Spider Star: Star Master, #2

By Mel Dunay

Jetay must destroy the Spiderstar…with or without his new allies! The psychic warrior Jetay has freed himself and his brother from slavery, and joined Lady Lanati and the Partisans in their interstellar war against the evil Red Knights. Unfortunately the Partisan military is an undisciplined, poorly led force, and the Red Knights grow ever closer to their goal of unleashing the ancient, deadly weapon known as the Spiderstar. Lanati has a plan to destroy the Spiderstar, but it would force Jetay to choose between love and duty. Even worse, he might have to use the same memory removal techniques which were once used against him….

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mel Dunay
• Release date: Jun 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223150756

Book preview

PROLOGUE

––––––––

Exiting hyperspace in five minutes, Jetay announced over the comm system. "All crew and passengers aboard the Vanner, please report to the cockpit."

Are you sure Sekdaa Shipyards isn’t going to shoot us out of the sky? Khed asked him telepathically.

I doubt it, Jetay told him. We have something they want.

In ship’s time, it had been five days since the death of the Red Knight who had been hunting them, five days since Jetay had freed himself and his brother from the control of the smuggler Ularti.

Five days since Jetay, Khed and their passengers had defeated the Sickle, the privateer frigate which had hunted them through three star systems in pursuit of Lady Lanati, a member of Partisan Command who had acquired the blinkdrive, a stunning new technology that could change the shape of space warfare forever, and potentially give the Partisans the upper hand over their enemies the Loyalists, who served the oppressive High Council.

Jetay and Khed and the others had spent the first of those days repairing the Vanner and stripping the crippled frigate of everything useful they could find. Jetay did not have enough time or people to launch the dead individually into space, so the frigate was their cemetery. Once they were sure that the entire crew of the enemy frigate was dead, they transferred the remains of those who had died aboard the Vanner, including Ularti, to the frigate.

Jetay had held a brief funeral service for the dead men, with Essem, the Sickle’s captain and its only survivor, attending, and then used the Vanner to nudge the frigate into a vector towards a nearby black hole. Essem was the Vanner’s prisoner now, but he seemed grateful to be alive and free from the power of the evil Red Knight who had overseen the hunt for Lady Lanati. Once that was done, the Vanner had jumped into hyperspace, on a vector for the Partisan-aligned Sekdaa Shipyards. From the defeat of the frigate to the Vanner’s departure had taken a day and a half in ship’s time, but they had been in the ergosphere surrounding a black hole, which had created a time dilation effect. In the outside universe, six weeks had passed.

Jetay twisted in his seat, to keep an eye on the passengers as they showed up. The jhamool called Annut arrived first, a large beast who looked like a brown bear brought from the long-lost Homeworld, but with the hooked beak of a falcon. He had been trained to protect Lady Lanati, to work with her bodyguard Menevis, and to respond to telepathic commands from either of them. The animal lumbered over to one of the seats closest to the door and climbed into it. The seat groaned under his weight but held, for now.

The prisoner Essem entered next, shoved into the cockpit by Menevis. Captain Essem was a bland looking man of average height with a forgettable face. His most distinctive trait right now was his limp.

Go easy on him, Jetay told Menevis. The medbay’s only just gotten Essem’s leg fixed.

Essem had broken his leg when his crew attempted to board the Vanner, but the freighter’s automated medbay had managed to fix him up. He was almost completely healed now.

Your concern for my prisoner is touching, Menevis sneered. But I prefer to remind him that we’re not on the same side.

Maybe not right now, Essem said. But honestly, I have no reason to love the Red Knights or the people they work for. I’d be willing to join the Partisans if they’d have me.

That’s not for us to decide, Jetay said firmly. But I hope they will.

Menevis steered Essem to the seat opposite Annut’s and then stepped back to strap Annut in. Menevis took the seat in front of Essem’s. Either he didn’t really expect much trouble from the prisoner, or he assumed his beast would handle it.

Menevis was Lanati’s cousin, although he didn’t look like her. He was a tall, thin, rather ungainly man, around Jetay’s age, with a long, sour face. He had the pale skin of someone who had northern ancestry and didn’t spend much time out in the sun. The paleness, combined with his dark hair and eyes, gave Menevis a washed-out, corpselike look. Jetay sometimes wondered if Menevis chose to play up this look of unwholesomeness as some kind of affectation, but Jetay didn’t know enough about fashions among the nobility to be sure.

You’re even worse than Essem is, Menevis told Jetay. You’re always panting after my cousin like a hungry dog. The only reason you want to join the Partisans is because you want her.

Jetay keep his face stony. Your cousin is an impressive woman, but I am on her side because we have the same enemies. If she and you served the Red Knights, I would have nothing to do with you.

Just then, Khed walked in.

We could still go back to having nothing to do with them, he told Jetay telepathically. Hand over the lady and the blinkdrive, say our goodbyes, and fly off to the Outer Worlds, free as a bird.

No, Jetay told him. The indenture chips that enslaved us were authorized by the High Council, and the woman who now calls herself Pharaoh. This war isn’t just the Partisans’ fight, it’s everyone’s fight.

Khed frowned at him, but didn’t say anything more as he took a seat just behind Jetay. He was Jetay’s younger brother, a short wiry man in his early twenties. He was also a mechomancer, a psychic with the ability to analyze machines at a glance. Khed was the one who kept the Vanner running. The two of them were the only crew that the Vanner had right now.

Previously the little freighter had belonged to Ularti, an unsuccessful smuggler who had taken the two brothers as indentured servants, and had arranged to install indenture chips in their brains so that anyone who checked could see that she owned their labor. But she had also found a way to induce pain in her servants using the indenture chips, and had essentially made them her slaves until Jetay had learned how to use his own psychic powers to burn out the chips. Ularti would’ve killed Jetay then, but Lanati had killed Ularti first.

The last to arrive in the cockpit were the two female passengers: Lanati and Shenti. The two women made a sharp contrast. Shenti was short and slender, around Khed’s age and height but almost painfully thin, with a narrow, brown face dominated by a long chin and a pair of shrewd gray eyes. She was easy to overlook, and preferred to keep it that way.

She looked warily at Annut as she entered the cockpit, and the beast growled, a faint rumble deep in his belly. Jetay knew that Menevis had told the beast to do that, as surely as if he had heard the command himself.

Charming as always, Menevis, Shenti said. Enjoy your fun while it lasts. They won’t stand for that sort of thing at the Shipyards.

I don’t think they like spies at the Shipyards any better than I do, Menevis retorted.

Shenti claimed to be a plain, simple seamstress, but Jetay knew she was a spy for the Partisans, and a defector from the Star Navy’s Intelligence Department. Khed had gotten fond of her, and Jetay wasn’t sure he approved. But he said nothing. After all, Khed didn’t approve of Jetay’s attraction to Lanati either.

Enough of this, Menevis, Lanati said wearily. Stop quarreling with people who are on our side. Shenti, sit down.

The authority in her voice was enough to make Menevis shut up and Shenti take a seat in front of Annut. Jetay could strike that tone of authority but it didn’t come to him naturally, the way it did to Lanati.

She was tall and graceful, with large, gentle eyes, dark and yet filled with a light from within. She had a heart-shaped face and what Jetay considered to be curves in all the right places. Her skin was about the same color as Jetay’s own, but he suspected she had a more varied ancestry than he did, because she looked like a combination of all the three peoples who had been taken into space thousands of years ago: the light-skinned northerners, the dark-skinned southerners and the people of Egypt.

She came from the nobility of Hedjet, an old-fashioned place where people with great psychic power were handed great responsibilities, and expected to serve their world as a matter of honor. She had the ability to see the future to some extent, and held the title of deputy-nomarch on her world.

Lanati seated herself upfront in the co-pilot’s seat.

You are going to need my help, when we enter the Sekdaa System, she said.

I know, Jetay told her. Exiting hyperspace in 5...4...3...2...1.

The misty gray of hyperspace faded from the forward viewscreen, replaced with a view of the star system.

Jetay hadn’t been here before, and only knew Sekdaa Shipyards by reputation. He had never seen a star system like this one. Every gas giant had orbiting satellites and patrol craft to prevent unauthorized ships from skimming fuel from the atmospheres of the gas giants. Every moon, asteroid and rocky planet seemed to have a mining facility on it.

Only one planet had the right atmosphere and gravity to support human life easily: Sekdaa itself, a blue-tinged sphere ninety million miles from its yellow sun. Dozens of orbital ship docks and factories swarmed its libration points, glittering in steel and white. Out on the frontier, most systems were underpopulated, and only had enough system patrol ships to cover the ecliptic plane where the planetary bodies all orbited. Sekdaa was not one of the Inner Worlds, the first worlds settled by humans after their abduction by the evil Duat and their escape from the Duat thousands of years ago. But it was perhaps the most powerful of the Middle Worlds, the next layer of planets outward from the Inner Worlds.

Lanati had told Jetay that Sekdaa and her own homeworld of Hedjet were the innermost and richest planets in the Partisan Alliance. Here, they had enough ships and drones to patrol a spherical volume of space that had the plane of Sekdaa’s orbit as its perimeter.

On his display, Jetay could see a destroyer only a few light seconds away. It hailed them.

Unknown ship, identify yourself! A stern voice barked. The destroyer wasn’t broadcasting video, only audio.

Jetay straightened the collar of his Partisan uniform. Lanati had given him a temporary commission in the Partisan military so he could help her with her mission, and Shenti had made the uniform for him. Jetay hoped the Partisans would make it permanent; breaking the indentures had made him and his brother outlaws. He set the Vanner’s external comm system to broadcast video as well as audio.

"This is Captain Jetay of the Vanner, he said. We’re carrying Lady Lanati on a mission for the Partisan High Command. Please advise us on the most secure approach to Sekdaa."

There was a long silence, longer than the two or three seconds it would take for the destroyer’s answer to reach the Vanner.

Our records do not list any one of that name and rank with the Partisan Navy, the voice from the destroyer finally said. 

It was a temporary commission, on my authority, Lanati put in.

You’ll have to prove your identity, Lady Lanati, said the voice from the destroyer. Your video transmission certainly looks convincing, but we do not have the resources on this ship to verify your voice print.

I was given a numeric code when I undertook this mission, Lanati said. I was supposed to transmit it to any Partisan ship which challenged me during this mission. Do I have your permission to transmit it?

Please do. The voice sounded skeptical.

Jetay watched as Lanati typed in the code and set it to transmit. Then he had to wait while the destroyer’s crew received the code, checked it against their orders, and sent their reply.

Finally a response came: not just audio, but video as well.

A flustered-looking young officer with the insignia of a lieutenant commander appeared on the viewscreen.

My apologies, Lady Lanati, he said. It appears that you are who you say you are. We will escort you to Sekdaa planet. By the time we get there, traffic control should be able to give you a landing vector to a secure location. But first, I must wake up my Captain and brief him on the situation.

Thank you, Lanati said, and closed the comm channel.

Well, she said, It looks like we’ve finally come to the end of the mission that I hired this ship for. Jetay, what plans have you and Khed made?

Jetay shrugged.

We’ll join the Partisans, if you’ll have us. We broke our indentures, and that makes us outlaws as far as the High Council is concerned.

Not to mention, the High Council came up with the indenture laws and those chips that were used to torture us, Khed put in. We are not on their side, so I guess that means we’re on yours.

And this ship belongs to Sekdaa Shipyards, and therefore the Partisans, if it belongs to anyone, Jetay said. "They’ve had a lien against the Vanner ever since Ularti bought those engines from Sekdaa Shipyards on credit."

You will both be welcome among the Partisans, Lanati said. We can always use talents like yours.

And that’s before they find out about your part in securing the blinkdrive technologies for the Partisan Unified Command, Shenti said. You’ll both be hailed as heroes.

Not that you deserve it, Menevis said bitterly. Everything you did, you did to save your own skins.

That’s not true, Lanati protested.

Jetay knew better than take Menevis’s complaints too seriously, but this time the nobleman’s words agreed with his own feelings.

I wasn’t trying to save my skin, he thought. Sometimes I was trying to save my brother’s skin and other times I was doing it because it was the right thing to do. But Menevis’s not wrong: I was basically an impostor pretending to be a military officer for most of this mission. If I continue with the Partisan military, would I still be an impostor, or would I become the real thing?

He reached out with his mind, trying to contact the local Akh, the benign spirit who lived in the yellow star of this system. He laid his problem before the Akh.

A faint, distant voice sounded inside his head. This is a problem you must solve for yourself, the voice told him. It may not be a solution that comes to you quickly, or easily, but it will come to you. And with that, he had to be satisfied.

CHAPTER ONE

––––––––

Khed scurried through the glossy, white-walled corridors of Dock 5 at Sekdaa Shipyards, feeling small and grubby. Even though he had been living here for the past three months, he still didn’t know his way around all that well.

I’m lost, and I’m going to be late, he thought. He still had fifty minutes to launch time, and he knew his brother wouldn’t launch without him, but Khed could easily spend those fifty minutes wandering in circles. The Vanner was a support ship to a carrier group now, and Khed didn’t want Jetay to get in trouble for failing to launch on time.

He rounded a corner, and collided with a tall woman.

Hey, watch it! She snapped.

Sorry, Khed said. I’m supposed to be at docking berth 12-20, and I’m not sure where that is.

12-20? The woman asked.

She squinted down at him, through a scar that slashed downward across her face from right to left. Whatever had done it had taken out her right eye at the same time; she wore a bionic one there. Her coloring was the same as Khed’s or Jetay’s - bronze skin, dark left eye and hair - which meant that her ancestors from the Great Abduction had been mostly Egyptian. She wore gold earrings and necklaces with a colorful red and blue spacer’s suit, a little startling on a woman who looked to be in her late forties or early fifties.

Khed realized he was staring at her, and lowered his eyes. No point in aggravating some hotshot smuggler or pirate who had a taste for lost causes and had decided to throw with the Partisan Alliance.

You’re in luck, little man, the woman said. "This is Section 12, and my ship the Unlucky Fox is parked at 12-26, just a few slots down from yours. Come with me."

Thank you, Captain.

Don’t mention it. And the name’s Mauti. Who might you be?

Khed introduced himself.

Mauti stiffened and shot him another glance.

Khed, huh? From the way my daughter talked about you, I figured you’d be taller.

Khed gulped. Your-your daughter?

Shenti can be dangerous, no matter how harmless she looks, he thought. Just how dangerous is Shenti’s mom?

Mauti grinned, an expression that sent shivers down Khed’s spine.

Shenti’s her name, you should know her pretty well by now. You and your outfit have been her pet project for the past three months. Every time we’ve made contact with her, she’s talked of nothing else.

Khed’s mouth had gone dry. He worked his tongue around before saying: That’s funny, she hasn’t mentioned you.

She wouldn’t, Mauti retorted. Opsec.

You’re with Partisan Intelligence too? Khed said. Today was just getting worse and worse.

Me? I’m just the pilot. My husband used to be freelance intelligence, Mauti grumbled. "But Shenti’s got it into her head that these idiots with the Partisans stood a fighting chance against the High Council, so I guess we are with Partisan Intelligence. Can’t let our daughter down, now can we?"

Of course not, Khed said. Family comes first, even when they side with this bunch.

He could understand her disdain for the Partisans. The richest world in the Alliance was Sekdaa, and it was only fighting the High Council because the Council had snubbed Sekdaa in the last round of military contracts. The planet in the Partisan Alliance which had been settled the longest was Hedjet, and Khed assumed they were all as posh and pretentious as Menevis and Lanati.

Here’s your slot, Mauti said. 12-20.

Jetay emerged from the airlock.

There you are, he said to Khed, and added telepathically: You could have let me know.

Yeah, well, I was lost and it was embarrassing. I don’t want to talk about it, Khed retorted. Aloud, he said: "Jetay, this is Captain Mauti of the Unlucky Fox. She’s Shenti’s mom. Mauti, this is my brother Jetay."

The White Knight, huh? Mauti showed her teeth in something that didn’t look like a smile.

I was training to be one at one time, Jetay said stiffly. I hope to finish my training under Samar...

Faster than Khed could react, Mauti pulled her baton and lunged at Jetay, swinging at his head with her baton.

Jetay dodged sideways. The moment before Mauti’s weapon could connect with his shoulder, the weapon bounced off the faint shimmer of a mindshield.

Mauti hammered Jetay again, and once again he shifted his shields in time.

Hey! What the blazes do you think you’re doing? Khed demanded. He grabbed Mauti by the arm, trying to stop her.

Don’t. Touch. Me. Mauti snarled.

Let her go, Khed. Jetay’s voice rang out, stern and full of authority. She needs to get this out of her system, one way or another.

Khed let go of Mauti’s arm. That tone of voice from Jetay always bothered him. On the one hand, he was glad to hear Jetay asserting himself, instead of just drifting through life without caring. On the other, it was Lanati and Samar who’d gotten him to do that, in the service of their pet causes, and their pet causes might just get Jetay killed.

Mauti let loose a scream, and lunged at Jetay, battering his shields over and over and again. Jetay stood impassively and watched as her strikes slowed to a stop.

You were one of their victims, weren’t you? Jetay asked gently.

Khed began to understand what was going on. The White Knights had once been a revered order of psychics, who fought for peace, justice and other fancy words. Then the mindbenders, a group of sadists with psychic powers, had secretly taken over the Order of White Knights, torturing mundanes and weaker psychics and sealing their victims’ memories so that the mindbenders wouldn’t get caught. About seventeen years ago,the mindbenders had been exposed, and the White Knights dissolved.

Officially, the Red Knights were a more honorable replacement, but actually they were the same old mindbenders, protected from punishment by their friends in high places, and still up to their old tricks.

I don’t want your pity, White Knight! Mauti snapped.

I only ask because I...went through the same thing you did, a long time ago.

Yeah, that’s what my daughter said. I wanted to see for myself what you were.

And what have you learned, Mauti?

Khed saw her face harden.

The mindbenders were all about power, Mauti said at last. One of them would have tried to hurt me. Maybe he’d make it look like an accident, if he cared about his reputation among the Partisans. But one way or another, he’d get his licks in at me, teach me not to come after him like that.

Did I do that to you? Jetay asked softly.

No. You’re alright, I guess. Mauti turned to Khed. "I still wish my daughter wasn’t hanging around someone who had that for a brother, but we’ll talk about that later. See you around."

Jetay dismissed the incident with Shenti’s mother from his mind the moment he and Khed entered the T-shaped airlock. The Vanner’s topside hatch was docked to the bottom of the T, so they had to climb down through the hatch and onto the cargo bay ladder to get into their ship.

Jetay had been over the ship half a dozen times in the past week, but its current state never ceased to amaze him. He glanced down at the cargo bay, which had been cleaned until it shone. Most of the old shipping containers latched to the deck had been removed, and replaced with some kind of complicated electromagnetic equipment that the Vanner needed for its new role as a search and rescue support craft. Lanati was smiling up at them, waiting at the foot of the ladder with Shenti at her left hand and Menevis and Annut at her right. The women wore sleek, short-sleeved white jumpsuits with gold jewelry, and Lanati carried her boarding pike on her belt, with the head retracted and the shaft collapsed to the length of a baton.

Are you sure they didn’t give us some other freighter from the same class? Jetay asked Khed. They built thousands of them right here at the Shipyards, after all.

"No way, brother! I oversaw the upgrades myself. The Vanner’s had a major hull cleaning, an external comm array that actually retracts, a set of railgun turrets topside to replace the old plasma turrets, upgraded maneuvering thrusters, and a full overhaul of the engines that allows them to double as synchronized blinkdrives."

"That’ll come in handy," Jetay said. He stepped off the ladder and saluted Lanati. He started to move towards the front of the cargo bay, and the others fell in behind him.

The last time the Vanner had made any blinkjumps, Khed had ended up synchronizing both engines to a prototype blinkdrive to make it happen. Their opponent had managed to knock one of the engines offline, which had crippled the Vanner’s ability to blinkjump.

I’m glad you like what’s been done to the ship, Lanati said. "It wasn’t easy to get funding for it, but my part in this is a diplomatic mission, and I need to be conducting it from my own craft, not Admiral Nebeti’s flagship.

And this was one ship you knew for a fact could handle the stresses of blinkjumping, Jetay said. He passed through the doorway from the cargo bay into the main corridor of the ship.

More importantly, there was only one pilot I knew who could handle the stresses of blinkjumping, Lanati said. "I told Aunt Nebeti I needed you on the Vanner, so instead she took Essem as the Scarab’s pilot."

One of Mother’s less intelligent career moves Menevis said sourly. It’s not like she can trust Essem.

He’s the only officer from either faction to fight a blink-capable ship, and survive, Lanati pointed out. If Jetay is the closest thing we have to an expert at this point, Essem is the next closest. Besides, I’m sure Aunt Nebeti will keep a close eye on him.

I think these bigshot aristocrats need to stop marrying each other, Khed grumbled telepathically. Sometimes it seems like half the people we’ve met since getting mixed up with the Partisans are related to Lanati.

Most of the Partisan Navy thinks the blinkdrive is a disaster looking for a place to happen, Jetay told him. I think Nebeti was only willing to give it a shot because it had been designed by her estranged husband Danus, and she knew he would deliver.

Was it Nebeti’s idea to make her son Menevis and her niece Lanati part of the team who were going to get the blinkdrive from Danus?

I doubt it. I’m guessing someone on the Partisan Council thought it wouldn’t hurt to send a blood relative and a relative by marriage to talk to Danus. Besides, Admiral Nebeti isn’t technically Lanati’s aunt, just some kind of cousin of her father’s whom she calls an aunt for convenience.

They reached the cockpit, and everyone strapped in.

By the way, Shenti, I just met your mother, Khed put in nervously.

Oh, dear, Shenti said after a pause. I hope she didn’t frighten you too badly.

Absolutely not, Khed retorted.

Jetay smiled to himself. He could tell when his brother was lying.

Mauti did hammer away on Jetay’s shields for about ten minutes until she got tired of it, Khed went on.

She had her reasons, and it was good practice for me, Jetay put in.

And how come she - and I guess your father - know all about us, and we don’t know anything about them? Khed demanded.

They are very inquisitive about the friends I make, Shenti said mildly.

"This is Lieutenant Commander Jetay of the Vanner, Jetay announced over the external comm system. My orders are to rendezvous with the Scarab carrier group. Please advise."

"Acknowledged, Vanner, came the curt response from traffic control. Transmitting launch and rendezvous vectors now."

How soon they forget, Shenti said dryly. "Remember how overawed traffic control sounded when Jetay brought the Vanner in with the blinkdrive prototype onboard?"

I don’t know about overawed, Khed said. I remember them sounding really weirded out about it all.

"And now, they’re treating the Vanner as just another cog in the Partisan war machine, Menevis retorted. Which is as it should be. Don’t get airs above your station."

Meaning what? Jetay asked, trying to sound like he didn’t know what Menevis was talking about. He’d found this to be an entertaining way of annoying Lanati’s cousin.

"It was pure chance that got the Vanner involved in our last mission, and the only reason you’re involved in this mission is because we’re going to meet with Sherden and his smugglers. Lanati seems to think he’ll react better to seeing the ship that saved him at Pernemat," Menevis said.

Vectors received, Jetay announced. Request permission to launch.

Permission granted, traffic control replied.

A couple of hours later, they reached the rendezvous point in the outer star system. The carrier group did not seem to be at full strength. In addition to the lead carrier, it only included a cruiser, a destroyer, and and two auxiliaries. One was a factory ship used to build replacement parts for the rest of the carrier group, another was