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

  Inside the crates packed in the center of the transport, Ahveen, the Treemian, and Xenna collected themselves. It might have been a less than stellar move to assign a Treemian to an espionage mission. We work with what we have. Xenna gestured to their exit points and counted off the wait time.

  Three, two, one, go!

  Calivon lifted the crate lid in one silent, smooth motion, his musculature well-equipped to deal with the heavy, insulated plastiform. At the same time, Ahveen gathered her legs beneath her and sprang straight upward. A mighty, silent flap of her wings took her up into the scaffolding, and another tone joined the cacophony. On the ground, Xenna casually swung one shapely leg over the side of the crate, then hopped lightly down off the anti-grav pallet.

  She sauntered over to the tech, projecting soothing, sensual pheromones. Her gold mesh robe swirled around her body, the high slits concealing and revealing tantalizing glimpses of her skin beneath. Her lips curved up in an inviting smile.

  The tech’s eyes lit up at her presence. She knew when her pheromones hit him, as his eyes drooped to half-mast and his gaze was drawn to her assets. She felt herself enter familiar territory as she stepped closer. “I have been sent for you, my love.” She made her voice as throaty as she could manage.

  The tech licked his lips. “B-beautiful lady.”

  “Yes,” she purred. “Beautiful lady, all for you. All you have to do is take me to your special place.”

  “Sp-p-pecial p-p-place.” He repeated her words and sniffed deeply.

  That’s right, sweetie. Breathe me in. She leaned forward, displaying her cleavage, and whispered into his ear. “The impound station.” She gestured towards the blast door leading out of the loading dock. She let her arm rest lightly on his and guided him towards the exit.

  “Yes. The-the impound station.”

  “Our little love nest, sweet thing.” She glided alongside him.

  His fingers fumbled at the code pad. He keyed in a set of numbers and the access panel moved from red to amber. Xenna licked her lips. I’m coming for you, baby. He fumbled at the second set and the amber light flashed. Come on, that’s it.

  “Wait—” He blinked.

  “What? No, sweet thing.” She fought to keep her voice smooth and hypnotic. “Our place.” She stroked his fumbling fingers.

  His hand spasmed. He pressed the wrong button. The pad clamped closed and a klaxon rang out.

  “No! Safety is paramount! Morality is security! You are not moral! You are a security risk! Violation! Violation! Violation!”

  Xenna cursed. “Sonofabitch.” Her fingers curled into a tight ball and her arm snapped out. She clipped him in the jaw and staggered back. “Ahveen! Plan B!” I sure hope that Treemian sunk his tendrils deep enough into the security grid. They wouldn’t get a second chance.

  The tech staggered back, but did not go down. Instead, he lowered himself into a crouch. The scanner clattered against his belt and he lashed out with a series of flat-handed strikes. Xenna executed a backflip that took her legs up and over her head, her back leg catching the tech under the chin.

  But it was a glancing blow, and the man staggered back but did not fall. She landed in a crouch of her own, the gold mesh pooling around her feet. She paused for the briefest of seconds and let the robe fall from her shoulders. Gloriously naked, save for her boots, she rose again, gathered her balance, and struck out.

  She drove the tech back away from the blast door, raining blows on his torso. “Time!” she called out.

  Ahveen’s voice echoed through the dock, bouncing around the cavernous room. “Twenty-five seconds.”

  The tech rallied. His face was a determined mask as he blocked her blows and parried with his own. “Make it fifteen,” Xenna called back. She didn’t like that look in the tech’s eyes. It wasn’t so much a look as an absence of one. He drove her back towards the blast door, and towards the emergency lockdown. She spun around and delivered a wheel kick that deflected the arm that had been reaching for the scanner on his belt.

  Xenna heard his elbow crack. The kick should have stopped him cold. A break like that should put a man to the ground. She watched with mounting trepidation as he lurched forward. “Security lies in virtue. The unassailable is the triumphant.” His eyes fixed on hers, staring right through her and she felt a chill knife right through her belly. “You are not virtuous.”

  Rage burned white behind her eyes. “Not virtuous? Not virtuous?” She kicked out at his knee. “I purify the sacred waters of Pleasures Untold! I grant holy benedictions to kings!” He stumbled back, falling on his ass.

  Xenna stomped harder, the alarms ringing in her ears. “I hold the secrets to ecstasies of the gods themselves! My virtue is sacrosanct!” Anything to make the blank look leave the man’s eyes.

  She backhanded him and his eyes rolled back in his head. Ahveen dropped down from the rafters and enfolded her in mighty wings. “Xenna, stop!”

  Her blood burned. Ahveen’s wings moved air over her fevered flesh. Rage cooled. She stared down at the unconscious tech. “Nobody questions my virtue.”

  Ahveen followed her gaze. “I don’t think he’ll be questioning much for a long time coming.”

  The Treemian joined them. “If your plan required your identity to remain secret, my lady, I fear you must alter your plan.”

  Ahveen gave the access panel a critical look. “May have to alter our plan to rescue the Delta Rose.”

  “Never!” She stepped away from the Vultron and rubbed her arms, slicking off the sweat of her fury. “I won’t leave her here. I can’t.” She set to work prying off the cover to the power converter, and tried to compose herself. The blank look in the tech’s eyes disturbed her. Infuriated her.

  Scared her.

  Calivon cleared his throat. “I have access, my lady. It will take us but a few moments to unlock the doors and free the fair Delta Rose.”

  Ahveen raised her head. “I don’t know if we have a few moments. I hear them coming.”

  Xenna gave a good hard yank and the cover came off. She squeezed her eyes shut and grabbed a handful of wires. Good old fashioned hardline tech. She yanked.

  The panel sent a shower of sparks cascading over her skin like a thousand stinging insects. The energy field keeping the heavy door shut powered down with a low whine.

  “Great. Now all you need to do is break through permasteel.” Ahveen folded her arms. “I hope you have a plan for that, because I doubt those pretty breasts of yours are going to punch through.”

  “Perhaps I may be of service.” Calivon stood and handed his padd to Xenna. He regarded the door calmly. Now Xenna could also hear the constables assembling, right down to the hum of dated power cells powering up energy rifles.

  “By all means.” She struggled to keep her voice even.

  The Treemian sized up the blast door, balled up his fist, and smashed it at deliberate points. One, two, three, four, five hits, and it was just enough to create a gap in the seam that would let them through. Ahveen went through, then Xenna followed, but when she turned back, she realized the gap wasn’t big enough for Calivon to fit through.

  “Go.” His eyes gleamed. “I will hold them off.”

  “Absolutely not!” She shook off Ahveen’s hand. “You’re the personal aide to—”

  The stocky male showed his teeth. “You are kind to be concerned. I will prevail. There are not so many of them.”

  Ahveen pulled her harder. “Come on. He still has to release the impound clamps!”

  She ducked away, sparing a glance back at the door.

  Ahveen picked up speed. “He’s a Treemian. He can take care of himself.”

  “We can’t risk it!” The shouts of the militia came closer.

  “We can’t not!” Ahveen tweaked Xenna’s nipple ring and the ship—her sweet Delta Rose—responded to the remote embedded in the jewelry. The hatch opened and they bolted towards safety.

  Moments later, the impound clamps thunked free. Ahveen let out a breathy laugh
from the comm station. “We’re free!” She glanced down as Xenna took the ship up and out of the hangar. “And what’s more, there’s a whole lot of Union data here! Calivon wasn’t kidding when he said he was in—this stuff is deep! He even got some Undernet—Oh no.”

  “What?” Xenna’s hands moved over the ship’s controls. The ground fell away and she became as light as the ship as they pierced the atmospheric envelope. “Is Calivon—”

  “Worse.” Ahveen’s gold eyes dulled to orange. “It’s the Undernet. Someone’s got a pirate bounty out on your psypath.”

  Sharpclaw hissed, forked tongue darting out to flick at the air surrounding his muzzle, made moist from the breath exhaling from his nostrils. The gesture was instinctive, left over from his people’s past as predators in their native swamplands. It told him nothing about the state of his prey, the sleek and tiny ship filling the viewscreen, yet those same instincts that allowed his ancestors to conquer the small, squirming, fur-covered warmbloods of his homeworld told him there was a hunt to be engaged with this diminutive ship whose maneuvers twisted and snaked much like a tasty volrat with a limp foreleg. A hunt…and profit.

  “Sir,” his first mate rasped. “The ship’s model is unidentified by all known databases.”

  “Is that so?” Sharpclaw stroked a taloned hand over his throat frill, sending a frisson of awareness through his forebrain. His other hand shot out and stabbed the viewscreen zoom controls. The lines of the ship were sleek, smooth, a delight to view. But certainly not solely cosmetic. “Strongtooth.” He addressed his first mate. “What sort of craft goes unmentioned in the galactic databases?”

  Strongtooth pulled leathery lips back from teeth. “Craft which do not wish to be identified, due to the nature of their cargo, their systems, or their purpose.”

  Sharpclaw’s fingerclaws began a staccato dance across the arm of the captain’s chair. “And those craft belong to one of three categories—large corporations, wealthy individuals, or pan-galactic governments.”

  “Odds?” Strongtooth asked.

  Ironskin, at the helm, chuffed. “Does it matter? Wealthy individuals and large corporations both have plenty of money. And the government—”

  “May not have money, but the value of the technology surpasses the direct cash benefit,” Strongtooth finished.

  Dexeter, the only human in the warm-aired ship, held up a hand that seemed all the more pink when compared to the grays and greens of the Riktorians. “Gimme a sec and I’ll tell you all you need to know about that ship.” His pink hands and infant-clawless fingers moved over the sensor controls. “I’m reading a sweet hyperdrive, burning a little hot, though.” He tsked. “Bad luck for them if they overheat and end up dead in space.” He paused for several minutes, then made a whooshing sound with his mouth, a pale imitation of a good chuff. “Shee-ow. The ship’s silhouette indicates a Nitradix influence in the design, but that’s impossible. The Nitradix have been out of business for years. In fact, they’re damn near extinct as a species, thanks to the Union.”

  “Or so the Union would have you think,” Sharpclaw murmured. “On the other hand…” He consulted his personal monitor and tapped a clawed finger gently on the screen, transferring a sum from one icon to another. “The Union have simply hidden the Nitradix, and in return, the Nitradix have been working solely for the government all these years, developing ships just like this one for Union agents.”

  Ironskin shifted in his seat, his throat ruffles rippling. “Boss, do we really want to tangle with the Union?”

  Sharpclaw consulted the readout from his contact. A dossier featuring a pale, red-haired woman flashed on the screen, along with the most recent communication received from the ship with this particular drive configuration. The green and gold sigil next to the female’s name gave him pause. Vice Hunters were not normally easy pickings as far as effortless revenue went.

  The message they’d intercepted, however, and the amount of zeroes in it…

  “Target that ship and give it everything we’ve got.”

  A little work never hurt anyone…and for that much money, it wouldn’t feel like work at all.

  ***

  Episode 3: Tailspin

  Jumpspace Dreams

  The Galladance Jumpgate yawned before Treska, while the Jumpgate station’s duty monitor answered her courtesy hail with a yawn of his own. “Unidentified vessel, you are not in queue for arrival. If you are not in immediate distress, then in accordance with Union Jumpgate ordinances, prepare to be boarded for inspection. Failure to log a Jump plan is punishable by suspension of Jump privileges for one standard month. Acknowledge.”

  She scowled at the comm and hit the switch, perhaps harder than necessary. “Galladance Jumpstation, this is the Needle’s Eye, registered under the Department of Special Affairs. Jump plan was logged at Tenraye station. Do not attempt to board. Cargo is hazardous. Repeat, cargo is hazardous.” She sent a glance back towards the main cabin, where her “hazardous cargo” hung helpless in the magnetic cuffs, along with—don’t think of things that hang to the left.

  She still shook, her system barely out of the shock that the Voice had sent through her. Her training hadn’t failed her in years. None of the psypaths she’d confronted had triggered the Voice, no matter how persuasive their mental suggestions. Her training taught her how to block the psypath power of Suggestion, how to protect her mind and seal it away from invasion. Now twice in as many face-to-face encounters with the last free psypath, she’d granted him liberties.

  The first time, she could be forgiven—she was in pursuit, and he used every trick in the book to distract and misdirect her. Not something out of the ordinary with mindsnakes. They were called such because they could pull the snakes out of your mind—your deepest dreads and your deepest desires—or put them in.

  All of her targets, save this one, chose the dread. But when you’d already lived through your deepest dread, the fear of it couldn’t stop you in your tracks. But this one, this…Micah. His name is Micah. This one chose to pull the snakes of desire from her mind.

  Even when my hands were at his throat, he threw sex at me. It was an unusual choice, to counter violence with sensuality. Maybe that’s why he’s the last one. She could see why the Prime Minister wanted him neutralized. If Micah had the ability to pull desires from anyone’s mind, only the stars knew what the Marauders would do to possess that skill.

  She slid back into the piloting couch, pointedly ignoring any stray memories about sexy dreams, and called up the HUD as soon as the hood was over her head. Two flicks of her eyes summoned Life Support, and she triggered an atmospheric freshening for the cockpit. “Antiseptic,” she bit out at the computer’s request for her scent preference. “Nothing but antiseptic.”

  The slight hiss of forced air followed almost immediately, driving away the lingering musk-floral scent that made her think of things best left un-thought of.

  With her head clear, she called up the flight plan. Galladance was a bigger hub than Eston, and she had many more choices that would take her sunward, into the Union’s heart. Her Nav HUD suggested routes ranked first by safety, Jumpdrive burn, number of Jumps, and total travel time. Fingers still tingling, and her heart rate still fluttering recklessly, she re-sorted her options according to travel time, then number of Jumps. Every Jump ran the risk of repeating what had happened in the piloting couch. But the longer she waited, the more chances that mindsnake had to break down her defenses. She couldn’t risk another episode of the Voice taking over.

  The most direct route took her to Eridiae, and from there to the Cetares orbit, then through the central checkpoint and on to the Capitol. It wasn’t perfect—Eridiae’s Jumpgate and its only habitable moon were inside a thick outer ring of ice and debris encircling the gas giant that dominated its orbit. Navigating that cloud could put her right into the middle of a nest of smugglers running interdicted goods who wouldn’t exactly welcome an agent of the Union with open arms, and the Jumpgate was known for shut
ting down when the cloud grew thick. She could be marooned there for days, waiting for the cloud to clear. If not, it was a quick shot through to Cetares and the heart of civilization.

  Her other option was to do her waiting now, then take the Jumpgate to Fumaru. If I wait now, I can run through the gate to Fumaru. If I burn the engines just right, I can Jump to Dengali-Drednan and skip Eridiae. If I rush it, I can avoid the Jumpgate to Cetares and get into the queue for Barthenia, and then the central checkpoint and finally home to the Capitol. This route wasn’t without its own risks—the Jump to Fumaru wouldn’t come up for several hours. But Cetares was a traffic jam on the best of days—even her Special Affairs credentials might not push her to the front of the queue for up to a whole standard day.

  She weighed the options—do the waiting at Fumaru, or at Cetares. Fumaru was a backwater orbit, with a small Jumpgate with several hours between Galladance and Dengali, and an automated Jumpgate station. If she experienced trouble out there, the chances of available help were much slimmer.

  But the chances of a mindsnake loose in Civilized space so close to the Capitol were far greater. She could never forgive herself if the neuro-collar failed when so many other minds were nearby. Fumaru, it is, and the wait be damned.

  Micah anticipated moments of terror in the course of his capture and the trip to the Capitol. He never expected the long stretches of boredom, though.

  The magnetic restraints kept him imprisoned, fastened to the wall like some avant-garde piece of artwork. The Huntress’s ship did not have much in the way of cargo space. He’d only had brief glimpses of the outer hull as she’d chased him over the plains of Tenraye, but the interior appeared just as exotic. The vast majority of the Civilized Worlds’ spacefaring vessels were modular in nature—depending on class, modules of different sizes fitted together in custom configurations—or standardized configurations, for the budget-conscious—and made a spaceworthy ship.