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

by Athena Grayson

  Xenna emerged from the polymesh cocoon like a butterfly and stretched as she emerged into consciousness. The darkness, backlit by a red glow from a great distance, disoriented her for a moment, before she came fully awake and realized she was enjoying luxury accommodations on a garbage scow bound for the Capitol.

  She peeled herself off the wall and out of the mesh and retrieved her pack. From around her neck, she unwound the scarf holding the dead lizard and deposited it into a preservative pouch. She sealed the pouch and put it in her pack. She would need it if she hoped to get off this tub and into the Capitol, but for now, she needed her comm gear. She found the headset and encoder and assembled them, wrapping the headset around her head. “Begin Transmission: Contact established. Package incoming. Estimate time of mission between twelve and twenty standard hours. Terminate transmission. Encode and send.” She coded her authorization key and set the encoder to spool. The data would travel over subnet bands in a thin stream of low-frequency data, and travel along the most ubiquitous of broadcast information available to the public, and end up as a barely-registered flicker at the bottom of a sports ticker broadcast.

  Once the communication was sent, she set up her comm padd to download the feed and attached the encoder.

  She was scavenging through the cargo hold for the hidden cache of food and medical supplies when the comm padd pinged. She put down the lid of a crate of decommissioned medi-scanners she’d be liberating from the trash—amazing what people in the core orbits considered junk. The message the encoder translated waited for her on her padd. Blossom waits to flower among spires in jewels.

  “Oh, Ahveen.” She shook her head and looked around the garbage scow. “Not even you could add poetry to this place.” Her friend could have simply said she’d have the Delta Rose docked at The Cabochons on Capitol, but the extra layer gave a sophisticated veneer to what was a workmanlike infiltration and retrieval. Unless it didn’t work.

  The Shadow-spinner clutch did not have Hathori guidance in spiritual matters, but what they lacked in religion, they made up for in efficiency. As with the other displaced Hathori in the Web, the clutch had well-established lines of back-channel communications and transportation. And, it turned out, this particular clutch had bred the ubiquitous lizards that scuttled all over not just the waste processing center, but the entire eastern continent of Cetares. The creatures were mostly harmless, and kept down insects and other vermin, but more importantly, possessed a gland that secreted fluid that mimicked Hathori pheromones. Since a key component of the restrictions for the clutch and other Hathori were the sensors that logged their presence in any place with a security checkpoint, the lizards provided both cover and access. The Shadow-spinner clutch encoded lizard pheromones as their own scent-signature, creating an identification that anyone, Hathori or not, could use to access the places they were permitted to be. Like garbage scows collecting waste from all the inner orbits on a scheduled rotation that included priority status in a Jumpgate queue with notoriously long wait times.

  In return, she acted as steward and escort for the Shadow-spinners’ transport network. She consulted her padd and adjusted micro-atmospheric controls in nineteen other cocoons just like hers. Cocoons that held unconscious travelers and refugees, and possibly an assassin or two. The cocoons were imperfectly constructed, and the sleep was chemically induced with a home-brewed cocktail of fluid chemistry, unlike stasis pods, but travelers taking the “scenic route” as it were, did not have the luxury of either Jumpgate priority or registered travel.

  Her payment for the contacts and access to the Capitol was to monitor these cocoons and ensure the next batch of twenty made it aboard the automated scow. She monitored the occupants’ vitals and ensured the contents of cargo compartment 1-B remained tagged with pressurized atmospheric requirements, lest the breathable air be jettisoned to conserve energy.

  A box of decommissioned medi-scanners that still functioned perfectly well would not be missed. Neither would a crate of improperly-labeled painkillers, and both would be more than valuable in the frontier orbits. She tagged the boxes with tiny subnet beacons and loaded them in the compartment’s airlock tube. When they reached the Capitol orbit, she would jettison the crates and pick them up once she was back on the Delta Rose. They’d fetch a nice price on the frontier, and end up in the hands of people who needed them and knew the difference between trash and treasure.

  Her thoughts returned to the Shadow-spinners. The clutch had done amazing things, isolated as they were. The young men were competent, intelligent, and lethal. Yet in the eyes of her goddess, they were little more than children. Not unlike her Schoolboy when he first entered the Temple before the world had gone mad. When this mission was over, when Schoolboy was safe and they had the information they needed to break the New Morality’s hold on the solar system, she promised herself she would return to the clutch, teach them to be Hathori and give them back what had been stolen from them.

  And after that, she would give back what had been stolen from every Hathori. Their freedom.

  ***

  In one swift move, Captain Iverka crouched and heaved Wullas up. The commander extended her arms and punched through the emergency hatch in the ceiling. “Stop that override, Commander.”

  “Yes, Captain.” Wullas lifted herself up and out of the compartment. A moment later, her face appeared in the dark rectangle. “It might be best if we part company for awhile.”

  Treska still sprawled on the floor, reeling with Wullas’s dropped-bomb revelation. Me? Hathori? Ridiculous! But it would explain some things. The behavior of the Scimitar crew members, even—she swallowed—even Micah’s attraction to her.

  Her stomach rebelled. Did he know the truth about her? Enlightenment had said he spent a lot of time with Hathori. He had a Hathori partner. And if Micah knew, then how many other people knew?

  The captain lifted her next. His solid body almost gave her comfort for a second, because it was something that wasn’t moving and hadn’t yet lied to her. He planted his hands on her rump and shoved her upward towards Wullas.

  The commander grabbed her by the forearms and threw her body weight backwards. Iverka gave her another push upwards, and she accidentally kicked him. “Sorry!” Her response to his grunt was more automatic than sincere. She still didn’t have most of her brain wrapped around the idea that the military officers had presented. It just didn’t make any sense.

  Wullas slapped her.

  She punched the other woman back without thinking.

  Wullas reeled back, rubbing her jaw. “Sorry, but we don’t have time for your identity crisis. Save it for later. There are bars on the mid-levels that serve a wicked homebrew that’ll knock you right on your ass for half a day. Now climb, or that lift will reset and you and I will be smears.”

  She started climbing. She knew about the mid-levels bars. Vakess had tried unsuccessfully to flush out the corruption in the mid-levels, but the Director diverted his efforts. “Let the mid-levels eat themselves and focus on the rest of the solar system. As the New Morality spreads, the corruption will be choked out naturally.”

  “Like Hyborea chokes out other plants when you plant it...eh, pretty much everywhere.”

  That was one of the rare times she’d ever seen the Prime Minister smile. It made him look so much younger. Almost attractive in a severe way. Did he know I was Hathori? She missed a rung and slipped.

  Wullas turned around and glared at her. “You’re supposed to be an elite member of a special force, specially trained to be the best of the best, and something as minor as an identity crisis sets you off? Focus, dammit!”

  Treska scowled up at her. “Do you want to know what sets me off? Being lied to!” She scrambled up the access ladder at double speed. “Being manipulated! Did I really even need a medical scan?”

  “You should be asking why more people haven’t requested one!” Wullas retreated upward.

  “I had enough of them to last a lifetime when I was being rebuilt. I
checked in regularly with Special Affairs. Doctor Rimana—” was the only doctor she’d ever seen. She missed another rung and smashed her face into the wall. “Hey! The wall’s changed. I think I found a door.”

  Wullas swung down from a line of horizontal conduit. She slapped a magnetic disruption device about the size of her palm over the door after Treska pointed out the seam. “I would love to know how they did it. What made you agree? Why would you give up—of course, that’s a stupid question. If I suddenly found myself quarantined and considered a health hazard just by existing, I might also choose to surrender my species to preserve my freedom.”

  The disruptor popped, sending a shockwave out from the doors. Treska’s boots stuck together, their metal clasps momentarily magnetized by the device. Good thing, too, otherwise she’d have fallen right off the ladder. “I did not choose anything!”

  Wullas stopped. She stared at Treska for a long moment. “I’m sorry,” she finally said. “You were sentenced? Criminal background erased?”

  “No!” Treska didn’t want to speculate. “I don’t know. I don’t remember my life before the Union reconstructed me.” She used a piece of conduit from the wall to wedge the doors apart enough to fit her foot, and together, they stumbled through the crack in the doors into a deserted hallway. “The Union put me back together, rebuilt some inside parts and a lot of outside parts, and made me better.” She headed for the service-bot access panel at the end of the corridor, but stumbled as a wave of nausea hit her. Her vision blurred.

  Wullas placed a cool hand on her forehead. Treska’s hand went to her belt. “My inhibs.” She looked around. “This is a medical lab. I wonder if they have—”

  “Your scans showed traces of a suppressant cocktail in your system. Pretty strong stuff. That’s likely what masked your pheromones.” Wullas shook her head. “Hathori physiology is complex. Attempts to neutralize their pheromones have been unsuccessful.” She lifted her eyebrows. “Until you.” She held up a hand. The lab was deserted, but the sounds of activity could be heard through the corridor doors.

  Treska knelt and used one of her tools from the belt to unseal the service-bot access panel. It would be a tight fit, but she and Wullas could make it. She wriggled in and Wullas followed her.

  “Those inhibitors of yours were probably doing an adequate job.” Wullas’s voice echoed through the tunnel.

  Treska inched forward and her hand went into a puddle of lubricant. “Ew.” She wiped it on the other sleeve of her jacket and continued forward, wincing when her body passed through the puddle “I hear that unspoken ‘but’.”

  “Hathori pheromones don’t just come from a single gland. It’s a whole system. Connected to the other systems in your body. I have no idea what the long-term effects of suppression of that system are. You’d have to consult with a medical facility on Hathor.”

  She still didn’t believe Wullas about herself. But she kept the panic at bay by pretending they were talking about someone else. Her hand found a hole. “Oh! Vertical access here.” With much wriggling and squirming, she managed to move over the hole far enough so that her legs went down first, and began climbing downward.

  “If I were you, I’d get as far away from here as you can. The frontier orbits aren’t a bad life.”

  Running sounded better and better. The Union had given her a life and a purpose. She remembered her conviction when she’d said just that to Micah. The Union lied to me about my own species. In fact, the only one who didn’t lie to me is Micah. He’d never been anything but a mindsnake. But that wasn’t entirely true, either. He’d been a kind man with a sense of humor and genuine affection for the people he cared about. He had a sense of honor.

  She couldn’t shake the flash of memory that returned to her. Wenn DiVrati, whose eyes had met hers and softened, showing pain and regret and exhaustion and resignation. Who’d called her beautiful and died, rather than go back to the place where they held him. “I can’t leave him,” she said. “I can’t leave Micah.”

  “He isn’t your problem right now.” Wullas put a hand on her ankle, and Treska turned to look at the other woman. Wullas’s green eyes were steady. “Your psypath is in the past. Cope with your present, if you want a future.”

  “Where do I go next?”

  She heard commotion above their heads and hoped it wasn’t a service-bot, heading down to clean. The things were small, but durable and solid as mineral-rich rock. “Wherever you go, go fast!”

  She scrambled downward until she came to an intersection and swung around inside. “I hope this is the way out.” Sounds of movement grew louder and she moved faster, finally bursting out of the panel at the end of this tunnel.

  Into a room full of startled government employees.

  Wullas tumbled out behind her.

  A hundred pairs of eyes pinned her. She was filthy and confused and tired and heartsick. She held up her wrist and flashed the ident-tattoo. “Special Affairs. Official business. Nobody saw nothing, understand?” She glared at the closest row of individuals. The Treemian woman looked away. Her deskmate, a Vultron male, still gaped. Several humans shuffled their feet and when she glared at them, they froze.

  For a second, nothing moved. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the lift doors, the light above them red for out of order.

  The red began to flash. A chime sounded. “Attention personnel of Government Plaza levels four hundred through eight hundred and twenty-two. A security breach has occurred and lockdown is in effect by order of Special Affairs. Consult personal comm devices for specific protocols and instructions based on your location.”

  Wullas prodded her. “Go!”

  Treska bolted towards the exit.

  In the corridor, she found another service-bot tunnel and dove into it just as a bot emerged. This time, she climbed. Whenever she came to an intersection, she chose up. Up and up, until her hands were sore, and until she thought she might be climbing right out of the Capitol’s atmosphere. Between one minute and the next, her allies had vanished. Her status, revoked. Her access, denied. She climbed until her muscles cramped and finally reached an intersection where the service-bots connected to the lift tubes. She stumbled out of a service-bot panel covered in grime to find herself in a maintenance dock with a platform leading outside. Maintenance workers moved back and forth with pallets, anti-grav sleds, and wheeled carts. She moved through the aisles of parts and equipment and sidestepped an automated cart before she came to the actual loading dock. A transport was just closing its doors.

  “Hey! What are you doing up here!” The dock foreman pointed to her.

  She could have talked herself out of it, or maybe still flashed her ident-tattoo. But that would require the conviction that she was in the right, and her conviction had been left somewhere in an access tunnel, drowned in a puddle of lubricant. She ran.

  The transport was just lowering from the dock to pull out into air traffic. Her boots thunked on the plates of the loading dock as she increased her speed. Thunk, thunk, thunkthunkthunkthunk—And then nothing as her next step took her out into the air. Wind rushing in her ears, the noise of the traffic whining behind the wind, she plunged downward and the roof of the transport rose to meet her.

  Thunk!

  Untethered

  Treska dropped off the transport as traffic slowed near the Commerce Plaza. Advertisements for every sort of thing from shampoo to personal security systems blazed from mammoth projection-panels above the heads of the pedestrians. Smaller adverts flashed and scrolled from pole-mounted screens and floating bots that hovered back and forth in a set area.

  For once, she was grateful for the sensory overload.

  Someone bumped into her. “Hey, watch—” the man started to growl.

  She scowled back at him and held up her wrist instinctively. He flinched and stepped back. “Hey,” he repeated, his tone more deferential now. He took a breath and became even more respectful. “Hey,” he murmured.

  Her hand dropped to her bare
waist. Shit, she thought. My inhibs.

  It all fell into place again—the inhibs, the Voice, the Commander’s medical scans. She flinched at the stranger, who sought to move closer to her.

  “I’m sorry I bumped into you, my lady,” he said. “Are you hurt?”

  A sick feeling clenched her stomach. She shook her head. “No, I—” Stars, he didn’t even realize what he was doing, did he? His hand cupped her elbow and his body leaned towards her in a non-verbal gesture of protection.

  She backed away. “I’m fine,” she said. “Thank you for your concern.”

  “You should sit down,” he said. “You don’t look well.”

  The poor bastard was falling all over himself to get closer to her. Her skin crawled, not from the man’s behavior, but from the knowledge that she—her body, that is—made him do things no good Union cit should want to do with a stranger.

  Confusion twisted her insides and she ran, dodging the shoppers visiting the kiosks and loitering outside of the storefronts. Knowing full well that it was insane, she hopped up on the platform’s safety rail and ran along the bar until she spotted a moving walkway below, and jumped.

  For one endless nanosecond, she hung there in the air, no connection to solid ground. For once, her external state matched her internal state and an odd kind of peace settled over her. The wind whistled past her ears and brought with it the thought that if she just shifted a centimeter or two to the left, she could miss the walkway altogether and keep falling, suspended endlessly in rushing wind and empty air.

  Too soon, the walkway rushed up to meet her and she landed hard, the shock traveling all the way up from her boots to the top of her head, snapping her teeth together. She looked around at the startled faces of sents on the walkway. A tall Vultron woman turned her head away. “Thrill-seekers,” she muttered with a sniff.

  Treska stood up and wrapped her arms across her body. She could feel the eyes on her more acutely than ever before, and the sensation made her body tingle. She felt transparent, as if every one of these strangers could see right through her, right through to the lie she lived. To the lie she was.