“You’re here for something, because you don’t have the build to be a recreational climber, although you could have entered through one of the ground-level caves and taken the lift.”
Micah opened the other eye to glare at the Mauw. “The helpful signs you didn’t post around failed to alert me to that fact.”
Enlightenment’s whiskers twitched. “Half the fun of salvage is the journey through the junkyard.” He bowed, then offered his hand. Micah took it, using it to hoist himself to his feet. The slender felinoid staggered, staying upright only barely. “Now what is it that you’re looking for.”
“A Turing-Aggshad crystal actuator, unless you’ve got one from the Nitradix,” he replied, “and a Vice Hunter if you’ve got one of those.”
Enlightenment smiled broadly. “Just received a new shipment from the Vice Hunter factory, although I have to say, parting with such charming company is going to cost you. The first thing I’ll take is that filthy cloak of yours. It’s stinking up my habitat.”
Micah shrugged out of the cloak, glad to be rid of the thing. “Sorry,” he said, “Rolling in Riktorian guts has become all the rage in the Inner orbits.”
“The females must be going into heat over you, then.” Enlightenment stuffed the cloak into a hole in the wall. Micah heard a pneumatic system whir to life, and a short, choked sound indicated his cloak was on its way to what hopefully was a better existence as nesting material for the native rodentia.
“Did you say ‘charming company’ before?” he asked.
“Quite so, quite so.”
“We’re talking about the same Vice Hunter, aren’t we? Redhead, pale skin, fondness for knocking unconscious people who don’t agree with her?”
“Right this way. The actuator, I’m sure I’ve got one. Alas, it’s somewhere in my stock. The Vice Hunter, on the other hand, I couldn’t help but feature her in my showroom. And by showroom, I of course, mean living room. I wouldn’t want to be accused of inhospitality, and to show anything less than the utmost of courtesies to the charming young lady would sink my personal honor to a level with which I am most uncomfortable.”
Micah blinked rapidly. “By all means,” he said, “lead on.”
“Oh, stars in the heavens, not without a detour through the sonic, if you please.” The Mauw took him by the shoulders and shoved him into an alcove at the side of the entrance.
He braced himself as the sonic waves traveled over his body and the blowers churned the dust and debris out of his clothes and hair. Perhaps Treska had a more pleasant-natured twin out there. Who just happened to crash-land on the same remote moon. Right. More likely, she’d done something to Enlightenment’s already-tenuous grasp on reality and the poor Mauw had gone all the way round the bend.
Once he passed the Mauw’s literal sniff-test, Enlightenment led him past shelves of parts in various states of repair through a doorway into a room decorated with colorful rugs, lightweight plastiwood occasional tables and dominated by a high pile of lounging pillows in pale neutral colors. Quite comfortable looking, in fact, and lit with subdued wall sconces that gave the impression of natural light. A single, thin seam of crystal ran around the room at eye level, accented by the sconces so that its luminescence threw rainbows up onto the ceiling.
From the center of the largest pile of pillows, Treska rose up, her dark-clad limbs making a graceful contrast with the decor. And the hiss of her wrist-shooter cut through the silence. His hand came up and he caught the dart just before it buried itself in his neck. “I guess you missed me.”
She blinked twice and scowled. “My aim will get better. Nice catch.”
His eyebrows climbed at the growled compliment. “Treska, are you—feeling well?”
“I feel fine,” she said, floundering her way out of the pillows. “For someone whose been bird-jacked and cat-napped and holed up in a cave.” Her eyes swept over his body, noting the lack of manacles around his wrists and ankles. “I see you’re a bit more…liberated…than when I saw you last.”
“Not liberated enough,” he said, tapping the collar.
“Touching as this moment of reunion is, it would be quite rude of me not to offer some refreshment to go with the slices of palpable tension you seem to be serving each other.” Enlightenment’s whiskers were vibrating, whether with amusement or distress, Micah couldn’t say.
But his interruption induced a change that could only be called miraculous in Treska. Her attention shifted to the Mauw and her features softened. “Of course,” she said. “I’d be grateful for some water.”
Micah hoped his jaw didn’t make an audible thunk as it hit the floor. Enlightenment nodded and vanished through the archway on the far side of the room. An unreasonable streak of jealousy lanced through him at the realization that her loathing was reserved for him and not the Mauw.
“I see you survived Sharpclaw’s goons,” she said.
“Disappointed?” he asked.
“Relieved,” she retorted. “You’re worth far less dead. Your avian friends, on the other hand…”
“Did they harm you in any way?” He would fight for Brezeen, and he knew the avian matriarch wasn’t given towards undue violence, but her employees were another matter. And the long climb up the cliff had given him plenty of time to curse Brezeen for her interference.
“They stuffed a bag over my head and ditched me in the middle of nowhere,” she said crossly.
He grinned. “I’ve fantasized about doing that to you myself.” Among other things…
She threw a pillow at him. “Ass.” The fact that it wasn’t a trank-dart from her wrist shooter was not lost on him.
“If it’s any consolation, at least your sack wasn’t a net made of woven entrails.”
She drew back. “So that’s what I smell.”
“You do not!” He straightened. “Enlightenment put me through the sonic before he’d let me in the door.”
Enlightenment returned with a small tray of refreshments. He handed Treska a tin cup full of fresh water and set the tray down on the floor. “Join me, Ariesis?” he asked.
Micah nodded and folded his legs under him, using the pillow Treska had thrown at him a moment before. Treska, with an intrigued look softening her features, crouched down on another pillow. “Is that—”
“Tenrayan Gold,” Enlightenment said, uncorking the frosted-glass bottle and tipping its contents into two chipped glasses. “Pure indulgence.”
Treska mumbled something under her breath. Micah glanced at her and noted the color draining from her face.
“Beg pardon?” Enlightenment said as he finished pouring.
“Indulgence of vice is a danger to security.” Treska’s voice was barely loud enough to hear. She reached a hand up to massage her forehead and Micah felt a prickling on the back of his own neck, accompanied by a sudden surge in the susurrations constantly lurking just below audible level.
He frowned, studying her more intently. Her eyes had lost their focus and he was reminded of the incident aboard the Needle’s Eye when she’d collapsed. “Treska?” She’d needed those medications to come out of whatever internal torment gripped her mind. For the millionth time, he cursed the damn collar circling his neck, and her stubbornness in believing the worst of him.
She shook her head absently and blinked rapidly. She sipped her water and raised her head. “You know that’s illegal, right? Union vice law specifically forbids the trafficking, sale, import, or export of mind-altering substances not used specifically for medicinal purposes.”
“Then it’s a good thing I’m not selling this and it’s not leaving or being brought onto the planet, isn’t it?” Enlightenment purred. He proffered a glass to Micah. “A gift, freely given, of my own hospitality. To your health and your continued existence.” He raised his own glass in toast.
Treska sputtered. “It’s illegal!”
Micah sipped the wine and the simple pleasure of an artfully vinted brew washed through him. In the middle of a cave on a backwater mo
on, in the company of a junk dealer, civilization—true civilization—clung tenaciously to rough-hewn walls. “To your health,” he returned. “To the delights of an Enlightened civilization.”
Enlightenment laughed and tipped his glass again. Treska cleared her throat. “Ahem! You two do realize you’re in the presence of an officer of Union vice law and it’s my job to confiscate stuff like this.”
“By all means,” Enlightenment said, tipping the bottle into her tin cup. “It would be unconscionably rude of me to obstruct justice.”
Treska gaped. “Have you no respect for the law?”
Micah’s patience chose that moment to snap. “Just drink it, woman! You’re light-years away from your damned New Morality, and no one will know or care that you had a sip of Tenrayan wine in your heroic quest to rid the galaxy of scum like me.”
She scowled. “Tetchy, aren’t we?”
“Consider it research,” Enlightenment said. “For how can you truly protect the citizens of your Union from vice if you don’t truly know its effects?”
Treska’s scowl faded a bit and she sniffed the glass’s contents. Surely it wouldn’t hurt to have a single glass of wine. In the course of pursuing a dangerous criminal, one did have to come into contact with the criminal element.
She put the cup to her lips in the name of research.
The explosion of taste dancing along her tongue shattered her senses. Her sharply indrawn breath included a little of the wine itself, and she coughed the liquid out of her lungs. The afterburn seared her throat and she sucked in air in short pants.
Enlightenment laughed. “Take another drink,” he said. “Second sip is much more mellow.”
She did as he bid, if only to wash down the first swallow, but he was correct—the second sip did go down easier, leaving warmth pooled in her belly and tingles dancing to the tips of her fingers. Some half-buried sensory impression twitched at the back of her mind at the spicy, languid aftertaste of the wine, but chased itself away with her first deep breath. “Wow,” she muttered.
Enlightenment’s whiskers twitched. “To your health,” he said. “May you continue to draw breath with ease.”
Treska was still reeling from the first two sips. Something was happening to her vision. Tiny stars danced in the corners of her eyes, just out of vision range if she tried to glance at them. “No wonder this stuff is illegal,” she said.
“It shouldn’t be,” Micah said. “When properly enjoyed, it’s a mark of refinement.”
“What’s so refined about drinking fire?” she asked, staring down into the battered tin cup at the golden liquid inside. “Fire made out of grapes left to rot in casks.”
“Oh, stars and comets, I should think not,” Enlightenment said. “There’s a science and a sublime art that goes into the crafting of Tenrayan wines. Type of grape, fermentation time, type of wood cask, even the type of materials through which the water is strained. Any one element out of sorts and the whole batch becomes nothing but vinegar. A damn tragedy.”
“A damn waste of resources.” She pursed her lips. “Corruptions like the preoccupation with how many grapes sit for how long is what weighted the old Star Empire down. Kept it too focused on its own indulgences to see—”
Micah edged closer to her and tipped more liquid in her cup. “Did you know that Tenrayan Gold gets its name not from its color, but from the flames of the fruitwood smoke used to fume the pressing of the grapes?”
She pressed her lips together at his pointed look that said, Enough already. For the first time, she wondered if maybe it was. She stared down into the cup. “That’s not the kind of thing they teach you in Vice training,” she said. Was it her imagination or did the cup warm in her hand? Out here in the border orbits, people didn’t seem to care so much about how terrible things had been before the attacks, or how much blame they all carried for letting the attacks come in the first place. They just didn’t get it. She took another drink. Or maybe they did, but they just didn’t care.
“Tenrayan Dusk is even more rare and complex,” he said. “The wine changes when it comes in contact with skin.”
She stretched one lazy arm out and held the cup over it with her other hand. The wine would be cold as it first hit the crease of her inner elbow, but by the time it dripped off her fingertips, the liquid would have warmed—she blinked, privately marveling at her imagination.
Beside her, Micah stiffened. It was a slight, subtle shifting, but she picked it up. Her arm dropped into her lap. “Narcotics. They make people do stupid things,” she said flatly. “I’m a shining testimonial.”
Tucking one hand underneath her head, she tilted over sideways and curled her knees up in the pile of pillows. Shameful, she thought woozily. Without my inhibs I’m having truck with undesirables and bending laws I should be upholding. Through slitted eyes, she watched Micah sip his wine like the nobleman he once was. I should have sipped and instead I gulped. I didn’t know any better.
She wondered if Micah knew better through years of training, or instinct. In spite of the worn condition of his clothing, and the years he’d spent living as an outlaw, Micah still looked like a nobleman. The way he carried himself reminded her of the Prime Minister. Vakess had been a nobleman in the old Union, but he’d sacrificed his status and station in the name of protection for all.
Micah—he had told her he was trained by the monks on Ursis Amalia. In a way, he’d given up his station as well. Sacrificed it in the name of—well, whatever psypaths wanted out of life. World domination or whatever.
Funny. She’d never even thought to ask.
She scrubbed her free hand down her face. “Enlightenment, I’m going to sleep. Please don’t sell my psypath to anyone while I’m unconscious, okay?”
“Of course not, my lady. Your psypath is safe with me.”
Micah’s gaze kept going to the sleeping Vice Hunter. Enlightenment called him on it after several minutes of brooding silence. “What is she to you?”
He started. “I don’t know yet.” He savored the wine, having had more sense than to gulp it down like Treska had. “I should be halfway across the galaxy by now but there’s something about her—”
“A simple attraction? My friend, if your Hathori partner isn’t enough, I don’t know what to tell you.”
He shook his head. “It’s not that. Or not that simple, at least.” Xenna would call him a fool, like she did when he first brought up the idea of trying to sway the Huntress to their cause. “She’s the most dangerous kind of enemy—a zealot who believes her own dogma—and yet I’m sure—as sure as I am of my own heartbeat—that she can be convinced.” Something he wasn’t as sure of was the hunch that lurked in the back of his mind about her.
“Your loyalty to the Restoration is commendable, Ariesis. But there are times when loyalty is taken too far.” The Mauw’s whiskers twitched and his eyes grew more sober than they should be with so much Tenrayan wine present. “And folk on whom it is wasted.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Micah said, more harshly than he intended.
“My friend, very few appreciate the rarity you represent. Many more fear it. There are enough in the Restoration who would be just as happy to see you gone as in the Union.”
“Nobody important,” he said. “I can be of help to them. The Restoration needs everyone it can get if we ever hope to restore sanity to this galaxy.” He shot his friend a look. “Are you that content to let Guerre fall into the Union’s hands to be pillaged at will by Vakess’s government?”
“I am only a humble junk-peddler, living off the land in peace. What do I care whether my coin goes to bribe Union or Restoration coffers?”
“Even a humble junk-peddler isn’t above scrutiny by Vakess’s Special Affairs troops. And they’re not all as charming as our sleeping beauty here.”
“Sleeping beauty’s single-minded pursuit of you keeps me quite safe,” Enlightenment said, chuckling. “One would almost think there’s an attraction there.” He slanted a yellow-ey
ed glance Micah’s way. “You wouldn’t be encouraging that, would you?”
“Not unless I want a throbbing headache,” he said, tapping the collar.
“I can get rid of that, if you like.”
“It’s a new model. You don’t have the hacks for it yet. It’s got…failsafes.” Even now, the scab where his skin had burned in a painful, searing line still itched.
“Ahh, the old, ‘tamper and your head falls off’ trick. Simple, brutal, and effective.” The Mauw stroked his whiskers. “What’s your plan, my friend? Eventually, she’ll find the actuator and you’ll be off this rock and headed to the Capital. What will you do then?”
“Get answers,” Micah said. “Find out what all the psypaths have really been used for.”
“Used for?”
Micah nodded. “The propaganda paints us as evil and dangerous, yet we’re never simply shot on sight. The bounty for a live psypath is three or four times as much as a dead one. If we were that dangerous, they’d be stupid to try and bring us in alive.
“It is reasonable to conclude that psypaths are being incapacitated and used for something else.”
“Yes, except—” He hesitated. The Mauw knew him, and he trusted the feline insofar as their goals were compatible and far outstripped any animosity they may encounter, but some things were trade secrets. You don’t have a trade anymore. There’s no one else left. At the Mauw’s attentive glance, he continued. “There isn’t any sign of other psypaths. We could sense each other in Jumpspace. I haven’t sensed anyone else in months. The last transmission from another psypath to the Restoration claimed he was being held at a prison and—terrible things.” Micah shook his head. “If that were the case, every time I entered Jumpspace, my head would be screaming. Instead, there’s silence.” He raked a frustrated hand through his hair. “If they’re dead, they’re dead. If the Union is using them for something else—using psypaths, imprisoning Hathori, that damned New Morality that has such a stranglehold on its followers—something stinks. Worse than the cargo hold of a Riktorian transport.”
The Snare (Huntress of the Star Empire Episodes 4-6) Page 13
