Only Human (40 page)

"None of this is your fault, Kiran,"
she said. "We won't blame you, ever."

He took her hand. "Don't let them hunt
me, for their sake. Tell them I've left Trans-Targon. And tell them I shot
Dadda." For a moment, Kiran mischievous grin reappeared. "That way
you'll dodge the court martial."

"Where will you go?"

"Shaddallam, at the moment. Your
Colonel's planes are losing their fight. There are still people dying because
of me. It's got to stop."

She touched his cheek. "You are not a
monster."

"Not all of us are evil," he said,
an echo of Pe Khoja. "I won't be back, don't worry. I need time to find
out who I am, perhaps work on my survival instinct. You won't have a second chance
to point a gun at me." He stood on his toes to kiss her, then paused for a
brief moment. A smile lit his tired face. She gasped when he raised his small
hands and pressed them to her belly. For an instant, she felt every cell in her
body react to his touch. "You can give him a daughter, if you wish,"
he whispered.

Nova watched him climb into the Eagle and
then hurried to where Tychon was struggling to get up. Greah did his best to
help when they hauled him up and maneuvered him into the landing bay's control
room. They waited silently for the bay to depressurize.

From inside Eagle Five, Kiran relinquished
his mental control of the battleship's functions and allowed her to drift.
Watching through the control room's window, they saw the Eagle lift off and out
of
Erato
, leaving the bay doors open. It moved only a short distance
away before it vanished as if it had taken only a second for Kira to open a
keyhole and slip into the reach.

"Woah!" Greah shouted. "What
was that?"

"What have I done?" Nova said
tonelessly.

Tychon leaned heavily on the edge of a
control panel, suspecting that a few days in a clinic lay in his future. "No
regrets now," he said. "You promised him as much."

"You agree with what I did?"

He thought a moment. "No," he
said. He pulled her close to himself and she moved into his embrace, hiding her
face in the warm curve of his neck, wishing to stay there for a very long time.
He held her tightly. "But I am grateful that you did it."

"He may never forgive me for letting
him go," she said. "But I have to believe that he won't make me
regret this." She reached up to trace the lines etched into the handsome
face where he should not have had any for years. A sickle-shaped scar below his
eye would always remind him of this day. "You've lost so much, Ty."

He kissed her softly. "But not
everything. And he's alive because of you." He smiled but she saw the pain
behind the Delphian facade and the grief that he would not examine until there
was time and space for these things.

"Look, look, look!" Greah shouted.
Unable to stand still in his excitement, he was bobbing up and down in front of
the observation window. "Look at this!"

Teti
had
come into panoramic view outside the bay door, the hundreds of lights from her
windows shining in the cold dark like a distant city. The mammoth ship slowed
to approach the
Erato
with caution. The maw of her launch issued a few
fighter planes.

They became aware of voices bursting
through the open communicator, wanting to know.  Tychon peered at the
unfamiliar controls around them and then poked experimentally at a likely one.
Several of the overhead screens came to life, among them a view of
Teti
's
crowded control room. Greah waved eagerly.

Carras' face loomed over them. "What
is going on over there? Where is… where is the boy?"

Although Nova tensed when she saw the
Colonel appear on the screen, Tychon did not let her pull out of his embrace.
"At ease, soldier," he said mildly.

She turned her head to look at Greah. The
Shaddallama answered her unspoken question by nodding. She looked into the camera.
"I'm sorry, sir. He is gone. We do have Tharron and Pe Khoja. They're dead,
sir.”

Carras’ eyes narrowed even as some of the
people on his bridge broke into a cheer. He glanced at nearby officers before
he replied. “Stay where you are. I’m coming over there.” He shut the com link
down.

Greah stood on a chair for a better view of
Teti
. “So what are you gonna tell him?”

“Depends on what he asks us,” Tychon said.

They watched silently from the control room
while a runabout entered
Erato
’s landing area and settled to the floor.
Nova found the controls for the massive door and the mechanism to re-pressurize
the bay. Red lights overhead dimmed and the shuttle’s doors opened. Tychon
leaned heavily on Nova when they left the control room to meet Colonel Carras.

Two others had arrived with the Colonel,
one of them in plain clothes. He immediately entered the disabled rebel ship
while the officer went into the control room, leaving Carras alone with his
pilots and the Shaddallama.

The Colonel looked around the hall, then
beyond the transparent walls into the adjoining space. “All dead?”

“I assume so, sir,” Tychon said.

Carras regarded them for a long, silent
moment. Tychon’s arm was around Nova’s shoulder and both looked drained,
disheveled and strangely reserved. His eyes travelled down to the diminutive
Shaddallama who returned his gaze with a broad smile. “The Tughan escaped?”

“Yessir,” Nova said. “With the Eagle. We
saw him open a keyhole just outside. At least I think that’s what it was.”

“There are no breaches anywhere near here.”

“None that we can detect, sir. He could be
anywhere now."

Carras gazed at the corpses littering the
passage around the launch. "I'm sorry about your son, Tychon," he
said finally.

Tychon took a deep and not quite steady
breath. "He's alive, Tal. Somewhere."

“Did he… harm you?” Carras asked. "You
look terrible."

“No, sir. I was shot. It’s not serious.”

The Colonel nodded slowly. “We have a
Shantir aboard
Teti
, if you prefer that to our medics.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“He will not want to discuss the Tughan
with you. No one on Delphi does. Ever.”

“Understood, sir.”

The engineer returned from the control room
to join them by the shuttle. "No life signs aboard, sir," she said.

Carras stood with his hands on his hips,
surveying the bay. He pursed his lips and pondered for a while. “Clearly,
Tharron was experimenting with some sort of radiation, maybe even something
similar to our Challenger. No doubt he then got in his own way. He was not a
cautious man.”

“No doubt, sir,” Nova said.

“You three are very fortunate to have
arrived here after the initial blast. Too bad that you were overwhelmed by one
of the surviving rebels and lost the Eagle during his escape.”

“Indeed, an expensive loss.”

Carras gestured at the overhead
surveillance system. "That kind of radiation can wipe out entire recording
systems. Isn't that so, Captain Taha?"

"That is correct, sir. I will take a
look." She walked back through the control room and into the hallway
beyond.

The Colonel searched their faces. “Is there
anything else that we need to discuss before we bring in a crew?”

“Tamotsu Comori is also in Shad Areen,”
Nova said, her eyes still following the engineer, once again amazed by the
efficiency in which the Union's military dealt with inconveniences. “Along with
several other high-ranking rebels. The native population will cooperate if we
extract and remove them.” She gestured at Greah. “I’d like to request
compensation for this man and his people. They sustained some losses.”

Tychon winked at Nova. “And I’d like to
request a leave of absence, sir. To recuperate. From being shot. It’s very
painful.”

"I got shot, too," Nova
protested.

If it had been in the Colonel’s nature to
roll his eyes heavenward, he would have done so now. “You three get into that
shuttle before you fall down. I recommend isolation until we determine the
nature of this… radiation. And until everything has been... sanitized. A month
at most. Am I clear?”

“May we be isolated on Delphi, sir?” Nova
inquired blithely.

"Delphi! The base?"

"No," Tychon said. He pressed his
lips to Nova's cheek before turning them both toward the shuttle.
"Home."

-END-
*  *  *  *  *
*

Dear Reader:

I hope you enjoyed this
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then I thank you for making it all the way to the end!

There will be a prequel to
this story about the earlier adventures of Nova Whiteside, entitled
The
Catalyst
, available in January 2013. It has pirates!

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Also available by Chris Reher:

The Gods of Chenoweth
, available at Amazon,
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In the distant future and on a distant planet, two brothers are sent
to a nearby moon to rescue a woman whose mental abilities, still untrained and
untried, must stand in the way of an advancing enemy. There they are hunted as
demons, fall in with pirates, and are ensnared in a violent passion that
threatens to destroy everything it touches.
As they learn the truths about events that brought them to this place, the
brothers must decide between the future of one world and the destruction of
another.
Two women hold the keys - one can save their planet, the other can save their
lives.

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