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

by Athena Grayson

  The tight clench returned to her ribcage with force, and she pushed through the passengers on the walkway. She kept her head down and ducked through the knots of people, shoving this way and edging that way, and skulked her way to a shuttle.

  She remained on the shuttle until it reached the terminus and then moved into the foot traffic leading away from the transport depot. It was easy enough to find a network terminal. She cleaned the Union credits from the account and converted them into portable barter-scrip, then moved most of it into anonymous accounts she kept for times when she had to move outside official channels. The rest, she converted into spending credits and secured them in her jacket pocket. She kept walking until her hips ached and the sun sunk low behind the spikes of the high-rises. Her eyes automatically lifted in search of the needle-spire of the government offices. She blinked as she finally caught sight of the winking blue lights of the spire, far off in the distance. Further away than she’d expected. Further away than she’d ever been on Prime. She looked around at the nearer buildings, searching for some landmark to which she could orient herself, and found nothing but a nagging sense that she should know this place, but no sense of how.

  Where the hell am I?

  She was using her comm padd to scan for an orientation sign when the padd map popped up a familiar glyph. The logo of a New Morality center beckoned like a beacon. She knew there would be something warm to drink and somewhere quiet to gather her thoughts and she set out towards it, her steps quickening into a run.

  The sign burned steady and the main door opened before her. The sparsely decorated foyer was tiny, and the young woman greeted her with a serene smile. “Welcome, traveler. Do you seek shelter and safety?”

  Treska nodded and put a goodly amount of her credits into the slot. The tranquil air felt well-scrubbed, the climate controls set to reduce the humidity and distracting odors. The greeter led her to a tiny room. “Contemplate as you desire.”

  “Thanks.” Treska followed the girl into the room. She stopped when the girl did, and suddenly remembered something very important.

  The young woman turned, eyes wide. “What is this?” Her pupils had dilated. With a swift motion, the woman grabbed Treska by the upper arms and pushed her against the wall, holding her in place with her body. “Is this some kind of joke?” The woman inhaled deeply. “By the Jewel, I can’t—” One of her hands moved up to stroke Treska’s face.

  I forgot! Treska pushed back. “No! I—”

  “Security! We have an illegal!” The other woman’s voice thundered through the room.

  Treska panicked and bolted from the room as a bell-like alarm went off. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean—” She ran out into the street and kept going the other direction until the ringing couldn’t be heard anymore. She stumbled over a pitted panel in the walkway and spun around, falling against the railing. The railing groaned ominously. “Crap!” she hissed, and let go of the railing when she saw the corroded bolts giving way from the plasticrete. The railing tilted out over the edge of the walkway and she skipped backwards. Great. The place is falling apart.

  She kept to the center of the walkway as she headed for the lifts. She sagged against the lift wall when the doors to the capsule closed. At least I still have one wrist dart. And an emergency communicator that can earn me a nice stay in a safe prison cell. Hard to imagine it getting worse.

  No sooner had she finished the thought than the lift began to move. Downward. She muttered a curse. The lower you went in the Sprawl, the fewer official security forces patrolled. She still had her utility belt, and the five half-charged perimeter balls she’d first used to capture Micah. When the lift doors rolled back, she stepped out on the walkway.

  In spite of the New Union’s efforts to enforce a set of common standards, the mid-levels were still the domain of those not wealthy enough to afford living quarters in the spires of the massive strato-scrapers that comprised the Sprawl. The middle levels of the high-rise buildings had once been respectable, if modest, neighborhoods, but the streets she walked had begun to fall to ruin as the gap between rich and poor grew. In the artificial canyons created by the buildings, walkways stretched between the monoliths like spiderwebs. Twilight traffic flickered in vertical and horizontal lines made into streaks by the motion of the vehicles. Treska looked skyward, and spotted the ruin of the Hathori temple as a blank hole where the flicker of lights should have been.

  Now that she was several dozen levels below the gaping hole in the sky, the hum of air scrubbers returned to her. The massive machinery that kept the air clean, kept water pumping, sewage draining, and power flowing thrummed around her. There were few people around, and few of the signs advertising shops and services had all their lights burning. The plasticrete here was just as pitted as above, but the pits had moss growing around the edges—these pits hadn’t shown up overnight. The main walkway stretched into the distance, but branches peeled off almost immediately outside the lift landing. One led to the southwest, where she could see a sign for public transport in the distance, and the other turned due north. The north walkway looked less pitted, but the street lamps were mostly burnt out, and only a small grocery sign’s blinking icon broke the darkness. The buildings to either side of the thoroughfare had the even repetition of high-density residential areas. Apartments, probably small, cramped, and maybe infested with vermin, although the front stoops of the first few under the still-burning street lamps looked kept. Someone had taken the time to patch the plasticrete of the pillars flanking the first doorways.

  She rubbed her arms and stepped off the lift landing onto the Eastbound walkway. The dinner crowds were just starting to emerge from shops and apartments, and she filed into the thin stream of sentients heading away from the lift landing. The air down here held a certain clamminess to it, and the humidity carried with it the scents of many sentients in cramped places. Musty odors of Mauw fur, the moss-mould scent of a Treemian who passed her on the way to the lift. She stopped under the orange glow of a sign advertising parts in trade. Someone bumped into her, nearly knocking her off her feet. “Watch it, Twink,” a feral, feminine voice growled.

  She turned. “Back off, Citizen.” She held up her wrist with the ident-tattoo.

  A flash of wariness entered the Voltron woman’s luminescent gold eyes. Her wings wrapped more tightly around her packages, giving away her nervousness, while her eyes flicked to some point behind Treska. Half a second later, the woman’s arms settled on her hips and a sneer appeared on her lips. “Slumming down here by yourself’s not usually a sport for government snitches. Go back up there and leave the rest of us alone.”

  The kind of specialized law enforcement handled by Special Affairs generated an active hostility in most sentients. People acted jumpy all the time, because even if they weren’t guilty in the eyes of the law, they were guilty as sin in their own minds.

  Treska stiffened. “All areas deserve equal protection in the Union. And all areas receive it.”

  The Vultron laughed. “Threats only work when you’ve the muscle to back them up. Right now, all I see is a Vice Hunter with nothing but a big mouth and an ident-tattoo to make it easier to ID the body.”

  She scowled. “Who says I need muscle?” She crossed her arms, unlocking the safety on her remaining wrist dart. Vice Hunters might be sparse down here, but they were supposed to work alone. That was the point of all the access, the equipped jacket, the good boots, and the reputation.

  The woman sneered again. “Hardly any meat on your bones and anemic as well, judging by your color. You wouldn’t even make a decent snack.” The Voltron stepped around her and out into the main flow of foot traffic.

  I don’t know whether to feel relieved or insulted. Vultrons were not a weak species and those claw-tipped wings could be deadly. She might have some hairy moments with a winged opponent. A body brushed against hers as the wedge of light from behind the shop door widened. She glared at the retreating figure of the Vultron woman.

  “Yo,
you coming in or just blocking the sidewalk?”

  She turned. The skinny human man standing in the doorway wore a hide apron over a lubricant-stained shirt and had his hair tied up in a topknot. Tattoo lines scored the right half of his face, ending in dots leading down his neck and into the collar of the shirt. He looked too young to be the proprietor, and too young to be looking at her with a look of half impatience and half “are you witless or something?”

  She exhaled and stepped into the store. The Vultron should be ignored. Even at the heart of the Union, there were people who didn’t appreciate the protections of the law. Protections? Like ‘use lethal force’ protections? She couldn’t shake the feeling that all the strangers on the street were watching her, waiting to see her trip up.

  Inside the shop, the young man turned to her. “You looking for something?”

  She shook the feeling and dug into her belt pouch. “What can I get for this?” She emptied the pouch onto the worktable.

  “Lady, we aren’t a trash recycler.”

  She looked down at the half-eaten protein ration, the crumbs from one of Enlightenment’s biscuits, and the capsule of water purifier chemicals and felt heat climb her cheeks. She scooped the items up and put them back into the pouch. “There.”

  “Hm. A set of government-issue perimeter balls. Nice. But only half-juiced.”

  “They’re rechargeable,” she countered.

  “Got the charge unit?”

  She thought longingly of the Needle’s Eye. And the remote unit still in her jacket. I don’t care how desperate I am, I’m not hocking my ship. “There’s more.” She pointed to the pile of small stones.

  “Wow. Rocks. Trilumia was right. You are slumming it. This some kind of sting operation or something? Cause I run a clean place. We trade in quality legal after-market used goods only.” He pointed to the sign behind him. The red and blue letters spelled out “If it’s hot, it don’t get bought.”

  “No sting,” she said. “That’s Guerre crystal right there. Not just rocks. It’s untuned.”

  “Yeah, I’ll just go put it in my refinery in the back room.”

  “It confuses psypaths.” She had firsthand experience.

  The teenager smirked. “Yeah, like that’s a real problem. Do you need me to read the sign out loud for you?”

  She rubbed her temples. “Fine. I thought all you junk-dealing types took anything and sold anything.”

  “And maybe you watch too much Tri-D. The Uniforms don’t like it when you’re in direct competition with them.”

  “Huh?”

  He tilted his head. “Did you just crawl out from under a rock? You think Capitol Sec comes down here to sweep the walkways and water the flowers? They come down here to shop for what they can’t get up there among the spires. Now I’ll give you fifteen for the perimeter balls, but the rest is useless to me, and you have to leave my store. People see you in here and they’ll be thinking I’ve turned snitch. Besides, your handlers are probably wondering where you are.”

  “I don’t have handlers,” she said, taking the credits. This time, she tucked them into her undershirt. She’d have to be naked before losing these babies.

  She left the shop and slunk back into the crowd, thickening now as the main quad of the district came into view. Carts and stalls dotted the sides of the main walkway, reminding her of the shantytown outside the gates of Shiba City. The noise of flitter traffic faded, replaced with half a dozen different kinds of music from the square. A blast of heat hit her as she passed a cart. Behind the cart’s portable grill, a ginger-hued Mauw skewered another small animal carcass and set it on the open flame. The aroma made her stomach growl. Fifteen credits would be better spent elsewhere than on takeaway.

  Her stomach didn’t agree. She reached into her pouch for the half-eaten ration and crunched down on the stale protein-meal. A battered crate hulked against one of the high rises and she plopped down on it, still within smelling distance of the Mauw’s cook-cart. The crate creaked and shifted underneath her. She looked down to see a dark-pelted rat squirm out of an unevenly-chewed hole in the side of the crate and run off, squealing. Ugh, she thought, her appetite now gone. She folded up the protein ration and tucked it back into her pouch.

  The crate shifted again and this time, she didn’t trust it not to collapse, so she stood and backed away from it, just in case another rat made an appearance.

  The edge of the crate lifted up. An underfed Riktorian hissed, his obsidian-black eyes protruding from his face above a pair of reptilian nostrils at the tip of a blunt snout. “Fark off, warmblood. My house ain’t a place to rest your ass, ‘less you want it bit off.”

  Her stomach twisted right up, the last of her appetite gone and leaving her regretting even that bite of protein ration. “Sorry, sorry,” she muttered, quickening her pace away from the crate, her nerves jangling. The people making their way on the street sent her funny looks, stares, and some outright glares. No wonder I don’t want to remember if this is the kind of place I grew up.

  She stopped. Unless I didn’t grow up here. She’d been found in the midlevels—that’s what the doctors told her. But they lied about her being a Hathori. Would they lie about where she’d been found?

  Someone ran into her. “Oof!” she grunted and turned to glare at the clumsy oaf. “Watch it!”

  The Treemian towered over her. “Who do you think you are? Honestly, some people.” He glided away, his thick body moving gracefully for a being that large and dense. She edged towards an open space in the walkway and sagged against the railing. Under her feet, she could feel the vibration of the anti-grav generators keeping the walkway in the air. They sounded slightly off, and she noticed the steel cables tethering the walkway to the sides of the buildings trembled just a bit.

  The quiet space couldn’t remain quiet in the press of people and she pushed away from the railing and moved on. She could still feel the shake as she put one foot in front of the other over and over, but it was worse when she stopped. Keep walking. She left the open quad behind and passed some eateries and several small shops and offices.

  Keep walking. If she could just keep walking, she wouldn’t have to think the thoughts that clamored to come out. The crowd thinned out and she turned down a side avenue. The out-of-sync thrumming gave way to the whoosh of air exchangers and the massive cylinder of an atmospheric scrubber came into view. She looked up. The steam belched out by the atmo-scrubber blotted out some of the twinkling lights of the sky traffic, but she could no longer see the hole in the sky made by the ruin of the Hathori temple. Where the nine hells am I? she wondered. Not that it mattered. She was walking, and she’d keep walking until she could think herself into answers.

  Her boots scuffed on the plasticrete surface of the street. The sound made an orderly, even echo off the tall buildings to either side. Keep walking. The even beat of her footsteps developed an echo and the back of her neck suddenly prickled. She flipped off the safety of her wrist-launcher and slowed her pace, waiting for the right moment. When her instincts twinged, she whirled, bringing up her arm.

  The lone man standing there hardly looked like a threat. “Nice pair of boots you got on, missy,” he said.

  “Turn around,” she said tightly. “Turn around and go back the way you came. I’m not in the mood.”

  “Hey,” he said. “I’m just being friendly. You’re new down here and maybe don’t understand. We’re friendly to each other.” He smiled, showing a set of untrustworthy teeth. “Being friendly helps us get along.”

  She offered her own insincere smile. “Fine, then consider this a friendly warning. Walk away now or the boots you like so much will take a short and vertical vacation in your ass.”

  She didn’t register the warning from her instincts until her body was already moving, her leg swinging out and around to catch the man that had slunk up soundlessly behind her. She connected with his body, feeling the shock all the way up her leg. He staggered to the side and she planted her foot behind
her, crouching low to tighten her center of gravity.

  The man’s grunt of pain seemed to be the signal for his friends to slither out from the shadows and she found herself facing a handful of humans, tightening their circle around her. She brought her arms up in a defensive stance and forced herself to relax. She knew from experience that if she thought too hard, she’d just get in the way of defending herself.

  She blocked a punch from the leader and used the momentum to drive her shoulder into the man next to him. She kicked out behind her and let her arm take the brunt of an overhand strike. Hands reached for her waist and she used her weight to drive herself back and out of reach. She came up against a body and drove her elbow back into a gut. Her knuckles ached and her muscles burned. Someone’s kick landed in her kidneys and she grunted, her gut twisting from the impact.

  As trained as she was, she couldn’t keep up the momentum indefinitely. She blocked a punch and had no spare arm to defend the grapple-hold that came from the opponent next to the first one. He bent her arm backward and she shouted as the joint popped.

  “Get her other arm!” “Immobilize that leg.” “For nine hells’ sake, somebody get in a headshot!” An elbow clipped her jaw and her teeth snapped together. She thrashed against the tightening grip of a hairy male arm around her neck. Her free hand fumbled at her belt, looking for a grenade that was no longer there. She flicked her wrist and heard the dart whistle from her wrist launcher and the satisfying thunk of dart striking flesh, but the dart’s victim ended up slumping on top of her. She staggered backwards and her arm cranked up further as the man behind her twisted out of the way of the falling body.

  Pain nearly blinded her as she felt the sickening snap of the joint in her shoulder giving way. Someone pulled the limp body off her and she saw the face of the gang leader through a haze of pain. “You gave my boys more trouble than I expected. Now we’ll teach you why you don’t want us unfriendly.”