Chapter 1: The Animus Hunter

The image on the screen, an almost imperceptible frown on a heart-shaped face, oversized almond eyes tight at the corners, and, most telling, triangular ears pressed flat, told Chloe Rina Hughes all she needed to know. She needed to go home.

As she’d expected.

“What’s wrong, Mom?” Chloe asked.

“I picked up a gravitic distortion,” her mother, Ellie, said. “Small, but close. You need to come back to Mother Goose.”

Ellie’s voice remained calm. To most people, her expression would have looked it, too, but Chloe knew better. Ellie was a felid, a hybrid of human and feline DNA. Her ears were as expressive as anyone’s else’s face, and Chloe had grown up reading them. Right now, they told her Ellie was worried.

Only a ship tunneling into the system would distort its gravity so far from the stars and planets at its heart. It might just mean passerbys.

It might mean pirates.

Chloe glanced at the pile of memorabilia she’d dug from a locker aboard the abandoned space station. Posters for idol-orchestras decades before her time, discs with recordings of their concerts, statues and knick-knacks, an actual, physical book commemorating a tour decades ago. She’d found the stash by searching the same nooks and crannies she kept her own memorabilia in. She could find more. She knew how much her family needed the money.

She knew she didn’t have time.

She exchanged nods with Ellie. “I’ll be right home.”

Ellie’s transmission hadn’t come at an odd time or over emergency channels. It could have been a routine check-in. Until she saw Ellie’s expression, Chloe had no logical reason to expect trouble. Why had she prelit the thrusters of her mecha, Gosling Two, before Ellie’s face appeared on her screen? Why had she begun to back out of the residential block she’d wedged it into?

She’d had a hunch.

Now she had an excuse to act on it.

At a thought, the hand of Gosling Two scooped the pile she’d assembled into a repossessed cargo container. Gently, since her machine could crush a far more resilient haul, but fast as she dared.

Another thought and Gosling Two crawled backwards into the station’s promenade. Unlike the residential block, it offered her space to stand her nine-meter-tall mecha upright and even use her maneuvering thrusters. An agile former scout machine, it fit Chloe’s skills and the cramped quarters she often had to move through. She jetted over a broken railing, down two floors, and into a docking tunnel built to accommodate mecha.

If the station had remained operational, she would have had to wait for one of its industrial airlocks to cycle her out. Of course, if it had been operational, the crew of the salvage ship Mother Goose would have had no reason to visit, much less to bring their mecha inside. Derelicts like this, rarer every year as the Civil War receded further into memory, were their workplaces.

Chloe would have liked to visit thriving space stations, but at least empty ones offered a quicker exit. She jetted out of the cavity where the airlock would have been. A shell from a capital ship had blown it, and much of the surrounding hull, away. Similar holes and craters pockmarked the torus of the station, except where its superstructure caved in entirely. The central spire that would have housed station management listed at the edge of Chloe’s sensor range, torn away during the attack.

Most days, she gave little thought to where the ruins her family scavenged came from. They were as much a part of the backdrop of her life as the light of the stars or the soft hum of the Mother Goose’s engines.

Today, she couldn’t help but think of the people who’d lived on the station. She kept posters of idol-orchestras and listened to recordings of their music, just like whoever’s abandoned room she’d been raiding. Had they left their memorabilia behind when the battle lines of the Civil War drew near? Chloe had seen no bodies, but the station must have been visited by other salvagers to have lacked its complement of mecha and its valuable electronics. They might have laid the human remains to rest.

When she salvaged scrap electronics and mecha parts, it was easy to forget they’d belonged to someone who was probably dead now. Personal effects made her wonder whose home she’d been picking through, who had attacked it, why.

Chloe’s parents didn’t like to talk about the war, probably because they’d been on opposite sides. Her dad, Jack, had signed on with the Oligarchial fleets to fight the mechaneer-aristocracy, who he saw as using their resources and psychic powers to oppress ordinary people. Ellie had grown up on an aristocratic world and saw the nobles as heroes, fighting not just to retain their rule but for hybrids like her to be treated as people rather than property. They’d agreed on that last point, which was probably why Jack resigned and left the war behind.

They seemed to agree both sides kept their battles far from inhabited planets and civilian stations, too, so what happened to this one? Maybe it had been dragooned into a command center or refueling station, or maybe it was hit by pirates who took advantage of the chaos.

Or maybe Chloe’s parents tried to keep the worst of the war from her.

Regardless, she wouldn’t have minded leaving the station behind, except she couldn’t shake the feeling whatever waited for her would be worse.

She guided Gosling Two to the open mecha bay of the Mother Goose. She set her cargo down in the nearest of six open berths, then backed her mecha into another.

At least they had plenty of cargo space. When Chloe was a little girl, all but one of the berths held a mecha. They’d had pilots, too, and a ship’s engineer and doctor. As the salvage pickings thinned out, the Mother Goose’s crew found other employment. Two of the pilots owned their own mecha and took them to their new homes. The last was sold for scrap.

Chloe had grown up with that crew, learned to fly and maintain those mecha. Seeing the empty mecha bay still ached. Now only she, Jack and Ellie remained. She wondered how much longer they could hold on to the Mother Goose itself. The boxy, long-necked Baldur-class transport had been home for as long as Chloe could remember. Without it, what would they do? Could they even remain Spacers, or would they have to settle on a planet?

Chloe shivered at the thought. Jack accepting someone else’s captaincy would turn their world upside down, but at least they’d keep living on a world that could turn upside down. A planet, with its constant gravity, its unmoving scenery, and its groundling customs? Unimaginable.

The doors of the mecha bay closed and atmosphere hissed back. Chloe sent a transmission to her still-absent father. “Aren’t you coming home, Dad?”

Jack Hughes’s broad face appeared on one of her mecha’s screens. He offered up a smile she only knew was forced because she’d seen his expressions for so long. “Not yet, Clo. I’m staying in Gosling One to keep an eye on whoever’s paying us a visit.”

“Should I redeploy?” Chloe asked. She piloted the family’s scout mecha. Her father’s was a surplus line mecha, bigger, stronger, built to fight and capable of hauling heavier cargo. “Two has better eyes.”

Jack shook his head. “You check in with your mom.”

“You’re gearing up to fight,” Chloe said.

“I won’t start anything. If it turns out I have to finish it...” He shrugged. “Better them than us.”

If it turned out they needed to run, they could, in theory, create a compression tunnel here at the edge of the system’s gravity well. It might not be safe, but it might be safer than whatever Chloe feared was coming. No running if one of them was outside the ship, though.

She told herself she had to trust her father.

Telling herself so didn’t make it easy to pop Gosling Two’s cockpit and descend its access ladder. She sprinted to the Mother Goose’s bridge as much to keep her mind off her worries as to see what was happening.

When the door opened and she got a look at the main screen, she wished she’d taken her time.

She’d expected to see a ship rounding the curve of the station. The equipment to generate a compression tunnel between stars took up too much space to be mounted on any smaller chassis, and prepping mecha for launch right after a compression jump guaranteed churning stomachs and bad piloting. Any crew disciplined enough to pull it off wouldn’t need to against a ship the size of the Mother Goose.

The figure facing off with her dad’s mecha was undoubtedly humanoid, though. A mecha, but like none Chloe had ever seen. The technical specifications hovering next to it on the screen told her it stood twenty meters tall, twice the height of Gosling One, but she needed no numbers to see how it loomed over her dad’s machine. Its glossy beetle-brown and matte black paint made it blend with the space at its back and drew her attention to its one point of brightness: the faceplate, bone white and strangely smooth, shaped halfway between a bird’s beak and a mosquito’s proboscis. It looked as much like a titanic creature as a machine.

Chloe wiped her brow when the Mother Goose’s computer offered the familiar chirp of an incoming transmission. Whatever the strange mecha was, at least it was a mecha, not some monster pulled from her nightmares.

Ellie tapped the panel before her and cut the camera feed from the bridge. “You better take the call, Jack.”

“Already got it, hon.” Jack did most of the negotiating with anyone whose opinion on hybrids they weren’t sure of. In the last year, Chloe had even taken turns talking up customs agents and port authorities, though only when they hadn’t had anything to bluff about.

She resented that her mother couldn’t speak for their family, more than Ellie herself seemed to.

Today, Chloe just wished none of them had to take a call from whoever was piloting the mecha looming in front of the Mother Goose. She didn’t even want to watch, but she owed her parents that much and more.

When the communications window popped up before her, it took her a moment to realize it. The pilot’s flight suit was the same black and brown as his mecha, his helmet capped by the same beaked, bone-white mask.

He looked the part of a monster, so when he spoke, his voice startled Chloe. Though deep, it sounded bland, almost monotone, with the precise intonations of an actor from the capital-world Etemenos. “You are Captain Jack Hughes, of the salvage vessel Mother Goose?”

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“Free Spacer and licensed salvager, in the flesh. On the screen, anyway. What can I do for you, Mister...?”

“Zelph.”

“Mr. Zelph –”

“Animus Hunter Zelph.”

Chloe had already known what he had to be, but hearing the words spoken still made her glad she wasn’t broadcasting her shudder to his screen. Only telekinesis could open a compression tunnel between the stars without a machine even bigger than Zelph’s mecha. Only members of the Animus Hunter Corps would use that power so openly within the bounds of the Federated Stars, because anyone else would fear a visit from them. They pursued renegade nobles and out-of-control errants. What happened when they caught their prey, nobody seemed to know, but Chloe knew it couldn’t be good.

Even people the Animus Hunters had no business with feared them.

So it impressed Chloe all the more when her father just laughed.

Zelph’s expression remained hidden, but she thought his mask drew back in what might have been surprise.

Jack said, “I guess I don’t have to report you to the Animus Hunters on account of how you dropped in, then.”

“Your civic mindedness is appreciated, Captain.”

“Least I can do. I fought for the Federated Stars, you know. I’ll be damned I’m gonna let a bunch of nobs go around stepping on people after we just got done kicking them out.”

“I’m familiar with your military record, Captain.” Zelph must have called it up on another of his mecha’s screens, because he began to quote it. “Voluntary enlistment. Four years with corporate security, during which your successes earned you decorations for both valor and skill. Three more with the Devil Ray unit.”

Jack shrugged. “I just did my best.”

“What you did was very impressive. I fought beside the Devil Rays at the Battle of Etemenos. They acquitted themselves well even against the Imperial Guard.”

Chloe bit her lip.

Jack stretched his neck.

“Ah, yes,” Zelph said. “You did not fight at Etemenos, did you, Captain Hughes?”

“No, sir, I did not,” Jack said. “My boss and I had a... disagreement.”

“It must have been a very serious one.”

“Was.”

“And yet your resignation was accepted and granted with honor, immediately before the last and bloodiest year of the Civil War. I am not used to such magnanimity from oligarchs.”

“Well – and keep in mind I’m saying this with all the respect in the galaxy, on account of I’ve got it for you and what you do – it was a private disagreement. I’m not real clear how it’s relevant to you finding whoever it is you’re after.”

Zelph inclined his masked head. “Merely personal curiosity, Captain.”

“It’s a personal matter,” Jack said.

Chloe only knew the broad outlines herself. If her parents didn’t like to talk about the Civil War, they liked to talk about how they left it behind even less. The Oligarchy had considered hybrids like Ellie property. Jack’s old boss did something that put that belief front and center. Considering how protective Jack was of Ellie and how their crew had been almost all hybrids in Chloe’s youth, she imagined his ‘resignation’ had looked one step removed from armed rebellion.

Still, she didn’t understand why an Animus Hunter would care. They pursued renegade nobles, not hybrids. Even if Zelph considered what Jack had done treason against the Federated Stars, it wasn’t his remit to pursue traitors.

By the same token, though, why did Jack refuse to answer? Chloe supposed the circumstances of his resignation might be controversial, but hiding them from the Animus Hunter seemed more likely to make him suspicious.

Suspicious or not, Zelph let it drop. “Then it can remain private, as well.”

“Thanks.” Jack exhaled. “What can the Mother Goose do for you, Animus Hunter Zelph?”

“I am pursuing a fugitive,” Zelph said.

“This poor bastard got a name? Better yet, a face? If any of us have seen him, you can bet we’ll do whatever we can –”

“She,” Zelph said.

Chloe closed her eyes.

“A lady rather than a lord, huh? All of ‘em were in it together, so it’s all the same to me. Can’t imagine we’ve met someone like that, but, hey, stranger things, you know?”

“Captain Hughes.” Zelph’s voice rose in volume, though it didn’t change in tone.

“Sir?”

“That will do.”

Jack stopped talking.

“Better.” Zelph drifted toward the Mother Goose. Chloe saw no thrusters flare or limbs move, so she assumed he moved his huge mecha by telekinesis alone. “As for ‘doing whatever you can,’ I want you to assemble your crew in your ship’s mecha bay.”

Jack sighed. “You heard the man, Ellie?”

“Of course. I’ll be right down.” Ellie’s ears perked up, belying her tight smile.

Of course. Chloe knew her parents would talk to Zelph alone if they could. Ellie’s place in the social order of the Federated Stars might be uncertain, but it didn’t justify an Animus Hunter’s attentions.

Chloe smiled back and took a step toward the pilot’s chair as Ellie vacated it.

Her smile vanished when Zelph’s voice broke the silence. “All of your crew, if you please, Captain.”

Jack frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Your ship’s manifest indicates a crew of three. When I arrived, two of your mecha left that station. I trust you would neither lie on your manifest nor be so reckless as to trust your transport to autopilot so near a derelict.”

If Zelph thought he was going to catch Jack Hughes in a bluff, prophecy obviously wasn’t one of his psychic gifts.

“Of course not,” Jack said. “Chloe is on the bridge, too. Ellie’ll bring her along.”

Chloe couldn’t, quite, recover her smile. Not when she had a face-to-face, or at least face-to-mask, meeting with the Animus Hunter waiting for her. She had to admire how smoothly her dad bluffed, though.

She could only guess at Zelph’s reaction, because he severed the connection.

Chloe stared at the screen where his image had been. The nearly identical figure of his mecha loomed larger as it approached the Mother Goose.

Ellie’s arms encircled her. “It will be okay, Chloe.”

Chloe turned and hugged her back. “I know, Mom. You and Dad wouldn’t let something happen to me.”

It felt better to pretend they could prevent it.

Chloe would have stayed in the false security of her mother’s arms forever, but, haltingly, Ellie pulled back. “We’d better not make the Animus Hunter wait.”

Chloe nodded and followed Ellie to the mecha bay. This time, they had to wait in the inner airlock. The bay doors must have already opened to admit Gosling One and the Animus Hunter’s mecha.

Chloe and Ellie’s flight suits rippled over their heads to shield them from vacuum. Like their mecha, the suits responded to thought, conscious or otherwise. If only they’d offered as much protection – not, Chloe supposed, that a mecha’s armor could stand up to an Animus Hunter.

She feared Jack might put it to the test. He’d returned Gosling One to its berth and popped its cockpit, but stayed atop its access ladder.

The Animus Hunter’s mecha couldn’t fit in one of the berths. It hunched in front of the bay doors, a slumbering giant. Up close, Chloe could at least see mechanical joints and clusters of synthetic polymer muscle through the gaps in its armor. Its open cockpit, situated beneath the weird beaked mask, flickered with displays much like those on Gosling Two. For all it seemed to fill the bay with darkness, it was just a mecha, not a monster.

She reserved judgment about its pilot.

He descended through the air, arms folded. Like his mask, his flight suit seemed patterned on his mecha, or perhaps the other way around, and didn’t maneuver with thrusters. Pure telekinesis, the kind only an Animus Hunter dared to use in the Federated Stars.

Air flooded back into the mecha bay. Chloe, Jack and Ellie swayed with it, in tune with the rhythm of their ship’s systems. Zelph seemed not to feel it. When the rush of air stopped, he touched down on the bay floor and strode forward.

Ellie slid between him and Chloe. She inclined her head and said, “Welcome to the Mother Goose, sir.” like he came as an honored guest.

“You’re Ellie Hughes?”

“I am.”

Zelph stepped forward. He stood a head and a half taller than Ellie and looked right over her. “Which makes this young woman your daughter, and the final member of your crew.”

“That’s right,” Ellie said. “Chloe.”

Chloe gave a little wave. She couldn’t find her voice.

“You’re very fortunate,” Zelph said. He waved toward Ellie’s ears. “I’m told genetic compatibility between humans and hybrids is a rare gift.”

“People are told a lot of things about hybrids.” Ellie’s voice sounded ragged, as angry as scared.

Jack’s boots clanged on the mecha bay floor. He’d abandoned Gosling One and strode to stand behind Zelph. “We’re lucky, like you said, Animus Hunter. What’s any of that got to do with why you’re here?”

Zelph continued as if neither of Chloe’s parents had spoken. “And you look so young, for people with an adult daughter. The Spacer life is apparently quite healthful.”

“I’m adopted,” Chloe said.

Jack and Ellie both turned to her. Their flight suits spared her a clear view of their expressions, not that she needed to see them to know how horrified they’d look. They would keep bluffing to protect her for as long as Zelph let them. When he stopped letting them, they’d fight to protect her.

When he stopped letting them, they’d die to protect her.

“I was orphaned during the war,” Chloe said. She stepped around Ellie and faced Zelph. “My parents took me in and raised me.”

“How generous of them,” Zelph said.

The hint of sarcasm in his voice infuriated Chloe almost enough to make her forget how afraid of him she was. “They’re good people. They haven’t done anything wrong!”

“Have you?”

“No!”

“If you’ve done nothing wrong, then, by law, I cannot touch any of you.” Zelph reached out and cupped Chloe’s chin.

Some system in his flight suit overrode hers. The suit flowed away from her face without her willing it to. She squeezed her eyes shut and thanked the Almighty Principle she wore her hair bottle-blonde and straightened.

“Hey!” Jack reached for Zelph’s arm. 

“It’s okay, Dad,” Chloe whispered. From the way her voice trembled, she didn’t think she sounded all that persuasive.

Zelph didn’t seem to care. He didn’t seem to notice Jack and Ellie at all. “You protest your innocence, Miss Hughes. Yet you’re afraid of me.”

“Of course I’m afraid of you!” Chloe balled her fists. “You throw around powers we couldn’t possibly resist, you barge onto our ship without even accusing us of anything. You even wear that creepy mask. You expect me to believe you don’t want to be feared?”

“You’re right,” Zelph said. “I do. Do you know why?”

Chloe shook her head as much as his grip allowed.

“For centuries, the aristocracy used not power, but the fear of power to enslave human space,” Zelph said.

“So you think you need to use it, too?”

“Need?” Zelph chuckled. “No, Miss Hughes. I do not want the people who oppressed the galaxy to fear me because it is necessary. I want them to fear me because it is deserved. What they inflicted on others must now be visited upon them.”

“If only the deserving should fear you, then we have nothing to be afraid of.” Chloe opened her eyes. She heard the intake of breath from her parents, but her gaze locked on Zelph’s mask.

Chloe’s eyes were as dark as blue got before turning black, the color of the stratosphere on a habitable world. Like her natural hair, dark and curly, her eyes were a symbol of the old aristocracy. Lots of people who weren’t aristocrats had them, and not every aristocrat did. All the same, people whispered “mind’s eyes” when they saw hers. Animus Hunters sought them.

This one found a pair.

She dared him to condemn her for them.

For a moment that seemed to stretch to an eternity, he said nothing.

Chloe felt a bead of sweat roll down her forehead, a mote of dust settle into her eye. She refused to blink, even though she knew she couldn’t win a staring contest with a featureless mask.

She didn’t have to.

The ivory beak split down the middle and slid to either side. Zelph’s face made Chloe start, not because he was terrifying, but because he wasn’t. He looked like he sounded. A pinch-faced Etemenos bureaucrat, thin-lipped, hollow-cheeked. His only distinguishing features were his eyes. Stratosphere blue, just like Chloe’s. So dark she thought she could see space in them, but no scarier than what she saw in the mirror every day.

“You’re wrong,” he said. Coming from his thoroughly ordinary face, spoken in his thoroughly ordinary voice, ominous words almost sounded laughable.

Maybe they would have been if his fingers hadn’t gripped Chloe’s jaw. She tried to pull away. As well try to escape a mecha’s grasp.

“You may have nothing to fear from me, Miss Hughes.” His hand dropped from Chloe. She stumbled backwards. “All the same, you – all of you – should be afraid.”

He turned his back on her and took a step toward the shadow that was his mecha. His mask slid back into place.

Chloe swallowed. “Why?”

“Because the person I hunt is immeasurably dangerous.” Zelph lifted into the air as casually as Chloe might walk across a room. He glanced over his shoulder. Though she couldn’t see his eyes, she felt them on her. “Even to herself.”