The Catch (Huntress of the Star Empire Episodes 7-9)

by Athena Grayson

  “I would like to think your powers of deductive reasoning will activate before I have to point out the obvious.” His whiskers twitched towards the door leading out to the warehouse space and the dirigible hangar. “It’s time to leave.”

  She rubbed her forehead harder. “I’m sorry. Were we disturbing you?”

  “Ariesis disturbs me on a regular basis, but not through conversation with you. I couldn’t help overhearing you, though.”

  She moved her hand down to her cheek to see if the renewed burning there couldn’t be cooled down by touch and sheer force of will. “I just asked a few questions.” She sealed the actuator into an anti-static pouch and followed the Mauw to the hangar. The dirigible floated near the top of the massive cavern, its tethers preventing it from bumping up against the circular roof of the cavern, a cap made from overlapping panels of durasteel that were opening in an iris fashion to the sky.

  “Ah, but did you listen to the answers?” the Mauw asked. He motioned to the small gangplank leading to the gondola. She didn’t see Micah anywhere aboard until she noted the unassuming trapdoor at the aft end of the gondola. I must not have noticed the lower deck before. It shouldn’t surprise her that the resourceful junk dealer had a little space for things he wanted kept from casual observation.

  She made her way on board the dirigible. “Of course.” The scowl on her face felt like it might become permanent. “I just don’t see why he’s so upset. I’m only pointing out the truth about psypath nature.”

  Enlightenment followed, pausing to cast off the guy ropes and the dirigible began to float upward. “Indeed?” He stroked the tuft of hair at the edge of his chin, just above the creamy blaze at his throat. “And if our mutual friend were to pluck your deepest fantasy from your mind, what do you think he would find?”

  She scowled. “Isn’t that the point of deep fantasy? You don’t know it’s there, lurking. Vice waiting to broadside you into doing something dangerous and foolish.”

  “A possibility, yes.” Enlightenment tapped a claw against his chin. “But I find it lacks imagination to conclude that any sent’s deepest fantasies stray only to the lascivious.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “What are you getting at?”

  “I think, my dear, that one’s deepest fantasy might have something to do with one’s greatest loss.” Enlightenment looked away. “But alas, even a psypath cannot reverse time.”

  She felt like smacking her forehead. Right over the part that still tingled from Micah’s touch. She’d been so distracted by the scandal of Brezeen’s jokes that she hadn’t put them together properly. Brezeen was a matriarch, and flirted outrageously with Micah, but her real desire was to acquire the psypath to free her planet. Everyone who’d ever made a joke about psypaths—an old prostitute at the Jumpgate station she’d encountered years ago who first told her of the rumor—and cackled madly at Treska’s blush, the mutters of soldiers placed under her command in raids against psypath sympathizers. They all made the sex jokes, but their real desires were much more complex and personal.

  That was the truly frightening thing about the power. She was afraid that without the collar, Micah would see the sensual dreams she couldn’t control. She should be more afraid that without the collar, he would see the memories she couldn’t remember.

  Constructions

  Treska pushed away from the nav crescent and went to the railing of the gondola, watching the grasslands below. Once they’d left the cliffs and canyons, the terrain flattened out to barren, rocky scrub. Evidence of ancient ocean could be seen from the air on the cliffs and mesas that rose up from the landscape. The terrain gradually rose and gave way to grasslands, which passed by beneath them now.

  The mesas dotting the flat plains reminded her of the squarish pods that made up Ares Arcology, the training center where she’d learned all she needed to know about hunting psypaths and exterminating Vice. The center of Ares was the spire that held the government offices and living quarters, and the Vice Hunter training dormitory. The spire was ringed by security barracks and detention blocks, as well as some of the re-education facilities for Hathori, all arranged according to significance and security, and color-coded, so no mistakes could be made about who belonged where. The Capitol’s tidy hierarchy of permissions and restrictions had made her safe. Sure of where she and everyone else fit in the Grand Unity. Out here, high mesa butted up against low country, where boundaries were sometimes sharply defined, but more often crumbled like chalk against wind.

  “Treska,” Micah said, coming up to stand next to her. “There’s something you should—”

  The dirigible suddenly lurched to one side, sending Micah stumbling to the opposite side of the gondola. “Updrafts, ho!” Enlightenment called from the nav crescent.

  Micah sent the Mauw a glare from his sprawled-out position on the deck. “Thank you so much for that warning. Your piloting skills are beyond compare.” He rose to his feet and dusted off his tunic. “Simply because no one else could be as monumentally bad at piloting a bag of hot air.”

  Treska folded her arms and leaned against the railing. Enlightenment looked unrepentant, and his expression made her wonder just what the Mauw was up to. She sat down on the deck instead, and looked up at Micah. “I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”

  Enlightenment turned back to the nav console, apparently absorbed in keeping the dirigible in the air. Which meant he would be listening to every word. Her lips twisted. Nothing was as it seemed on this moon.

  Micah folded his legs beneath him and held out his hands. “I’m an open book,” he said.

  You’re really not. “Why are you here?”

  “I thought existentialist thought made good Union cits unsafe.”

  She stopped the scowl from cramping her eyebrows. I’m starting to see through you, mindsnake. “I mean, why are you still with me?”

  Micah tapped the collar. “You have me at your mercy.”

  Dampness chilled the skin on her palms and she realized she’d clenched her fingers so hard they ached. She forced herself to relax her hands and set them, palms flat, on her knees. “Let’s not kid ourselves anymore,” she said. “At any time since the crash, you could have ditched me and been halfway to the Outer Territories by now. Collar or no collar.”

  Micah looked at her for a long, silent moment. “Your little device traps a part of my mind that is as natural for me to use as breathing. It would be madness to travel the fringes of the system without my abilities.”

  She nodded. “I could believe that. It’s perfectly logical.” Her voice hardened. “So try again.” Because it feels completely wrong.

  “I’m intrigued by you.” He adjusted his legs. “You are unwaveringly loyal to the Union. Rumors say that you are incorruptible. That no amount of begging distracts you from your goal. Nothing mitigates the absolute execution of your duty as a Vice Hunter. Even for minor offenses. In your eyes, the Union can do no wrong. I want to know why that is. What did the Union do for you to engender such loyalty?”

  She couldn’t help feeling a certain amount of pride with the praise. “The Union has given me everything. I had nothing after the Marauder attack. They gave me everything, right down to my name. I owe it to them.”

  Micah steepled his fingers. “Them. Who do you mean? Your handlers?”

  “They aren’t my handlers.” She frowned. “I don’t have ‘handlers,’ as you put it.”

  “Well, what would you call them?”

  She searched for the right word. “Mentors,” she finally said. “Vakess and the Director put a lot of work into me. They put me through training, gave me a life. I don’t guess someone like you could understand. You can take a person’s will away with a thought. Giving a will to someone is a lot harder.” She looked at the slice of purpling sky above the gondola rail. It began to sink in that hunting psypaths had been her only job for almost ten years. Vice Hunters were supposed to defend against all forms of vice, but her focus had been on tracking down the psypaths
of the galaxy that hadn’t been incarcerated when the Union ordered the closure of the monastery at Ursis Amalia.

  “And now?”

  She shot him a look. “Is that collar malfunctioning?”

  He rolled his eyes. “A blind man could read your thoughts. They’re not very hard to figure out. I’m the last psypath, your last bounty. Once we get to the Capitol, you’re out of a reason to be. The Union gave you purpose, and you’ve all but fulfilled that purpose.” His eyebrows went up. “Will they be good enough to give you a new purpose? Or will they finally set you free?”

  “I see what you’re doing there.” Enlightenment shoved a handful of auxiliary lines into Micah’s hands as he approached the Nav crescent.

  Micah had left Treska watching the horizon for signs of Riktorian or Guerran activity while he ran diagnostic checks on some of the ship’s mechanicals. Now he squinted up at the Mauw. “She needs to be told. Warned.”

  “It will not go well for you.” Enlightenment frowned. “If we had weeks to keep her out of the hands of the Union, perhaps she could be eased into the knowledge without damaging herself. The steering vanes are rather sluggish. I’m aloft to patch what I can.”

  Micah shook his head. “She doesn’t have weeks. She has now. When she turns me in at the Capitol, there are no more psypaths for the Huntress to hunt.” He rose, lines in hand, and began to secure them along the rail in movable clamps that allowed for control of the solar-powered navigational wings from the nav crescent. “What happens to a weapon, once its primary function is fulfilled?” The grasslands below had given way to the shallow ocean that separated the southern continent from the north. This high up, the thinner atmosphere made for a much smoother ride, but the solar wings were necessary to maintain the lift.

  Enlightenment leapt up on the railing and flipped up into the creaking rigging, his patch kit pouch looped around one shoulder. “My friend, rarely in this system’s history have the swords been beaten into ploughshares. She will be aimed at another target.”

  Micah finished securing the lines and found the extra one that belonged to Enlightenment’s belay line. “Mauw can fall, too, you know.” He secured the belay line to the rail. “I don’t want her to be a weapon. She deserves a life.”

  Enlightenment peered down. “One might say the Union gave her just that.” He turned towards the aft end of the airship.

  Micah followed his gaze. “All in a very controlled, very delicate state.” Treska stood at the railing, scanning the horizon with a pair of thermal binoculars. Her medication had worn off even more this morning, allowing her natural pheromones through, for good and ill results. “Hathori are well-known for their amorous effects on other sents because that’s what they export. People specially trained to use their physiological influence in concert with their social position.” He took his eyes off Treska to send a pointed glance up at the Mauw. “Treska’s not trained. And she’s certainly not the diplomatic sort. What do you think will happen the first time she truly loses her temper without those suppressants in her system?” He remembered the incident in Shantytown. There’d been another Mauw in the bazaar. “I caught a glimpse of it outside Shiba City—I flirted with her, and she started something that could easily have exploded into a full-blown riot.”

  “Perhaps it’s a good thing to send her back to the Capitol. That place could certainly stand a riot.”

  Micah shook his head. “It’s not worth risking her life.” He stepped into the nav crescent and set a diagnostic check to run while they worked.

  “My friend, her life has been nothing but borrowed time since the Union found her. Perhaps, if you unsealed the collar and used that artifact your feathered friend scarred you with, you might be able to cushion her psyche enough to navigate the storm.”

  Micah’s mind jumped at the reminder of the artifact. He’d only had time to examine it inside its seal of syntha-skin. Behind him, he heard Enlightenment drop down onto the deck. A chemical whiff of patch epoxy followed the Mauw’s descent. “If only you had more time.”

  “More time, more training, more knowledge.” His voice ended on an edge of frustration. His mental talents were too reflexive to risk unwrapping the artifact, and he wouldn’t risk another incapacitating feedback-loop because he couldn’t control an impulse.

  They’d gone into the main cabin for the journey over the ocean when a squall kicked up. Given that the rain on Guerre was full of particulate crystal dust, anything more than a light rain shower would have scoured off a few more layers of skin than was comfortable. Enlightenment manned the cabin nav station while Micah squinted at the weather reports.

  “Can I help?” Treska didn’t feel like sitting on her hands. She stepped up behind Enlightenment.

  The Mauw’s fur bristled out. He lowered his head. She felt the deck beneath her feet begin to vibrate with a gentle hum. “The auxiliary stabilizers must need re-tuning. I could do that.”

  Enlightenment inhaled deeply. “So you could.” His voice sounded a touch deeper than she’d grown used to. At the weather station, Micah lifted his head. “Why don’t you check on the Needle’s Eye, Treska. I can re-tune those, uh, stabilizers.”

  She frowned as Micah stepped up beside Enlightenment. “Steady, friend.” The easy way he touched the Mauw’s soft fur made her hands itch to do the same. In fact, she wanted to bury her face in his warm fur and feel the feline’s arms around her like a comforting blanket. The urge was as powerful as a blow to her midsection.

  Enlightenment lifted his head and the air in the room thickened.

  Micah’s head whipped around, his eyes boring into hers. She could only check the progress of the automated repairs of the Needle’s Eye so many times before she let what nagged at her come to the surface. “Your answers aren’t good enough.” Micah blinked, and by the expression on his face, it took him a moment to realize her words referred to their earlier conversation. “Brezeen could have had her thugs kill me, instead of drop me in the middle of nowhere not too far from a handy rescuer. Guerre is a small moon, but it’s not hard to get lost with all the open spaces of the plains, and accidents happen all the time. She knew you didn’t want me dead.”

  Her words broke the silence of the close quarters.

  He paused for a long moment before answering. “I don’t want anyone dead. I know how it feels to have someone else want you dead, and it’s not something I wish for another sentient.” He inhaled, as if to sigh, but held his breath before committing. “Brezeen acted on her own, for her own interests. As much power as you may attribute to my talents, rest assured that nothing deters a Guerran Matria from her purpose when it comes to the well-being of her flock.” He lifted his brows. “Let’s go with your theory. Why would I stay with you?”

  A scowl furrowed her brow. “You tell me. I’m the one asking the questions here. If we return to the Capitol, you’ll remain ‘blind and deaf’ as you say, without the use of your abilities. You’ll be taken into custody at Special Affairs, interrogated, and incarcerated in a re-education center. The re-ed will find a way for you to be a productive citizen in your confinement. Probably through manual labor.”

  Enlightenment glanced over his shoulder. “Similar efforts were attempted with the Hathori expatriates who were unable to or refused to return to the Hathori homeworld. They were not a smashing success.”

  The Hathori Riots were at the beginning of her career. Intelligence reports identified glitches in the behavioral modification program instituted at places like Dengali-Drednan. Reports of re-education failures began to trickle in, of mad Hathori inciting whole facilities into emotional frenzies. Of the monitors losing control. She noticed the Mauw’s hands remained firmly affixed to the steering arch. The pads of his fingers left condensation smudges over the polished brass ornamentation.

  She’d been just out of training and awaiting her first mission when the Arcology’s alarms had gone off. The other newly-minted Vice Hunters had grabbed riot gear from their lockers, ready to lend a hand to the regu
lar security, only the Director had stopped her. “Treska,” he said. “Come, I need you.”

  “But I—”

  The Director waved a hand. “It is of no consequence. Hathori are little threat to well-trained security forces. But I have discovered something that is a much greater, more insidious threat, and I need your help to stop it.”

  The Director’s discovery had marked the beginning of a Vice investigation that resulted in evidence of psypath influence in the Union Parliamentary Council, leading up to the dismissal and unfortunate accidental death of a sitting Council member. A dark day for the Union, but not the last, as more psypath activity had been ferreted out. Treska found herself leading the pack in tracking down psypaths in exile. Meanwhile, Special Affairs had developed an arm devoted to successful rehabilitation of so-called “secondary security risks” —individuals whose species made them dangers to Union security.

  The weather station chimed, indicating that the weather had improved, and rather than stay in the cabin any longer, both Micah and Enlightenment scrambled to open the hatch leading out to the main deck. Treska frowned as she stepped out a few moments later. Below them, the ocean had given way to shoreline, then as the land elevation rose, the scrubland where the Needle’s Eye initially crashed. They’d come up from a different longitude, and both the mountains and Shiba City lay far enough to the east that the city’s skyline was over the horizon.

  “Improvements to the incarceration system were made,” she said. “Hathori have earned enough freedom to move about in Union society on a limited basis while security is maintained.” She shot a glance at Micah. “They even helped us develop technology to neutralize their pheromones’ influence. Even your friend on Tenraye should only get six months’ incarceration in isolation for consorting with you. As long as she attends the therapy sessions, she can earn back her freedom, eventually.” She didn’t know why she was arguing with him. Of course he wouldn’t embrace the new ideals. He was a danger to their very existence. But some part of her—the part of her that kissed him, saw him as a man—wanted to find a way to give him a place in the Union. Maybe I can talk to the Director. Make him an advisor. In a controlled environment, of course.