The Eyes of the Huntress (Shil the Huntress Book 1) Read online

  He had taken one look at her and pulled out his phone. ‘I must change our dinner reservations. I think I know a more suitable venue for such a dress with such a woman in it.’

  The restaurant he had selected required a mortgage to pay the bill and was, as far as she knew, impossible to get into at short notice. There were film stars at two of the tables and Sheila was still getting glances from some of the men as they were led to their table. She felt like a goddess.

  ‘Mutton dressed as lamb,’ her inner housewife commented before being bludgeoned into silence. Nothing was going to spoil this evening.

  4th July.

  It was heading rapidly for two in the morning when they got back to Tony’s flat. There had been a club after the restaurant. He had danced close, close enough that she could feel how much he wanted her pressing into her stomach, and his hands had been all over her right there in front of all those people.

  By the time they were through the door, their need was becoming all-consuming and there was no waiting, no coffee or drinks. They went straight to the bedroom and Sheila slinked her way to the middle of the bed, kneeling there with her arms up over her head to pull her breasts up and push them out.

  ‘Want this?’ she asked in a soft purr.

  ‘My sweet Sheila,’ Tony began, and then there was a buzzing sound from his watch. He looked at it as though it had suddenly appeared there and he had no idea what it was. His face creased into… anger, or fear, or both. He said something which sounded like an expletive, except that it was in no language Sheila had ever heard before.

  ‘Tony?’

  He threw himself onto the bed, fumbling at the bezel of his watch.

  ‘Tony? What’s going on?’

  A pull and the watch face came free, revealing a button, a red button, hidden beneath it.

  ‘Tony, you’re scaring–’

  Tony’s finger jabbed at the button and suddenly the room seemed to vanish in a blaze of brilliant, white light.

  The Cantarvey, English Channel.

  The world swam into focus around Sheila as her head reeled from whatever had just happened. She thought she heard expletives and a sound like a lift door opening, but she was not sure. Then her brain caught up with the rest of her and she managed to take in her surroundings.

  She was in a large, open room with a lot of crates piled on one side. Around her was some sort of metal framework. Flickers of light still danced around parts of it, dying away slowly, and it looked very high-tech, like something you saw in a sci-fi movie. The rest of the room looked like the hold of a ship, however: metal walls, a lot of grey, kind of dirty. She climbed to her feet and brushed dust off her knees.

  Part of her mind was still refusing to grasp that she had been in a bedroom in Mayfair, and now she was in a ship’s hold. Her inner voices had, apparently, decided to hide in a corner because neither of them were offering any help. This was impossible. Scientifically impossible. Maybe if she kept telling herself that…

  ‘Tony, where–?’ But there was no Tony. He was nowhere to be seen. But, she could hear something. Something like a low thrum had started coming through the deck. She remembered the sound of a door and turned, seeing what she thought might be what she had heard in one of the walls.

  It took her a second to work out that the little panel beside the door opened it, and then she was walking out onto a corridor which was at least a bit cleaner than the hold, but it did not help her state of mind. The walls were some sort of weird material that looked metallic but felt like plastic. The floor had a feel a little like rubber but was too solid for it to be actual latex. Light was provided by panels in the ceiling which glowed starkly white and looked like nothing she had ever seen before.

  And there was still no sign of Tony, but there was, at the end of the corridor, a ladder. Climbing it in her heels was not exactly easy, but she managed it, finding herself in another corridor with a door right beside the hole she had come through. She pressed the panel beside the door and it opened, and she was hit by a string of expletives in whatever strange language Tony swore in. At least she had found him. She stepped through the door, opened her mouth to speak, and froze.

  In front of her was a wide window of some sort. No, on second thoughts, it was some sort of TV screen – one with impressively high definition, but that was not the important part. What she could see on it were stars. Lots of stars, and they seemed to be moving. This was either the best spaceship mock-up ever, and Tony was an inveterate and genius practical joker, or…

  ‘Tony? Where–?’

  He glanced at her and said something that sounded rude before turning back to whatever kind of control panel he was working at. The room had two chairs in it, each with a lot of very complex-looking displays around them. Looking closer, Sheila decided they were far too complex.

  ‘Tony?’

  ‘Just shut the fuck up and sit down!’ Tony yelled at her. ‘When I’ve got the navicomp programmed, I’ll explain.’

  ‘N-navi…’ She trailed off, because he was obviously ignoring her, and sat down in the other flight chair. It was a flight chair. They were accelerating through space even if she could not feel the movement. She was in a spaceship and they were accelerating away from Earth, and he was programming some sort of navigation computer… She fainted.

  ~~~

  There were still stars in the viewing screen and she was still sitting in the chair. Groaning, Sheila sat forward, putting her head in her hands as much to hide the view as anything else. If she could not see it, then maybe it was not really there.

  ‘Oh, you’re back. I was enjoying the quiet.’

  She lifted her head and looked around at the man she had hoped would be banging her brains out by now. ‘Where are we? What’s going on?’

  ‘This is the Cantarvey, my ship. We are in space. Some… people I was hoping wouldn’t find me found me. I had to activate my emergency escape teleport and you were on it when I did. I don’t have time to take you back so you’ll have to come with me.’ He stopped speaking English and reverted to whatever language he had been swearing in, mumbling to himself as he checked over the displays in front of him.

  Sheila looked at the ones in front of her, which seemed to be a match for his. There were various squiggles which she guessed were letters, but looked more like hieroglyphics, and there were some gauges, and there was something she guessed was a radar display or the high-tech equivalent. On the lower side of the display was a shape which she guessed was the planet she called home. A few dots around it had small symbols tagged against them: they were probably satellites. Above there was nothing, empty space which they seemed to be flying into.

  ‘Where are you taking me? I… I can’t go into space in a dress like this.’

  He laughed. He actually laughed. ‘Don’t worry. Where we’re going, you’ll fit right in.’ Then there was a mumble in the odd language again.

  ‘You’re an alien.’

  ‘To me, you’re the alien.’

  ‘But you look human.’

  ‘Huh. Bloody humans, always the centre of their universe. Look, I always sucked at biology. Look up “convergent evolution” sometime. Anyway, this isn’t my natural skin colour. I changed it to go to Earth.’

  ‘Why? I mean, why come to Earth?’

  ‘Commodities, like I said. Earth has things it doesn’t know the true value of. I transport those things off your mudball to a slightly more civilised mudball. Then I sell them for way more than they’re worth in the domestic markets. I was setting up a really big deal too. Until fucking StarCorps figured out where I was.’

  ‘Star–?’

  ‘They’re self-appointed cops. Like to think they run the galaxy. Basically, they’re mercenaries. Every last one of them is on the take. If they’d have caught me, they’d have killed me, and they’d have killed you to stop anyone finding out. So quit your bleating. I saved your life.’

  ‘Saved my… You kidnapped me!’

  He aimed an index finger at h
er, glowering down it. ‘Listen, human, you’d be dead right now if it wasn’t for me. You’ve got no worthwhile skills, you don’t know any of the languages out there, and I can’t get you back for a while. We’re going to hole up on Dromeli until I can get the capital I need to finish up what I started. If you are very lucky, I’ll take you with me. Until then, there is exactly one thing you are useful for and that involves you being on your back. So shut up, lie back, and watch the pretty lights before I regret not letting them blow your face off.’

  Sheila slumped back in her chair, her eyes on the radar display. Earth was receding behind them and it seemed that there was no way back. Her wonderful, sexy, heart-throb lover was basically saying she was his sex slave until he decided to take her home, but he was right: there was nothing she could do out here, she was going to be entirely reliant on him for everything, and if he chose to kick her out she was going to die, and no one was ever going to know where she had gone.

  Trying very hard not to cry, because it was bound to annoy Tony, Sheila watched her life sliding away on a computer monitor.

  ~~~

  The scene had changed and now the scanner showed a large disc ahead of them, but Sheila was not watching that. The view screen was displaying the planet, Dromeli she figured, and it was… different.

  The entire planet seemed to be white. There were a lot of sharp, high mountains covered in snow, and while there seemed to be less ocean than on Earth, it was hard to tell because a lot of it seemed to be covered in ice. Dromeli looked cold.

  Tony was talking to people on the ground, presumably negotiating to land his ship, but since he was speaking whatever language it was that aliens spoke, she could not really tell what he was saying. He seemed to be a little annoyed, but then he had been like that since leaving Earth.

  They swept down through the atmosphere maybe twenty minutes after coming out of the jump. That had been something of an anticlimax. They had been flying out into space, there had been a sudden shift in the viewing screen display as though they were accelerating hugely, and then the stars had been different. Despite her situation, Sheila had been hoping for a kaleidoscope light tunnel, or flaring bursts of starlight, or… Well, something a bit more Hollywood. Stupid alien couldn’t even get the special effects right.

  Whatever kind of engine pushed the Cantarvey around, it seemed to be powerful. The vessel powered through the air, making sweeping turns as it flew in toward a large city on one of several small continents which made slightly less snow-covered holes in the ice oceans. Their destination seemed to be on the outer edge, an expanse of concrete dotted with various buildings and, sure enough, a minute or so later they were dropping onto one of the platforms on the outer edge of the site, well away from most of the structures.

  The humming of the engines died away and Tony turned in his seat. ‘All right, I figure it’s about four in the morning on that pit you call home. I’m tired. We’re going to go to sleep. The ship’s locked down, but if you did decide to try to get out, Dromeli’s average temperature is about fifteen below. You’d freeze to death before you made it to the spaceport concourse.’

  Sheila shrugged a little. ‘What would I do if I got there?’

  ‘Damn right. Come with me.’

  The cabin, right at the back of the inner corridor, would have been quite nice if Tony had spent five minutes tidying it up. It was split by the corridor, with a bathroom, kitchenette, and small office space on one side and a lounge on the other. The lounge had a couple of wardrobes in one wall, a chair with a table beside it, a wide, curved couch, and no visible means of entertainment. There were also a couple of crates, the remains of some sort of packaged meals, empty drinks cans… No bed that Sheila could see.

  The latter changed as they walked in and Tony said something, apparently to the air. The sofa shifted and expanded, becoming a large, elliptical sort of pallet. No sheets, but the air in the cabin was warm. He began taking off his clothes.

  ‘Tony–’ Sheila began.

  ‘Quit calling me that! It’s T’ney. T’ney D’nova. Try to pronounce it right.’

  She swallowed and tried again. ‘T’ney, I’m sorry about earlier. Thank you for not letting them kill me.’

  He nodded. ‘You’re welcome. Now get some sleep.’

  Like that was going to be easy.

  The Cantarvey, Dromdaria Spaceport, Dromeli, 11.1205 Local.

  Sheila awoke from sleep that had been hard to come by and was fitful at best to discover that T’ney was getting dressed. She had hoped that when she woke up the entire thing might have turned out to be a dream, she had expected to wake up to a demand for sex, but he was dressing in what looked like winter clothes, which probably meant he was going out.

  ‘I need to go see if I can find a couple of contacts,’ he said as he noticed her eyes were open. ‘You stay here. Anyone comes to the door, there’s no one home. The ship’s programmed for English. It used to monitor business news for me. Get it to teach you some Gadek Taved. Pretty much everyone speaks it. I doubt you can learn it properly, but a few phrases will help and maybe you can get some of the grammar. It’s not a complicated language.’

  ‘How do I, uh, access it?’ There seemed to be no form of computer in the room. Maybe in the office?

  ‘Ship, introduce yourself. In English. Sheila has guest access to ship’s systems.’

  ‘Yes, Mister D’nova.’ The voice came from speakers hidden somewhere in the room. Somehow it was no surprise that it sounded female. ‘Good evening, Sheila. I am Cantarvey. How may I be of assistance?’

  ‘It’s some sort of artificial intelligence?’ Sheila asked.

  ‘Yeah, not a hugely complex one, no emotions to speak of, never gets my jokes, but she keeps the ship running and as long as you tell her what to do, she’s great. I’ll be back… sometime.’ He marched out of the door without waiting for a reply, leaving Sheila alone with the empty room.

  Sort of empty. ‘Cantarvey?’

  ‘Yes, Sheila.’

  Getting to her feet, Sheila located her dress and pulled it on over her head. The clutter around the room was already annoying her. Something was going to have to be done. ‘T’ney wants me to learn some “Gadek Taved.” I don’t suppose you have a children’s book on it?’

  ‘No, Sheila.’

  ‘Okay then, uh…’ Choosing a corner, she began picking up dead cans and cartons. ‘Okay, so what is this language anyway?’

  ‘Gadek Taved is a trade lingua created by the veda during their imperial period. It is derived from the original vedan language, Tavedic, but unlike that language, Gadek Taved has remained in use throughout much of the galaxy for over four thousand Earth years. The primary principles employed in creating Gadek Taved…’

  Humming slightly as she worked, Sheila listened to the computer’s barely inflected voice as she worked on cleaning up the room. Well, if she was going to have to live here, she might as well help around the place.

  ~~~

  T’ney said nothing about the room when he returned. She saw his eyes flick about, noting the cleanliness, she had no doubt. Cantarvey had told her, upon being asked, that there were some cleaning supplies in the kitchen. Sheila had had to blow the dust off them before using them, but they had still worked. All T’ney did, however, was to start stripping as he walked to the bathroom.

  Sheila had checked out the shower earlier, feeling dirty despite it being unlikely that there was much dirt on her. It had been a very strange experience given that there was no water involved. Several devices set into the walls had begun a soft hum, when she had asked the ship to activate it, and some sort of sonic vibratory field had enveloped her, gently easing the tension in her muscles and apparently cleaning her since she did feel less sweaty afterwards. She had wondered absently whether it had a slightly stronger mode but had decided not to ask.

  When T’ney emerged, naked, from the bathroom, she wished she had taken the time to find out. Without a word, he pushed her over the back of the room’s one ch
air, pulled her skirt up, and entered her.

  She let out a screech of protest at the pain and indignity, but his hands pressed her hips into the seat back and he kept thrusting until her body had decided it knew what it was doing. She was still barely lubricated by the time he shot his load into her and pulled out, leaving her slumped over the chair, breathing hard.

  ‘You are going to have to learn to do better than that,’ he said.

  ‘If I’d known what you were going to do, I could’ve–’

  ‘Just assume you’re going to get fucked whenever I walk in the door.’ He slumped onto the sofa, resting his arm on the back of it. ‘So, while you were screwing around with a duster, how much of the language did you learn?’

  Sheila pushed herself to her feet, pushing her dress down her legs. She could feel the results of his activities oozing out of her, but she thought it unlikely he would wait until she had cleaned herself up for an answer. ‘Basic grammar structure, a few phrases I figured would be useful. It’ll take a while to pick up the vocabulary.’

  ‘Say something.’

  ‘Uh… Anay…’

  ‘Hello,’ T’ney translated.

  ‘Il mona na Sheila.’

  ‘My name is Sheila.’

  ‘Il gadek fashin Gadek Taved.’

  ‘I don’t speak much Gadek Taved.’ He laughed. ‘A useful phrase, given your circumstances.’

  ‘I thought so. I can ask the time, the way to the spaceport, someone’s name…’

  ‘And you’ll remember all this?’

  ‘I have an excellent memory. For facts anyway. I’ll remember the words and their meaning, but it’ll still take time to learn more of them.’

  ‘Huh. Have you eaten?’

  ‘I found a few things in the kitchen. Cold stuff. I had no idea what some of them were and I don’t know how to cook in there.’