Only Human (2 page)

"You're not funny."

He gripped her arm, more forcefully than
necessary to turn her around. "Good, because I'm not joking."

"But you're crazy."

He leered unpleasantly. "This is
turning me on."

"And you're pissing me off, Fynn."
Nova stalked away. "You probably damaged my plane, I've hurt my head
thanks to you and you've used your guns. You better figure out a way to keep
O'Neill calm when he sees you."

"I had orders to shoot."

Nova halted. "You what?"

He caught up with her. "Command told
me to force an emergency landing. They know it would take guns to make you
land. They fabricated your malfunction when you weren't about to give up. Nothing
wrong with your plane. Don't worry about them finding out how easily I tracked
you down here. The game was over for you the minute you left the cockpit. That’s
all they cared about."

"And you let me run for my life and
scare the hell out of me for nothing?"

"Fun, wasn't it?"

"Bastard," she hissed and slapped
him.

He caught her wrist and twisted it until
she winced in pain. "We could have some more fun, if you like."

Nova recognized the half-angry,
half-excited glint in his eyes. She was tempted to reach for her gun. "Let
me go," she said evenly, in no mood for a fight today. "I need to see
a medic."

Fynn hesitated, disappointed with her
reaction. He released her.

Nova walked ahead of him back to the ships,
her anger smoldering. Why did she allow him to bully her like that? And why did
she keep going back for yet another taste of his abusive nature? He was
unpredictable in his moods and could be downright nasty when the wrong mood was
upon him.

When Nova took leave from active combat for
retraining on Myra, what seemed a lifetime of dangers and discomforts already
lay behind her. The squad she had left behind consisted of seasoned career
pilots who had expected her to shoulder her load under any conditions. And, for
the most part, conditions on Ud Mrak were miserable. Fynn had been quick to
realize this and had claimed her attention, soon marking her as his own. He
showed her how to have fun on this base where there were only tests to worry
about and superior officers to elude. Adept at the latter, Fynn made a game of
ignoring curfews, breaking rules for the sake of breaking them, and infusing as
much recreation into his stay here as possible.

Nova joined in his games at first, enjoying
the relative freedom of Myra for a while. But her nature and upbringing did not
allow her to defy authority or create new rules for herself. Growing up on one
army base after another taught her the value of order and routine that did not
vary from one post to the next.

She knew that it would not be long before
she would end this. For all the technical skill she admired in him, Fynn was a
danger in combat. She would never be able to accept his disregard for others
from which not even she was exempt. In bed he was a fierce as in battle, but
away from her cot he had the social skills of a Rhuwac. If anyone ever
socialized with a Rhuwac.

Nova laughed at the thought, her fit of
anger gone with the last giggle.

Fynn scowled at her. No doubt she was
laughing at him again. He balled his fists, loving her in his own way, hating
her for being gifted and beautiful and totally without need of him or anyone
else.

*  *  *

Nova landed her kite directly into the
hangars of the base. She had no wish to hear her squadron mates’ snide remarks
about her 'capture', nor listen to their condescension. Some of them hadn't
clocked even half of her flight hours and damn them all if they thought that
the forced landing embarrassed her.

She relinquished her plane to one of the
hangar jockeys and turned into the hall leading to the residential wing and her
own room for a change of clothing. Her boots squelched with every step and the
drying fabric of her uniform was chafing her into renewed irritability.

Her head, too, demanded attention. She
changed her direction and entered the base clinic, still cursing Fynn under her
breath.

"You're a sweet mess today, aren't
you?" the medic, someone with whom she was familiar enough to know by name
had she been able to pronounce it, greeted her. He, however, was fluent in
Union mainvoice. "Whiteside, isn't it? Captain Nova Whiteside." He did
not bother to confirm her identity when her touch on his screens displayed her
file. "I shall soon need to ask for additional staff if you continue to
lacerate yourself."

She followed him into an examination room where
a nurse began to clean the blood and grime from her injuries. "You've been
here for what? Eight months? And in that interim I have seen you six times. I'd
hate to see how you fare in active combat."

"I was transferred here
out
of
active combat," Nova told him. "And there I rarely had the need for a
doctor. It's the boredom here."

He sniffed disapprovingly. "Many
soldiers would welcome eight months of retraining here on Myra. It's an
excellent facility."

"Ouch!" Nova frowned at the nurse
swabbing her abraded hand. "Maybe so but I'm a Hunter Class pilot. I don't
know what I'm supposed to learn here."

"Modesty, maybe." He motioned her
to follow him to a diagnostic station. "Or perhaps the mechanics involved
in keeping a helmet on your head. You jarred your node almost completely loose.
Any local pain there? Dizzy? Vision fine?”

“No, no, yes.” She let him inspect the
triangular interface module embedded in her temple. He winced when he peered
through a probe to look for damage. His wince was for the abused technology,
not her face.

“I wish you pilots would take a little more
care with the taps. Do you have any idea how expensive they are? Not to mention
the minor fact that they lead directly into your neocortex.” He attached a
small wire to the nodes on both sides of her head and consulted his diagnostic
displays. “Follow that light. Good. Run that simulation. So you are between
orders?”

She obeyed his instruction and directed the
computer to build a complex geometrical shape out of smaller components. A
simple undertaking compared to using the neural link to operate her plane or
weaponry, but every single synapse was analyzed and charted during the short
exercise.

"I am. I didn't apply for a transfer
and my past commander wasn't exactly thrilled when I got one, anyway. I don't
even think he knows where I am now. If he did, I'm sure he'd request to get me
back. My time is wasted here."

The doctor regarded the bedraggled young
warrior in front of him, ready with a suitable comment to put her into her
place. He realized that he could do no such thing. She was wasting her time
here, he agreed. He tugged the connectors from her nodes and fused the loosened
edge to her skin. “Try not to collect any more injuries in your boredom. Come
back in two weeks for follow-up."

Nova thanked him and continued on to her
room. The doctor had been right to chide her, she thought. She only recently
visited him with a dislocated finger sustained in hand to hand combat training.
Two previous injuries, both minor and caused by Fynn, were not the type of
accident one easily came to in combat.

But here she was, playing war games with
junior officers while the real battles were fought elsewhere. For what seemed
to be the millionth time, Nova wondered why she had been transferred to Myra
and then forgotten.

Moodily, she rounded a corner, now only a
few minutes away from her room and a clean uniform.

"Nova!"

She groaned inwardly and slowed her steps
to let Fynn catch up.

"Yo, kid, I've been looking all over
for you." He had changed into his usual fatigue trousers and a black shirt
clearly meant to show his torso off to its fullest advantage.

She held up her bandaged hand, shaped into
a fist. "Where the hell do you think I've been?"

"Don't be cross. O'Neill sent me to
find you."

"I'll get down to the test center as
soon as I've changed my suit. He'll have to wait a while if he wants to tell me
how badly I did today."

He took her arm and turned her around.
"Walk this way, and quickly. Colonel wants to see you."

"The Colonel?" Nova wondered why
the commander of the base wanted her.

"Yeah, and you better hurry. He's been
looking for you for a while, I hear."

"I can't see him like this!" She indicated
her sodden boots.

But Fynn was already propelling her along
the hall, carelessly shouldering aside anyone of lower rank and smaller size.
"You got to. He's got everyone looking for you."

"What can be so urgent? Why didn't he
just call me?" Nova looked at her wrist array and found it offline. When
did that happen?

Fynn stopped dead and whirled her to face
him. "Listen, you won't say anything about my live fire on you today, huh?"
He pressed her arm as if to squeeze an answer from her.

She pulled out of his grasp. "I
thought O'Neill sanctioned that. Didn't he?"

"Well, in so many words. You know how
the Colonel is. Wouldn't put it past him to demerit me because of a bit of
roughhousing."

Nova laughed humorlessly. Roughhousing!
"Some day they'll throw you out, Fynn," she warned. "Transfers
are coming up. We've got a hundred recruits coming in and some of us have to
leave."

His features rearranged themselves into an
expression of apprehension. As much as Nova ached to leave this playground, he
wanted to stay. Here he showed off his skills in friendly competition without
any real danger to himself. Out there, he thought correctly, was only hard,
dangerous work among pilots equally or more skilled than he. He dreaded the day
that would bring his next assignment.

He looked truly miserable and Nova
relented. "Don't worry; I won't mention it. I'll see you later."

She left him to hurry along too-slow conveyors,
struggling to untangle a few strands of copper-colored hair that had escaped
its clasp, patting ineffectively at her wrinkled uniform. A pleasant thought
had struck her. Was she, finally, to be transferred back into serious work?

* * *

She was out of breath when she reached the
Colonel's suite. Once admitted to his work space she found him at a desk, bent
over lectures and speeches that he planned to deliver to the expected new
recruits.

She waited at a respectful distance as he
spoke into a recorder. His voice still held the authoritative ring of the combat
command that he had given up years ago before taking this post on Myra. As a
respected commander of troops, many of his feats had passed, with suitable
embellishments, into legend. No less respected now, he was charged with turning
young pilots into the able warriors so much needed by the Union for her wars
against a growing rebel force.

But not for the first time did Nova notice
his age, the once sharp features blurred by time, his height decreased by a
slight stoop of his shoulders. She was reassured only when he looked up at her.
The expression of deep concentration left his face to be replaced by a smile.
It seemed to erase the years that had etched their passage into the stern
facade. His eyes were clear and did not betray his emotions.

"Father," Nova went to his desk,
her stride unmistakably military. "You were looking for me?"

His smile faded as he regarded her silently
and for an uncomfortably long time. Nova clasped her hands behind her back to
prevent them from fidgeting helplessly. She began to think that Fynn had sent
her here for a joke to embarrass her in front of her father.

"I did,” Whiteside said at last,
rising to his feet. "I see that I caught you unprepared for this
interview."

Nova blushed and resisted an urge to fuss
over her rumpled sleeves. "The race..."

"I know. I just spoke to Major
O'Neill. You seem to have had some difficulty with your emergency
landing."

"I did," she said simply.

He waited for more, pleased when she didn’t
budge. “We know how you were forced to land. And we know that you didn’t panic
and we also know that you stayed in neural link until you landed. Laudable,
Captain.” He did not mention that he had hung on every second of the
transmission until the moment she left the plane safely, fearing that she would
try to take manual control of the craft. “I’m less pleased with Bridger’s
deportment. I will be glad to see him shuttled off my base and onto someone
else’s.”

"Fynn? Why?"

"His time here is up. And Major
O'Neill and I, among others, now agree that the best place for him is on
Targon. We're sending fifty of your group to Targon in a few days."

"Targon?" Nova gasped. Targon was
the very center of the Union's military activities in the Trans-Targon sector. The
few and too-short visits she had made to the planet had sparked her desire to
become a part of it. Targon, the Center, after which this entire sector was
named. Targon, where the Union employed the best of her warriors, weapons and
planes to drive their enemy back, out of Union domain, dispatched glorious
battleships...