by K. B. Wagers
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To all the women who inspire me on the daily.
Past, present, and future generations.
I am here because I stood on the shoulders of Amazons.
1
Hail. Get up.
The voice cut through the nausea, sounding too much like my father. I suppose it made sense in some twisted way. If I were dead, it wasn’t completely illogical to be hearing the voice of a man who’d been shot in front of me twenty-one years ago.
The bitter tang of blood filled my mouth and nose when I inhaled, rusted iron and the awful smell of death. The stale air of a carrion house screamed of the violence that had taken place in my cargo bay, violence I couldn’t remember through the pounding of my head.
Hail, get up now.
Whoever’s voice was in my head, it was enough to make me move, or at least try to. I scrambled to my feet, pain stealing what grace the gods had gifted me. My boots—gorgeous red-black Holycon IVs I’d borrowed from a dead raider six months prior—slipped on the blood-slick metal. I went down hard, cracking my already abused face on the deck, and the world grayed out for a moment.
More pain flared when I tried to flop over onto my back and failed. All right. So—not dead. Because even now at my most cynical, I didn’t believe for an instant the gods let you still feel pain after you died. It just didn’t seem proper.
“Look at this mess.”
This voice was outside my head, which made it infinitely more dangerous. I froze facedown in what smelled like someone else’s guts.
Judging by the events filtering back into my brain, I suspected the guts belonged to my navigator. A vague memory of trying to strangle her with her own intestines flashed before my eyes. Memz had been a tough bitch. She’d landed a few good punches before I’d given up and broken her neck.
“Weekly saints preserve us.”
I heard several other curses from behind me, but the high, lilting call for the saints to my left was what caught my attention. It was edged with a Farian accent, and that was enough to keep me from moving.
Farians. An alien race who could kill or heal with a touch. The only thing that kept them from ruling the universe was some strange religious code enforced with a fanaticism privately envied by most governments. They had seven saints, one for each day of the week. It was the Thursday one, I think, who abhorred violence.
According to Farian scripture, he’d set an edict on their power. It was to be used for healing, not death. Killing people with their power drove Farians crazy. I’d never seen it firsthand, but the vids I’d seen had given me nightmares: grief-stricken, screaming Farians held down by their own comrades as an executioner put them out of their misery.
Not moving was a good idea. Anathema or not, there was always a chance this Farian was ghost-shit insane, and I didn’t have a gun.
“You claimed to sense a life sign, Sergeant.” A female voice several octaves lower than the Farian’s didn’t so much ask the question as pick up a previous conversation.
“Did, Cap. In this room. Only one,” the lilting voice replied. “That’s as close as I can pinpoint it.”
“Fine. Fan out and check through this”—the owner of the voice paused, but I resisted the urge to lift my head and see if she was looking around the cargo hold—“rubble,” she finished finally. “Sergeant Terass says one of these poor sods is alive. Figure out which one.”
I kept my eyes closed, counting the footsteps as my unwelcome guests fanned out around me. There were five people total, all moving with military precision. They were probably fucking mercs come to claim my ship. I hadn’t been able to figure out whom Portis—my bastard of a first officer—thought he was going to sell Sophie to when he started his little mutiny.
You mean when you killed him.
Grief dug razor claws into my throat, and I choked back a sob. Gods damn you, Portis. Why did you betray me?
Except I wasn’t entirely sure he’d been trying to kill me, or that I’d been the one to kill him in the end. My memory of the fight was as fuzzy as a Pasicol sheep and had teeth just as sharp. Trying to dredge up anything resembling coherency made the pain in my head turn on me with snarling fury.
I snarled back at it and it dove away, whimpering, into the recesses of my brain. There were more important matters at hand—like getting these bastards off my ship and getting the hell out of here.
Sliding my hand through the gelling blood on the floor, I wiggled my fingers deep into the thick, squishy mess. A spark of triumph flared to life when I closed my hand around the hilt of my combat knife. I knew it was mine because I felt the nick in the handle even through all the gore.
The day was a fucking waste, but at least I was armed.
The intruders moved past me. By some grace I’d ended up partially beneath the stairs and out of sight. I eased myself sideways, rolling over Portis’s torso and away from the abstract blood painting on the floor. I saw his profile, and all at once I wanted to kick him, curse his name, and drop to my knees and beg him not to leave.
There’s no time for this, Hail. You have to move. The voice I now recognized as my own damn survival instinct shouted at me with the crisp precision of an Imperial Drill Sergeant. I got my feet under me and rose into a crouch. My left leg protested the movement, but held my weight.
The strangers had their backs to me. I almost thanked the gods for it and then reminded myself there was nothing the gods of my home world had done for me lately. Portis had been the believer, not me. The dim emergency lighting might be just enough for me to slide into the shadows and make it to the door.
The ship’s AI wasn’t responding to my smati’s requests for information. At this point I couldn’t tell if I’d been hit by a disrupter that had shorted the hardware wired into my brain or if the problem was with Sophie. Either way it didn’t matter. I had to get to the bridge and access the computer manually. If I could space these jokers, I would be long gone before they finished imploding.
If.
I backed straight into the sixth intruder before I had time to remind myself what If stood for.
He was hidden by the shadows I was trying to blend into, as still and silent as a ghost. He didn’t make a sound when I spun and drove my right hand into his ribs. The blue shimmer of his personal shield flared and I swore under my breath. It would smother any strike I threw at him, making the damage laughable. But the kinetic technology didn’t extend to his unprotected head, so I swung my left up toward his throat, blade first. He caught my wrist, twisting it back and away from his head.
I matched him in height, and judging by the surprised flaring of his dark eyes, we were nearly equal in strength. We stood locked for a stuttering heartbeat until he drove me back a step. Sophie’s emergency lighting made the silver tattoo on his left cheekbone glow red.
My heart stopped. The Imperial Star—an award of great prestige—was an intricate diamond pattern, the four spikes turned slightly widdershins. But what had my heart starting again and speeding up in panic was the twisted black emblem on his collar. He w
as an Imperial Tracker.
“Bugger me.”
The curse slipped out before I could stop it—slipped out in the Old Tongue as my shock got the better of me. There was only one reason for a Tracker team to be here. The reason I’d spent the best part of twenty years avoiding anything to do with the Indranan Empire.
Oh, bugger me.
Trackers always worked in pairs, but I couldn’t break eye contact with this one to check for his partner. Instead I eased back a step, my mind racing for a way out of this horrible nightmare.
My captor smiled—a white flash of teeth against his dark skin, just enough to bring a dimple in his right cheek fluttering to life. The fingers around my wrist tightened, stopping my movement and adding a high note of pain to the symphony already in progress.
“Your Imperial Highness, I have no wish to hurt you. Please let go of the knife.”
Oh, bugger me.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lied easily. “I’m just a gunrunner.”
He tapped a finger next to his eye, just missing the tattoo, and now I could see the silver shadow of augmentation in their dark depths. “I see who you really are. Don’t try to fool me.”
A stream of filth that rivaled any space pirate poured out of my mouth and blistered the air. The modifications I’d paid a fortune for after leaving home had stood up to every scanner in known space for the last twenty Indranan years, but of course they wouldn’t stand up to this one.
Trackers were fully augmented. Their smatis were top-of-the-line. The DNA scanner had probably activated the moment he grabbed my wrist, and that, coupled with the devices in his eyes, had sealed my fate.
Bluffing wasn’t going to get me out of this. Which meant violence was my only option.
“Highness, please,” he repeated, his voice a curl of smoke wafting through the air. “Your empress-mother requests your presence.”
“Requests!” My voice cracked before I composed myself. “Are you kidding me? She fucking requests my presence?” I wrenched myself from his grasp and kicked him in the chest.
It was like kicking the dash when Sophie’s engines wouldn’t power up—painful and unproductive. Fucking shields. The Guard stepped back, his suit absorbing my blow with a faint blue shimmer as the field around him reacted to the impact.
Hard hands grabbed my upper arms.
There was the other Tracker.
I snapped my head back, hoping this one was as helmetless as his partner. The satisfying crunch of a broken nose mixed with startled cursing and told me I’d guessed correctly.
I spun and grabbed the man by the throat with one arm as I flipped the knife over in my hand and smiled a vicious smile at Tracker No. 1. “You come any closer and I’ll cut his throat from ear to ear.”
It was a good bluff as they went. I knew the Tracker wouldn’t risk his partner—couldn’t risk him. One of them died and it was likely the other would follow them into the Dark Mother’s embrace. It was the price of the connection, the bond that had been set when they were just children.
“I don’t know who you are or what you promised Memz to try and take my head, but it’s not going to happen today.”
“Highness, we weren’t responsible for this.” The Tracker took a step toward me.
“Back yourself off me and get the hell—”
The sound of phase rifles powering up cut off my snarl. Shit. I’d forgotten about the others.
“Hold.” The Tracker held up a hand. I dared a glance to my left and wasn’t surprised to see the others arrayed around us with their guns at the ready.
“Highness, your sisters are gone to temple,” he said formally. The words drove into my gut like a hot knife, and my grip on the semiconscious Tracker loosened.
Cire. Pace. Oh gods, no.
An image flashed in my mind—Cire, two years my senior, her raven-black curls flying behind her as she sprinted over the hand-painted tiles of our quarters. Cire chasing a tiny blond Pace, whose laugh was like the bronzed waterfalls in the palace square.
“Princess Hailimi Mercedes Jaya Bristol, your empress-mother, and the whole of the empire need you to return home.”
“No.” I breathed the word, unsure if it was a denial of the formal command or of my sisters’ deaths.
I thought I saw some sympathy in the Tracker’s expression. He extended a hand toward me, unfurling his fingers in an impossibly graceful movement. Pale lavender smoke drifted across the space between us, slithering into my mouth and nose before I could jerk away.
“You fucking rat bast—”
I passed out before I could finish the curse, falling on top of the Tracker whose nose I’d just broken.
I awoke in the dark, my head still pounding, and muttered a vicious curse when I remembered the events that had put me here in the first place.
“Be at ease, Your Highness.”
The voice and the sudden light sent me rolling from the bed. I landed on my bare feet, settling immediately into a fighting stance as I swept the room with a quick glance. Two men watched me carefully—the one by the door was the Tracker I’d faced off with, and I could only assume the one on the opposite side of the bed was his partner.
There was no evidence of my head strike, which meant the Farian had healed him. This Tracker was a little shorter than me with bronze skin and eyes like the sand on Granzier. The gray-green color even shifted like those sparkling sands.
“Your Highness, we mean you no harm.” Tracker No. 2 had his hands up in a useless placating gesture; his polite tone and downcast head made my stomach turn.
Here you go, Hail, back to the pit. I answered his platitude with a snort and a cold glare at the Tracker by the door.
“I want my clothes, my boots, and my ship,” I replied with a wave of my hand at the drab gray tank and pants someone had dressed me in while I was unconscious. “My name is Cressen Stone. I don’t know who you think I am, but—”
“Liar.” Tracker No. 1’s voice was all smoke and heat, like the smoldering coals of a fire about to burst back into flame. It drifted lazily through the air, the taunt burning as it slammed into me.
I’d been away from home a long time, and I was well used to the way the rest of the universe operated—preferred it even—but to hear an insult delivered with such casualness from a man of the empire stunned me a little.
“Emmory.” Tracker No. 2 had raised his head, but didn’t look away from me as he issued the rebuke.
Not that it had much of an effect on his partner. Emmory kept his arms crossed over his chest, his eyes boring into mine. Finally, he gave me a small nod. The barest of required acknowledgments. “My apologies. You are a liar, Highness.”
“Dhatt,” Tracker No. 2 sighed at the ceiling, running his tongue over his teeth. Then he looked back at me with a surprisingly earnest smile. “Please forgive my partner, Your Highness. He’s not a people person.”
“Fine,” I said, only because I knew we wouldn’t get anywhere if I didn’t forgive the man. Inappropriate behavior or not, he’d been right. I was a liar, and we all knew it.
As Trackers, they’d have a file of my whole life. They would have studied me, gotten as deep into my head as humanly possible—all for the express purpose of hunting me down. I wondered briefly if they really knew why I left home, or if they had the sanitized version about me running away. Judging by the attitude, I guessed it was the latter.
“Let’s start at the beginning, shall we? We are here on a mission from your empress-mother. Do you promise to foreswear violence against me and my partner?”
I considered it, then shrugged. “I promise—for the moment,” I added, careful to keep from swearing an open-ended vow. “Who are you? You can’t keep me here.” I kept my voice as even and cool as I could, given the circumstances. “Bugger you, you bastards. My head hurts.” I pressed a hand to my temple as the pounding increased.
“Tell me about it,” Tracker No. 2 replied automatically. Then he winced. Apparently out of the two o
f them, he had some sense of propriety. “Sorry, Highness. The sapne was for your own safety.”
“Foul lavender smoke,” I muttered. I realized as he was apologizing that my head was the only thing that hurt. All my other aches and pains were gone and my mouth dropped open in shock. “You let that Farian touch me.”
“Sergeant Terass is fully vetted, Highness,” Emmory said. “There was no question of your safety in her care. Given the circumstances, we felt it was better to return you home in full health.”
I glared at him a moment, then transferred my gaze to the other man. “Who are you?”
“Apologies for my rudeness. I am Starzin Hafin, Your Highness, Level Five Tracker. This is my partner, Emmorlien Tresk. We’ve been sent to retrieve you and bring you home. You are needed.” Starzin was all palace formalities and proper folding of the hands. It was amazing how that immediately put my teeth on edge. I preferred Emmory’s hostility to the obeisance.
“Fine.” The chance of lying my way out of this had been nonexistent from the moment Emmory had touched me and gotten a verified reading. “What does Mother want with me? I’m having a hard time believing she just wants me back to have a chat about my sisters’ deaths. We didn’t exactly part on the best of terms.”
That was a bit of an understatement. Officially, I’d run away from home to avoid an arranged marriage just after my eighteenth birthday. Less officially, but still not approved by my mother, I’d left home to hunt the mysterious third man responsible for my father’s death.
My mystery man had vanished like coven smoke in a stiff breeze shortly after the first year away from home. And no matter how many feelers I’d put out over the years, I never got a good lead. I’d expected General Saito or Director Britlen to send Trackers after me when I told them I wasn’t coming home. I’d seen how the rest of the universe lived. It was far from perfect, but I’d sworn to myself I’d never go back to Indrana and her antiquated ways. I wasn’t willing to give up on my search for my father’s killer and had kept hunting him long after the trail had gone cold.