Four planes soared. Four planes banked.
Four planes swept in perfect unison around the double peaks of Mount Saeda and
headed into the vast playground beyond.

Nova Whiteside could see into the cockpits
of the other planes when the squad grouped at the testing grounds, hovering
almost silently below one of the towers. "Hey, Keta!" she spoke into
her microphone. "Your door is open!"

After a shocked second the Caspian in the
plane next to her turned his head, as sleek and alien in its helmet as without.
He shook a fist at her.

“Captain Whiteside,” the voice of the flight
lead rumbled over the com. “When you're done annoying the Lieutenant we can
begin."

Nova waved at Keta who would forgive her,
as always. She was glad that he was part of the chase instead of Fynn Bridger,
who surely would have been a natural choice for this trial. Fynn, her sometime
lover and frequent tormentor, had a way of taking the fun out of days like
these.

"Engage neuro.”

She tipped her head to settle her helmet
against her seat and ran her hand along its sensor to display her fingerprints.
Several connectors inside the helmet grasped her head like so many tiny fingers
massaging her scalp. It took only a second before the indicators on her control
board acknowledged the connection to her brain.

"I'm off," she transmitted to the
others. "Let's see who gets home first."

Her plane understood her commands faster
than her hands could ever manually input her intentions into its circuits. She
tipped a wing, veered, and immediately shot away from the others across the red,
marshy flats, faster than any living thing would ever traverse these plains.
She soon passed the terminator into daylight. Three of Myra's moons faded
against the brightening sky.

Using their ships’ neural interface, the squad
was to circle Myra's equator to test a much-anticipated systems update
especially designed for the Kite class planes. Gossip among the pilots suggested
not only a new top speed for the combat ships but also greater maneuverability.
Every one of them coveted one of the four spots when the exercise had also
turned into a contest.

Nova cared nothing for the prize - another
day off on this stint was not something she needed. Just the thought of winning
held enough fascination.

“This update is just brilliant!” she
exalted. “Are you getting this, O’Neill?” She watched her velocity with awe. A
minute adjustment to her heading brought immediate results as the machine
understood her command, calculated the risks, evaluated for pilot error and
responded, all of it in an instant. A tingle of excitement shivered along her
spine when she saw some of the other planes catch up.

“Nova, we need you to relax a little,” O’Neill
said. “Don’t get distracted. You’re really pulling the G’s now. Don’t be puking
in my plane.”

“This is amazing,” she marveled. “And I
can’t feel anything. Shields are fine.”

“You’re approaching the first marker.
Whiteside’s point; good work, Captain. Cut your speed, everyone. Down to ninety
spins. Start maneuvers over the lakelands, my voice direction only. See how
they relay.”

The team obeyed and the pack slowed their
headlong chase across the flat landscape.

Their commander began issuing directions
which the pilots passed along to their planes using only the microscopic
sensors buried in their brains. Again, the kites performed as hoped-for,
handling their tasks with ease, obedient to their flesh and blood masters.

“All right, looks good,” O’Neill said much
too soon. Nova heard a few groans from the other pilots as well. “We've got
enough. Let’s get home for dinner. Go!”

Nova launched herself at the distant
horizon, waiting not another nanosecond for the others to process his command
and pick up the chase again.

“Nice reflexes, Nova,” she heard a smile in
O’Neill’s voice. “We’ll have to–"

“Lost you on that last bit, sir.”

There was no reply.

“O’Neill, come in.”

Nothing.

An orange light flashed among the controls,
indicating another plane nearby. The others were closing in. “Did any of you
lose the tower?” she asked.

No one answered. The orange blip continued
to eat the distance between them.

She felt her heart beat high in her throat
and cursed herself into calmness. Medical sensors taped to her chest, head and
neck fed back her vital signs to the control center for analysis as this test
unfolded. Not just the planes were under scrutiny.

“Keta? Dylan? Is that you back there?” Nova
muttered unfine endearments to herself as she tried to identify her pursuer. By
now it was obvious that he was pursuing her, dangerously close, and not just
sharing her flight path. Her mechanical sensor faithfully reported a Union
issue fighter plane. He moved above her and began to lose altitude.

Her alarm systems screamed at her.

The kite continued to drop, forcing her to
do the same. Where were the others? She varied her speed, hoping to slide out
from under him. He stayed with her, not losing a single meter of distance.

Nova smiled grimly, having met her match.
Only a few of her peers flew with such precision. She decided to stay in the
neural link and play him along, her plane twitching the way a rabbit runs
before a predator. Perhaps she could still outfox him. The concept of surrender
did not occur to her nor did the repeated warnings of the instructors not to
risk the expensive kites needlessly. This might be fun. She began to maneuver,
pushing the machine to decide between her unspoken commands and the safety
parameters of the plane’s design.

"Hey! What the…?"

He had opened fire! She saw projectiles tearing
into the ground below, flinging up clods of red mud in twin rows running after
her shadow.

"Are you crazy?" she hissed into
her microphone. "What are you doing?" She raised her visor to get a
better look at the plane above her.

The hunter answered with another round.

"Identify!" Nova's voice shook.
Fear sliced into her gut like the blade of a cold knife. Rumors of rebels on
the base were now widely accepted as fact. Could one of them be on that plane? She
brought her gun controls online and prepared to return his fire, knowing that
there was still a chance that one of her overzealous colleagues was simply
playing the bad guy. But how long could she wait?

Then something grazed along her hull that
sent her kite into a wild spin. The ground rushed toward her at a sickening
speed and sky changed places with earth in a kaleidoscope of red and blue. Out
of instinct, she reached for the steering bars of the plane but then recalled
her direct link with a far more precise steering system than she could ever
hope to be. She allowed it to follow her mental commands to steady the ship, gaining
control by sheer, teeth-grinding determination.

She felt anger rise in her throat, pushing
her fear somewhere into the background where she didn’t have to deal with it.

"Bastard," she breathed and forced
the kite into reverse. The plane obeyed, held together by little more than its
shields, less successful in protecting its Human cargo. She was thrown hard
into her seat belts and felt her helmet collide with the steering bars.

The hunter swooped over her head, guns
blazing.

"Control, Whiteside under fire,"
she reported, forcing a calmness into her voice. "It's live and not what I
signed up for today!” A bright beacon on her dashboard reported further
trouble. “I’ve lost my left interface. Come in, Control!"

Still, no reply.

Her pursuer had banked into a tight turn
and now came head-on, his fire barely missing her kite. She continued her
evasive tactics, now relying only on a single neural link to her machine.

This game had turned into a mindless bid
for survival. And now, although she had not taken a direct hit, her displays signaled
yet another malfunction, this time in the crossdrive system. Her velocity
dropped steadily.

Cursing, Nova stopped the plane and hovered
it into a passable emergency landing on a clear patch among the tall grasses
and pools of stagnant water that made up most of Myra's surface. She disengaged
from the sensors in her helmet to break the neurolink, retracted the canopy and
freed herself from her seatbelts. She slid across the plane's triangular wing
to land on spongy ground, taking only her gun and a small backpack containing
medical supplies and emergency rations.

Her actions were automatic, a list of priorities
ingrained into her since the day she walked into basic training over a decade
ago. Her only conscious thought now was to abandon the plane before the enemy's
missiles turned it into a deadly storm of shrapnel. She ran toward a gully, slowed
by the surface mire, tearing through brambles and reeds until she found a hump
of moss-covered rocks among tall fronds of fern. She gasped for air, her lungs
on fire.

Had he given up? Nova listened for the
other plane, hearing nothing. Had he landed, too? She waited through uncounted
minutes, letting the insects of this bog find her. Her head throbbed. She knew
that the people back at the base would be shaking their heads over her erratic
read-outs. She forced her breath to slow, tempted to remove the wireless sensor
that still stuck to her chest beneath jacket and shirt.

Something trickled along her cheek and when
she touched it her hand came away bloodied. Gingerly, she prodded her neural
interface node and found that it had torn.

“Oh, Noooova," a contrived falsetto
sing-songed behind her. The barrel of a gun stabbed into her nape. Startled,
she spun to raise her own weapon. A heavy boot came down on it, crushing it
along with her hand against the rock that was supposed to have hidden her.

"Interesting reflex there. I could
have taken your head off."

Nova wrenched her hand free. She rubbed it,
glaring at the Lieutenant, angry at herself for having allowed him to come up
behind her. "You're a pig sometimes, Fynn."

"Whatever that is." He looked at
the blood on her face in thoughtful fascination. "I've caught myself a
prisoner."

"Good for you. Let me up." She
pushed his leg aside and stood up. Her uniform dripped with swamp water and her
boots were probably ruined. "How dare you shoot at me? If O'Neill finds
out you'll be demerited into oblivion!" She jammed her gun into its
holster and turned to march back to her plane.

"Hold it," he said. "Didn't
you hear me say that you're my prisoner?"

"Yeah, so?" Nova said irritably,
the terror of the chase already receding in her memory. She had lost the contest!

"I'm playing a Rhuwac today. Big mean
Rhuwac rebel wants to play with his prisoner."

BOOK: Only Human

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