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

by Athena Grayson

  A startled yelp bubbled up from her throat, along with a tide of conflicting sensations. In parallel universes, she kissed him back, tore open the front of his cloak, soaked up his warmth and life, and surrendered to the desire to make her dreams real.

  His tongue thrust between her lips, the strange-yet-familiar sensation sending a thrill through her. Her arms snaked around his waist, to better hold herself against him. Her heart sped up, trip-hammering in her ribcage at a frantic pace. He nipped at her lower lip and she wanted to nip back, but—

  He broke the kiss first. “You’re adorable when you’re offended.”

  She had no idea how icy gray could be hot, but his eyes were as hot as her temper. Her forehead prickled and she punched him in the stomach as revenge for nearly forgetting herself. “Don’t ever do that again,” she whispered. “Ever.”

  She straightened and looked around. The pair of young Guerrans who’d been shoplifting fruit from the stall on the corner had abandoned their quest and were nuzzling beaks. The Mauw male stopped in his tracks, his feline nostrils flaring before he dropped into a crouch to scent the hides. Somewhere down the aisle a little ways, low and feminine laughter could be heard from the cookware female. “And what the hell is wrong with all these people?”

  Thank the stars for solar plexus punches, Micah thought, shaking his head to clear it. He couldn’t do much else, considering his hands and feet were still firmly stuck together. Perhaps I should keep my mouth shut, he thought. The complicated, irritable nature of the Huntress baffled him in turns. He wasn’t lying when he said there was something about her that made him want to protect her. Some indefinable sense that some part of her needed rescuing. Xenna would call it his idiot gene.

  It was bad enough she’d provoked his outburst earlier. He worked hard at recovering, running through mental exercises without the benefit of the physical activities to enhance his focus.

  As Treska stalked away, he felt the tug on the repulsor cuffs. Not really wanting to fall into the dirt, he minced forward, then graduated to hopping to keep up. “Ah, Treska,” he called out.

  She whirled, sparks in her eyes. “What?”

  “You could probably stalk off more dramatically if I didn’t have to hop behind you.”

  Her scowl couldn’t go any deeper. She gave the remote in her hand a squeeze and his limbs released. “Let’s go,” she said.

  “Where?” He shook his arms out.

  “Wherever your bright ideas can take us to provision up. I’ve decided you’re earning your free tour around the solar system. Your job is to find me a crystal actuator any way you can. I’ll be watching you and taking notes on your performance.”

  He lifted his eyebrows. “So that’s how it’s going to be.” He clamped his teeth firmly down on his tongue to keep the smile from breaking out. “Right this way, my lady.”

  He hadn’t been here in years. The moon’s proximity to the Union border made it a reasonable stop for either a Restorationist or a Wanted individual, but not both. Shiba City held the above-board trade, but the shopping he did wasn’t for products found along Mercantile Avenue.

  The shantytown’s configuration never stayed the same—traders came and went, squatters in the lee of the wall that kept them out had become entrepreneurs of the outcast and purveyors of the unsanctioned but requisite items that made life easier out here in a commercially low-priority orbit. The last time he’d been out here, it had been an exciting foray into wild territory for a gentleman scholar. At the far end of second aisle, he found what he was looking for.

  The stall was a bit more sturdily built than the produce vendors’. The prefab planks were heat-sealed and bonded to each other, rather than glued and pegged. Bits of glass and crystal suspended on filament wires hung from pins covering every spare centimeter on the side walls, making the booth resemble something large, square, and either armored, or dressed for an operatic performance. The entire booth emitted a faint tinkling hum.

  The Guerran nestled in the middle of the crystalline chaos unfolded itself onto slender avian limbs. The extension of her impressive crest indicated she was indeed a ‘she,’ and likely a Venerable She, at that. “I did not expect to see the Prince of Wells return to us so quickly.”

  Micah felt a blush creeping up his neck at the nickname and the memory it summoned. “I was traveling through this part of the galaxy and couldn’t bear the thought of not seeing your lovely crest at least once, Matria Brezeen.” He bowed deeply.

  Her iridescent crest-feathers rippled with amusement, shading from russets to pinks to vibrant oranges with the shifting light. “I’m not so foolish as to attempt to win your affections twice. Especially as I see you’re now a kept man.”

  “Matria, you have always held my deepest affections, which are one small shade in the spectrum of your admirers.”

  “Hah! I see your tongue’s as slippery as a long-snouted burrowvark’s.” Beside him, Treska snorted out sudden laughter.

  Brezeen’s sharp eyes flicked from her, then down to his wrists. “Does the lady know how lucky she is?”

  Treska grew tense as a Mauw at a butcher stall. “He’ll make me the richest woman in the entire sector. But luck has nothing to do with it.”

  Brezeen chuckled again. “Perhaps not for the well-pleasured one. The rest of us can curse our rotten luck at not landing him first, and hope our luck will change enough to discover another one just like him somewhere in the Outer orbits.” What appeared to be a cloak swelled into feathered wings which, even furled, would have dominated the space around them. Brezeen kept them just open enough, ostensibly to catch the breeze beneath the awnings, but Micah recognized the dominance display in the black and emerald under-feathers and watched Treska for her reaction.

  Treska squared her shoulders and clasped her hands together in front of her. She lifted her chin, but Micah noted the way her opposite hand tapped the cuff of her wrist-shooter. “One of him is more than enough for the entire system.”

  Brezeen chuckled and peered at Treska. “For my sake, I hope you’re wrong. When you’re finished with him, have pity on an old bird and send him my way, would you?”

  Treska drew back. She opened her mouth to speak when Micah interrupted. He didn’t trust her not to fling her Union credentials around, especially when she felt threatened. On the one hand, it would be quite easy to toss her to the wolves—or the raptors, as the Guerrans were avian. But running away from her wasn’t part of the plan yet. “Guerre has been, and remains, a destination for psypaths everywhere. As you well know.”

  Brezeen’s crest fluted again. “So it is. At least…its wells are.” She chuckled. “Come back to fall down another one, O Flightless One?”

  The blush that had receded was back in full force. “Ah, not this time.” He ducked his head. Nothing screamed incompetent like the bad luck to fall down a hole marked in plain sight, and be unable to fly yourself up and out of it while the work crew you led had a hearty laugh at your expense.

  “You fell down a well?” Treska’s brow furrowed in disbelief. “You can read a mind but not a terrain map?”

  Brezeen cackled. “Not when he’s got his nose buried in a ten-thousand-year-old scroll he can’t read.”

  If Micah had had feathers, he would have bristled. “I was on the verge of a breakthrough.”

  “Broke right through to the water table.” Brezeen chuckled. “Lucky you stopped by. Some genius in the Union decided that draining Shiba Lake would open up space to expand the refinery without having to move the wall.” She jerked her head in the direction of the large structure keeping them out of the city. “My inside man was fortunate enough to ‘discover’ wreckage of an antique submersible. Inside it, we found maps of a cave system beneath the lake.”

  In spite of himself, his ears perked up. “Indeed? What era?” He leaned on the shelf of the booth. “What condition? Were the caves still there? When did they flood?”

  Brezeen laughed. “Well, that depends on how much your mistress has in
that belt of hers.” Brezeen said. “The cache we found has markings from the Nine Sisters era of the old Star Empire.”

  Micah’s heart skipped a beat. While the government of a decade ago—pre-attack—had been called the “Star Empire,” the title was nothing more than a remnant, kept around by the Civilized Worlds more for nostalgia’s sake and used by the Noble Houses more than anyone else. The Civilized Worlds were a loose association held together by trade agreements and transportation standards. Their “empire” was an empire in name only, and only the archaeologists and historians cared about what it had once been. The name referred to the star cluster that was comprised of the Jewel and eight other star systems in close proximity to one another. The oldest and largest Jumpgate, at the outer edge of the solar system where the Ares Arcology traveled in its lonely orbit, bore references to other “Sisters” in its Jump schedule, but the starship specifications required to make those jumps were beyond the scope of any modern shipyard. The Nine Sisters era—an era when the scraps of evidence pointed to the ability to travel the incredible distances between even the nearest stars—was a time nearly as mythical as humankind’s origins.

  The only other references to the Nine Sisters era still intact were those found in psypath monasteries that had once been found throughout the entire system. Every other era in traceable history showed psypaths in steady decline—limited population, periods of persecution, times where peace came only through xenophobic isolation, eras of diaspora, fundamentalist schisms that caused the excision of entire disciplines of mental practices and the proscription of free expression thereof. But the precious little left of Nine Sisters-era psypath artifacts suggested a time of expansion and integration, something that Micah yearned so deeply for that he chased down every scrap of rumor like a starving vratyx with a blood-scent.

  “Look at you,” Brezeen chirped. “Would you like a cloth to take care of the drool?”

  He blinked. “I fear a cloth wouldn’t be enough. I might refill the lake.” He sighed, the pained expression on his face real. “Alas, I’m not here for a find. The truth is I’ve crashed, and if I don’t find a crystal motivator, my mistress, here, will be unhappy with me. I’ll undoubtedly have to curry her favor with lascivious acts of deep depravity if I don’t find the part for our ship. Will you put the word out for me? Else I might find myself down another well, only this time it’ll be full of water, and I can’t breathe underwater.”

  “I’ll put the word out,” Brezeen said.

  “You’ll be handsomely rewarded,” Treska said stiffly.

  Brezeen cackled. “I’d be happy if he were half as handsome as your man, here. Now off with you.”

  Micah turned away, one last, longing look at the stall’s crystal decorations. What had Brezeen’s people found? He was dying to know.

  “Now what?” Treska asked.

  She was a sharp reminder that he wasn’t here for artifacts. He sighed. “We wait. Brezeen will contact us when she’s received a response. In the meantime, we find somewhere that Sharpclaw won’t be looking for us.”

  Sometimes, she should know when to keep her damn mouth shut. They had left Brezeen’s booth and moved across a couple more aisles until Micah spotted a hot food cart, and as they stepped up to the proprietor, she opened her mouth. “Cluck—”

  He clapped a hand over her mouth. “Syntha-meat with spicy vegetables.”

  The vendor eyed them, sending a glare towards Treska. Micah cleared his throat. “As spicy as you can make it.”

  The vendor trilled. “Got to keep it up for yer mistress, eh?” Micah relaxed. They took their foil packs and Micah shrugged when he held out his hand for payment. Treska tossed a handful of dated universal credits into his claw with a scowl.

  As they left the booth, she turned towards him. “Is it some Guerran thing that makes everybody think we’re a couple or something? What is it about repulsor cuffs and zapguns that screams ‘consort’ instead of ‘convict’?”

  Micah shrugged, his attention on the hot, bread-wrapped vegetables and syntha-meat. He hadn’t sought out a table to eat, just tore into the foil package with the air of a man used to eating on the run. “What is it about being a Vice Hunter that makes you think it’s a good idea to order cluck-bird from an avian sentient?”

  She blanched. “Oh double suns, I—” She made an impatient sigh. “This place is crazy. And what did he mean by me being your mistress?”

  “Guerrans are matriarchal in nature. Nests are run by females. Males play a secondary role in their cultural life, freeing them up for employment outside the nest-home. As for the other…do you think it’s odd that Brezeen would find me attractive?” Micah’s answer was testament to his distraction.

  She risked a glance at his profile. He wasn’t an unattractive male at all. If she knew nothing of his nature, she would likely have taken a second look at him if she passed him on a walkway. If she were in the market for a boyfriend, that is. If people like me could afford the luxury. “You just don’t look—hawkish enough for someone of her type. And you’re a psypath.” She broke into her own meal and gasped at the first taste of the spicy food. This should be interdicted! She thought the words, because she couldn’t speak them over the coughing she was doing.

  He thumped her on the back and held out a canteen, not missing a beat of his explanation. “Which is precisely why Brezeen is willing to overlook my lack of feathers, else I’d merely be serving her drinks and sweeping feather-dander off her gowns. As it is, she’s enough of a scholar to know—or think she knows—about a wide range of psypath talents.”

  Treska was reminded of the rumors she’d heard about psypaths. The ones she wanted to dismiss as the ramblings of an old, lonely woman with a harmless perverted streak. Yet she’d tracked this one in the company of a Hathori.

  They can sense your deepest, most secret desires…

  Good thing she didn’t have any dark and secret desires, then. “She doesn’t know squat if she’s willing to deal with you without a neuro-collar, then. How much have you fleeced out of her over the years?”

  He put a hand on her arm and jerked her around. She fumbled for her remote, but he stuck his face in hers. “Put that sunspots-damned remote away and listen to me very, very carefully,” he said, his nose nearly touching hers. “You were raised on fear and New Union propaganda, and that excuses a certain amount of ignorance about my kind. However, I find I cannot tolerate your willful rudeness on the part of my honor as a man. Either keep your future speculations to yourself, or be prepared for me to answer the challenge to my honor.”

  Her fingers relaxed around the remote and hot color flooded her cheeks. Only the faintest tightening around the corners of his mouth gave any indication of his anger, but it simmered in icy heat in his eyes.

  She blinked first.

  “I don’t have time for idle speculation,” she said curtly, hoping her voice didn’t betray the quiver in her stomach. She turned towards the vegetable aisle. “I need supplies.”

  She’d barely taken two steps before his body slammed into hers, knocking her down. “What the—” His food pouch fell into the dirt.

  He rolled off her and sprang to his feet. She looked beyond his legs to see a trio of Riktorians, their leathery skin a pale greenish-tan in keeping with their surroundings. One was loading a net-flinger with a cartridge of liquid netting, and the other two brandished shock-sticks. Shrieks sounded from all around as beings dove for cover. Treska rolled to a crouch and, using the mindsnake as a shield, lifted her wrist.

  Her first dart took out the net-man. Her second went wide of the middle Riktorian. Micah leapt forward into a graceful martial combat move, using his hands and feet to engage the stick-man on the left. She rose and bared her teeth, motioning to the middle Riktorian—the one she’d missed with her wrist dart. “Come on, lizard-man,” she taunted. “Let’s see how you face a Vice Hunter.” She circled him and when he crouched, she threw her own half-eaten food in his face.

  She miscalculated h
er effect on his temper. With a snarl, he turned away from her, aiming his shock-stick for Micah’s back.

  “No!” she cried.

  “Auugh!” His legs buckled underneath him. The Riktorian in front of him brought the shock-stick down on his neck and blue lightning danced along Micah’s body. His scream was cut short and he crumpled face-first in the dust.

  “Dammit!” She lunged for the Riktorians.

  The nearer one lashed out with his boot, catching her in the stomach. “Away, female. Your quarry is lost. We have no quarrel with the Vice Hunters.”

  She drew her zapgun. “The hells you don’t,” she muttered. “That’s my bounty!”

  Between them, the Riktorians hauled Micah up by the arms and dragged him away. She lifted the zapgun and aimed, but by the time she brought her arm up, they were lost in the crowd. She was left with one unconscious Riktorian and his net-gun, which wouldn’t even make up for her half-eaten meal. “Dammit!” she shouted, and kicked the fidgeting lizard man in the ribs. He grunted and went still.

  She looked up and found a loose half-circle of sentients had gathered around her. She moved in the direction that Sharpclaw’s other goons had dragged Micah, and found her way blocked by two broad-chested male Guerrans. “Let me through!”

  They backwinged in unison, creating a feathered wall between her and the retreating Riktorians. She swore under her breath. “I don’t want to have to do this, but you leave me no choice.” She pointed her zapgun at the rightmost Guerran. “Step aside, in the name of the Union of Civilized Star Systems.”

  “The Union can go to the Nine Hells!” Someone cried out behind her. Her hand twitched at the insult.

  “The Union is the Law on this moon,” she said in a firm voice, glancing from face to scowling face. Did she have any grenades? No, dammitall, she was out of grenades. She hadn’t even bothered to salvage from the crash site. She’d been more concerned with finding tranks for the mindsnake and inhibs for herself. “As a duly appointed representative—”