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

by Athena Grayson

  “I know more than you think about how Hathori ‘helped’ develop that technology.” Micah shook his head, taking several deep lungfuls of the moist air, as much danger as it was to do so. “Listen to yourself,” he said. “If you honestly believe that I’m going to be ‘rehabilitated’ into some lobotomized version of unquestioning patriotism towards the Union, you should be working for the propaganda department instead of Special Affairs.”

  Enlightenment spoke from the Nav crescent, while he removed the protective cowling that shielded the controls from water damage. “Asking someone to believe that their very existence, intention notwithstanding, is a threat, interferes with the basic rights of existence for all sentients. A Treemian is not treated so, even though his incredible strength can crush any of the human or near-human races in the Union. And your ship is coming up off the bow.”

  She studied the lightening sky. All but the distant horizon had turned cyan and would be chartreuse until the Jovian rise cast rosy light over everything. Except for the smudge of cloud in the distance opposite the mountain range. “I think that it would go better for you if you came around to the Union’s point of view,” she said quietly, rising to her feet. The smudge on the horizon grew, faster than a changing weather pattern ought to. Maybe it was a crystal transport convoy. She peered over the side of the gondola to the welcome sight of the Needle’s Eye, resting in the grasslands at the end of a large, bare swath of scorched ground.

  “Micah? Belowdecks, if you please? I still don’t trust that rudder assembly a hundred percent.”

  Micah rose in one fluid motion and arched back into an acrobatic handspring that landed him into the open trapdoor leading below. “Showoff,” Enlightenment muttered. He looked at her, his ears perked. “Are you quite certain you wouldn’t like to remain marooned for a bit longer?”

  The offer sent a surprising stab of longing in her. The Capitol seemed so far off when she floated in an air balloon over deserted grasslands in the middle of nowhere on a moon in the middle of nowhere.

  She stepped up beside him at the crescent-shaped navigation panel. Was she doubting her target? Questioning the objective? She turned away from him and looked out to the horizon again. If. I said ‘if.’ ‘If’ we return to the Capitol.

  A minor slip, but a telling one. Her hands tightened around the railing until the knuckles were so white, she could see bluish veins criss-crossing underneath her skin. Her voice, when she spoke, seemed to come from a long distance away. “Enlightenment?” She felt as light and adrift as the envelope creaking above them.

  “Yes, my lady?” His clawed hands moved nimbly over the controls for altitude and direction.

  She turned back to the Mauw. “You don’t think they would really do it, do you?”

  “Don’t think who would do what? My lady, you’ll have to make more sense if I’m to follow you. My specialty is making sense of spare parts, not spare thoughts.”

  “The Union wouldn’t lobotomize Micah.”

  “You sound as if you’re trying to convince yourself.”

  She frowned.

  “I would never presume to contradict the Union’s official determination on a subject, however I would be remiss in not questioning the wisdom against preserving solid evidence supporting interdiction or extermination policies against an entire class of sentients.”

  “What do you mean? You and Micah both keep insisting the Union is murdering psypaths.” She shook her head. “They’re not. They can’t. No sentient gets a death sentence without just cause. That’s why there’s such a huge penalty for not bringing them in alive. But they can’t be allowed to roam free and prey on untalented innocents.”

  “ ‘He’.”

  “What?”

  “He can’t be allowed to roam free. Micah is the last psypath. Once you bring him to your version of justice, there will be no more. He will pay for all the crimes of his kin, even after they have long since paid their own price. He has been tried and convicted in absentia, for transgressions not committed by him, or even with his knowledge, or even in the course of his lifetime. But he will bear their sentence. Is that your justice?”

  Treska didn’t realize how tightly her hands had clenched. An unpleasant little twinge put pressure at the base of her spine.

  “Now then—” he bowed at the waist. “—I do believe my terminal indicates a course correction heading due west, and your finely-formed rear end happens to be blocking the controls of my aero-flaps. If you don’t mind?” Just as swiftly, he shifted his weight and his demeanor and returned to the eccentric and innocuous gentleman-hermit.

  Treska wanted to sag against the console. He’d demonstrated ability and intent the other day in the warehouse. But Mauw claws were one thing. Controlling other sentient minds was another. “I know what you’re getting at, Enlightenment. But it’s not the same.” She flicked the safety stud of her wrist dart launcher back to active and reached into her belt pouch for the actuator. “An actuator can’t help but actuate power fluxes if it’s fixed. That’s its job. Its reason for existence.” She handed the actuator to the Mauw.

  “That might be considered a challenge when said to a junk dealer.” Micah’s voice made her jump. “Your steering vanes are fine. Some of the wiring came loose.” He spoke to Enlightenment, but he looked at her.

  The ground rose up as the dirigible descended. Her ears popped, and she had to hold onto the gondola rail as they passed through a zone of updrafts that buffeted the balloon. About three meters off the ground, the gondola steadied. “That’s as far as we go,” Enlightenment said. Micah left them in favor of the aft end of the airship and shot a harpoon line down to steady the craft.

  She looked at the sleek form of the Needle’s Eye, and thought about what waited for her inside. Inhibs and, once they left Guerre, the Voice.

  “Do you—do you think Micah could do it? Do you think he could find my memories?”

  “No one has accumulated more knowledge about the sentient mind than the psypath Order.” Enlightenment made nimble adjustment’s to the dirigible’s course, flipping levers and tightening the manual rigging with one hand, while sending commands to the anti-gravity nodes with the other. “And no one knows more about the Order’s collected knowledge than its librarian.”

  Her gut feelings revolted at the idea. Deliberately allow a psypath into her mind? Let Micah snake into her brain and cut channels through her mind. Steal her deepest secrets and lay them bare?

  Enlightenment turned his attention back to the navigation console.

  Or, possibly, unlock the doors that remained stubbornly closed? Fill in the blank spaces whose absences she fought so hard not to let torment her?

  Sudden terror at returning to the Union gripped her. What if Micah had somehow gotten into her mind in spite of the collar? What if he’d poisoned her will, made her think wrong thoughts? Forced her to betray her ideals?

  “Does your offer to stay marooned still stand?” she asked, knuckles so white she might not have had any blood at all in her fingers.

  The Mauw reached out and stroked her cheek. The pads of his fingers were leathery-soft. “I’m afraid not. We cannot avoid ourselves for any longer than a brief respite, and I fear yours is up.” He began to move swiftly, unrolling the ladder to the ground, and firing the retractable zip cord for cargo. He hooked the toolkit she would need to install the repaired actuator to the zip cord and hefted the kit over the side. “Keep the kit,” he said, edging her towards the ladder.

  She frowned. “What’s going on? Why are you so eager to get rid of me?” She peered over his shoulder. “I’m not leaving without my psypath.”

  Micah emerged from belowdecks. “For a barren wasteland, it’s going to get crowded.” He held up a communications padd. “Air traffic control is in chaos. Nothing this exciting has happened on Guerre in an entire season.”

  The Mauw turned to him. “Are you certain this is what you want, Ariesis?”

  Treska’s stomach curled. I was right. He is up to s
omething, and the Mauw plays along. Her hand went to her wrist trank. Curse me for a fool.

  She jumped the railing and stepped down the ladder, taking it two rungs at a time. It was stupid to feel anger at Enlightenment. And she certainly shouldn’t have expected Micah to deal straight with her. She landed in the grass, and the wind whipped the blades against her calves. The Capitol will set things right. This stupid moon has me forgetting too much.

  She saw Micah’s blond head appear over the railing, then disappear again. She folded her arms and waited. When she saw a leg, her heart did a little skip inside her chest. For whatever reasons of his own, Micah had chosen to come with her. She should be cautious, not elated.

  Enlightenment leaned over the gondola railing. “Farewell, lovely lady Vice Hunter. I earnestly hope to meet again, when you are off-duty.”

  She waved. “A Vice Hunter never goes off-duty. Thank you for the hospitality. Stay clean!”

  “Get out of here already, you lunatic!” Micah yelled. The ladder rolled up, the zip cord retracted, and Enlightenment’s feline head disappeared from the railing. Moments later, the dirigible rose to the thermal zone and caught an updraft current away from the Needle’s Eye.

  She searched Micah’s face. Bruises from the crash were already fading, along with a half-dozen little nicks and cuts coming through the day-old stubble on his cheeks and chin. And even now, even knowing what he could do to her mind and her will, her hands itched to cup those fuzzy cheeks.

  Micah looked at her. “Treska,” he said. “Have you ever thought what your life was like prior to the attack?”

  She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter anymore. This is who I am now.” She turned and aimed her remote at the boarding ramp. The repair gel had done its job and gone inert—crusted flakes of the greenish stuff had dried and littered the ground. She wondered if Enlightenment might come back to the site once they were gone in order to collect up the dormant nanites for repurposing. Guerre could certainly find use for them. As for the Needle’s Eye—she would be spaceworthy, once the actuator was re-installed. Being near the ship brought her a sense of relief. She had her ship, and she had her bounty. She didn’t need much else. “Who I was, is not important.” She blinked and squinted. The smudge on the horizon had grown, and it appeared to be coming closer.

  “Not even for the people who may have lost you?”

  She pulled binoculars from her utility belt and held them up to her eyes. Moments later, she dropped the ‘nocs back into their spot on her pouch as the sound from the approaching atmospheric disturbance hit them.

  Her communicator padd squealed and popped. “Vice Hunter Treska Sivekka of Special Affairs. This is Captain Iverka of the Scimitar, at your service. Do you require assistance?”

  The Union battle cruiser rose over the moon’s horizon, filling the sky and forcing air ahead of its approach. She held up her arms to shield herself from the debris.

  “Treska!” Micah shouted over the roaring from the massive ship.

  She remembered the lonely hours, painful days as she tried to remember a name, a family, a face from her past. How the hole in her soul had sealed up only when she turned her back on it. “No one came!” Why did he keep bringing the subject back around to her past and those stupid attacks?

  “Do you want to know why I stayed?”

  Yes! Yes I do want to know! I’m dying to know!

  Virtue is safety! Vice is weakness! Enemies of the Union deceive with lies! The vice hunter does not hesitate! The Voice awakened inside her head, only this time as a guiding beacon and not an unforgiving master.

  She held up her wrist. “I don’t care,” she said, and fired. The trank found its mark.

  The Artifice Of Strategy

  Back in his inner sanctum—the one with no windows and only a single door—Vakess contemplated the map of the solar system. Planets, moons, orbital stations, and Jumpgates all glowed in their realtime positions, aligned with the stresspoints in his mind. He waved a hand before the map and the orbits began to move, showing a standard year every three minutes. Reference points defining individual planetary seasons marked the glowing ring of each orbit, along with a reference card outlining how many standard days, months, or years a planetary season lasted.

  His gaze kept slipping back to Tenraye. “How did Riktorian pirates gain access to the Jumpgate station again?”

  “A strategic decision by Special Affairs.” Behind him, the Director spoke, the careful modulation of his voice reducing the audible electronic harmonics emitted by his bionic vocal chords. “An act of petty crime does not warrant the response of a battleship. I felt it necessary to prioritize the Union’s interests further out on the frontier. Guerre is a weak point in the network, and too many blockade runners sidestep the checkpoints—”

  Vakess was unsure how Riktorian pirates raiding a Jumpgate station was more petty than blockade runners missing the outer checkpoints, when Cetares scooped them up just fine. But he kept his suspicions to himself.

  The Director sensed his mood and switched subjects. “It’s fortunate I did. Our Vice Hunter required the assistance of one Captain Iverka of the Scimitar.”

  Vakess felt his heart leap, but he hadn’t been a politician for over a decade without being able to mask a reaction. “Is she all right?” He couldn’t explain his fondness for Treska, or why she inspired a sense of responsibility in him. But he’d be damned if he’d let a fondness become a weakness.

  “Both she and her bounty are intact and en route to the Capitol as we speak.”

  Vakess wanted to sigh with relief. The last psypath—the last loose end against the Marauders—would soon be out of the way, and the machinery of the solar system could continue undisturbed. Treska wouldn’t have much to do if she no longer hunted down psypaths. Perhaps she might enjoy a Capitol job somewhere in Government Plaza. “What happened? Why isn’t she returning on the Needle’s Eye?”

  “The craft made an unscheduled Jump and was damaged in a crash landing. The Scimitar is bringing it in as a courtesy.”

  Perhaps I’ll have to revise my opinion on maintaining a respectable distance from the military. “I will have to extend the Scimitar’s captain my personal thanks.” He consulted the customized padd linked only to his android concierge. “Parliament gave lip-service approval to the grant of official writ to the New Morality cells.” He frowned. As much as he was a member of the belief system and believed whole-heartedly in its tenets, he’d been resistant to granting official sanction to the followers to enact governmental policy. “Realtime communications monitoring does not show a warm reception.” He glanced up at the Director’s unnerving face.

  The cyborg kept his expression equally cautious. “This is the right thing to do. You know as well as I that the Union’s strength depends on its unity of purpose.”

  “You know that, and I know that. The people have had ten years to be brought around, and we still see far too limited a success in the middle and outer orbits, and the frontier is all but lost to us.” Vakess used his voice to misdirect while his hands moved over the padd and searched for information on the Scimitar, and Treska. The battleship’s crew failed to concern him, but the bridge officers’ histories, even as carefully scrubbed as they’d been, still showed signs of old loyalties and alliances left over from the Star Empire. Vakess wanted to leave those old machinations behind—he really did believe that unity of purpose was where the future lay—but the rest of the solar system was taking devilishly long to catch up. Even with help.

  “The New Morality cells will help with that. The workings of government can only train focus down to so much granularity. The rest must be willingly embraced by the citizenry. Tenraye showed us that it is possible for top-down and bottom-up reform to meet in the middle.” The Director clenched his fist. “We’ve all but crushed the resistance on a world whose entire economy was anathema to reform.”

  Vakess pressed his lips together in a thin line. Mind-altering substances were a significant source of vice, and
he did not indulge, but he could not recall the exact time or thought process that led to the idea that they should have been outlawed altogether. The thought troubled him and he called up another set of data on his private padd. Six years ago, right along with the Hathori riots. The interdictions on regulated substances slipped into safety bills designed to increase protection for citizens against displaced Hathori seeking retribution. He raised an eyebrow at Vox. “You might want to dial back the evil dictator a bit. It makes for lousy optics and gives the propaganda department fits.”

  The cyborg tilted his head and gave Vakess a questioning look. “Does the Prime Minister not feel well?”

  I should know better than to attempt humor with him. “Nevermind.” Directing Special Affairs clearly meant never having to say you were sorry if your security policies ended up cratering the economy of an entire planet. “Tenraye will be my mess to clean up.”

  “You must not take this burden alone.” Vox’s voice turned mellow. “Special Affairs has already established a strong presence of the New Morality on the world. It will make an excellent middle territory for the New Morality to grow. The planet’s strong agriculture can be turned to producing other food besides wine grapes. It will ease some of the immigration burden on Cetares.”

  Since when did Vox Unificus decide it would amuse him to play settler and manage civilian populations? It was Vakess’ turn to frown at the cyborg. “Well. That can be tomorrow’s problem.”

  “Indeed, Prime Minister. Perhaps you would enjoy some contemplation time with your meditations now.” The Director paused before the door and laid his hand on the panel. “Conn, see that the Prime Minister isn’t disturbed for at least an hour.”