Moonsteed. Manda Benson

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       MOONSTEED

      Beasts, Book One

      By MANDA BENSON

      LYRICAL PRESS

      An imprint of Kensington Publishing Corp.

      KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

       http://www.kensingtonbooks.com/

       For Zarcan

       Acknowledgements

      With thanks to Nerine Dorman, Carol Hone and DJ Cockburn.

       Chapter 1

      It’s easy to fall off a horse in three twenty-fifths g. Verity dug knees hard into the saddle as the horse veered and leapt to clear a crater. On the other hand, at least hitting the ground doesn’t hurt so much.

      Gibbous Jupiter cast its ruddy, mucky light over Callisto’s black plain. Three-hundred-foot towers gleamed like obsidian, their blunt edges eroded by eons of sublimation. The lamps on the horse’s breastplate and Verity’s helmet cast a quivering figure-of-eight on the ground ahead. It was difficult to see the other horse and its rider lost in the dark terrain and the oblique shadows of the ice protrusions.

      The research base’s ANT was tracking the spy and informed Verity his horse still ran toward the scarp. She looked over her shoulder at the base on the horizon and the man riding beside and slightly behind her. His name was John Aaron, a dull, ordinary name which suited him. Verity didn’t know him, but she’d noticed him staring at her on several occasions during training sessions. Something about him creeped her out.

      Verity shouted back to him after checking the ground ahead of her horse was free of obstacles. “It looks like we’re in for a hard ride. Whatever happens, we mustn’t shoot him. The voltage to the nervous system will mean the Inquisitor won’t be able to get anything out of him. Ideally we need him alive.”

      Aaron yelled, “Understood!” He sat hunched forward, his weight not in the stirrups properly, and behind the visor, his skin was ashen.

      “Are you all right?”

      He inclined his head to show his eyes, triggering an uneasy sense in Verity, and nodded.

      “Keep close to me.”

      She pressed her heels in and urged the horse faster. Clouds of vapor rushed from its nostrils with each exhalation, sweeping behind and forming ice on Verity’s knees and the armor protecting the animal’s neck. The fleeing horse raced far ahead toward the edge of the scarp. The spy was taking the long way around. Verity knew the region well. This was not the only route.

      “You follow him,” Verity ordered Aaron. “I’m going to see if I can cut him off.”

      She turned the horse toward the base of the scarp. This area was geologically newer than the old, dark plain behind her. An impact soon before the moon had been terraformed had blown a crater in the top of the scarp and forced liquid water up through the surface of the surrounding area, freezing it into jagged ice formations. A pale mountain reached into the sky ahead. Facets of jutting ice glittered from the heights in the russet light. She braced herself again as the horse jumped a crack in the stratum. The lamps illuminated more cracks, some of them wide and sprouting ice spears. The horse cleared them easily. Verity began to calculate the course up through obstacles she could barely discern.

      At her thought-prompt to the horse’s cybernetic armor, razor-sharp crampons extruded from the shoes to grip the stratum. Verity seated herself firmly, digging knees in as she gave the thought-prompt for the horse to jump. The first leap carried them twenty feet up to a ledge above some pointed stalagmites. A few beats of a canter, then the next jump, and the next, and in this way Verity guided the horse toward the summit. The horse moved as one with her, and she felt the ice under its feet and saw the world through its eyes, a wide, panoramic vision strangely devoid of red hues. The horse could feel no fear, for the part of its brain that processed fear had been cauterized. It would never refuse a jump, but it relied on Verity’s leadership and judgment to keep them both safe in doing so.

      Higher now, the crest must be close. Cold, arid air cut into their lungs. Another jump to a narrow track leading up. Spindles of pale ice blocked the way over to the other side and their descent. Verity pushed the horse forward and gave the command to jump, making it tuck its forelegs in close to its breastplate and pull back its head. Ice shattered with a noise like breaking glass, fragments bouncing off the armor and spinning through the air like tiny daggers. As the horse extended its forelegs for the landing, a disembodied pain lanced up from somewhere below and forward of where she sat. A splinter of ice must have found its way through the front left shoe’s protection, into the tender frog.

      They landed on a narrow area, momentum still carrying them forward. Verity had to calculate the next jump immediately to a ledge thirty feet down. Upturned icy knives sailed below. Verity fought to suppress the pain, reassuring the horse and supporting it with the strength of her mind. Hoofs down, throwing her forward in the saddle, leaving just enough time to recover before the next jump. There lay the track, a hundred or so feet below, and along it raced another rider. She couldn’t get down there without another jump. She found a place and directed the horse to it. Turning toward their quarry, they made the final leap toward the path that ran along the top of the scarp and the edge of the crater. They landed running, the man on the fleeing horse yards ahead. Adrenaline surged, setting up a pounding in her chest and an aching rush through limbs as Verity focused on the spy’s back, the bleed-back through her connection sustaining the horse against its pain a little longer. White ice and black dust raced by, each stride bringing them closer to him.

      Verity sat forward in the saddle and gripped with her knees. “Halt! In the name of the Meritocracy!”

      The man’s long, loose hair obscured his face as he crouched over his horse’s neck, his thighs tensing. Verity realized what he was doing and swerved her own horse aside as the other pivoted and kicked out, its hoofs missing Verity’s horse’s ribs by six inches.

      Unbalanced by the maneuver, Verity clutched at the reins with her left hand while her right flailed for balance as the ice rushed under the horse. Its hogged mane offered no purchase. She gave the thought-prompt and the horse made a short jump in the direction she leaned, resettling her in the saddle and drawing level with their quarry.

      “I’m armed!” Verity shouted. “Stop and you won’t be hurt!”

      The man’s shoulders twisted. His hand stretched toward something on his belt, a weapon. Without thinking, Verity reached to her left hip and grabbed the handle of her katana. The man’s head turned at the ring of steel. The blade rushed through the air, and Verity caught only a glimpse of the man’s fearful expression before head and shoulders parted company and the face disappeared under a whirl of hair and blood. The horse under the man’s body stumbled, its head falling and its legs giving way under it. It fell on its side to crash into the wall of sharp ice bordering the rim of the crater, and the man’s body flew out of the saddle and disappeared over the edge. The horse screamed.

      Verity pulled on the reins and leaned back, giving her horse the signal to stop as the fallen one lashed out with its feet, fearing its flailing hoofs would foul with her own animal’s legs and bring it down too.

      The horse had come to a stop lying on its side, and it made no attempt to rise. Its head twisted on its neck, ears back, eyes rolled to the whites. It groaned. A terrible broadcast of pain penetrated her senses. Verity kicked her feet out of the stirrups and dismounted. Her katana was too bloodied to be re-sheathed, so she laid it on the ground before approaching.

      Blood spread rapidly across the ground beneath the horse, solidifying before Verity’s eyes. She pulled off her helmet, the skin of her face tightening as sweat froze where its cheek plates