The Snare (Huntress of the Star Empire Episodes 4-6)

by Athena Grayson

  They’d been on the move for several hours. After he’d awakened in the shadow of the downed starship to find her keeping watch over him, she’d offered him water, a protein cube which he vehemently refused, and an order to get on the march.

  “What planet are we on?” He’d squinted up at the sky, the light hurting his eyes.

  She pointed to the horizon, where the Jovian was just beginning to rise in the afternoon sky. “Guerre. There’s a settlement—”

  “That way.” He waved in the direction of the mountains as he shuffled to his feet. “I know. I’ve been here before.”

  “Good.” She nudged a pack towards him. “You can help navigate.”

  “I never traveled on foot. We always flew.”

  She scowled, her irritability becoming more pronounced as they left the ship behind. “That option isn’t open to us. We’re going through the mountains.”

  “Through?” He shook his head. Something had ticked in his memory, something about Guerre. It was coming back to him slowly as he stumbled after her. His knowledge about the moon bubbled up—facts, information, lore, contacts—along with a roaring headache. “The Guerrans avoid the tunnels for a reason.”

  “Yeah?” She whirled around, a challenge on her face.

  He shrugged. It hurt to do so. “Which I don’t quite remember.” He motioned. “The settlement is called Shiba City.”

  As the Jovian rose, the golden light turned ruddy with the reflected light of the gas giant. Micah knew he should avoid the tunnels, but couldn’t remember why, so when it came time to enter, Treska’s raised remote informed him of his choices in regards to moving under his own power.

  At least in the caves, the cool blue-green glow of the crystal deposits reflecting their glowsticks, his headache started to recede and the fog in his mind began to dissolve. Only to be replaced by the walls wanting to have their say. They wanted to prod at his Jump-dreams, and ask why they sent him back to his ignorant youth. They wanted to remind him of why he’d been on Guerre before, and of the life he used to live before the whole solar system went mad.

  Voices, indistinct and garbled, crept in, just under his conscious hearing at first. The low tunnels, where the walls were close and it hurt to walk, amplified the sound, and it went from a low susurrus to maddening whispers that his mind chased to incomplete understanding. Too many voices he couldn’t understand.

  “Stop here.” Treska’s voice broke through the veil of whispers. He jumped at the sound.

  “What?”

  “I said, we can stop here.” She lifted her hand and pointed to the opening in front of them. A low, irregular threshold opened onto a larger cavern. She moved forward and he followed, numbly concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other until the ceiling opened up and he could breathe again.

  And hear. He stuck his fingers in his ears and shook his head. Half-tempted to risk a psypath meditation, he brushed the collar irritably, with a pointed look in her direction. Treska met his eyes without flinching as she made no move to give him relief, only held her glowtorch higher. Flashes of blue-green light bounced off the walls, most thankfully several meters away. From somewhere across the room, a faint, liquid trickle could be heard. The whispers receded to a comfortable level the further he walked into the room. He moved all the way to what felt like the center of the irregular cavern and dropped his pack.

  Treska’s pack landed with a clatter. “Over here,” she called from the edge of the cave. He turned to look. She’d set her pack against the wall and knelt on the ground next to it, pulling out palm-sized boxes and setting them on the ground.

  “I’ll be fine right here,” he replied and sank down into a cross-legged meditation pose. If the collar generated feedback, at least he wouldn’t have far to fall.

  “Don’t be an idiot,” she said. “If something lives in these tunnels, it’s going to find you first in the middle of the room.”

  He opened one eye to look at her. She stood a meter in front of him, one hand on a hip and the other tossing one of the boxes in the air. “You’re worth more to me alive than dead.”

  “That’s hardly a motivating factor,” he retorted. “Unless—” he raised his eyebrows and allowed a suggestive note creep into his tone, “—you’re looking for someone to sleep with?”

  “Before, you were delirious. What’s your excuse now?” A blush visible even in the aqua light of her glowtorch bloomed on Treska’s cheeks.

  Micah thought it best not to mention the whispering in the walls. “The ground is softer here.”

  “Fine. If you want to be cave-pig bait, who am I to judge? Come here.” She held the light up to his face and opened the medi-kit. Grateful for the distraction, as bitter as it may be, he asked the extent of his injuries, and inquired after her own health. After a brief and clinical description of his wounds and their progress, she shoved her wrist cuff into his face.

  “The medi-monitor says your brain is perfectly fine, psypath freakiness notwithstanding. But if you try to kiss me again—”

  “I—kissed you?” He frowned. He had no memory of kissing her, and felt the loss. “Why in the stars would I do that?” It was a petty thing to say, and patently untrue, given her looks. She had to know she was a beautiful creature.

  But the falter in her expression told him differently, and he immediately felt like an ass for the thoughtless comment. “Treska, I’ve been flirting with you since you put these cuffs on me, and every time I do, you threaten my life.” And felt like a moron for worrying about the feelings of his captor. He lifted his eyebrows with a pointed glance at her dart-shooter. “If I were to kiss you, I’d do it as part of a cunning plan to escape your nefarious clutches.”

  She poked at a bruise, perhaps a little too roughly. “Well, you did. And whatever a myzara is, I don’t have one.”

  The sound of those syllables coming from her sent him jerking back too hard, and he lost his balance. “What?” he said to the ceiling.

  Her face appeared above him. “Did I hit a nerve?”

  His Jump-dream returned to him. Zara, in all her innocence and youthful openness, laughter like wind chimes, her oversized Hathori heart in her eyes every time she looked at him— “Zara. Not mizara or whatever you think you heard.” Mizara. My Zara.

  “Sounds like a name.” She lifted an eyebrow. “You reopened that cut on your face. Hold still.” She turned away for the medi-kit.

  His disoriented senses, bringing back the too-real Jump-dream and mixing them with the voices in the crystal, decided his nose needed to join in the game and Zara went from just a memory to a presence. “Zara—” He didn’t even realize he’d spoken her name aloud.

  “Who was she? Old victim? Pet slave?”

  “Lost to me.” He pushed her hand away. “It’s of no interest to you. Slavery is even more morally abhorrent than your silly New Morality interdictions.”

  Her eyes widened. “A co-conspirator, then.” She set the can of syntha-skin down next to him. “I was just trying to help. I don’t need you feverish with infection while I’m trying to fix the ship and avoid pirates and claim my bounty.”

  “Zara.” He avoided her gaze. “I must have confused you with her. I’ve no idea why.”

  “Who was she?” Treska rummaged through his pack and found pouches of compressed sleeping gear. She handed him one.

  He opened the package. “Someone who loved me.”

  “She must have been something. The way you were talking almost sounded like you gave her a choice in loving you.”

  His eyes were going to fall out of his head if they had to keep rolling like this. “How many times must I disabuse you of the notion that I’ve got mind control powers of that extent?”

  “Try until you’re blue in the face, I’ll never believe that lie.”

  He separated the sleeping materials from the rations and hygiene packs. Zara had been blue in the face. And all over. The jeweled hue of her Hathori complexion made her foremost among her peers in desirability.
Yet she chose me, because I understood her mind. “Am I so unlovable, then, that I’d have to compel a woman to give me her heart?”

  “Not hardly,” she muttered.

  “What was that?” He shot her a glance. Had she implied what he thought she implied? Could she be softening towards him?

  “Nothing. I thought I heard a cave-pig.”

  His lips twitched as he set up a bunkroll for himself, making a point to settle it in the center of the cave. “I think you’re curious about my prowess.”

  “I’ve seen you naked. You’re probably not half bad at seducing a woman into your bed.” She parried his glance with one of her own. “If only out of pity, if those weak attempts at flirtation you keep trying with me are any indication.”

  His face grew warm. I’ve been trained in seduction by Hathori priestesses! Initiated in the carnal arts! But he couldn’t say that out loud. “Uh, you’d better move away.” She lifted a questioning eyebrow. He cleared his throat. “I think I hear a cave-pig.”

  Unfamiliar Territory

  Cave-pigs, indeed! The trek through the cave had been going well, up until her unexpected reaction to Micah’s flirtations. Treska wasn’t kidding when she mocked him about it—his attempts were comically terrible at seducing her, but somehow, they’d still managed to soften her feelings towards him. She left him to the center of the cavern while she followed the sound of water to a tiny, trickling stream. She filled three survival canteens and steeled herself. He was still a mindsnake, even if his forked tongue could make her laugh. And it wasn’t his attempts at seduction she needed to concern herself about.

  It was her own sudden willingness to be seduced. She dropped her hand to her belt, but paused, torn between extending her supply and maintaining her resistance against her own weaknesses. She couldn’t help but wonder if her enhanced systems were already breaking down, if she were weakening inside and out. She popped an inhib. After she crunched the bitter pill, only two more remained. As she returned to the center of the cavern, she caught the sight of him removing his tunic, his body outlined in the blue-green light.

  Not even another inhib could make her look away. She licked dry lips and had to stop herself from lifting the canteen’s unpurified water to her lips. An angry patch of abraded skin marred the planes of his back and she told herself it was concern for another wound. When she handed him the can of syntha-skin, her hand shook. “You—have a—” She motioned to his shoulder. “On your back.”

  He lifted his eyebrows. “Not going to play nursie?” His lips quirked up. “Kiss it better?”

  She scowled. “A moral society is a—” I wish I had an inhib.

  “Spare me.” He tossed the can back at her. “I thought we were making progress. It’s no shame to admit you’re afraid of pleasure and intimacy. But don’t hide it behind that stupid New Morality code.”

  “I’m not afraid at all!” She caught the can. “There’s a right way and a wrong way to go about these things. Not that I’m going about them with you—”

  “So you have considered it.” he asked. “Is that why you enjoy these cuffs so much? I could show you other ways to seduce a man that don’t involve restraints.”

  “I’m not really the seductress type,” she said, her fingers tightening around the can. “That’s what the cuffs are for. I could reactivate the magnetic fields, if you’re going to be a smartass.”

  Did she betray herself with a tremor in her voice? She knelt down and focused on using the survival kit’s contents to purify the water in the canteens.

  After a few moments, he joined her. “I could teach you how to use these cuffs for much more pleasurable pursuits.”

  She made to step back, but stopped herself and jutted out her chin. “You really are an amoral creature, aren’t you?”

  His lip curled upwards. “Who is the more amoral? One who is as his nature dictates, or one who lives an elaborately-constructed lie which requires extreme mental conditioning to perpetuate?” He shot her a glare. “At least I don’t need a memory wipe to swallow the Union propaganda.”

  “My memory wasn’t wiped!” She kicked open the bedroll with more force than necessary. “And anyway, the Union doesn’t wipe people’s memories. Mine went away thanks to the old regime.”

  He shook out his own hand-sized package of compressed thermal blanket. “Then can you truly say the new morality has made your life better?”

  “Of course,” she said automatically. No doubt existed in her mind. “I’d be nothing without the Union.” She broke the seal on the edge of the blanket and one half of it swelled to several centimeters thick. She set the padded side on the ground and sat down on it. “I’d be just another statistic of the Capitol attack.”

  “But how do you know you weren’t better off before?” he pressed. “You could have been wealthy. Could have been desired.”

  She ignored the timbre of his voice. “Knock it off. Nobody came looking for me.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.” She turned away from him and pulled the other half of the blanket around her shoulders. Her memories of the trauma center were disjointed, probably because of the head wound. “I waited.” Flashes of green-garbed medtechs, soft voices in a static of urgent whispers, and being moved several times permeated her consciousness and she was reminded of the last part of her Jump-dream. “Nobody came.” She snuffed her glowtorch with abrupt finality.

  “It was a time of great chaos.” In the darkness, his voice held sympathy. “So many beings were lost.” His voice grew faint, as if he grappled with his own memories. “They overestimated the death toll, but they underestimated the missing.” She heard him shuffle behind her, along with the slight hiss of his bedroll activating.

  “The military moved quickly to repel the invaders. But Parliament had to approve an increase in Civic Aid funding. They bloviated,” she said. “And Vakess did something about it.”

  The snap of fabric punctuated his response. “Is that what they told you?”

  “That’s what happened.” She’d learned differently as time went on and she healed. But she’d needed the lie, and understood most of the citizens found more comfort in believing the military had frightened off the Marauders, rather than the fact that the Marauders had disappeared as suddenly as they’d attacked. It was only during the reconstruction that all the weaknesses in the old Star Empire had come out in inquiries and investigations. How the Parliament had debated over nonsense while the Star Empire had rotted from the inside, drunk on prosperity and excess. Ripe for the plucking.

  Parliament still existed after the birth of the new Union. Its job now was to advise the Prime Minister, argue and plead points of order, and generally question the wisdom of doing such and such or so and so. Nobles of the Houses that understood that life had changed held seats on it. The military had taken its cues from the Nobles and taken fresh funding from the new government. But Vakess Azymus was the man who made the decisions, and the man who actually got things done.

  Her Jump-dream returned to her. Shortly after the Director had persuaded her, Vakess himself paid her a visit. He was a dark, intense man, driven by something that burned behind his eyes. He scared her, young and confused as she was, but he looked into her eyes and promised she would never need to fear again. For all the Director’s inspirational passion, she trusted Vakess more.

  Vakess had even given her a name. “Treska,” he said. “On my homeworld, it means huntress.”

  “Civic Aid never lied about its abilities or its funding.” Micah’s voice interrupted her thoughts of Vakess. “They had no plan to handle an invasion on that scale, but they did the best they could. Volunteers from dozens of worlds shut down all non-essential traffic through the Jumpgates to help in the aftermath. Freight companies cleared their decks to transport emergency supplies and personnel. Even personal craft mustered into an aid fleet. I know. I was among them.”

  She turned over to stare through the murk in his direction. “You?”

  “Ye
s, me.” She heard him shift and his voice took on a distant quality. “Ursis Amalia mustered every known psypath in the whole system and dispatched us to attack points to coordinate rescue efforts. Does that surprise you?”

  She had the grace to admit it. “Yes. The Marauders targeted emergency muster points. Intelligence from their inside informants.” She coughed. Ones who could project their thoughts and communicate with enemies outside of detectable means. “Psypaths.”

  She heard his gusty sigh, and the argument, so certain in her mind, felt a little weak even to her ears. “Psypaths who were among the first to use our minds to find lost and trapped people. To use our minds to ease pain and suffering. To use our minds to prevent starvation and exposure and death.”

  “What were we supposed to think?” She stared up at the ceiling. “It was all over the news that the Marauder Dreadnought over Ursis Amalia never fired a single shot.” Her inability to remember drove her to read and watch as much as she could, in the vain hope that something would fill in the gaps. She’d been just as mystified as everyone else over the incident at Ursis Amalia, but couldn’t make sense of it until the Director suggested that perhaps the Marauders owed the psypaths some mercy. Her own mind filled in the blanks from there. “Vakess proposed an investigation before the evidence could be wiped away.”

  “Oh, yes. Our hero.” Micah’s derisive laugh punched through the darkness. “Power abhors a vacuum.” He was silent for a moment. “Civic Aid did as much as it could, but it sometimes took years for families to find their lost.”

  “Yeah, the holoshows love those stories of ‘long-lost relative returns to family.’ Makes my teeth ache with happy.” Her lip curled. “If you’re trying to tell me I’m one of those holodramas waiting to happen, let me put that one to bed. I have no one. They found me in the midlevels. I was probably some street gralx, living off garbage, and generally being a pest to decent folk.”