Galaxy's End: Book One Read online

  The spry woman wore a soft leather skirt and a top made of dark green silk or satin. It sparkled in the white sunlight. She had exchanged her sandals for the sort of athletic shoes runners often wear. Light-weight and good traction. She carried the small, curved sword, but no shield because it wouldn’t stop a mace, so it just added useless weight. Her gait was light and quick, almost like dancing. She seemed anxious to begin.

  I got it. Finally, I understood.

  Her clumsiness had been an act to increase the betting odds against her. She was never going to use the mighty broadsword that looked like it weighed half of what she did. She could barely lift the heavy weapon, let alone swing it. All that had been for show. Everyone had bet on the Hoot until the odds became insanely high and who does not like an occasional long shot, especially with odds like those.

  While she had struggled with the broadsword and the odds were at their highest, her unseen companions had placed bets for her to win, and probably not a measly fifty credits. Not a single large bet that would draw attention, either. No, if they were smart, they had placed dozens, maybe hundreds of bets of smaller amounts while she warmed up. That’s why the odds had suddenly decreased so fast. Not too many credits in a single wager, but thousands and thousands of credits, would return four times the initial outlay.

  Brill nudged me with his elbow again. “I hope we did the right thing. He can kill her with one blow from his mace.”

  “And be disqualified. This is not a fight to the death.”

  The combatants faced each other from the regulation five meters of a chalk circle outlined in the dirt. Each stood with their heels on the chalk when the starting bell clanged. The Hoot charged, mace raised, ready to end the confrontation in record time. The lithe human woman moved so quickly that when the Hoot pulled up where she had stood, there was nobody to smash.

  She now stood several steps to one side, calm and appraising in contrast to his rage.

  The crowd roared, squealed, shrieked, whistled, and clacked claws in appreciation of her opening move. Around us, the vocal enhancements of a dozen races blended their excitement to a chilling crescendo.

  The woman ignored the noise and crowd. She darted ahead, slashed the calf of the Hoot’s leg once with her short sword—and leaped back before the mace flew harmlessly through the air where her head had been. Her sword had cut the back of one leg, nothing serious. She danced on her toes, sidestepped, feinted, and drew back before he could attack, searching for an opening and working to his left as I’d suggested. She looked like she was trying to get behind him.

  He looked like a lumbering fool as he continued turning in an attempt to face her.

  A red stain spread on the back of one of the Hoot’s legs, and a noticeable limp slowed him. She darted to one side and slipped on the hard-packed sand.

  The Hoot instinctively charged.

  Instead of falling, she used her momentum to slide and roll. She landed behind him, with her sword-arm extended. The blade had sliced higher this time, closer to the back of the knee on the same leg. It was also a deeper cut. More blood flowed. Her “slip” in the dirt had been intentional and planned. The Hoot wouldn’t fall for it again.

  He turned quickly and rumbled in her direction. She nimbly slipped away.

  When he spun to face her again, she was marginally within range of his long arms and the extension of the mace on the short chain. He drew back in a move quicker than I’d believed possible and swung. The head of the mace whistled through the air.

  Instead of retreating, the woman dived toward the Hoot. She held her sword in front of her body and slashed again, using only her wrist. This time, it bit deeply into the side of the Hoot’s left calf, the same leg that already had two cuts. Blood ran freely as she rolled three times to stay out of his reach. She sprang erect in a single bound and danced back on her toes.

  He lumbered after her in awkward pursuit. The mace circled menacingly above his head as he moved determinedly, limping with each step.

  She stood her ground, waving the small bloody sword from side to side in an intricate pattern.

  He made a hard dash at her—however, his foot slipped in the blood filling his sandal. He tried to recover but stumbled ahead. Like a matador with an enraged bull, the woman calmly stepped aside, and her sword slashed through the air as she dodged, this time cutting deeply into the back of the thigh on the same leg.

  The crowd that had howled and roared earlier now went intensely quiet, sensing the end of the match. It was obvious to everyone that she could outpace the Hoot or outlast him as his blood stained the dirt. With the loss of blood, he would grow slower and weaker the longer the match lasted.

  The Hoot hobbled to a confused halt, lowered the mace, and glanced to the side of the ring where his trainers and owners huddled in desperate conversation. From their center, a traditional white towel flew high into the air.

  The Hoot warrior had lost.

  Brill and I cashed in our winnings and intended to celebrate for, at least, two full days or until we were out of money again. We’d buy decent food, drink, and erotic stims for our closest friends. It would be a party to remember.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Captain Stone

  “Your orders, Captain?” The large First Officer of the starship asked the woman who had defeated the Hoot in combat. His size approached the Hoot’s although he came from a human heavy-gravity world.

  She spoke with a rush, “Take the Guardia to Escobar Hab. Get her repainted. I like colorful designs painted on a ship’s hull, maybe a floral display this time. And get new papers with a new name and registry information while you’re at it, damn the cost. Roman troopers from the wagering commission are going to be looking all over for us in a few tenths of time because of the amount of the wagers we cashed in, so lift off immediately and I’ll see you in thirty rotations.”

  “I hate that dirtball Escobar Hab. Full of thieves and crooks, if you ask me,” he said as he grinned wryly. “You’re going searching for the influencer you felt in your mind at the coliseum, right?”

  “Empath, not influencer. I think she is a full empath. She’ll make a valuable asset if I can find and recruit her.”

  “If she doesn’t convince you to give up your ship in exchange for half of a stale sandwich.”

  “You know better,” the captain snorted with laughter to join his as she turned to leave. “I’m a native anti-empath. See you on Escobar.”

  She strode down the ship’s ramp in disguise while still thinking about the conversation with her First Officer. Anti-empaths are not well known and most wanted to keep it that way, just as empaths hid their ability. For mostly the same reasons. Anything relating to telepathy was strictly forbidden on all worlds. Most considered empathy a lower grade of the same thing as telepathy and nobody wanted strangers inside their minds.

  There were wild tales prominent in the entertainment video industry about both abilities. Nearly all exaggerated the effects and the impact. However, when there are hundreds of races in the nearby space, there are far stranger occurrences of life and survivorship than using a mind to manipulate others instead of talking, singing, or physical prowess.

  Behind her, the ship’s boarding ramp detached itself and rolled into its hanger. The ship’s engines rumbled to life and idled as dozens of computers performed the preflight self-diagnostics. This time, the ship carried a cargo of a new strain of grain reputed to double harvests, and bottles of expensive wine, along with a few pieces of local art that were being searched for on Roma. If the police looked hard enough for the art here and on Escobar Habitat after her ship arrived, they might find them.

  Traders, most of them, didn’t violate local planetary laws so much as stretch them. She and her crew had had nothing to do with the thefts. They had only accepted a commission to transport a few crates and only discovered what the crates held after they were aboard. As Captain, she had notified the shippers of her intention to notify the local authorities of her illicit cargo. The
shippers quickly offered to pay premium shipping charges, higher than what the costs would have been if they had been forthright with her.

  No trader liked being taken by surprise or being fined by local authorities, especially when others broke the local laws and pinned them on the traders. If the risk were worth the reward, like most traders, she would take the deal. But it had to be her choice.

  As she exited the space terminal, the rumblings of her ship leaving the tarmac shook the ground. She imagined everything around her vibrating, knowing that it wasn’t happening, but it gave her a feeling of immense power. She didn’t bother to turn and look. It would only make her feel foolish for going off on her private mission concerning the touch of another’s mind with hers.

  To anyone looking, she no longer would be confused with the gladiator who had fought in the arena only this morning. The now-famous human woman who had defeated a Hoot in a single-battle match had disappeared from the public eye.

  She wore a wig of long green hair with strands as thick as vermicelli spaghetti that trailed down her back in a tightly woven pattern. Her thick eyebrows were dyed a matching green. Her makeup had a slight greenish tinge, not much, but just enough so anyone looking her way had no reason to associate her with being human, thus there could be no association with her appearance in the Colosseum.

  She also looked younger. Late teens, at a guess, instead of her normal human age of early thirties. Part of that was the intention of her disguise, a dress noticeably short in the skirt gave the impression of being even shorter than it was. Boots with tall heels and even taller unseen inserts gave her legs the appearance of length longer than any human.

  A chest-band compressed her upper body and eliminated the appearance of having curves, typical of many unisex and egg-laying races. While observers might not recognize her race, they would intuitively conclude she was not human, and that’s what counted.

  At a food cart, she asked for a small sack of deep-fried tri-colored insects, which consisted of three varieties. She enjoyed two of them. The blues would be discarded as she walked.

  She said to the vendor, “A human owes me money. He is usually broke and I think he lives at the edge of town. Can you point the general way?”

  The vendor pointed with one of the lower arms.

  “Just one slum?” she asked as she crunched a red insect and savored the musky taste.

  “This is a vee-shaped valley. The more you get away from the spaceport, the lower the rent.”

  Captain Stone nodded appreciatively and placed a small coin on the cart. If she needed information later, he would remember the small gratuity.

  She strode confidently down the avenue and past the pair of troopers wearing the colors of the Colosseum Police racing to the spaceport and probably the launchpad the Guardia had recently occupied. She chuckled at the irony of the name of her ship, as always. Guardia meant police in an old Earth language, so the police were chasing after the police.

  Hopefully, her First Officer would choose another inventive name this time around and provide a little more humor. His choices always impressed and amused her. For now, her only job was to locate the girl who had tried to invade her mind with helpful suggestions about defeating the Hoot. She was sure it was a female, but couldn’t say why, just as she also believed it was young and poorly educated. How she could tell the sex, schooling, and age of the empath from a few random thoughts that her mind rejected was a mystery.

  That was part of the allure of empaths. Many believed they didn’t even exist. Others misunderstood the depth of their powers. The vast majority knew only rumors and tales.

  If the empath turned out to be a male, Stone wouldn’t be completely surprised, but the sex and age impressions seemed to fit the tone of the projected thoughts. Not the words she’d heard, because there were none. It was the ideas behind them, the feelings. A lot more had been conveyed to her than the simple instructions for her to attack the Hoot’s rear, a tactic she hadn’t considered but was grateful for.

  A quad of Wittens fell into step with her. One, the obvious leader, asked, “Have you the desire to be adored this afternoon and evening? We can provide you with edible stims and physical stimulation.”

  She barely glanced at the blue creatures, however, there had been a time years ago on another planet she fondly recalled. “I have known a quad of your kind and if I didn’t have to work today, things might be different.”

  The leader flashed a smile so white and pretty that it sped up her heartrate. “We are often in this neighborhood because we occupy an apartment near here. Just ask around. Someone will know where we are.”

  With a salute of a single finger to his forehead, the polite Witten veered away, along with the trio behind him. She watched from the corner of her eye. Maybe next time.

  Captain Stone pulled her thoughts to the present. She had learned her skills with swords like she had learned many other weapons early in her life. Her father hadn’t spared her the intensity of her training for being smaller than her brothers. She either defeated them or suffered the pain of loss, which was both mental and physical. He’d later insisted on lessons by professionals and hadn’t let up until each of his children was master of three or more weapons.

  The last free-lance empath she’d heard about had been placed on trial a dozen years earlier on a moon circling a gas giant near a dim red star. She couldn’t remember the name of the place or the planet, but she vividly remembered the public reaction when he’d been captured and tried in a court over the vast amounts of charitable contributions that had poured into his bank accounts before he was identified.

  He was found guilty. He admitted to unknowingly enter their minds and convinced people to give him money. But what the captain remembered most was the common reaction, for the people of that planet and others, because the trial was widely followed. They instinctively hated him. They called for his death and they cheered when he was suspended above the marsh at low tide by all six appendages for the local scavengers to eat their fill before the tide came in and swallowed his limp body.

  Which brought her to try and understand why she was risking chasing down the empathic girl. If they were discovered by others, she might someday hang above a marsh alongside the girl with the tide coming in.

  There were other empaths, probably far more than most suspected. She knew that because with her anti-empathic mind, she had identified at least six in her ten years as captain of the trading ship, never more than one on any single planet. Only once had she confronted one of them, and that was about the overly expensive price she’d almost paid for automated farm equipment she wished to sell on another planet.

  She had accused him in private of being an empath. In response and possible fear of discovery, the empath had reported to the docking authorities that Stone’s larger than normal trading vessel contained secret compartments for smuggling and contraband. He’d also mentioned she would accuse him of anything to get revenge—even of being an empath.

  All trader’s ships have hidey-holes, but the troops had come aboard as if they had a personal vendetta against her and the ship, no doubt the result of the empath stirring things along. They located a few empty places, some suspicious, but nothing illegal in any.

  A year later, with the ship modified and wearing a new name, and with Stone in another disguise, had returned and “allowed” the empath to again bargain her down in price. Stone sold her a dozen crates of broken electronics at premium prices before lifting off hurriedly.

  However, the Captain had learned a valuable lesson. Don’t accuse or mess with empaths. When cornered, they fight for their lives. Yet, after all that, here she was chasing one down. They were rare and all used their powers carefully. The idea of an empath and an anti-empath teaming up felt sinfully good.

  The benefits were tantalizing and more. The Guardia, her ship, had been totally paid for by her father and listed as an independent trader. Not a pirate ship, but not far removed. Profit was profit. She and her ship w
ere not welcome to return to several worlds, but the number of other worlds to trade on was endless in the area of the galaxy known as the “Human Sphere.”

  Of course, the known sphere of “civilization” only encompassed an estimated thousand stars boasting planets with intelligent life. Since one in five had life, and one in three of those held intelligent life, there were about two hundred known intelligent space-faring species—until the aggressive humans spread out further.

  A scenario from long ago kept playing out in her mind as she strolled the streets of Roma in search of her prey. In it, she remembered a time shortly after her father had died when she was on a backwater world selling her entire load aboard the ship to a greedy fat man. They were close to an agreement but still dickering over details. Without warning, he had suddenly stood and violently rejected her deal before storming away in anger. The cargo was perishable; an expensive, exotic fruit not able to grow on that planet. Her expected buyer had stiffed her over a minor difference in price and an implied insult that angered him. She later learned it was because she had haggled too much in his opinion.

  There were no other buyers. The cargo rotted in the hold of her ship. Fortunately, another buyer finally appeared. One that made expensive wines from over-ripe fruit. She sold the fruit for a third of the value a few days earlier, along with a promise of a few cases of wine if she ever returned. The wine deal saved her ship from the bankers she owed. Barely.

  The credits for the fruit had been enough to pay the landing and fueling fees. She even consigned a hundred cases of other wine for delivery to a luxury planet and earned a few extra credits. It took her almost a year to fully recover from the loss.

  What bothered her was how close she had come to losing her ship and everything over a few credits and a token misunderstanding. If she had an empath on her crew who could tip the deal in her favor at the beginning, she would have earned a nice profit and not missed several nights of sleep. She might prevent the same thing from happening in the future.