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

by Athena Grayson

  Commander Wullas’ lips curved upwards. “I also serve as the ship’s physician. It’s standard procedure to screen for a general physical for anyone picked up in the mid-orbits outward.”

  Her hand went to her belt, but the inhibs weren’t there. Hadn’t been there for days. “You understand that for security reasons, a Vice Hunter’s medical status can’t be included on general-access ship’s logs.”

  “Understood, Ma’am.” Wullas inclined her head. “But all personnel are subject to procedure without exception. Wullas out.”

  Once the Huntress had left his ready room, Iverka tapped the ornament on his desk. “Well, Wullas? Your professional opinion?”

  “Her medical scans aren’t coming up outside the range of normal for humans.” Wullas emerged from the shadows. “However, Haarkon’s reaction was textbook.”

  “She credits the psypath with it. Why is that, do you suppose?”

  “I should think it obvious, sir. The psypath’s presence provides a convenient cover to mask her effect on individuals. I noticed you allowed her to perpetuate the ruse, sir.”

  “I’m not ready to show my hand, yet, Wullas. The fact that a ship as large as the Scimitar was diverted for the purpose of retrieving her suggests she’s very, very valuable. But to whom? The head of Special Affairs is not a man to be outmaneuvered easily, and neither is the Prime Minister. I’ve little doubt that both of them have the capacity and the intelligence to ensure discretion in whatever vices they may indulge.”

  “The man who is now Director of Special Affairs was also seriously wounded in the attack.” She frowned. “Of course. Records of his prior history are inaccessible.”

  “Clearance?” The Captain raised an eyebrow.

  She shook her head. “Destroyed. He began his life after the attacks. Started his career as an advisor to Vakess and the architect of the Hathori re-education program.”

  “Fascinating.” Iverka stroked his chin again. “Oh, this is rich indeed.” He chuckled. “I wonder if Vox Unificus is as much of a fiction as Treska Sivekka.”

  “Undoubtedly, Sir.” Wullas kept her expression neutral. “It’s useless to speculate without motivation, though.” His second’s flat tone revealed nothing about her reaction to the conclusion they’d both come to.

  “Oh, there’s motivation enough.” Iverka’s smile took a while to fade. “What a wily individual our Prime Minister is.”

  Wullas shook her head. “Vakess doesn’t strike me as the type to indulge where others go without.”

  Iverka laughed, with little humor. “Vakess is not a stupid man.”

  “He’s not an indulgent one, either. He’s the one that forbids anything stronger than fruit juice at state functions. He attends New Morality meetings. Leads them. By all accounts, he’s a true believer.”

  “Stars save us all from true believers,” Iverka muttered. “Then why flaunt a Hathori in his inner circle? A lesser man would have simply kept a Hathori imprisoned in his personal quarters, trusting that the secret would remain with his staff. This one hides her in plain sight and even makes her an important part of his government.”

  Wullas moved nimble fingers over her padd. “Sir, have you ever heard the expression ‘keep your friends close, and your enemies closer’?”

  “My dear second, it is that expression that keeps us in torpedoes, rations, and starship fuel. But the Huntress seems to be his ally, through and through. By all accounts, she believes as much as he does.”

  Wullas leaned against the desk and activated the viewport, where the ring of the Jumpgate could be seen as the battleship made its way through space. “There’s not much a man keeps closer than his weapon. The true mystery is who gave him that weapon in the first place…and what will unsheath her blade.”

  Iverka turned away from the Jumpgate and stared directly at his second. “We have to be sure. Have you confirmed her identity?”

  Wullas shook her head. “The basic exam only offers a range of acceptable readouts that would apply to any human-variant, including cyborgs.”

  “And does her basic exam match acceptable readouts?”

  Wullas nodded. “Within most tolerances, save for a few.” She sent him a sideways glance. “All within ranges of plausible deniability.”

  “Even the almighty Union is not so powerful as to change one’s species.”

  “Certainly not,” Wullas said. “It’s genetically impossible. But some traits can be masked with sufficient technology.”

  “I want her tested for everything. Blood, genetic material. Anything you can get. Have at her, Wullas. Just bring the data back to me. Someone wanted a Hathori at the highest levels of government, and wanted that secret kept from even her. Why?”

  “Plausible deniability?” Wullas maintained her lack of expression. “Or towering arrogance? And to what end?”

  “Excellent question, Commander. Special Affairs has a broad spectrum of power and influence. Let us be seen by them as a loyal ally rather than a potential complication, until we can determine who pulls what strings.”

  “And which ones we will cut.” The smile that crossed Wullas’ face was as sharp as the blade of the ship’s namesake.

  Architecture

  Treska’s quarters were typical for a battle cruiser, but she’d been given an officer’s room, and the private necessary had an actual water shower. She couldn’t stop the rolling wave of joy that gripped her, and it was all she could do not to stumble into the cubicle with her clothes still on. When the water hit her skin, she laughed out loud.

  For five whole minutes, warm water sluiced over her naked skin and she reveled in it. The wrist on which she wore her trank shooter was a swath of paler skin next to the color she’d picked up on Guerre. As much as the sonics and the ultra-violet scanners did, only water seemed to completely erase the feeling that her skin was coated in crystal dust. It would explain why the crew kept acting oddly around her. Guerran crystal had a lot to answer for.

  While she was toweling off, Commander Wullas chimed her door panel. Still wrapped in the towel, she released the panel for the medical officer.

  Commander Wullas wore the uniform as one bred to it. Her smooth appearance couldn’t have been any neater, from the regulation haircut to the perfectly-starched creases of the uniform. Boots so shiny you could check your teeth in them, and a regulation greeting precision-engineered for her status. She guided a portable diagnostic kit on an anti-grav cart into the room. “Good afternoon, Vice Huntress.”

  “Sorry I’m not dressed.” Treska pointed to the necessary door. “It’s not every day a girl gets five minutes in water to get clean.”

  Wullas paused. Treska could read in her expression that the officer was sizing up the situation, analyzing, and adapting. Her features softened a second later. “I would have asked you to disrobe anyway. Let’s see you now.”

  Treska had been very naked in front of medical personnel before, and it shouldn’t have bothered her. One didn’t worry about showing skin when one was more concerned about showing bone and muscle tissue. But something in Commander Wullas’s expression made her feel more exposed than not having skin. The other woman’s fingers were professional as she probed cuts and bruises and scanned for internal injuries. “Amazing,” she murmured. Her fingers, gentle as they were, were insistent as they loosened the towel from around Treska’s breasts. “You had a few broken ribs, but they knit themselves in record time.”

  The Commander’s fingers traveled over her ribs. Treska squashed the tickle impulse and insisted the light touches remained professional, that it was only her mind that tricked her into thinking the woman’s touch might be anything more. She lifted Treska’s breast, and murmured, “Responsive,” when her nipple tightened.

  Treska leaned back and frowned. “My breasts weren’t injured in the crash,” she muttered. But the last time she’d had her shirt off had been the floor of the crystal cavern, in Micah’s arms. Her body heated at the memory. His head had rested between her breasts.

/>   Wullas jerked her head up. For the briefest of seconds, her pupils were dilated. She snapped her mouth closed and turned away, affixing a mask over her face. “I’m sorry. You’ve had reconstruction over that part of your body. The syntha-skin is astounding. A true masterwork.”

  “It’s not syntha-skin. It’s vat-grown tissue and reconstructed nerve endings. Medical nanites.” Treska noted the mask, but didn’t say anything about it. There was no way she could still have Guerre crystal on her. Were these seasoned crew members really so unnerved by her presence? She pushed back in order to reclaim some personal space. “I can take a beating and still keep coming.”

  “Indeed you can.” The medical officer wouldn’t look at her. “Whoever rebuilt you was an artist.” The other woman continued her examination of Treska’s nude body, but acquiesced when she refused the full gynecological exam. “I still need to swab.” This time, her eyes were sympathetic, and her movements were quick and efficient.

  The woman’s gentle hands continued over her body, shifting the towel away as the officer examined her. “Good field technique.” She consulted the diagnostic scanner. “Your numbers are a little elevated, but that’s to be expected.” The other woman gave her a penetrating glance. “In the company of a dangerous enemy.”

  Treska searched the Scimitar’s databanks for news updates from the confines of her room. Wullas had notified her that her presence caused “additional stress” on the crew, and insisted that, if Treska wanted to move about the ship, the first officer would escort her personally. Additional stress, my ass. She knew a dodge when she saw one. The Scimitar was a warship, and if one Vice Hunter caused a crew full of seasoned soldiers “additional stress,” then they were about as seasoned as a protein cube. No, the Captain wanted her out of the way of something.

  Fair enough. She didn’t want to be bothered anyway. She used the room’s communications panel to check on Micah’s vital signs. Green across the board. The man did well unconscious. Her lips twisted wryly. She remembered Enlightenment’s disgruntled tone when he remarked on Micah’s tendency to sprawl in his sleep. But there was no sprawling in stasis, no matter how much your body may have wanted the stretch. She remembered her own time just out of stasis, and how her body couldn’t respond the way her mind wanted it to. It was a time of much frustration for her, and not just physically.

  ***

  She searched the names of the missing and dead for the hundredth time as they scrolled past her on the info panel mounted to her recovery pod. Nothing. Not even a letter jumped out and said, Hey! I am part of your name! She knew how to walk, how to speak, knew how to cut a parpa-melon into a flower and which way to insert a data crystal into an info-terminal, but she didn’t know her name or remember the taste of a cheese sandwich.

  She darkened the panel and bit her lip at the sight of the bitter ovoids in the cup, waiting for her to take them. No one in Special Affairs had told her specifically that the inhibs were a secret, yet she had never failed to notice that the other residents of the physical rehab center went to the standard government medical facility for checkups, while she was sent to the Special Affairs private med-center. The same one the Director himself went to, as well as the Prime Minister and his top tier of personal advisors. She always figured it was because of her amnesia. And maybe…a little fondness for her by the Prime Minister.

  “I understand you’re considering our offer to join us.” The Prime Minister’s lean frame filled the doorway to her new room at the new medical facility.

  Her head was still immobilized. Microcarbon fiber mesh covered her scalp. It would act as scaffold for new skin cells to bond to while keeping infection out. The bone reconstruction in her arms was nearly complete, and as soon as her hair started growing back, she’d be allowed to start physical training. “Why have I been brought here?” she asked. Her voice was rough from the caustic dust she’d breathed in during the attack. They’d given her a new set of artificially-grown lungs, but it would take months for her vocal cords to repair naturally. Whatever. She didn’t need to sing songs to learn how to move again.

  “You’ll be a very special employee of the New Union government,” Vakess replied, coming into the room. He walked with the aristocratic bearing of his ancestors, his dark hair and pale skin framing classical, yet strong features. His personal interest in her made her feel deeply honored, and she wanted to deserve his attention. “Can you remember anything?”

  She tried to shake her head, but the ring around her skull wouldn’t give. “Nothing. I feel so useless.”

  “Nonsense.” He leaned his body over the bed so she could look at him straight. “What’s before—it doesn’t matter. That’s a gift of the New Union. No matter who we were before, we all start fresh now.” He took her bandaged fingers in his. “I gave up my titles, my family name, and the outmoded class system that afforded me privileges that I didn’t earn. It would have been easier if I’d been the one to lose my memory.” His hand felt warm where her fingers touched, and that connection to another being comforted her. “I want the New Union to succeed. It will shape me, and it will shape you, as well. We will let the New Union rebuild us from the ground up.” His fingers gently brushed her cheek. “Do you trust me, Treska?”

  She nodded. “I do, sir.”

  His eyes, a warm and luminous topaz, held her own. “I won’t let you down.”

  ***

  She’d made up her mind at that moment to leave her past behind. Vakess was right. Whatever she’d been, whatever life she lived before the Marauders came, it couldn’t ever come back. She had the chance to escape the hell of crumbling buildings and screaming people and a sky filled with fire. To exchange an out-of-control past with a future of her own construction.

  Guerre had put that at risk. Micah had put that at risk. The life she’d built for herself had been enough, until now. Enlightenment’s words, however, wouldn’t leave her alone. She found herself wondering if she’d ever tasted a cheese sandwich, and her mind told her that Micah would know.

  She searched her pack and found the chain wound through with crystal. Enlightenment had sealed it in a blister of syntha-skin for Micah. A psypath medical device, used by their healers to heal fractured minds the same way she’d used the syntha-skin to heal the cut that had hidden the artifact.

  She still couldn’t believe it. Mindsnakes destroyed. They slithered in, coerced and manipulated, forced a mind down pathways according to someone else’s will.

  She touched her scalp. You couldn’t feel microcarbon fiber mesh once skin had grown over it, any more than you could feel where regenerated bone began and your original bones had left off. But she still imagined she could feel the criss-crossing of tiny fibers, forcing skin cells to regrow along programmed pathways, pausing at intersections to mutate just enough to become whatever the programming needed it to become. Skin cells became hair follicles, bone tissue became ligament down in her arms. All programmed by someone else’s will to rebuild her.

  From what?

  The answer didn’t lie in Union databanks, she was certain.

  She took the blister—a small thing, no larger than her palm and no thicker than her finger—and slipped it beneath her wrist cuff. The syntha-skin’s adhesive properties activated with a stroke of her thumb, and she affixed the artifact to her inner arm, underneath the cuff. It bulked her up a little, but not enough to be visibly obvious from outside.

  The Union would confiscate such an artifact immediately, and have it destroyed. For the first time, the Union’s practices didn’t seem right. First chance she got, she’d return the artifact to Enlightenment. It would have a home in his treasure trove full of outmoded junk. She could repay the Mauw’s kindness with something of value.

  She shied away from the other reason she wanted to keep the chain. Losing it would be something heartbreaking to Micah, no doubt, and she wanted to spare him that sadness. She put the thought right out of her mind. She couldn’t think about wanting to spare him the loss of his psypath ar
tifact, because that would force her to admit she wanted to spare herself the loss of her psypath.

  She touched her scalp again, still positive she could feel the artificial structure underneath, as if only memory itself kept her together.

  ***

  Episode 9: Lost Girl

  Core Decay

  Captain Iverka personally escorted Treska off the cruiser and through Capital Spaceport, his two aides trailing behind, one on each side of the capsule containing Micah’s unconscious and incapacitated body. She would not look back at the tiny readout to make sure the lights still flickered green, but she listened for the quiet chiming that indicated all stats were still normal.

  “Madam Huntress,” the Captain said. “Let me thank you once again for allowing the Scimitar to escort you to your destination. The crew—and myself—know of no greater honor than to have assisted a Vice Hunter in this most important security measure.”

  Compared to the way she’d been treated on Tenraye, she could enjoy this…respect accorded to her position.

  Don’t be ridiculous, she told herself. That’s not the way the Union works. We’re all equals. Cogs in the great machine, each doing our part. Right. And the captain wasn’t counting at all on her willingness to relate his assistance to her superiors in order to grease the skids towards his own eventual promotion.

  Her answering smile only held a hint of dryness. “Thanks for the help with the heavy lifting.” She held her wrist out for the security scanner leading from the spaceport to Central Command.

  Behind the security perimeter, they boarded a tram. The utilitarian gray of the spacedock gave way to a widening hallway lined with columns that led into the soaring rotunda of the central government offices. Eight massive columns supported the four story roof. Beyond the rotunda roof, the torus of the strato-scraper soared up, holding offices and laboratories of entire departments of government. Within the columns, turbolifts glided up and down, bearing various personnel to offices and conference areas. Seven of the turbolift columns were ornamented with a lightstrip of different color, and the eighth bore a strip of black marble backlit with white light. She started towards the turbolift in that column. “Thank you, Captain,” she said again. “I can take it from here.”