Head Trip

 

In the midst of a black pit, a pinpoint of light appeared, focusing into a glowing oil candle. As he drifted closer to it, the circle of light widened to reveal a shadowy bower. Silken pillows in dark, rich hues tumbled in piles up to the elaborately carved head and foot boards of a huge four-poster bed. He recognized the bed as one in his family’s old estate that he’d liked to jump on as a child. The repulsors beneath the frame had a peculiar instability that caused the bed—and the jumper on top of it—to bounce high enough to brush the barrel-vaulted ceilings.

This time, though, he wasn’t thinking of jumping on it. She waited for him, her lithe blue-skinned form enrobed in starsilk so translucent, it may as well have been vapor. Indigo nipples peeked enticingly between the whispering folds of fabric as he joined her on the bed. “Zara.”

Her eyes fluttered open, aqua jewels gleaming out from sapphire-shaded lashes. “I’m going in blind,” she said. Her fingers trailed down his cheek, her touch liquid-cool. Her other hand pushed him down to the bed with more force than her slender frame appeared to have.

He was content to submit to her direction, but turned his head to catch her fingers lightly with his teeth. “I keep thinking about you. I know Hathori don’t fall in love.”

“It defies every rule, I know!”

He rained light kisses across her fingertips against her protest. “I know that, too! The Order forbade us affairs with non-psypaths.” Her gaze saddened. He wanted to smooth the distress from her features, but found his hands oddly heavy against the bed. “My House placed me up for auction in an alliance match.”

“We’re locked into our fate.” She leaned down and pressed her lips against his. The taste of her arrowed a path straight to his groin, and he wanted to surge up, to deepen the kiss and feel her body against his.

She held him down and read his mind without psypath gifts, covering him with her warm weight. The scent of her pheromones surrounded him, driving out concerns about the future, of the dissolution of the Order and his own unfinished education, or the expectations of his House which saw not a lost son returned, but a new tool acquired in the pursuit of power. Her hands bunched in his robes, shoving them aside as she trailed wet, burning kisses down the side of his face to his neck where she bit playfully, and maybe a bit too hard. His body strained upward. Her enticing presence left him breathless. “I don’t know how—don’t know what—to do next.”

She rose off him, her movement stupefyingly fast as he suddenly found it unusually hard to breathe. Her pheromones were searing his throat, but he couldn’t help sucking in deep lungfuls of her. “We have to jump now!”

“Jump now?” Her diaphanous robe billowed around him like smoke as she leapt upward and came down, her bare azure feet landing on either side of his body. The bed shook—that broken repulsor.

She did it again and this time her landing crashed the furniture to the ground with a great boom. “Jump now!” She jumped up and down, each landing making the whole room shake. Perhaps the whole building. The world. Her laugh became a scream and his breath suddenly turned to fire in his lungs.

“Juuuummmmppp nnnnnooooowww!”

 

Treska knew entering Jumpspace without warning was a good way to play fast and loose with your molecules. But so were torpedoes. As the Jumpgate swallowed the Needle’s Eye she opened the comm system. “I’m doing this blind.” She wanted to give her passenger a little warning, and maybe leave a last transmission in case they did end up space dust. “It defies every rule, I know!”

She juked the ship away from the pirate, realized she’d clip the gate itself, and over-corrected again. This is bad. She felt the Jumpgate fighting for control of the ship as gravity gathered in its rings. A laser from the pirate ship knocked out her aft shields, sending alarms screeching. “We’re locked into our fate.” Her entire body rebelled against the pull of Jumpspace as she struggled to right the ship. Even worse than an unscheduled Jump was a Jump sideways—the last thing anyone sane wanted to do was go through a Jumpgate out of control. Of course, that’s what I’m doing.

“We have to—” Space warped around her, and reality came unmoored from its anchors. “Jump now!”

Should have taken my chances with the Riktorians. The thought stretched out along with her molecules and just as suddenly, she was in the hospital recovery ward back in Government Plaza.

The window before her looked out over the western slice of the massive city. In the distance, she could see the jagged edges of destroyed stratoscrapers poking up like broken teeth. “The fires burned for a whole standard month,” said a voice behind her.

She turned to see the Director standing in the doorway. In the silence, the click-whirr of the servos operating his temporary cybernetics echoed through the room.

The assisted-breath of her own ventilation unit hissed in prelude to her own words. “Has—anyone—come for—me?”

The Director shook his head. “The Garden District finished clearing this week.”

She turned back towards the vista. Already, the broken buildings had sprouted scaffolding. Repair bots hovered like tiny insects around the fractured spires. In the distance, something exploded and a controlled demolition collapsed a broken stratoscraper into a neat fall that sent up a column of dust, back-lit by the setting sun. “The—Capitol—rebuilds itself.”

“No. We rebuild it.” The Director moved into her room. “We make it stronger. We cut away that which is not necessary.”

She glanced down at her chest, where the vent unit rested in its harness like some many-limbed parasite. Inside the hole in her chest, bio-mimetic nanites were reconstructing her ribcage and growing her a new set of lungs.

“Have you considered my offer?”

It had been almost six months since they’d found her, healed her. Why hadn’t she jumped at the chance the Director offered her to rebuild her life with purpose? Her memories weren’t coming back, and no one was coming for her. She may as well resign herself to assumptions rather than memories, and leave the past in favor of the future.

She felt the Director approach. “Join us in rebuilding.” She closed her eyes and saw what it could be. The shining city whose order rose from the ashes of chaos, with a vision of a clear future in all directions, against which the random cruelties of life had no chance.

“I’m too broken.”

“We have already begun to rebuild you. Do you remember when you first awakened?”

She couldn’t tell him that she’d first awakened to smoke and fire and an incredible, pressing weight stealing the very air from her, of opening her eyes and mouth each time to a darker world and less air to breathe in the choking swirls of dust. She couldn’t tell him of turning her eyes upward and hoping. Because she couldn’t remember what she hoped for, or why she thought hope came from the sky when it rained fire and death. “I remember the trauma center.”

“We gave you life. Help us give life to this New Union. Vakess Azymus has a vision. A unity of purpose under whose protection this entire star system can truly flourish.”

She didn’t have hope anymore. It vanished, ephemeral as smoke and her missing memories, a thing to be pursued, but never caught.

But purpose? In the absence of hope, purpose would do.

 

 

She lay in the trauma pod, trapped by the weight of the thick, pressurized air. Only brief flashes of cool blue light, the murmuring sound of voices above her, and the hiss of ventilators.

“—perfect candidate…excellent recovery from extensive reconstruction—”

“—genetic obstacles…chemical therapy—”

“—closely monitored, but…it could be—”

“—no guaranteed…success chances—”

“—contingency—”

“—risk of psychosis—”

“—me worry about that. It’s manageable.”

Sudden panic ripped through her. My body is perfectly healthy! She struggled against the restraints, but the tubes and the fluid lines became a spider-webbed prison and her limbs felt a hundred tons each.

Jumpspace. It’s Jumpspace. This is a Jump-dream. Time and space snapped back together and she returned to the piloting couch and a HUD full of redlined systems. She registered just in time to jerk her body to the right and avoid an auto-freighter, its pre-recorded proximity warning echoing through the cabin.

“Jumpgate Station, this is the Needle’s Eye, requesting aid!”

The response chime thundered in her ear. “Welcome to the Guerre Orbit automated Jumpgate station. Sentients are reminded that Guerre is an automated station only. Application for Jump queue must be made six standard hours in advance. Unscheduled Jumps will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of Union law…Welcome to the Guerre—”

She cut the comm and avoided another auto-freighter. Under her hand, the ship shuddered and the systems returned to redline. That drive is running hot. She checked the chrono and understood why. The Needle’s Eye wasn’t equipped to handle Jumpspace for that long, and that wasn’t according to the false specs transmitted to stations, but the ship’s actual, top-secret specifications.

She focused on clearing the traffic around the Jumpgate while she called up information on the Guerre orbit. The HUD flickered as it showed her location relative to the planet—rather, the single habitable moon orbiting the gas giant—along with basic Union information. Crystal mines, small population in scattered settlements, native sentient life forms. Provisional member of the New Union. “What’s that mean, ‘provisional’?”

A resource alarm sounded. Another one joined in harmony, and the distance between the Jumpgate and the moon suddenly felt very long. She glanced at her position and did some quick figuring in her head. I’ve got to get to that moon before this whole ship turns into a puddle of melted slag.

She turned the ship towards the gas giant and gunned the ion drive. The piloting couch grew warm with the engine burn and the ship gave a great shudder as it shot forward. The alarms arpeggioed into urgency and the ship started a shimmy that shook her bones. “You okay back there?”

She got no response. Worry about him later. You get the bounty whether he makes it or not.

The gas giant filled the screen, its small moon a mere speck of darkness against its stormy light. She pushed for the moon, pausing in acceleration every time the redlines climbed into critical. For a brief few seconds, she eased up, letting the Jovian’s gravity pull her in, but her angle of acceleration soon became a battle against the massive planet’s grip, and the redlines stayed high.

The cabin heated. “Hang on back there,” she called out over the comm system as she pushed the engines to their last, flinging them into the moon’s orbit.

But she didn’t have enough juice, and she entered orbit on the Jovian side of the moon. Structural warnings rang out as she searched for something—anything—that would knock them just that much closer to the moon and away from the gravitational imperative of the gas giant. Just…a little…more—

Heat shrieked out a failure warning. The ship bucked, and not even the piloting couch kept her insulated enough. Her body smashed into the sides and top of the cowling. Alarms wailed. The drag of the atmosphere scraped against the ship’s hull and scoured her own skin. Something snapped free in the aft end and fire suppression reached empty.

She swung her arms and hands wildly, fighting the ship for control as they breached the atmospheric envelope. Her teeth rattled in her head and she tasted coppery blood when her tongue got in the way. She could see mountains now, a wide plain that looked promising, until she realized the cracked earth was actually deep canyons channeled between the rock.

She aimed towards a cloudy smudge on the horizon. Water vapor meant water, and maybe a softer landing. Meter by meter, the landscape grew in the viewscreen. She drew up as best as she could as the canyons emptied out into a true plain this time, and—even better than water, vegetation. Not the lush jungles of Dyskaya, but scrubland was better than nothing. She pulled up as hard as she could as the ground rose up to meet her, and braced for impact.

 

“I promise. I will take good care of her. I will treat her as my guide to oneness. It is the most significance a Vultron can confer on an inanimate object.”

“She’s not an object! She’s the Delta Rose. She is my home, my shield, and the best damn lover I ever had.” Xenna’s wine-dark lips folded tight against her teeth, and her flush turned her skin so deep in places, she ran the risk of attracting attention with a glow. The Cetares Orbit planetary transport hub roared white noise around them. The main terminal was large and cylindrical, with long, narrow viewports showing the orbital traffic docking and departing from the snakelike arms of the boarding tunnels poking out from the hub’s body.

Inside, groups and clusters of civilian travelers shuffled around the large space, making their ways on foot or strolling alongside embarrassingly slow repulsor pallets full of luggage. Most were inexperienced travelers, waiting for the passenger ships to take them through the Jumpgate, while others queued for local transport down to the planet or over to the moons. Xenna and Ahveen had docked the Delta Rose under an assumed identity seeking a short layover at the travelers’ rest. The two of them were loitering in a hallway near the public necessaries while the Treemian aboard the Delta Rose hacked into the non-commercial traffic logs to keep tabs on the Huntress’s journey towards the Capitol. The hallway, like nearly every part of this hub, was brightly-lit and so sanitized it could have been used as a medical facility. The brilliant lights hurt Xenna’s eyes.

“You had best mind your temper, priestess. And don your cloaking garb, before we test the New Morality’s grip on one of its strongholds.”

Xenna pulled the heavy robe and a veil disc out of her pack. “I hate this thing.” She swung the cloak around and fastened it at the neck. It self-sealed the rest of the way down. She breathed on the disc and the compressed fabric swelled with the moisture of her breath. “Do you remember Westgate’s Jump station?”

“I remember the makeshift casino causing such a power drain on the station that every time someone won at Fortune Rings, we all played a secondary chance game with life support.” Ahveen twitched at the hem of Xenna’s cloak, shaking nonexistent lint from the fabric. As if something like lint would be permitted in this place.

“Yes! The place was dark, and smelly, and lit with red paper lanterns. A sentient didn’t feel like she was under a slagging micro-magnifier every minute.”

Ahveen took the crumpled veil, shook it out and settled it over her head. “You are not using the mask?”

Xenna glanced around. “I think here, it’ll just stand out more than the travelers’ veil. Any word?”

Ahveen’s luminous golden eyes dimmed as she checked her padd. “No. Calivon still seeks the Huntress. She didn’t arrive at Eston as expected.”

Xenna’s fists clenched. She didn’t approve of her Schoolboy’s rash involvement with the plan, but she understood his desire. She understood most of his desires, except for that ridiculous romantic streak of his. “Tell him to widen the Jump possibilities. That ship of hers can probably Jump further than advertised.” Xenna licked her lips at the thought of that sweet, sleek ship. “If she didn’t Jump to Eston from Tenraye, she probably went somewhere further.”

Ahveen’s claws moved over the padd and her features shifted into a frown. If she’d lifted her head, she’d have frightened the large clump of displaced citizenry milling in the main area of the terminal. Their status was evident from the basic-issue coveralls and identical luggage that held all they were permitted to keep during re-education. But even moreso, their bewildered faces gave them away. Had any of them looked up, their faces, with their heads full of New Morality platitudes, would have shifted into fear of the scary-looking demon woman. Xenna wondered how many of them had once worked and lived alongside Vultrons or Hathori. Now how many of them now fear us?

Ahveen’s eyes, when she held the padd out to Xenna, held that much fear. “What?” The opportunities for flaws in the plan were many and varied, and she was only now beginning to truly understand what a long shot it was. And for what? Information. Not even a strike at the heart of the Union. She glanced down at the padd and saw what gave Ahveen pause.

She skimmed over the official-channel communications, ignoring the Jump delays rippling from the inner orbits out to mid-system, but paused at the bulletin coming up on the Undernet. “Oh.” The blood drained from her face. The image was blurry, but Micah’s features were unmistakable, pulled from the Tenraye spaceport security feed. The picture of Treska Sivekka was cribbed straight off her government ID. “Look at all those zeroes.”

“The penalty for interfering with a Vice Hunter is steep.”

“Not steep enough. A bounty that high might have the Restoration thinking of taking a shot.” She met Ahveen’s eyes. “Watch your back, my friend.”

“Neither the Prime Minister nor Special Affairs will deal with pirates. It’s against the New Morality code.” Ahveen spoke the words, Xenna knew, to soothe her.

Xenna shook her head. “I haven’t met a power structure yet with true believers at the highest levels.” The Hathori priesthood’s structure acknowledged this and separated those with spiritual calling from those with the ability to run temples. “They want Micah bad enough, they’ll deal with anybody.” She tapped the screen again. “Our only wild card is the Huntress. How badly do they want their Vice Hunter alive?”

“Let us discover that by being the ones with whom they must bargain.” Ahveen rubbed her sinewy arms. Xenna joined her in the action, smoothing the velvety charcoal down that covered her skin. Her cloak’s pheromone neutralizers couldn’t let her use her natural abilities to calm her Vultron friend, but that didn’t stop her from recognizing Ahveen’s nervous gesture.

“We have no way of knowing where the Huntress is, or when she’s coming in, now.” Xenna’s mouth tightened again. “Somebody better get on that.”

“We must explore her possible Jumps in the Delta Rose. You will not have to part with her after all.”

“I can’t.” Xenna spared a thought for her spaceworthy paramour. “We still don’t know the full capability of that ship.” Or the Huntress herself. “If she makes it back to the Capitol, I can’t let them take Micah to prison. I’ll make my way from here to the Capitol, and be ready just in case.”

“Do you trust your contact in the detention center?” Ahveen asked. “I know it is distasteful, but we must not discount the possibility that your jest about the Restoration may turn out to be true.”

“I don’t trust my contact in the least,” Xenna said. “That’s why I pay him well.” She felt herself hardening, her senses sharpening and the softer side of the goddess within her and all Hathori receding to make way for the passion of her vengeful side. “I’ll reach out to the Hathori web.”

Ahveen’s velvety ashen skin held the faint scent of spices her people used in their native cooking, and the affection they’d shared during the voyage here. Her strong, leanly-muscled limbs tightened around Xenna before she released her and stared down into her face. “I promise you, my friend.” She pulled a bead out of one of her dreadlocks and offered the tiny, electrum-plated object to Xenna. “I will keep the Delta Rose safe.”

Xenna closed her fist around the bead, then drew the veil over her head and the lower half of her face as she parted company with her friend and joined in with the crowd moving towards the public transport terminals and the checkpoint that would allow them through Customs into the Capitol. The veil’s lightweight fabric was unadorned, save for a ribbon along the edge woven with magna-mesh that kept the veil from slipping and provided a modicum of privacy for the wearer against casual scans. Nothing government-issue, though—she was as exposed as any other sent as she moved through the line at Security and Interdicted Goods. She filed into the alien immigration line with Treemians, Vultrons, and a family of Riktorians committing the Riktorian taboo of going legit. Her plain robe, infused with pheromone neutralizers, offered her no more protection from the Customs scanners than if she’d strolled naked through them.

Fortunately, her forgeries were iron-clad and radiation-shielded. She’d rather have strolled naked through the scanners and saved herself the trouble while giving the security forces something to talk about. Her skin was much more tantalizing than the drab shades of her clothing. She hid her smile behind the veil as she met the eyes of the security guard, who recognized her species and blushed. Not today, my dear. She wished she dared more ornament on the garb that she was required to wear in public, but anything fancier than the plain and soberly-colored ensemble would invite comment and for once, Xenna didn’t want to cause a riot with her presence.

At least, not yet.