The Captain smiled broadly. “Never let it be said that the crew of the Scimitar does not see an order clear through to the end.”
Her teeth clicked together. “I’ll be sure to mention your helpfulness to the Prime Minister.” She entered the turbolift. Between the unusual behavior of Iverka’s crew, his second in command’s scrupulous interest in her health, and the confusing feelings that haunted her about Mi—the psypath—she wanted to be done with this mission. The New Morality had a meeting center expanding on Cetares—maybe she’d go there for a retreat and get her head back on straight.
The captain and his aides followed, squeezing into the narrow oval transport. She flashed her wrist tattoo at the scanner and stabbed the display for the Executive level. When they emerged from the lift, she greeted the receptionist and logged her thumbprint at the bottom of the completed bounty contract on her padd. But when it came time to relinquish the stasis pod, she hesitated. The Union gave you purpose, Micah had said on Guerre. Will they give you a new purpose, or finally set you free?
Set her free? More like cast her adrift. Her temples began to throb. No. She was doing her part, fulfilling her duty. Unity of purpose drives us towards security and prosperity. She had made the Union safer and would continue to do so in other ways.
She mouthed the tenets of the New Morality and the barely-there pressure at her temples faded as she affixed her thumbprint next to the turnover.
The two crew members accompanying them stepped forward with the pod. The receptionist glanced at her, eyebrows raised. Captain Iverka spoke. “The Scimitar’s orders were to accompany both Vice Hunter and prisoner to their final destinations.”
The receptionist shrugged and motioned the crew members through the gate. Treska spared a long look at the pod, noting the flicker of the lights that indicated Micah was still in good health. She still wanted to plead his case at her debriefing, but for now, he was out of her hands. For the briefest of seconds, she felt as if she were falling backwards, down from a great height as thunder filled the sky around her. But it was only the closing of the security door, cutting her off from the pod. She shook her head and stepped back into the lift.
Iverka and Wullas moved with her. But right now, she just wanted to be alone. “Your courtesy is appreciated,” she said tightly, “but unnecessary. And I’m afraid you don’t have the clearance, either.”
“We’ll see you as far as we can.” Wullas placed a hand on her arm. “Logging an assignment as a Vice Hunter escort, even briefly, can elevate a military career.”
“Not more than good, faithful service to the Union,” she retorted.
She sent a pointed look towards the lift doors, and the level they’d just left. “Don’t deny their reality in support of your ideology.”
Treska frowned. She knew how the ideals were supposed to play out. She’d watched their architects in action, felt the embrace of the vision by people all around her. “Fine. I’ll note in my report how thorough the Scimitar’s crew is.” She entered Mission Debrief as her destination and waited for the lift to move. It would carry her to a secure conference room and she could begin the paperwork detailing her adventure. Or rather, begin the task of editing out the bulk of the adventure in favor of something that would pass muster. She didn’t think Special Affairs needed to know how many times she’d ended up in the arms of her enemy, even if her resolution had remained strong in the end.
How had so much dis-unity of purpose crept into her life when the whole point was to come together? She glanced down at her wrist, where the psypath artifact remained hidden. It was now the only thing she had left of Micah. Ever since she’d laid hands on him—back on Tenraye when she punched him to keep him from stealing her mind—her world had been slowly listing sideways, and taking her ideals with it.
No, wait—this time, it wasn’t her world, it was the lift. “Why did we switch routes?”
Wullas looked at the panel. “Priority re-route to Special Affairs.” She looked at Treska. “Is this a Vice Hunter thing?”
“Not unless something’s changed.” The doors hissed open and she stepped out, coming to an abrupt halt at the new upgraded security arch. The reception desk was gone, and two heavily armed guards flanked the arch. The first guard stepped forward, security wand extended. “Please place your hands on your head.” His helmet included a visor that obscured all but the lower half of his jaw.
She glanced back at Wullas. “Something’s changed.” The guard’s wand passed over her, heat radiating from it in a not-quite-obscene manner. The captain’s expression had gone from pleasant amiability to a puzzled frown. His second kept her face mostly expressionless but her eyes had narrowed. Treska looked back towards the guard and waited for the all-green sign that never came.
Instead, the wand flared amber and the second guard stepped forward. “Security risk,” he said into his helmet comm. “Amber alert.”
She sighed and held out her wrist. “Check the credentials. If you don’t mind, I’d like to get on with my debriefing.”
“Citizen Treska Sivekka, you have been identified as a Security risk. Please relinquish all government property and prepare for processing.”
“What?” One part of her registered denial and bewilderment. The part of her that moved her body had already gone past that and she crouched into a defensive position, zapgun already out.
The third guard murmured into his helmet. “Subject is non-cooperative. Use lethal force.”
Captain Iverka’s officers spun away. In practiced movements, they activated shock-sticks and, moving as one, drove the sticks into the security guards’ midsections. The two guards crumpled and the captain stepped over them. “It would be my pleasure to offer you the assistance of the Scimitar until this unpleasantness gets sorted out.”
“Sorted out? They were going to use lethal force on me!” Treska glanced from the captain to the security guards and back to Micah’s stasis pod. “I don’t even know what the hell is going on!”
Another pair of guards entered the room from the opposite door. “What the—” The timbre of his voice gave him away as a Treemian. A short one, but no one could mistake the stocky build for anything else. His partner was definitely Treemian and towered over all of them.
Iverka glanced at the fallen guards. “Disrespect for the Chain of Command is subject to immediate disciplinary action.”
The Treemian guard snarled low in his throat. “Special Affairs overrides the Chain of Command. Stand down, Sir, or I will take action.”
The guard moved to intercept the stasis pod, but Wullas stepped neatly around him and the shock-stick that appeared in her hand seemed to do so between one moment and the next. When the Treemian attempted to take control of the pod’s anti-grav sled, Wullas jammed the shock-stick between his thickly-muscled shoulders.
It would have brought an ordinary human or biped down instantly, but Treemians were from a high-gravity world, and the shock-stick caused him pain, but not enough to stop him from turning. His movement flowed into a takedown move that sent Wullas flying through the air until the wall stopped her. The impact set an alarm screeching out.
“Make your decision fast, Huntress,” Captain Iverka murmured as the other guard lunged towards Wullas. “They’ll only focus on her for so long.”
Special Affairs had been her home for ten years. SA had trained her, taught her, given her purpose. Under the Director’s tutelage, she’d flourished, risen to the top of her field, hunted faithfully for him. Anyone logical would say this was clearly a misunderstanding—a security glitch in the system that would undoubtedly be cleared up after a few hours’ worth of paperwork, if only she could reach someone in charge. But in the meantime, the words, ‘lethal force’ told her a different story. Glitch, my ass.
“Captain, I’m grateful for the hand you’ve extended and I will gladly accept the temporary protection of the Scimitar.” The words tumbled out over themselves.
“Excellent. Then let’s get out of here with all due
haste.” The captain lifted his hand. In his palm, a small device beeped twice. “Close your eyes. Now.”
Treska did as instructed and the whump of a flash-pulser sucked all the pressure out of the room. Her body felt light enough to fly, as if she could fall upward.
“Aauugghh!” The Treemians dropped their weapons and clapped their hands over their ears. The high gravity of their world made them sensitive to pressure changes, and the pulser had lightened the immediate area’s gravity enough that their inner ears were affected. As they both bent double, Wullas rose from the floor, using the wall as leverage. As her body shot up, one leg shot out and found its mark just under the jaw of the first Treemian.
The effect wore off just as the Treemian crumpled. Not one to wait for another to architect her own independence, Treska fired her zapgun at the other guard.
The setting was formulated for someone Micah’s size, not a Treemian, and the stun merely slowed him. But it was enough. He stumbled, his dense, muscled bulk knocking the security arch off-kilter. Treska drove her shoulder into his midsection, shoving him away from the lift entrance.
The first Treemian staggered back to his feet, shaking his head to clear it. He aimed his zapgun. Treska sighted down her wrist and fired again, but the zapgun failed to respond, its power cell depleted. “Shit!” She flung the useless gun away.
Wullas stepped in front of her and took the bolt. The stunner crumpled her body, forcing Treska to dive head-first into a roll that sent her into the lift. She and Iverka both took hold of the commander and pulled her into the lift.
A second zapgun bolt slipped through the closing doors and ricocheted around the cubicle. It found a home in Treska’s hip and she crumpled as her leg went numb. “Arrgh!”
The doors sealed and the lift began to move. Treska gasped for breath, leaning against the wall. “What the nine hells is going on?”
The captain revived Wullas. She blinked and sat up slowly. Iverka pointed to the duty padd she carried. “We received two sets of conflicting orders as we entered the complex. We’re duty-bound to follow the correct set.”
Iverka cleared his throat. “But it is the senior officer’s decision as to which one is the correct set.”
The significance of his words hung in the air between them. She gaped. “You mean you could have shot me in the back—”
“Those orders suggested a disproportionate response for a questionably-motivated countermand.” Iverka’s eyes narrowed. “Someone here wants you out of the way, and wanted to use my crew to do it.” He put his shoulder under his second and helped her to her feet. “I began my career in a House fleet run by a younger daughter who would have had a brilliant career if she hadn’t married an idiot who used her fleet as his toys. I’d rather take my chances with a Parliament-run military. But a military under the whim of a single governmental department without oversight is just as bad as a Noble House. The end result is an unprepared military and a weakness in defense ripe for exploitation.”
“The Union promised a departure from all that nonsense.” In what was surely a less-than-regulation move, Wullas wrapped her arms around Iverka’s waist and leaned on him.
Treska crawled over to the control panel, dragging her useless leg behind her. To her surprise, her ident-tattoo still worked. “Anywhere but here.” She slumped back down, pins and needles and fire shooting through her leg as the nerves slowly reset themselves. “Now what?”
The captain’s wry remark echoed through sudden silence. “It appears that the storied halls of our Union are not, in fact, possessed of unity in purpose after all.”
Treska glared up at him. “You think?”
The lift raced sideways, throwing her against the wall, but it outran the alarms on the security levels, giving them a few minutes’ respite. Enough time for Treska’s leg to return to working order, even with the pins and needles. Good. It’ll keep my mind off the fact that my boss now wants to kill me. “As long as we stay on the move, we might be able to outrun the security lockdown. I can’t stay here.”
“I should think not.” Iverka was entering commands on his padd.
She couldn’t help noticing that he and Wullas had both begun to perspire. Not unusual, given their physical exertion, but Treska hadn’t broken a sweat. The lift wasn’t exactly roomy with the stasis pod and, but it wasn’t a hotbox, either.
“There are security bulletins out on all of us. I’ve recalled the crew back to the Scimitar.” Wullas traced command patterns on her padd with shaking fingers.
The captain’s face remained neutral, but Treska couldn’t help feeling guilty. His decision to help her was putting his crew at risk. Wullas continued with the padd, fingers gradually moving more steadily. She frowned, then shook her head. “Captain, the countermands keep overriding each other. They change with location.”
Iverka’s frown matched his second’s. “Executive and Special Affairs fighting it out?”
She shook her head again. “No, Sir. The order to apprehend was only issued above orange-level clearance.”
“That makes even less sense!” Treska struggled to push herself up on a leg that still throbbed with the slightest pressure on it.
Wullas glanced up. “Not if you’re orchestrating a cover-up.” She looked at Iverka.
Iverka returned the look. Treska found the limit of her patience. “What?” She pushed herself up the wall to a half-crouch. Shooting, burning pains streaked through her entire side, starting and ending at her hip, but taking the scenic route through her body on the way. Now she was starting to sweat. She scowled. “What else do you know that I don’t?”
“Miss Sivekka?” His other hand tugged at the collar of his uniform and she could see perspiration had started to break out on his brow.
“Please try to control your emotions, Huntress.” Wullas said. “Your pheromones are affecting us.”
“I—what?” In a reflexive gesture, she sniffed at her armpit. Yes, she needed a sonic, but somehow that didn’t seem like the thing to focus on. Or a reason for a security lockdown.
Iverka took her arm and pulled her the rest of the way up. “You’d better tell her, Wullas.”
“There’s no need to prevaricate any longer. Your medical scans confirm it, along with the reactions of several crew members we placed in your path.”
Treska scrambled up onto the pod, but kept low. “You’re not making any sense. What reactions? What scans?”
“Lieutenant Haarkon, when you boarded the ship. He wasn’t sick, he was reacting to your pheromones.” Captain Iverka let go of her arm and edged away. “Your full medical work-up returned readings that fall into the human-variant ranges, but—”
“They miss the mark for human.” Wullas did not deliver the statement un-gently, but Treska stared up at her like she’d grown another head.
Treska, there’s something you need to know. “That doesn’t make any sense.” She stared down at her hands. You must try to stay calm, he said. And I gassed him with knockout gas.
“I’m sorry, Huntress. I wish there were time to explain. It would help us all if you told us why you, of all people, have personal access to a man whose asceticism is his defining characteristic.” The lift slowed, sending them all moving to the side as it slowed momentum.
She must have stepped into an alternate reality. “Me, of all people? What’s that supposed to mean?” Her tone hardened to flint. “I am loyal to the Union, and I resent your implication, sir.” She wished she hadn’t thrown away the zapgun, but she still had one trank dart. Use it on Wullas, her tactical brain told her. He might be bigger, but she’s sneaky and will take you down.
The captain and second exchanged glances, then the commander spoke. “She doesn’t know herself, Rogas. She’s a sleeper.”
Wullas must have had her brains scrambled worse than she realized. Treska shook her head. She felt like laughing with the absurdity of it. “This is a bad time for a stupid joke.” The slowed lift car drifted to a sideways halt and her unsteady legs couldn�
�t handle it. She slid off the pod and back down to the floor on trembling muscles.
The other woman’s features set. “And this is not my joking face. Someone—whether it’s the Prime Minister himself or another player—has contrived to put the architect of the New Morality in close proximity with one of its direct adversaries—a Hathori.”
“Ridiculous!” Treska scoffed. “Everybody knows that Vakess does not associate with Hathori. Even the negotiations after the riots were conducted via holo-feed. None of the faces I’ve ever seen in the Prime Minister’s company even bear passing resemblance to Hathori.”
“Have you tried looking in the mirror?” Wullas cleared her throat again. “Treska, you are the Hathori. Vakess associates with you.”
The car began to descend, only not at the sedate speed of a normal lift. “What the—” Treska didn’t have to worry about staying on the floor. As the lift plummeted towards the basement at express speed, her body lightened and she was back on her feet just in time to slap her hand against the emergency stop.
Moments later, a mechanical scream deafened her and her stomach caught up with the rest of her, and together they decided gravity wasn’t just a good idea, but a very compelling force. Or maybe it was her whole universe that spun, leaving her at a fixed point while stars, planets, and galaxies all shuffled themselves around while she wasn’t looking, leaving the starscape as foreign to her as her own blank past. But when it said, ‘down,’ she went down.
***
Unstable Alliances
The Catch (Huntress of the Star Empire Episodes 7-9) Page 10