Only Human (34 page)

Tychon grinned. "Forgive her. We're
not used to your customs. I'm sure Tsegh acted bravely."

"I can't believe you guys!"

Greah settled beside them on the floor. A
few Shaddallamas joined them, their eyes on the speaker as if anticipating the
words of a storyteller. Nova was certain that none of them understood their
language.

"Tharron's still in the house that
used to belong to Neb Hani. Neb Hani was a trader who got very wealthy out on
Shad Lengh and then settled here, in the lowlands." Greah noticed Nova's
idly tapping fingers and continued quickly. "Kira is with Tharron, so are
some of the others you spoke of: Pe Khoja, Comori, Jelani. Tsegh overheard
their conversations. He said that one of Tharron's big battleships is coming.
Then Tharron was shouting at Jelani a lot."

"He's going to move the boy," Tychon
said flatly. "On a battleship."

"Then we'll have to start all over
again!" Nova said. "Ty, we've got to do something!"

"There are two places with planes
here," Greah said. "One just has a lot of little planes that are kind
of round in the back and make a lot of noise when they fly by. Those are on the
other side of the town. There are bigger planes on the main airfield. The ones
that go straight up. One of those could be yours. But most of them look pretty
beat up."

"The Eagle's likely one of
those," Nova said. "Sounds like they're keeping the shrills over on
the other side. Not likely to take Kira up in one of those."

"No, they wouldn't have gear for
him," Tychon agreed. "They'll need a cruiser, so that leaves the
airfield." He came to his feet, not without a few groans and winces, and
twitched a curtain aside to look into the teeming street. "It's just about
dark. In this crowd we'll be able to snoop around without being noticed. Nova
will take a look at Tharron's keep and work with some of the locals to determine
the most likely route they'll take to the airfield and see if there is some
sort of ambush point. Greah and I will go to the airfield, find the Eagle and
make sure it's available for escape. I'm really hoping we can find a way to
contact Adachi and Xi on the other Eagles without anyone noticing. And then
we'll see about sabotaging some of the other planes."

"Why?" Greah asked. "I
thought the Eagle was fast."

"So is Pe Khoja," Nova said.
"We can't risk a chase. We'll be outnumbered. If they get to the
battleship all is lost. They must not leave Shaddallam."

Tychon regarded her thoughtfully. "No,
they must not." He took her face into his hands and kissed her softly. "Be
careful. Please."

"Don't worry so, Major," she
smiled. "I'll meet you at the airfield in three hours. We should know a
lot more by then." She motioned to two of the Shaddallama women to
accompany her and slipped through the door into the street. Tychon watched
through the window as she disappeared into the crowd.

"And what are we gonna do in the
meantime?" Greah asked.

Tychon stared at him absently, then shook
himself. "Sabotage," he said.

* * *

Nova followed her two guides through the
crowded city, dodging rebels along the way, until they reached a compound of
structures near the river. The Shaddlamas' gestures made clear that this was
Tharron's hideout and then pointed into another direction, likely the location
of the airfield. Nova nodded, understanding, but she could not tear her eyes
away from the buildings.

A wall, younger than the town, had been
erected around an apparently random selection of appropriated houses to serve
as rebel headquarters. Nova could barely see the rooftops beyond the
fortification. She circled it, noting two gates, locked from within and closely
guarded. Her eyes scanned each house outside the walls, judged distances and
counted guards. There were cameras mounted at uneven intervals but none of them
pivoted as they were designed to do and two were totally overgrown with some
clinging plant life.

Her eyes came to rest on a low building a
little further along the street. It was decayed and clung to the fortress wall
for support. Its crooked roof was high enough to afford a view into the plaza
beyond.

Nova motioned to the two women, bidding
them to wait, and ignored what were presumably objections to her plan. She
crossed the street and ambled toward the shack, stopping often to clear the way
for passersby and to examine proffered merchandise. Even here, close to Tharron's
hiding place, people converged and vied for living space.

The wooden building stood near the end of the
alley where, finally, the traffic seemed to thin out. Two guards patrolled near
the wall, looking bored. She waited for them to begin their stroll back to the
main gate, then darted out from the edge of a warehouse and into the shack.

The climb onto the roof was a matter of
seconds. Nova crept over the sloping surface, mindful of the places where the
rotted wood had given way to age and weather. She could see the anxious faces
of her guides on the street below. She peered over the wall. A lone Rhuwac
loitered near a powered-down skimmer in the cobbled courtyard below. The restless
noise of the crowded city outside the walls drowned out any sound coming from
within but there was an air of peaceful quiet about the place. It certainly did
not look as though Tharron was about to start a trek to the launch.

She considered her options. Down below were
windows to be peeked into and conversations to be overheard. Directly to the
left of her a stone staircase led to the top of the wall and onto the roof of
the main villa. Escape would be simple. She dropped silently to the ground
inside the compound, thankful for the soft Shaddallama leather boots that she
still wore. The guard by the car did not seem interested in guarding anything
as she stole past him.

The silence was unnerving. Nova tried a
door and found it unlocked. Had everyone left already? Had Tharron, somehow,
anticipated their plans and evaded their spies to move Kira to yet another
location? Or was he simply so sure of his safety within Shad Areen that he
could afford to be careless?

The interior of the building was cluttered
with randomly installed hallways and chambers. Strangely angled corners and
purposeless niches provided her cover as she made her way in the murky light
falling through unwashed windows.

She felt a single person's approach before
she heard the soft footfalls. A woman hurried past her and turned into another
narrow hall. Nova realized that this was the K'lar she had seen on the tape
taken from the rebel traitor on Tor Ag. She sidled to the corner, hearing voices.
A quick look confirmed the presence of a K'lar guard by the last door in the
hall. The woman spoke to him, laughed, and entered the room. Nova waited a few
moments, then inched her gun forward, sighting on the guard. He fell with a
dull thud.

She hurried forward and pressed her ear to
the door.

"Ghi, Ema," a small voice was
heard. "Ghi soma Kira, oweah!"

Nova closed her eyes. Kiran! He sounded
unhappy. She listened for others but there was only Kiran's plaintive whine and
the woman's soothing tones.

Nova adjusted her gun. The woman's voice
sounded kind and she had no wish to kill her. She stepped into the room and
reached for the K'lar, clamping her hand over her mouth.

Kiran stood close by, his eyes round in
surprise. In the dim light and in contrast to the deep blue hair, his face was
a ghostly smudge.

"Ema!" he wailed, frightened by
the red-skinned woman that was holding his nursemaid.

"Shh, Kira," Nova called. Seeing
that he was unguarded, she squeezed the trigger. Her captive convulsed briefly
and slumped in her arms.

"Ema! Ema!"

Nova lowered the woman to the floor and caught
the squirming child. "Kira, hush," she hugged him fiercely. "It's
all right. We're going home!"

Kiran stared at her, open-mouthed. Nova
realized that the boy had absolutely no concept of what or where 'home' might
be. "I know you. You're..." he hesitated. "Nova. You were with
Dadda on Feyd."

Nova smiled and stroked the long curls.
"You are very smart, you know that?"

"Yes, I do," he said and
something in his weak smile seemed to make him a dozen years older than his
age. "Shan Jelani was here but he said he couldn't take me home. Then he
showed me things and told me things..."

"What, Kira?"

"We're gonna go away. He..."
again, his voice trailed off. "...he scared me. Where's Dadda?"

"He's waiting for us." She went
to the window to look into the overgrown gardens surrounding the house. Parts
of the wall rose beyond the trees and she recognized one of the gates. The
stairs she had seen would be to the left. "Let's play Skyranch Patrol.
We'll climb out the window and then we run across the yard and up the stairs on
the wall. Sound like fun?"

He nodded. "I can run fast!"

She unlatched the window and tipped the
pane outward, grimacing when some metal part squealed in protest. Kira was
silent when she lifted him onto the sill and then lowered him to the ground
outside. It would take her a little longer to squeeze through the narrow opening.

He looked up at her. "Someone's
coming!"

"Quick, back inside!"

"No, in there. Behind you. Four of the
mean beasties."

"How do you know?"

"I just know," he said, sounding
resigned. "I don't want to know."

"You can stop them," Nova hissed.
"If you try."

He shook his head. "No, I can't."
He sighed, a strangely adult and chilling sound. "Not yet."

The door behind her slammed back against
the wall.

"Run!" she yelled at the boy even
as she spun around. At her touch, a blade shot from the handgrip of her gun,
ready for close combat. She backhanded her weapon at the first of the Rhuwac
guards to enter the room. He reeled backward, his neck slashed ear to ear. She
shot a guard at close range and spun around to stab another. Then a Rhuwac
grasped her wrist. Enraged, Nova lashed out at his face. He shoved her away,
slamming her head against the open door. Stars exploded in front of her eyes
and she dropped, feeling blood pour from her nose.

Rough hands pulled her to her feet and
shoved her along the corridor. She fought them but her mind was on Kiran's
serious little face. Behind that face she had glimpsed, somehow, so much more
than they had feared. Her feet barely touched the ground when two guards
manhandled her through Tharron's keep. The fact that she was actually being
touched by Rhuwacs did not even register. Kiran's face hung like a vision in
front of her eyes, obliterating any thought of escape, robbing her of the will
to do so.

They had lost Tychon's son, lost him for
good, but she knew it was not to Tharron.

* * *

"Let's get to work," Tychon
whispered to Greah whom he knew to be somewhere near. Practically invisible,
the diminutive Shaddallama had circled the airfield and then reported back.
There were guards, twenty at most, but the individual crafts parked here were
not manned. They patrolled haphazardly, content to remain at their posts. Only
a few overhead lamps illuminated the tarmac in orange pools of light.

Even here, the crowds brought to Shad Areen
infringed on the perimeter of the airfield where they made their camps and
confused the sensors. Greah had recruited more of his people to distract the
guards enough to keep them from noticing the red-skinned Delphian in the
shadows.

They scurried forward, out of the ditch
surrounding the parking area. The Eagle stood to the side, away from the small
fleet assembled here. Tychon touched its keyplate, wincing when the door slid
aside with an audible hiss. Greah darted past him into the ship.

"So this is what your ships look like
on the inside!" he said excitedly when Tychon had closed the door again.

Tychon began to search through several
crammed storage containers. "Huh? No, this is the cargo space." He
nodded toward a door to the main cabin, annoyed that someone had left the
normally tightly sealed hatch open. He found a few small transmitters. A rather
obsolete jamming device still worked when he tested it.

"Greah, there should be a tool box in
that–" He turned. "Greah?"

The elf was no longer at his side. Tychon
found him in the cockpit, taking in the maze of screens, gauges, switches and
indicators needed when flying manually.

"Come on, we haven't much time. Your
nights here are damn short." Tychon fished a shirt out of Eagle Five's camo
bin, glad to be back in clean clothes.

Greah turned, a dazed smile on his round
face. "It is so amazing!" He climbed back up to the main floor.
"It's like a house! You sleep over there? How long before you have to stop
for food and water? How does it fly?"

"I'll tell you later. Let's cause some
damage first."

Reluctantly, Greah followed him out of the ship.
He moved in a wide circle around Tychon, a shadow again, watching for Tharron's
brutish guards while his friend worked.

Each of the five planes was sabotaged in a
different way. Tychon used his electronic lock pick to gain entry into the
first and removed the systems starter module. The second plane would not yield
to his pick and was instead rigged with a crude explosive, triggered by the
slightest taxiing motion. He fused the locks on a passenger shuttle and stole
the coolant valves from another. The last of the cruisers was simply no longer
connected to its own tripod of feet. The very action of boarding it would cause
it to topple. He did what he could to foul up the long-range weaponry on all
planes.