Huntress of the Star Empire Part 1 The Chase: Huntress of the Star Empire, #1

By Athena Grayson

Part 1: The Chase

Getting him into handcuffs was the easy part...keeping him out of her mind is gonna take work.

Treska Sivekka is the Huntress--the Union's most skilled bounty hunter. Her targets? The psypaths whose mental talents summoned alien attacks on the capital planet that left her body shattered and her mind a blank slate. Now the last free psypath is in her crosshairs...if only he weren't her one chance at restoring her lost memories.

Alien attacks out of nowhere left the entire system reeling, but the aftermath caused twice as much destruction to the old social orders. Psypaths like Micah Ariesis and near-humans like the Hathori people became scapegoats for inexplicable devastation...and then rebels against the repressive, reactionary government that rose from the ashes. Now the last free psypath has one chance at victory for the rebellion...but it's the last Vice Huntress who holds the key.

Fans of Star Wars and Firefly, meet your new binge-read!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Uncharted Worlds Media
• Release date: Jun 4, 2015
• ISBN: 9781513035802

Book preview

by

Athena Grayson

Copyright Notice

© 2015, 2018 Jen Sokoloski. All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Published by Uncharted Worlds Media. unchartedworldsmedia.com

Cover Artwork: Steven Novak Illustration

About The Huntress

Getting him into handcuffs was the easy part...keeping him out of her mind is gonna take work.

Treska Sivekka is the Huntress--the Union's most skilled bounty hunter. Her targets? The psypaths whose mental talents summoned alien attacks on the capital planet that left her body shattered and her mind a blank slate. Now the last free psypath is in her crosshairs...if only he weren't her one chance at restoring her lost memories.

Alien attacks out of nowhere left the entire system reeling, but the aftermath caused twice as much destruction to the old social orders. Psypaths like Micah Ariesis and near-humans like the Hathori people became scapegoats for inexplicable devastation...and then rebels against the repressive, reactionary government that rose from the ashes. Now the last free psypath has one chance at victory for the rebellion...but it's the last Vice Huntress who holds the key.

Huntress of the Star Empire is a space opera adventure with sizzle. For more about the series, visit athenagrayson.com/huntress or join the Private Readers’ Group at readers.athenagrayson.com/StarEmpire and receive notification of new releases right to your inbox.

Find Athena: athenagrayson.com | Facebook | Twitter | Private Readers’ Group

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Part One: The Chase | Part Two: The Snare | Part Three: The Catch | Part Four: The Release

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Book One: Scandal | Book Two: Fallout

Episode 1: Hot Pursuit

Prologue

The tiny Starhopper craft bobbed and staggered down the spacelanes leading to and from Capitol, the central orbit of the Civilized Worlds of the Jewel star system. It darted in and out of inbound and outbound lanes like a much more agile craft than the old hulk it actually was. The ragged man at the controls wiped sweat from his eyes and checked the readout from the rear sensors.

Quiet and green. Still, he did not allow himself to relax. His senses—the ones he trusted above the delicate technology of the hijacked spacecraft—told him differently.

He was being followed.

He flipped a switch to turn the subspace link newsfeed to audio. A voice blared into the cramped cabin. The news cycle still attended to the morning morality is security speech by Prime Minister Vakess. The pilot resisted the urge to spit when the PMs name emitted from the speakers. He settled for a mental curse in order to avoid a potential short-out of the ancient craft’s systems.

But the newsfeed soon cycled through to local events. Just before the announcer spoke the headline, his psy-senses jangled alarm. He juked the stick down a bare nanosecond before the target-lock klaxons began to sound from the rear sensors. He shut down the noise with a mental command and the announcer from subspace began speaking of the detention center break and subsequent apprehension of the dangerous criminal by the heroic efforts of the Vice Hunters.

His readouts lit up as four craft of an indeterminate make flared into existence. The viewscreen showed their sleek profiles, and maneuvers that defied logic. They’re beautiful. An ache blossomed in his chest. If only—

The viewscreen whited out as the first of the blasts vaporized his outer shielding. Seconds later, his inner shielding failed, and the cabin shuddered with the impact of a docking clamp, the clunk of talons closing on his hull a period at the end of a long sentence. He reached for the makeshift shiv that had gotten him this far, and opened a comm channel low enough on the subspace band to be ignored as simple feedback.

My name is Wenn DiVrati. I am a trained psypath. I follow the code put forth by the holy monks of Ursis Amalia. To serve all civilization. To be at peace with myself and with the universe. To master myself and my talents.

The laser cutter’s whine preceded the steadily brightening glow of a section near the back of the cabin. He rose from the pilot’s seat and balanced the shiv lightly on his fingers. I’ve escaped the Theta rehabilitation facility on the Capitol. Don’t believe the subnews reports—it’s no rehab. He ran his free hand over his bare scalp, shorn even of the topknot of his holy order, his fingers finding the pits the diodes left from where he’d ripped them from his skull. No more pain. No more blindness of the mind. Ever. This vital information must reach the Restoration effort if psypaths are to be saved from extinction. The Vice Hunters are not ordinary trackers. They—

The hiss of escaping pressure accompanied the groan of peeling metal and the first Vice Hunter stepped through. The man pointed a zapgun at him and fired. The crimson flash lit up the cabin and DiVrati flung his free hand out, his mind arrowing to a pinpoint of focused concentration.

The sensation of connecting to the universe again filled him with joy. At last! Free again to feel, to be, to sing in the universal song that coursed through all things. Such ecstasy, even as the energy blast burned his palm, singeing the skin from muscle.

The pain from his hand paled, though, compared to the shrieking that bounced around the inside of his skull. The bolt’s force dispersed, but the effects of the rehab facility had done their damage. He fell to one knee, his good hand clutching the shiv.

The Vice Hunter failed to take the advantage, staring at his zapgun and at a second energy bolt hanging in mid-air, suspended by DiVrati’s abilities. Perhaps a chance? DiVrati thought.

Please, he said. I mean no harm to you or yours. I harmed none in my escape. I seek only to leave Union space. He put the force of all his willpower behind the words, weaving the energies of conviction around them.

The man’s shoulders shifted, his internal tension ratcheting down a notch. Hope stirred in DiVrati’s heart.

The Vice Hunter stumbled forward and a woman emerged through the opening. Healix! she snapped, shoving him hard. Her movements belied a grace he hadn’t seen in ten years, ever since the New Morality swept through the Civilized Systems. It’s a mindsnake!

DiVrati sought to keep control of the situation. Wait, he said, sending a burst of will through the words in spite of the pounding in his head. I don’t want to hurt—

Her beautiful features twisted with scorn, her blue-green eyes freezing cold. Mindsnake, she repeated, the force of her own convictions slamming into his. He staggered with the sudden and strong sense of wrongness from her. Abomination… His control faltered, and so did his will.

She brought her arm up and pointed it at him, showing the cuff wrapped on her wrist. She curled her fingers into a fist and squeezed. The darts flew out of their launch tubes, too fast and too close for him to stop with his abilities, depleted as they were.

Twin spikes of pain dragged a swiftly spreading numbness through his limbs. You don’t mean to hurt, she said, leaning in close so he could hear over the buzzing in his ears. He struggled for breath against the paralysis creeping through him and thought he smelled flowers. But you do.

The wrongness crawled through him, centered on the woman. The interior walls of the ship wavered, and he thought he saw billowing silks and clouds of incense. But the temples were closed now, and the Hathori scattered or quarantined. He tried to shake his head.

You’re a mindsnake, and you can’t help being what you are.

She rose and turned away from him. Get the body. We’ll need it to collect the bounty.

They wanted him alive, the Vice Hunter protested. DiVrati felt his jaw locking up and fought it as long as possible. The connections he felt with the energies of the universe flowed through and around him, except for the woman. In her, they turned, reflected back on themselves and distorted beyond recognition. She doesn’t fit.

He’s still alive. It’s a new stasis-poison I agreed to test-run. She leaned back down and DiVrati stared up at her face. Such a lovely face. What was it about her?

In spite of the pain, he kept his eyes open and looked hard at her, with both his eyes and his extended senses. Her features blurred and shifted, revealing a different face beneath her own. No less lovely, but tinted the blue of a summer sky. So beautiful…Im-possible, he stuttered. You—the Union—wears the—face of—Hathor?

Her eyes narrowed. See, Healix? Mindsnakes are liars with no morals. They can’t even see what’s in front of their faces. Who’d confuse me with a Hathori?

DiVrati’s consciousness began to fade, and the tiny core of him panicked. The sterile whiteness of the detention center filled his mind. I can’t go back there. I’d rather die.

Most sentients, when faced with these circumstances, would wake up to find themselves in the hell they would give all to escape from. Psypaths were not most sentients, and DiVrati was a desperate man. Pain warred with the paralysis as he forced his mental abilities down neural pathways and into muscle and blood. His eyes rolled back in his head with the effort of focusing on and slowing the throbbing muscle that was his heart. He would not go back to that place. Death was preferable to the living undeath that place held.

Hear my voice, he thought, his eyes fixed on the silent, blinking amber light of the subspace comm. He shoved his last bit of willpower towards that comm, in the vain hope that the message would reach the right ears, and someone would know not of his life or his death, but merely of his existence. I am, and that is what matters.

The gray crept forward, drowning out even the yellow light. I am.

The buzzing in his ears slowed to silence. No more.

His heart beat its last.

―›»●♦◊♦●«‹―

Huntress and Prey

The hooded stranger drifted through the marketplace in the dusty spaceport, stopping here and there to examine the junk traders’ wares. Inside the rough homespun cloak, his fingers absently sifted through credit chits, seeking by touch those that were small enough in denomination to use when he settled on a purchase.

Alas, there was not much to buy. Tenraye was a poor world these days, and the galaxy was sadder for it. He remembered his first taste of Tenraye-grape wine as being the highlight of one of his father’s endless social functions, back in the days before the New Morality came sweeping through the Civilized Worlds and excesses as mild as wine-drinking had become crimes against safety.

The Civilized Worlds once prided themselves on being the most advanced of the solar systems in the Nine Sisters star cluster. But when faced with the threat of invaders, they’d knuckled under to the fear. It was easy to believe that if only the Civilized Worlds had not flaunted their wealth, their decadence, their opulence, then the Marauders would not have targeted them for conquest. After the strike on Jewel, what had once been a fringe belief became a full-fledged cultural shift, spreading like a cancer through the entire solar system. Citizens of dozens of worlds, moons, and colonies frenzied themselves to denounce all forms of Immorality. As more individuals embraced the concept, more practices were sacrificed on the altar of fear. As if the Marauders cared whether or not we drank wine, he thought. Their dreadnaughts had come from the remote outermost Jumpgate in the system, straight to the heart of the Capitol, with no more than moments’ notice, and no reason why.

But the train of thought was one he’d