Only Human (5 page)

“What else does it say in there about me?”

“Plenty. So much so that the Union decided
to take you out of active duty until you cool down. I doubt there is any single
Union officer more loathed among the rebel than you are. The concept of staying
low when Tharron is counting heads hasn’t occurred to you. And now here I am,
on covert assignment, and they give you to me like a great big shining beacon.”

“Oh,” she said. “Well.”

He rose from the lounger when a tone from
the cockpit interrupted them. “I do not think that Tharron has forgotten about
you. Learn to duck, Whiteside. There will be no grandstanding here, am I
clear?”

“Yessir,” she said, deflated.

He leaned over the controls in the darkened
cockpit. “We have cleared Myra space. Go for jump.”

She took her place beside him and reached up
to settle the headset onto her interface node. Her sensors connected smoothly
and a few indicators come to life on the display before her. The Major also
engaged his system.

“Do nothing,” he said. “Just catch us on
the other side. This span is awkward and I want to push it to Magra Alaric if I
can find the right exit.”

She felt a giddy shiver of anticipation
when he reclined in his couch and closed his eyes. The excitement of assisting
a complex jump performed by a Delphian made up for his reluctance to let her
assist. His opinion of the skill required to navigate through a charted and
stable breach, although arrogant, was probably correct. The mental fireworks
needed to work in tandem with a computer to open a ‘keyhole’ in space,
calculate and detect an exit, preferably somewhere near the desired location,
and to close it again safely was something else entirely. She shifted her
attention to the controls, prompting the plane to approach the coordinates he
sought.

Both of them felt the Eagle’s emitters wind
up.

“Going negative,” she reported needlessly.

He did not reply. She felt him direct the
ship, suddenly aware that they now shared a connection not only to the plane
but also to each other. Using the enormous complexity of their brains,
augmented with the physical capacity and protection of the ship, he tapped into
the site, into the
reach
, to expand the anomaly and looked for a way out
again. She allowed herself to be swept along, awed by the precision with which
he calculated the span that would bring them to Magra. He moved deeper and
farther, searching, measuring, almost feeling his way through the endless
nothing until he seemed satisfied with what he found.

She gasped when they surged into the
fissure he created and then there was nothing. No lights penetrated her closed lids;
there was no sound, no sensation of even touching the couch on which she lay.
Her moment of panic was quickly subdued when she felt the Delphian’s calm presence
reach her like a steadying hand on her shoulder.

Then they were clear. Nova’s attention
snapped to their external sensors, assuring her that no one and nothing was
nearby to risk a collision. She took control of the ship from him and throttled
their velocity to run a quick systems check. All was in order; the Major’s
skill with the aperture had landed them safely in the middle of nowhere.

“That was just… just neat!” she declared,
opening her eyes. “I don’t think I’ve ever jumped this far.” She checked their
coordinates. “Nice work! We’re less than five hours from Magra.”

“Whiteside,” he said.

“Sir?”

His eyes remained closed. He reached up to
pull the sensors away from his interface nodes. “Be… quiet.”

She grimaced. He remained in his couch for
uncounted minutes, recovering from the tremendous effort required to focus on
the jump they had just taken. At last he stirred and moved his long limbs with
some effort to sit up on his couch. He swung his feet to the floor and found her
watching him intently.

“You were scared,” he said finally, a small
smile twitching the corner of his mouth.

“Was not!” she protested with a laugh.

“Was.” He stood up. “You have some talent.
If we can get you to achieve a measure of stillness you could even learn to
span on your own. Some day. I’m going to sleep. Wake me when we reach orbit.”

Nova shifted restlessly in the small alcove
housing various real-video screens as well as thermographic and acoustic
surveillance sensors. No matter how diligently designed and well-padded, after
four hours this chair felt like it was stuffed with sawdust. She tried to
loosen and relax each cramped muscle in turn, her eyes never leaving the softly
glowing sweep of the sentinel system in front of her.

Could one die of boredom? On the other side
of these walls was only darkness. No moonlight ever revealed the shapes of the
trees she knew to be there as there were no moons over Magra. This was her
third night of passive surveillance while Major Tychon was doing things never
fully explained. She knew that he had made contact with possible rebels but he
seemed uneager to let her join the operation.

Whatever he was doing, it seemed to be more
demanding than her lonely boredom. She was able to sleep when necessary,
trusting the ship's sensors. He, however, battled fatigue in coping with the short
nights here, returning in the gray dawns to drop onto the lounger in the main
cabin, not bothering to find sleep in his own bunk. Nova passed her time in long
games of strategy with the computer, tiptoeing around the Major until she
realized that he did not wake easily. He slept motionless, rarely turning or
shifting in his eerie, silent rest. Delphi's peaceful evolution had not taught
its creatures to remain alert even while in repose. Eventually, she adjusted
her own sleeping habits to his. His taciturn presence when awake was still far
more interesting than the games his computer offered.

The Delphian spent several hours each day
in showing her his store of maps and tapes to help her understand the nature of
their work. Much of it was dry material, geography and environment of places
they were to visit and also the laws, dialects and politics of sentients found
there. But he was an interesting teacher possessed of great patience. She found
that she enjoyed her studies until it was time for him to leave the ship again.

And so her last few days had been spent. Reading,
staring at screens, reports, chores aboard the ship. Tychon was quite obviously
trying to keep her occupied.

The Eagle’s alarm system startled her out
of her mood on the fourth day. A life form other than Tychon and his contacts
appeared on the screen, man-size and moving stealthily toward the ship. She
reached for her gun and carefully opened the pilot hatch to investigate. Once
on the ground, she crouched by the landing structure, her gun aimed at the edge
of the clearing. She saw nothing until her eyes adjusted to the little light
shed by the stars above.

A shadow slipped from the far edge of the
clearing and moved noiselessly toward her, neither humanoid nor any other
sentient she recognized. Nova swung onto the wing of the plane and reached
through the pilot hatch to engage the parking lights. The intruder was a Class
Three resident who, after a fierce display of fangs and claws, moved on to
easier prey. Nova laughed silently and extinguished the lights.

She was loath to return to the confines of the
ship. What could Tychon possibly be up to on this outpost planet? Perhaps he
came to gamble and carouse the night away. Nova stifled a snicker at the
thought of the Major in a carousing mood. After some hesitation, she holstered
a second sidearm and walked into the direction of Tychon's rendezvous. The
seeker on her wrist array, along with that of the ship's system, showed her the
way in nearly absolute darkness.

She followed its sensors through a stand of
massive trees, so straight-boled that they seemed like a forest of stone
columns holding up some vast canopy in the sky. Nothing but strangely luminescent
mushrooms grew around their feet.

Eventually, Nova emerged into a meadow
where she found a low building constructed of a combination of wood and
plastics common to areas where off-worlders put up temporary shelters. A dim
light shone above the door, allowing her to see a few battered ground vehicles
and a skimmer nearby.

She crouched close to the hovel and ducked
past filthy windows until she heard voices. She watched from the cover of the
undergrowth, resolving to spy for just a few minutes and then return to the
Eagle.

The Major sat with a few others in a dim
room that was no more presumptuous than the outside of the building. Currency
of various denominations was scattered on a table that seemed barely sturdy
enough to support its own weight, let alone the elbows of those seated around
it. Tychon fit well into this group. His hair was disheveled, the loose
clothing dust-covered and ill used. Nova saw that all weapons had been placed
on a stool near the only door into the room. The motley group spoke in low
tones, their language foreign to her. One of them laughed in a high-pitched
whistle and clapped Tychon’s shoulder.

Nova nearly missed the sound of more voices
behind her. More by reflex than calculation, she dove deeper into the bushes.

Three figures walked past her. One of them
turned briefly in the doorway, suspiciously peering into the night. Rhuwac!
Small eyes within leathery folds of skin seemed to bore into her and he sniffed
the air, perhaps sensing the enemy that she represented. She knew that this creature's
sense of smell was his keenest. Would he recognize something foreign here?
Nova's hand tightened on her gun. There were no Class One Rhuwacs that did not
belong to Tharron's army of foot soldiers. If this one discovered her, she would
not die quickly.

The Rhuwac squinted myopically into the
gloom, sniffed again, and then sneezed. It was an insignificant huffing sound,
like that of a small mammal. He scratched something under his tattered coat and
ducked into the building. Nova offered a brief prayer of thanks to whatever had
induced the Rhuwac's allergy. She returned to the window in time to see the
newcomers enter the room.

The initial greetings were sharply
interrupted when one of the strangers spat a cat-like hiss and pointed at the
blue-haired member of the group. He snarled something and pulled a weapon from beneath
his vest.

Nova rose out of the shrubbery and smashed
the window with the butt of her gun. The sharp beam of her weapon sliced across
the room to pass between the still-seated confederates to find its target.

Tychon was the first to break out of the
motionless second of surprise that followed. He swung his arm to propel one of
the rebels across the room to fall over the smoldering body near the door. A projectile
tore into the wooden wall by his head. He turned and dove through the broken
window, landing hard beside Nova. The look on his face when he saw her was
almost comical.

She passed him her gun and drew another from
her belt. They chased through the dark without stopping to return their
pursuers' fire. Suddenly, ahead of Nova, Tychon stumbled and pitched to the
ground. She turned to fire into the blackness behind them, holding the rebels
back until Tychon regained his feet. He adjusted his gun to serve as a torch and
moved forward again, more slowly than before. To Nova, it seemed an eternity
before they reached the Eagle and he heaved himself up and into the ship. More
of the solid projectiles ricocheted off the hull and she barely ducked a laser
beam slicing the air just above her head.

Once inside the Eagle, Tychon took the
controls and launched into an unbalanced vertical take-off that threw Nova off
her feet. She grasped the fixed legs of the map table and hung on until he
stabilized the ship. His movements were quick, impatient, but he took the time
to complete all pre-acceleration checks before leaving Magra's atmosphere.

"You think we'll be followed?"
Nova said as she picked herself up again, spoiling for a fight, perhaps a
chase.

"No, they don’t have a decent plane
among them. There is a charted jumpsite at E 26 399 6 that reaches to Feyd. Set
course for that. I've already programmed the receiver."

Disappointed, Nova took the helm from him.
His taut expression cautioned against argument. She watched him move to the
communications console and signal a request for contact. After some delay he
received a faint reply without video, indicating that a relay station was ready
to receive his transmission.

"Targon, Vanguard Eagle Seven for
Colonel Carras. Tight band.” He paused a moment while the message priority was
changed and scrambled. "Nebdan grain vessel
Begiad
BT3222 is
heading for Magra carrying arms. Bound to show up at Aram Gate any moment and
jump from there. I would file a proper report but I thought that you might want
to intercept. No one important on board. I had hoped to get a location on Tharron
today but his underlings remembered me from some past affair." He felt
beneath his shirt and swore when he saw blood on his hand. His clothes were
torn in several places, likely from his flight through the broken window.
“Sorry, that wasn’t directed at you, Tal. I’m sure your parentage is
impeccable. I have some good news, too. I think we’ve got a bead on Anders.
I’ll report later. V7 out.” Tychon shipped the message to the relay at the
nearest jumpsite, from there to be transferred into Targon space.