Only Human (23 page)

He placed it into her hand. "Just keep
it safe."

Tor Ag proved to be dreary. The most
interesting color here was gray in various shades of boring. Gray mist hung in
the air and gray ooze covered the ground. Nova shook her feet with every step. Although
the surface appeared solid, she sunk ankle-deep into a powdery mass before
finding firm foothold. The dry substance seeped back into place where they had
walked, leaving no tracks.

"You come here often?" Nova
peered at Tychon over her respirator, still able to smell ammonia. She kicked
at the dust around her feet, sending up a billowing cloud of grayness. Her eyes
were watering and felt raw.

He scanned the empty, blurred street over
his own mask. Few of Tor-Ag's inhabitants walked, preferring the safety of
covered sleds that moved noiselessly over the surface dust. "I think
that’s the place over there."

"This is disgusting."

The moistureless clouds seemed less dense
here than they had been on the airfield and she could spot gnarled shapes of
gray vegetation between shuttered buildings. She, who was well used to the dead
emptiness of space, suddenly wished for even the slightest fragment of color. A
single green leaf would have been a relief. Those withered bits of shrubbery
seemed to exist without the chlorophyll so vitally needed in most of the places
she had visited. How could anything grow in this world?

Walking closer to Tychon, she looked up at
the sun she knew to be there and saw only a milky brightness, exactly where it
had been when they had landed here a few hours ago. She shivered. When he
stopped to consult the screen on his forearm her eyes adhered to the patch of
bright red shirt by his collar. She wished he hadn't worn his gray duster over
it.

Tychon led them into another, equally
deserted street. They moved slowly, alert to what may come to meet them, but
their guns remained holstered. She touched his elbow when she spotted the open
bay door of the repair station they had been instructed to find. Both of them
stopped some distance from the building, raising their hands slightly to show
that they were empty. Just inside the storage area, four hulking figures waited
in the drifts of fog settling among crates and barrels.

The one in front, a stooped and
thickly-robed K'lar, gestured to them.

"Out here is fine," Nova said.
"We prefer the fresh air."

The K'lar stepped out of the shelter, his
guards close behind. Nova saw scaled, tufted skin and realized that the shambling
creatures were Rhuwac. Her skin crawled and she fought the impulse to take a
few steps back. She glanced at Tychon but, except for a fleeting twitch of his
upper lip, his expression remained carefully neutral.

"You," the K'lar pointed at Nova.
"Whiteside?"

She nodded.

He held up two thick fingers. "Two
hundred."

She gasped, surprised by the amount.

Tychon reached into a pocket and withdrew a
clear plastic case of triangular tokens. He shook it. "Proof?"

"Have tape," the K'lar said,
using an awkward mix of Union mainvoice and bits of his own language.
"Picture tape. Delphi boy good. Not problem."

"How did you get that?" Nova
asked.

"No askings. Boy not far."

"Where? Here on Tor Ag?"

"No. Give that." He raised his
hand toward Tychon and the box of coins. But then he groaned loudly and his
eyes widened to show more of the yellows. He stumbled back a few steps and none
of his Rhuwacs caught him when he crumpled to the ground. Nova saw a new hole
in his dirty robe, quickly staining with blood. No one had heard the shot that
had taken the rebel down.

Tychon's weapon was in his hand and one of
the Rhuwacs fell even before any of the others had comprehended what had
happened. "Come on!"

"Wait!" Nova squatted beside the
writhing K'lar and held her breath as she searched his pockets.

The other two Rhuwacs now roared something
unintelligible and one lunged at her even as her fingers closed over a small,
round object. She whirled to run after Tychon, back to the main street and the
airfield, leaving the slow-moving Rhuwacs behind.

"Told you there was another part to
that message, didn't I?" Nova panted when she had caught up with Tychon.

He dodged into an alley when a large shape
loomed out of the mist. "More of them up ahead."

They raced into the direction of his plane
through a maze of alleys and narrow streets. A look over her shoulder confirmed
that they were followed by more Rhuwacs. Nova stumbled over something hidden in
the layer of surface dust and barely caught herself. An icy pain shot through
her foot. Tychon had sprinted ahead, far ahead, before he turned to see her no
longer behind him.

"Nova!"

Three Rhuwacs were only steps behind her.
Without time to turn and aim her own weapon, she limped onward, pain flaring up
from her foot in measurable bolts of agony. Nova could almost feel the Rhuwacs
behind her and heard their strained gasps for air. She was losing ground now, her
strength ebbing. Her respirator had come loose and her throat was on fire.

Two of her pursuers galloped past her,
toward Tychon, their guns forcing him to duck into a doorway.

Then she felt a rough, scaled hand grab a
fistful of her hair and jerk her off her feet. She sprawled into the dust,
desperately twisting around to get her gun between her and the beast looming
over her. He wrenched the weapon away and tossed it aside.

She looked up to see the brutal face of her
captor. Two rows of teeth angled like ancient tombstones and cold, thoughtless
eyes stared at her above a splayed, scarred nose. His carrion stench blasted
her face. She noted all this with interest, observing her terror as part of
this nightmare. He was leaning on her with one hand in the pit of her stomach
and she realized dimly that she could not breathe. A knife was pressed under
her chin, its tip already piercing the skin.

The Rhuwac  mumbled something and an
idiotic grin pulled his heavy features into a carnival mask that Nova had seen,
long ago, when she had been a child growing up on Skyranch Four. She hadn't
understood the mask until now.

He flung her into the entranceway of a
house and lumbered after her before she gasped some of the tainted air into her
lungs. She clawed at his face when he gripped her belt and tore her clothes as
if they were made of paper.

Then he was not there anymore.

Tychon was there instead, staring down at
the fallen Rhuwac, his gun still in his hand. The loose strands of hair and the
thick billows of dust did not obscure the boundless hate and rage burning in
his eyes. In one quick motion, he twisted the knife from the Rhuwac's grip and
slashed at the large body.

Nova rolled away, frightened by the sounds
now bursting from the beast. She felt the sour taste of bile rise in her throat
when she saw where Tychon was inflicting horrible wounds. Blood spurted thickly
from a severed femoral artery.

"Gods, Ty! Kill him! Finish it!"

Tychon looked from the blade in his hand to
Nova as if surprised by their presence. He flung the knife aside and killed the
Rhuwac with his gun. His arms were drenched in blood to the elbows.

"We're even," he said calmly.

Nova blacked out, almost gratefully.

She was vaguely aware of being picked up
and carried back to the airfield. No one stopped them, no one came to help.
Like on other worlds she had seen, rebel matters were left to rebels and the
locals had learned to stay out of their way. She clung to Tychon, her face
pressed against his duster. Oddly, the rough fabric seemed to wear away the
image of the Rhuwac's face that hung like a vision before her eyes.

 When he put her down she could see the
Eagle's scuffed hull crouching in the rolling mist, uninviting and unfamiliar.
She longed to be within its clean, comfortable, cluttered interior and gone,
long gone.

"Are you all right?" he said.
"Let's get you some air before you pass out again. You hurt your
foot?"

She leaned heavily on his arm, willing
herself not to throw up. "Ty you cut his... You didn't have to..."

"Shouldn't try to rape Union officers."
His voice was roughened by more than the ammonia in the air. He wiped at the
blood that trickled along her neck. He was more gentle when he helped her into
the ship.

They launched and left orbit, more to quit
this dismal planet than because of any real need to hurry. The autopilot took
them away from Tor Ag and Nova began to feel better with every minute that
passed.

Tychon winced as much as she did when he
removed her boots to reveal a bruised ankle. He  helped her pull off her torn
and blood-stained clothes and then removed his also, stuffing all of it into a
bag which he then tossed into the cargo hold where the smell of ammonia could
not reach them. They cleaned up the blood, dust and gore and slipped into clean
clothes before he carefully examined her foot. Neither the cut on her neck nor
the bruised ankle was especially worrisome.

"I wonder who shot that K'lar,"
she said.

He shrugged and placed a cold pack on her
foot "Wish I knew. The lizards must have thought it was me. Too stupid to
see I was carrying a laser."

Nova was uneager to discuss the Rhuwacs.
"Probably another rebel, shooting the K'lar for being a traitor. Oh, the
tape!"

"Huh?"

"I got a disk from that man."

He went back into the cargo bay to dig
through her clothes. "Found it," she heard him call. He re-entered
the cabin, thoughtfully examining the small spool in his hand. "Centauri
markings."

"Do we have something to play it
on?"

"I think so. The main screen,
maybe."

He helped her hobble to the cockpit where
she waited until he had inserted the spool into an adapter. When he settled
into his bench she climbed into his lap. He smiled and wrapped his arms around
her after making sure that her cold pack was back in place on her foot.

The tape threaded slow. Tychon adjusted the
unit until most of the static cleared. They saw an image of a two-storied
building. The picture shook as the viewer moved closer. A high wire fence
surrounded the house. Dense forest formed a background.

"Look!" Nova exclaimed.

Two children crouched within the small
yard, intent on a game. They wore only short pants, their feet bare. Tychon
swallowed hard when they saw one of them fling a mass of blue curls back over
his shoulder. The other was a small boy, no larger than a toddler, with
startling blond hair and very dark skin.

The door to the house opened and a K'lar
woman appeared, speaking to the children. They seemed to understand a command
and rose to pick up a few toys. The smaller child shouted something and tried
to wrestle Kiran to the ground.

The woman grabbed each boy by an arm to
pull them apart, but when she half-turned to the camera Nova saw an indulgent
smile on her face. She ruffled Kiran's hair and the three walked into the
house, Kiran's arm wrapped loosely around the woman's thick waist.

The image dissolved into static. Nova felt Tychon
breathing evenly in the dark of the cockpit, but she knew by now that this
would be no barometer of the turmoil he felt.

"He's fine, Ty," she said.

He stroked her hair absently.
"Yes."

She looked up at him. "Are you?"

He kissed her before rising from the couch,
taking her along with him. He crossed the cabin and placed her onto the
lounger. "I am. You should get some sleep now. Do you need something for
the pain in your foot?"

"No. Are you coming to bed?"

"In a while. I want to study the tape
for a bit."

Jelani leaned heavily against the wooden
frame of the door to the boy’s room. His heart beat high in his throat when he
saw Kiran on the floor, his blue-topped head bent over a captured rodent in a
jar. Jelani clasped his nervous hands and sought to control his emotions.

He had arrived!

After their meeting in that cesspit on
Feron, Pe Khoja had spirited Jelani away on his ship while sending the Delphian's
hired pilot on another errand. The trip had taken forever, spanning several
reaches including one so deep that Jelani had spent most of the time in fearful
prayer. For the long intervals between jumps, he had remained in a soothing
khamal that allowed him to avoid any thought but that which concerned the
Tughan Wai.

Jelani shuddered when he recalled his
meeting with Pe Khoja. He hadn't needed to touch the Caspian's mind to perceive
the sociopathic void that passed for his soul and the terrible intelligence that
guided his spirit. No wonder that the Union sought so desperately to rid
themselves of men like that. Jelani suspected that Delphi’s relative isolation had
so far sheltered him from a great many things that he preferred not to even think
about.

Too bad about Nova. Although merely Human,
he had sensed a great strength there and he had not missed Tychon's attachment
to her. Briefly, he wondered if the rebels, in their quest to rid themselves of
her, would also harm Tychon, his kinsman. He pushed that thought aside, too.
The high price paid seemed insignificant to the prize that was soon to be his.