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

by Athena Grayson

  A smattering of applause greeted his announcement. Vakess had been uncertain about enlisting the help of the New Morality—in the beginning, he’d sworn to himself that he wouldn’t favor his own beliefs in his authority. But the pattern was faltering in his mind, and he knew of no other way to return it to cohesion. The network of shatterpoints that showed him the pulse of the entire star system had grown thin in spots. He had no choice other than to push out strength to the weak areas, and followers of the New Morality were the most expedient way to do that.

  The Director began taking questions from the parliament members. In the early years, they’d been as fractious as ever. These days, the ones who disagreed did not speak up as loudly. They moved more carefully, more thoughtfully. The Director wanted to discourage the plotting, but Vakess held him back. Dissent is not our enemy. A healthy dissent strengthens our own position. I welcome it. If we had thought to dissent the decadence of the old Star Empire, then we would not have been so helpless when the Marauders attacked.

  Vakess let the Special Affairs head handle points of order and clarification for the records while he stood back. The pattern, the moving order of the great mechanism that held the Union together as more than a cobbled-together association linked by greed and self-interest, showed itself before him. The parliamentary members themselves showed as bright lines connecting their orbits to the Capitol in the map of his mind.

  And there—the bright lines and points dimmed in blurry clouds where corrosion began. Darkness spread out over the web of planets and people and life held in the cradle of the Jewel, and Vakess felt ice in his gut.

  ***

  Sleeping so deeply made Treska’s body feel good, but gave her a serious pain in the neck completely separate from the psypath. Treska rubbed her neck and shrugged her shoulders, trying to rid herself of the stiffness for the fifteenth time in the last hour. Enlightenment had been his usual, cheerfully polite self over bowls of prota-grain and slices of cured meat that he warned her not to ask about. “Common herdbeasts do not thrive in southern Guerran grasslands, but they are not without their unique fauna.”

  Since she hadn’t seen anything besides the small rodentia that made their homes in the canyon walls, she put the thought firmly from her mind and focused on post-breakfast activities. Enlightenment was making his dirigible available to them and needed the coordinates of the Needle’s Eye from her data-padd, so she dug it from her utility belt and handed it to the Mauw.

  “Excellent,” he said. “We’ll be ready to leave in a quarter-hour.” Enlightenment left the living quarters for the dirigible hangar, leaving her alone with Micah, and she felt decidedly uneasy. Her sleep had been deep, but not without dreams, many of which involved him. And of course, yesterday’s encounter when she hadn’t been asleep at all. It’s just my mind, processing possibilities, she told herself. Sifting through data and matching it to evidence. Like that irritating rumor.

  “The rumors,” she said, finally unable to resist asking. “Are they really true?” She traced fingertips over the aeronautically-engineered surface of the table. Obviously salvage, the thing possessed an intriguing beauty that she found herself attracted to. Enlightenment had taken aviation wreckage and turned it into something graceful and beautiful and not at all its intended purpose, and she was thinking about that more and more.

  The Union favored thinking that used things for their purpose. Specialized parts in a well-oiled machinery of the cosmos that kept the entire star system moving. Psypaths played the part of the unseen enemy. But given her behavior yesterday—and she couldn’t erase the feelings that had led her to share a kiss with him. A real kiss, one that she couldn’t lay at the feet of Jump-dreams, head injuries, or mind-control. Even the Voice hadn’t objected, and she worried that it was a sign of her systems weakening. Her lack of inhibs robbed her of the enhancements the Union had given her. She was weakening. That was the only explanation for her curiosity about psypaths’ rumored talents—especially the vice-related ones.

  Micah was engrossed in tinkering with the actuator. A reflexive glance at his collar showed the green LEDs winking steadily. “You’ll have to tell me of which rumors you speak. If you’re talking about rumors of stimulant use in the professional hoverball leagues, I’ve no idea if they’re true or not.”

  “I don’t follow hoverball,” she said. “Not since the Tritons traded Bonadano Bel-Uris to the Comets.”

  “Bel-Uris was never going to be Inner-orbit league anyway. He didn’t have the stamina.” At her skeptical look, he smirked. “Sports tickers are one of the few transmissions that travel unhampered and ubiquitous throughout the entire star system. In the most remote places, they’re often the only thing to read.”

  She welcomed the distraction of hoverball, and that told her she was afraid of asking the real question.

  He glanced up at her again, the goggles making his eyes inhumanly big. “If we’re dealing in rumor, I’m not the only one who’s the subject of speculation.”

  Her scowl couldn’t get any deeper, so she concentrated on the comm padd. “I wasn’t aware of any rumors about myself,” she lied. “What’s the Restoration saying about me?”

  “That you’re the worst kind of opposition to their efforts—you’ve got personal power within the Union, and you truly, completely, and very sincerely believe every word of the propaganda. You can neither be bought, nor coerced.”

  She let a small smile stretch her lips. “Your intelligence is right. The Union’s given me everything. I return the favor.”

  “I wonder,” he murmured. “If you’d feel the same way were your circumstances a bit different.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “If your memories were restored. Do you think your opinion of the Union would change?”

  She shook her head. “No. Who I was then and who I am now are two different people. I doubt I’d be able to make anything of myself if I’d gone back to the mid-levels. The Union gave me an education, a life, a purpose. Memories are as dead as the past.” She shrugged off the niggling doubt before the Voice could shout it away and focused on her next pile. “Anyway, why am I talking to you about it? What do you care? Or is this a clever mindsnake plan to subvert me to your cause?”

  “You were the one who brought up rumors.” He turned back to the actuator. Her padd displayed the attunement readings as he tinkered, shaving off molecules of crystal to reach tolerances that would tune it to the appropriate harmonics for the Needle’s Eye. She should be worried that he might acquire some proprietary knowledge of the ship’s design, but her own attempts to tune the actuator had nearly cost them the part when she couldn’t seem to steady her hands. More evidence that her enhancements were failing the further her inhib levels dropped. “You never said which rumors had you so interested.”

  Her cheeks burned as she remembered. Micah’s Guerran friend’s lewd jokes might be dismissible if Treska hadn’t encountered the rumor in other places. Strange places, from sentients as diverse as a reformed prostitute from the frontier orbits, and a New Morality convert who’d been raised as an honored daughter of one of the Noble Houses. Treska’s belly tightened. Even the convert had softened at the speculation, before turning away and murmuring her mantras with increasing stridency. Maybe she was better off not knowing at all. But she couldn’t resist asking. “It’s been said—that is, Brezeen—she said—that—” she faltered. Putting voice to it made it seem just so ridiculous. “She said that psypaths can pluck out your most secret fantasies and make them come true.” She finished in a rush. “I know it’s stupid. I mean, why would you bother with that kind of thing when you can make people do anything you want them to do.”

  “I don’t make people do what I want them to do.” Micah glanced up, his eyes many times magnified by the goggles covering them. “Why do you bother bringing psypaths in alive, when you can bring them in with much less hassle dead?”

  “The bounty’s bigger,” she said. “We don’t kill in cold blood.
The Union wants to rehabilitate.” All automatic answers she’d not given much thought up to now. She knew psypaths needed to be restricted, quarantined from the population because of their powers over the wills of others. They created disruption. She’d witnessed the abuse of their powers and their devastating effect.

  “So you do admit that I could be something other than a dangerous criminal.”

  “A vratyx isn’t guilty of being anything but a vratyx, but I wouldn’t want one running around loose in my house. It’s still a dangerous creature.”

  “Am I a dangerous creature? After all the work I’ve done reminding myself not to pee on the furniture.”

  He was deliberately making light, putting her at ease. She shouldn’t ever forget the danger he could be. If it weren’t for his collar— “You’re a little scary with those goggles on.”

  His teeth flashed. “The better to see you with, my dear.” He tilted the goggles up onto his forehead. “You’re a little scary with your friendliness. Why the sudden interest in psypath lore when the propaganda machine worked just fine for you yesterday?”

  It didn’t though, did it? She hunched her shoulders. She’d kissed him. Without Jump-dreams, or whatever other hallucinatory influences this moon inflicted upon them. She was afraid to wonder how or why her training and habits—a stunted lifetime in the making—faded so quickly. “My loyalty to the Union stands,” she said. “I’m just curious, is all.”

  He set the actuator aside. “You know that I’m your last chance to find out the truth,” he said.

  She snorted. “Truth about what?” Her arms crossed over her chest. “Are you avoiding my question?”

  He waved his hand. “Any truth about psypaths beyond absolute hearsay. It can’t have escaped your notice that after me, there are no more psypaths for you to hunt.”

  She shrugged. “I got that, yes.” There was a stain marring the sealing finish laid over the salvage surface of the tabletop. She pulled a cloth from the pile of tools and supplies spread out before Micah and started working on it. “I’ll visit you in prison if I’m allowed.” She kept her eyes on the table. “Help you with your re-education if it’s safe.”

  Micah set the actuator down. “Treska, they’re not re-educating psypaths. They’re eliminating us.” He sounded tired. Resigned. Alone.

  The stain wouldn’t budge. She spat on the cloth and rubbed at it with the damp spot. “You’re misinformed. The Union doesn’t kill without trial and conviction. It’s against the law.”

  “There’s already a conviction on my record for being who I am.” He set his fingers over hers, stilling her movement. “For being born this way.”

  “Your talents are a curse. It’s not your fault.” She knew her logic stretched. “You don’t mean—” she faltered as her mind flashed to the capture of the other psypath, DiVrati. You don’t mean to hurt, but you do. She’d spoken those exact words, and he’d called her beautiful and died. But her experiences were not her training. “You’ll be rehabilitated. Re-educated. Made safe. Then maybe—”

  “Now who’s avoiding a question,” he said, meeting her gaze with a frank one of his own. He looked at her for a long moment, his stormy, magnified eyes sizing her up.

  “I’m trying to make you see reason!” She held his gaze for as long as she could. The last psypath. With the collar firmly locked around his neck, he could have been any sent. Well, any long, graceful-fingered sent with a quirky sense of humor. Never mind the rumors of psypaths being able to bend the wills of others with their wills alone.

  “That’s exactly it,” he replied. “I was formally trained in the last psypath monastery back on Ursis Amalia. We were taught first and foremost that a psypath is always the servant of reason.”

  “I’ve read about that monastery.” A cesspit full of depravity, a training ground where those with gifts were taught to subjugate and abuse those without. Secret plans of galactic domination were hatched and executed from the mountaintops of Ursis Amalia, and it became a place to be feared.

  Or had it?

  Ridiculous. Of course it wasn’t a happy place full of sunshine and rainbows. But perhaps not quite a complete nexus of evil, either. She shook her head. It didn’t matter. “Tell me about Ursis Amalia.”

  “Ursis Amalia has long been the center of psypath studies,” he said finally. “For several generations, talented children have been sent to the Amalian system to learn to control the gifts they were born with.” He set the actuator down and rose from the table. She tracked him as he pulled open the cold storage and retrieved two bottles. “Ursis Amalia was a safe, remote place, and psypath teachings are consolidated and limited to the monastery there. Oh, for suns’ sake, it’s tea.” His last was delivered with an edge of frustration as he cracked the seals on the bottles. The thermal reaction from the opening seals heated water in the top half of the bottle and forced it through the filter holding the blend of herbs in the middle, while the bottom half had begun a different thermal reaction that removed the heat and used the steam to continue the brew, resulting in a brewed infusion chilled and ready to serve through the tube connected to the lower half of the bottle.

  Once she’d taken a careful sip, Micah’s eyes left her face and focused on a distant point over her shoulder. “But there are records from thousands of years ago. Records that show psypath schools and training centers all over the middle sphere, many of them vastly different schools of thought, and an even wider range of skills.”

  So many psypaths. If the government was right, then psypaths must have controlled the whole system. A puppet on every planet. She shivered with the implications. “Psypaths must have ruled everything in the old Star Empire, then. Controlled everybody. What happened? How did they lose it all to untalented people?”

  “Ruled everything?” He pulled the goggles off his head. “Where do you get these ideas? The Star Empire is—was—barely an interplanetary trade association of allied Noble Houses and their holdings.” His gaze faded further. “Thousands of years ago, in the Nine Sisters era, it may truly have been a stellar empire spanning multiple solar systems.” His eyes narrowed and his voice strengthened. “But it was never run by psypaths.”

  “Still, having psypaths everywhere meant they could be controlling everyone’s minds on dozens of different worlds.”

  Micah looked heavenward. “For the love of the nine interstellar hells, woman! What kind of people do you think we are?” He tossed the goggles on the table. “No. Don’t answer that. I think you’ve made it clear enough.” He ran his hands through his golden hair, making it stand up in tufts. “Look. I know you have no reason to believe me, but not every psypath is a power-hungry megalomaniac. In our past, there have been some notable…embarrassments where a psypath has used his or her powers for less than noble purposes. And in the trouble they caused, it was other psypaths who took them down.”

  “Making regular people pawns in a war between gods,” Treska said. “And you act surprised that your kind are reviled everywhere.”

  “Yes, I do,” he said. “Because in between the three or four instances of tragedy over several millennia, psypaths have been working and living their lives a lot more quietly! Did you know that when the Nitradix nexus Jumpgate collapsed, it was a team of psypaths who used their mental powers to hold the gate open long enough to evacuate the waystation there? And it was psypaths who first communicated with the Treemians and the Mauw and avoided interspecies conflicts.”

  “By controlling their minds?”

  “By averting misunderstandings like the one we’re having right now!” His cheeks flushed, and his eyes glittered with a pale light.

  Treska almost felt like stepping back, but she controlled her impulse, shaking her head instead. “I don’t see what there is to misunderstand. Are you denying the power to read my mind? Can you say that without that collar, you wouldn’t have the ability to force me to do or say anything you wanted?”

  He leaned forward and looked at her for a long moment, his eyes unread
able. “I think I understand,” he said quietly. He rose, sliding the actuator across the table. “It should be calibrated to where you need it to be.”

  “Wait!” She stumbled out of her chair and to her feet. “Where are you going?”

  He paused in the doorway. His eyes were flat now, like silver coins. “The rumors are true,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Your first question.” He touched her forehead lightly with two fingers, almost a caress. “Without the collar, a psypath could pluck the deepest fantasy from your mind and make it come true.” Sudden heat in his eyes summoned an answering curl in her belly and she had the most insane urge to repeat yesterday and kiss him until she lost her senses and the questions that kept eating holes in her mind. “But I think you’d be surprised to find out exactly what that fantasy might be.” He closed the door with a snap.

  Color flooded her face and a tight burn in her gut made it suddenly hard to breathe. She put her hand to the place where he’d touched. The nerve! But he couldn’t really pull the thoughts out of her mind as long as that collar was on. Not that she had any fantasies about him anyway…

  And maybe I’m a lousy liar, too. It would serve her right if the tingling where he’d touched her bloomed into a visit from the Voice.

  “If you’ve got a headache, I do have some headache powder in the galley cabinet to your left. If that’s not considered illicit pharmaceutical vice, that is. Otherwise, I’m completely free of medicinal vice and a model citizen.” Enlightenment’s purr made her jump.

  “Where did you come from?” She scowled and leaned against the door frame.