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

by Athena Grayson

  The Guerran on the left tapped his claws against his forearms. “The Union is not welcome on Guerre.”

  Something hit her and clattered to the ground. An empty food tin. It might have hurt had it been full. Of rocks. The bruise was more to her ego than anything else. She frowned and held up her wrist-ident. “I am a Vice Hunter, and I will bring down the full force of the law on this moon,” she shouted.

  “You and what army?” someone else called from behind her, the rolling tones of a Treemian throat enunciating the syllables.

  “The Union Army!” she retorted. The frisson pricked the back of her neck and she whirled just in time to dodge another food tin. She held up her wrist shooter, looking around for the can-tosser. The two male Guerrans lowered their heads, their wings tilting upwards in a show of aggression.

  “I wouldn’t do that.” She heard the flap of feathers and whirled again to face the new threat.

  Brezeen’s pinfeathers rippled in an avian smile. “You’ll run out of darts before they run out of attitude. Times like these, one has to ask oneself—’What are my priorities?’ Standing around to argue philosophy with a mob, or chasing after the hooligans who snatched that fine catch of yours?” Brezeen circled her, feathers fluffing in little shivers along the edge of her wings.

  “One’sin the way of the other,” she replied. “What do you care, anyway?”

  “I care for Micah, and you’re marginally safer than a Riktorian.”

  “I should be insulted by that.”

  “Then you need a thicker hide. All I meant was that I’m almost certain you won’t eat him for your next meal.” Brezeen’s crest rose high and she unfolded her legs to her full height. “Now if you trust in the fact that I have an interest in protecting you from an altercation that’s about to turn into a riot, then step into my wingspan.”

  Treska looked into the avian woman’s luminous eyes. What choice do I have? she thought. There was no Union army waiting for her command, and like it or not, Vice Hunters were vulnerable to angry mobs just as much as any other sentients. She stepped forward.

  Brezeen’s claws dug painfully into her arms, slicing through her ballistic jacket as if it were paper. The female avian’s sinewy legs coiled, and she sprang upward.

  The tiny scream choked Treska’s throat. Guerrans weren’t supposed to be able to fly!

  The warmth of Brezeen’s breast against hers shivered with laughter. Below the tips of her toes, the Guerran males flapped agitatedly in the tiny whirlwind generated from Brezeen’s flight. “What a trick, eh?” she said.

  “Trick?” Oh bollocks, they were starting to fall! Guerrans really can’t fly!

  A soft hum reached her ears. Brezeen’s wings extended and Treska saw the anti-gravity harness blending into the deep green of her feathers. Breath came back to her and she wheezed relieved laughter.

  “Don’t laugh too long,” Brezeen chirped. “It’s not made for long-range gliding.”

  Treska peered between Brezeen’s wings. “Do you have a landing plan?”

  “Away from that crowd,” Brezeen replied. She banked her body and spiraled towards the edge of the clusters of shanties and booths.

  In the distance, Treska spied ground vehicles and her heart sank as one lifted and darted off towards the main gate of the city. “Dammit! They’ve got him.”

  Brezeen’s clawed feet touched the low roof of a rattletrap longhouse. The scent of musty feather-mould rose from the edifice, making Treska’s nose twitch. The group of Guerrans surrounding the structure gathered on the ground below.

  “Trouble in the bazaar, Matria Brezeen?” one asked.

  The female’s beak clicked. “Just sents being stupid. This female is a friend of my flightless friend. She’s not entirely to be trusted.”

  “Hey!” Treska protested. “I trusted you.”

  Brezeen’s beak clicked again. “Hide her in the office while I decide what to do with her. She’s a Union law enforcer. Tread cautiously.”

  A ripple went through the assembled Guerrans. “Matria, are you addled? Bringing the law to us?”

  “Hush!” Brezeen reared back on her legs and fanned her crest. “Do as I command. Right now, she is the lesser of two—” Brezeen cocked her head. “—annoyances. I still have hope that I might talk her out of her psypath.”

  Brezeen hopped down from the roof and set Treska down a bit un-gently. A shock traveled up her feet and her teeth clacked together, but at least she was on solid ground and Brezeen’s claws were no longer digging into her. “Don’t bet on it,” she said.

  “Why not?” the female avian asked.

  Treska huffed. “Because those damn Riktorians took him!”

  “I have contacts in the city that will prevent our Riktorian friends from rendezvous with their ship.” Brezeen turned away from her and began issuing orders in Guerran. Treska couldn’t follow the language of clicks and chirps native to the avian species and began to edge away. A young male Guerran put his clawed hand on her arm.

  Treska scowled. “He’s a criminal and a threat to the Union. He’s a menace to the peace we all enjoy.”

  Brezeen’s wings rippled. “Look around you. Is it peace that Guerre enjoys, forced into Union membership simply because our moon has something you want, and you’re bigger and can take it from us?”

  Treska felt her face heating. “Guerre is well-compensated for its crystals! And Union membership is voluntary. Your moon gets protection from the Union. Without Union regs, every pirate in the galaxy—and maybe the Marauders, too—would be on your doorstep, taking what they wanted. At least the Union gives back!” She took a breath and narrowed her eyes, noting that Brezeen’s crest hadn’t risen. The avian woman was baiting her. “But this isn’t about the Union presence on Guerre, is it? It’s about Ariesis, isn’t it?” The connections all made sense now. “You think if you win his loyalty that he’ll put his talents to work getting the Union out of Guerre, don’t you? Well it won’t work,” she said, folding her arms. “Union governors are trained to resist psypath talents, for one thing. “

  Brezeen’s head dipped low, so that her eyes were level with Treska’s. “Such lies we tell ourselves, little biped. Is that what you would do if you were to secure Micah’s loyalty? Use him to get what you want?” She cocked her head. “Admit it, it is tempting, is it not, to indulge in a little fantasy about it?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She leaned away from Brezeen’s sharp and uncomfortably-close beak.

  “Psypaths,” Brezeen hummed. “What woman wouldn’t want a lover who could read her every thought. Anticipate her every desire.” Brezeen’s eyes glittered with opalescent flecks. Mesmerized, Treska couldn’t tear her gaze away as every little encounter with Micah came rushing back to the forefront of her memory. Not that they’d been buried that deep anyway. She didn’t have a lot of memories to begin with.

  Even with his abilities suppressed with a neuro-collar, his presence still inspired erotic dreams, turned mild curiosity into rapt fascination, and made her wonder if the official Union line was the only or the greatest danger a psypath presented.

  “It’s exciting to think about, isn’t it? The possibilities of having a loyal psypath at your side are endless.”

  Her forehead prickled, sending a chilly shiver through her. “You missed out on one part,” she said, shoving down the thoughts that wanted their freedom. She wasn’t willing to pay that price. “Psypaths aren’t loyal to anyone but themselves and their own depravities.”

  “Then, bless his flightless heart, we must ensure he gets to indulge in them.”

  She gaped at the avian matriarch. “But—why? Why do you care so much about the welfare of a mindsnake?”

  Brezeen dipped her head. “Are you really so ignorant, child? Can you be so blind to circumstance that all you see is the prejudice you’ve been trained to see? Micah is a kind man. That’s a rarer thing than even the greatest mental talents.”

  “Micah is a psypath,” she replied. Sh
e didn’t want to remember her moments of vulnerability—when the Voice had overcome her. He hadn’t needed to talk her through it like he did. She didn’t want to remember the pain in his eyes when he realized she wasn’t his lost love. “A kind psypath is nothing more than a master that doesn’t beat a slave. Kind or no, the slave is still enslaved.”

  Brezeen tapped one claw against her cheek. “Pity. You’re driven by such fear.”

  “I’m driven by the need to ensure safety for the citizens of the Civilized galaxy.”

  Brezeen’s crest feathers puffed. “That’s enough out of you, little biped. D’Koa, get her out of Shantytown and off my planet.”

  The male Guerran next to Brezeen stepped forward, a sack in his hands. Treska dodged, but found Brezeen’s leg blocking her on the one side, and another male Guerran cutting off her other side. She ducked and rolled between Brezeen’s legs, coming up with her wrist-shooter at the ready. She aimed her arm—and the world went black.

  “Auggh!” The sack went tight around her neck and she gagged at the smell of old foodstuffs. She sneezed several times, rather inconveniently giving the Guerrans plenty of time to secure her arms and legs with quick-tape, which really did work as advertised.

  By the time she stopped sneezing, she was over a Guerran shoulder—bony as the second hell—and could hear Brezeen’s voice through the sack. “She can’t be murdered,” the female avian said. “Vice Hunters are valuable to the Union—it would bring their army down upon our heads, and we can’t afford that.”

  “She’s a loose end, Brezeen,” D’Koa said. “What if she runs back to her Union with that silly story about us using psypaths?”

  “Then hopefully her superiors will enlighten her about untuned Guerre crystal’s effects on psypath talents. Take her out to the plains and leave her there. If she dies, it’ll be a tragic accident. Bipeds should be careful on Guerre. That’s why it’s restricted.”

  Treska relaxed slightly, hearing that. The avians underestimated her ability to survive. She would be back, and she would bring reinforcements. And Brezeen’s little revolution would die with a whimper. Whatever gratefulness she felt towards the avian dissipated as she was tossed into the back of what felt like a mining transport and driven off into nowhere.

  ***

  Episode 6: Unknown Horizons

  Wandering In The Wilderness

  One thing Vice Hunters had going for them as captors that Riktorians didn’t—Vice Hunters didn’t reek of half-digested raw meat.

  One thing Riktorians had going for them was that they liked to use parts from previous kills as equipment, rather than relying on technology. This made escaping his bonds a lot easier. In the back of the transport, Micah worked the weak knot in the net securing him until it gave with a moist tearing. He winced at the odor and set to work on the second one.

  His concentration broke with the transport’s sudden lack of forward motion. He was thrown against the forward wall and heard the crunch of plasteel. One choked-off Riktorian battle cry later, and the back doors opened, revealing bright yellow-green sunlight and Brezeen’s tall, avian form. “Hello, Gorgeous,” she said. “You reek.”

  “Lucky I’m not back in Shantytown, then, isn’t it. I’d start a riot with the smell.”

  Her laser cutter made short work of his netting and he rolled free, shaking bits of offal from his clothes. What I wouldn’t give for a nice hotel and a real water shower. “It’s the company I’m keeping,” he said, glancing at the dead Riktorian on the ground. “Pirate crew whose leader goes by the name Sharpclaw.” Who would no doubt be angry about the loss of his henchman and his prize. And sooner rather than later, sorry he’d crossed Brezeen. He caught a whiff of himself and realized it wasn’t all Riktorian stinking up the place. “Not to mention a Vice Hunter who doesn’t hold with clean justice.”

  Brezeen clicked her beak. “You needn’t worry about that any longer. I’ve taken care of your lady friend, who was no friend to you.”

  The reminder of Treska triggered something in his mind that he’d had a lot of time to think about, alone in the stinking dark of the cargo box of the transport. Brezeen had never openly flirted with him so much until his visit to her booth this afternoon, accompanied by Treska. Their argument by the vegetables, and the kiss he couldn’t resist giving her. At the time, he wondered where the nine hells it had come from, since he’d learned quite well that attempts at seduction usually earned him a swift stab with the tranquilizer dart and a headache afterwards. But more puzzling than the kiss was the behavior of the people around them.

  Teenagers—of any species—could be forgiven their tendencies to drop anything in favor of mauling each other. In places where the Union wasn’t welcome, displays of affection were not uncommon or so taboo as the government would like them to be. But the Mauw male—Micah knew the Mauw, and how they prided themselves on triumph over their instincts—no self-respecting Mauw would be anything but shamed to scent an animal pelt so obviously. Unless he wasn’t quite in control of his instincts—say from the failure of his pharmaceuticals...or the presence of something powerful enough to override both cultural and physiological suppressants.

  I’d start a riot with the smell...but what did she start?

  Uh-oh. “Brezeen, what did you do?” His tone held a hint of warning.

  Brezeen’s feathers rippled. “I did nothing I could be blamed for. The Vice Hunter is on her way to a little vacation in contemplation out on the Southern Plains. If she’s lucky, she’ll find Enlightenment.”

  Fighting just wasted her energy. The back of the ground transport wasn’t going to suddenly turn to cheese and let her eat her way through. Treska relaxed her limbs and concentrated on breathing steadily, using her heartbeat as an attempt to keep time. It only felt like forever. Beat counts suggested it was only somewhere around half an hour when the transport hit different terrain. The terrain had started out bumpy, with ascent and descent in a fairly regular pattern—the mountains to the south of Shiba City—but had now smoothed out to the occasional jostle. She struggled to keep track of her heartbeat, but the hood was stuffy, and the air warm and she slid into a half-doze.

  Voices on the edge of her hearing rose and fell in a hushed rhythm.

  “No memory…massive head trauma…a miracle she survived.”

  “You call this place a miracle? Better off dead, I say.”

  “Perhaps it is better she remembers nothing for a little while longer.”

  Treska strained to hear more, but the transport hit a bump and she was jolted back into consciousness, a curse jumping to her lips. No!

  The shreds of her memory prior to Vice training were rare. So rare, she wasn’t given to pursuing them. Outside of Jump-dreams, which were just as likely to be complete fictions as memories, she’d never experienced more than a sound, or a scent, or a vague sense of fleeting familiarity about a place that could just as easily be explained away as knowing how a stairwell worked, or having seen an image of a place on a holovid. The doctors warned her that her memory wasn’t likely to return, and chasing it would be a fruitless waste of her time and energy. The slivers of memory held no bearing on her present, and she was more than content to look to the future rather than dwell on the past.

  But this was the first time she’d experienced more than a fleeting, single-sense impression of a memory that couldn’t be questioned as a Jump-dream, and couldn’t be written off as entertainment, and she chased after it, down the corridors of her own mind. She could almost associate a face with the second voice when her forehead began to prickle.

  A shock of fear rippled through her, jolting her awake. A moral society is a safe society. Vice creates weakness, and weakness is…

  The prickling that preceded the Voice’s seizure of her thoughts intensified, but the Voice remained silent. Fully awake now, she shook with relief. She thought she might have to go through all the tenets of the new morality to ward off the Voice. The sweat of a narrow miss made her body heat just a little uncomfortab
le. But she was awake now, and wondering what Brezeen’s people had in store for her.

  It didn’t take long to find out. The transport slowed to a halt and she heard the hiss of the latch releases. Clawed avian hands grasped her arms gently enough to be considerate, but when her aching legs protested the sudden change in position, she was lifted out of the back of the transport and set on the ground.

  The avian holding her pressed close. The other avian spoke. “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked. “Take the hood off and let’s go.”

  She heard the whoosh of backwings. The other avian let out a surprised squawk. “Hey, Gludo, what gives?”

  Gludo must be the one holding her. She heard a deep-throated hissing from Gludo’s beak. “Get off my tailfeathers, man, I’ll get to it.” The hood came off with a whoosh, letting fresh cool air in and she sucked down greedy lungfuls of it, blinking against the sudden sunlight. Gludo’s clawed hand remained around her waist.

  “Here you go, lass,” the other avian said, motioning to the all-but-featureless landscape.

  “Uh, where exactly is ‘here?’ “

  “Out of Brezeen’s pinfeathers,” Gludo said with a wry chuckle. “And all alone.” His beak clicked above her head. She tensed. Surely the avian’s tone was intended to scare her, and not—We’re not even species-compatible, I don’t care what Brezeen says about Micah.

  He climbed back into the transport.

  “Wait! What am I supposed to do out here?”

  The first avian tossed her a survival kit. “Look for Enlightenment.”

  She caught the pack and the transport sped away, flattening the plains-grasses beneath it. She shook her fist at the pollen cloud it kicked up behind it. “I hope you get a killer case of the mange!” she yelled.

  The survival kit proved to be one of the overpriced deluxe kind that stupid tourists tended to buy when on strange planets. A personal tent made of thermal film that folded up to the size of her palm, a can of liquid rope good for about fifty meters worth of high-tension line, a dense and unappetizing-looking ration bar, a bottle of nutrient-water, and a moisture reclamator kit with adaptors for the face and...other parts.