive long enough to fix your ship.”

  She folded her arms. “Are you telling me how to cash in my bounty?”

  He lifted one of his manacled hands and scratched the downy stubble on his chin. “I’m telling you how to stay alive until the situation changes.”

  “You’re being awfully accommodating for a prisoner. Why should I trust you?” The bomb he’d dropped earlier about Zara’s fate had kept her silent in the journey to the shantytown, but as they entered the village, he seemed to lose his anger. She wasn’t afraid of using the repulsor cuffs’ highest settings on him, but that didn’t mean she wanted to.

  “It’s in the psypath code. We’re honor-bound to help those in need.” Behind him, two Guerran teenagers skulked around a fruit dealer, taking turns eyeing the goods displayed in his baskets and glancing around at the other browsers.

  “That’s a steaming pile if I ever heard one.” She turned away, ready to head back down the vegetable aisle. One of the Guerran teenagers jumped, eyes flicking nervously between her and his female companion, whose claws had just disappeared over the edge of a basket holding succulent-looking redfruits.

  “Haven’t you ever wondered why you’re so good at catching us when others twice your strength have failed?”

  She stopped. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He wrapped his arms around her and lifted her off the ground with little effort. Startled, she folded her arm against her body and jabbed her other elbow into his midsection, breaking his hold. She thumbed the remote for the repulsor cuffs and his arms and legs snapped together. “You snake!” she hisse
d. “How dare you lay hands on me!” Warm hands, with strength in long fingers that could be as graceful as his words.

  He rolled his eyes. “Acting the affronted noblewoman isn’t a part you play well. I was merely proving a point.”

  Was he calling her low-class? Was she caring? “What point is that?”

  “That there’s something in you that makes us think you need help. We respond to that. It’s in our nature.”

  “You mean like a vratyx scents a wounded kipkapi.”

  “Fine pelts for sale!” The hawker in the booth next to the vegetable stall suddenly shouted. “Healthy herd-beast pelts! Great for cloaks! All manner of uses!” A Mauw gentleman, startled by the hawker’s sudden yell, veered away from the booth, his tawny hackles bushed out.

  “Have you ever seen a carnadon use the single-mindedness of a vratyx on the hunt to steal vratyx pups from the den?”

  “That doesn’t make any sense!”

  “Neither does your comparison with a hunting beast. But there is something in the psypath code about protecting people from their own stupidity, and sad to say, I’m honor bound to it.”

  “Okay, first off—I don’t believe that psypaths have any sort of honor code at all. You have to have honor first.” Someone started banging on a tin pan and hollering about cookware. It was all she could do not to flip up her wrist darts and silence the screecher.

  “Now I’m offended.”

  “Hush. Second, this is a pointless argument. You’ve almost successfully distracted me from the fact that Sharpclaw and his goons are tracking us, and the real reason you’re willing to help me is because you think he’s a bigger threat to you than I am. Well let me tell you something—I am your biggest threat, and you will help me anyway. And anyone who thinks I have to use any damsel in distress crap to bag my ticket had better be prepared to spend a lot of time in repulsor-cuffs!” She didn’t realize she’d stepped closer to him in her tirade, but the fact was brought home painfully when he bent his head and kissed her.