Shadow Matter by S.W. Mayse

Author:S.W. Mayse [Mayse, S.W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tyche Books
Published: 2023-11-07T07:00:00+00:00

V

FAMILY

1

ES2742.080

“Walk normally or we stun you,” one of the men said in a rich Ayiti lilt. Claerans?

“Peace, Cedar,” Seren warned. It was no time to fight, with a hand laser nudged under her chin. She let them empty her pockets and take the bag holding Cedar. The lift door opened, and her four captors steered her out into the admin corridor.

In postwar Tirion they might work for the puppet regime, a crime ring, an interworld corporation—anyone with a private army. Openly bearing illegal weapons, they passed two nervous clerks outside the spaceport main office and turned into a narrower hallway. When the woman palmed open an unmarked door, Seren shuddered. Anything could happen out of sight, just like a year ago on Claer Arian, and no one would know.

Now. Seren twisted away from the stocky blond man on her right, but the other man only tightened his grip. She spun away as much as she could and jabbed her free hand at the blond’s eyes. He snapped backward, avoiding the blow, but it put him off balance. In that instant Seren twisted her left arm hard and was free. Heel of her right hand to the blond’s chin, and when he staggered, left elbow at his cheekbone. One down.

The dark man on her left grabbed her arm again. Instead of fighting him, she hooked her foot behind his knee and threw her own weight back. They went down together like a falling gantry, and she felt a rib crack. But she couldn’t pin him, and he bounced back up. She lashed out hard with both feet, ready to kick him across the hallway, when the woman charged back at her. A dark glint in her raised hand, a red spark—

Seren woke with her face gummed onto cold tiles by tears and mucus. Her hands were cuffed behind her back, too tightly to twist her wrists, and urine soaked her front. Dirty stun. She rolled onto her side and gasped as her rib shifted.

In silence they freed her wrists and handed her wetpacs and a brown prison coverall. Once she’d cleaned up, they took her to a room marked Immigration 2 and stood at ease inside the door.

Cedar sprawled motionless in a corner. Seren’s laser and slate lay neatly centred on a dingy plastic table. Her ID was in the hand of a small woman with round shoulders and tired brown curls, the image of a minor civil servant—until Seren met her cold grey eyes.

“Call the Taupan consul,” Seren tried.

“Don’t waste my time, Lieutenant,” said Mam’s sister-friend, her own second-mother Parvin Kerkallec. “You have one minute to account for your actions or face summary conviction for treason. No jury. No counsel. I judge. They execute.”

So, her four captors weren’t hired thugs but Pol special forces. Has Parvin lost her mind?

It took fifty seconds for Seren to tell her about the courier, the dwindling memory block, AnvilCo, Alluvion. Parvin didn’t need to know about Tas. She ended, “At home an hour ago I was attacked by a chimera.

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