Only Human (9 page)

None believed their ears when Tharron let
out a raucous bellow of laughter. "Excellent! If this peasant can simply
will himself to die, imagine, all of you, the power of the Shantir. And then
consider, all of you, the might of this man called Tughan Wai!"

His entourage drifted back together, nearly
applauding in hysterical relief.

Tharron sobered. "I want him found! Pe
Khoja and his crew will leave for Delphi at once to find out where he is. Is he
working as one of those Shantirs? Is he loyal and to whom? Can he be bought? If
not, find his family and use them as leverage. Go, all of you!" He waved
them away to their collective errands. "Find me a Shantir!"

Comori remained hunched beside the dead
Delphian. How he wished to have been able to study the fine mind. A farmer! He
would never understand these people. He glanced up at his bellowing leader.
Find me a Shantir! Get me the Tughan! Comori knew that it would take more than
an army of Rhuwacs to bring the Delphian to Tharron. But didn't Tharron usually
achieve what he set out to do? Didn't he know when and how to use people? He
even knew exactly how much each of his men hated him and how much each of them
needed him. He made men powerful and wealthy. Regretfully, he could make them
dead, too.

They had all left the garden now. All, that
is, except Pe Khoja. The Caspian lounged in Tharron's chair, a sacrilege that
no one but him would dare. His golden, furred face was turned to the sun but
his eyes were on Comori, unaffected by the intense light. Ah, that one, Comori
thought. That one was different. Tharron did not own him as he owned everyone
else here. The scholar, the poet, the murderer. Pe Khoja was, perhaps, the only
rebel here that truly was a rebel.

"Looks like we've botched that one,
eh?" Pe Khoja said, his yellow eyes alive with humor that so far escaped
Comori. He had hooked his legs over the armrest of the chair, dangling large
three-toed feet so endowed with fierce claws that few Caspians bothered with
shoes. In contrast, his six-fingered hands were delicate and nimble. Most
Caspians were amiable, courteous creatures who enjoyed the company of other species.
Pe Khoja was not.

The doctor glanced around. "We can
still stop it," he hissed.

"Why?" Pe Khoja said. "This
is beginning to interest me. Don't tell me that you wouldn't like to spend a
few long hours in conversation with this Tughan thing."

Comori looked at the Delphian’s crumpled
body and nodded. "Of course. But I'm afraid that..." he cleared his throat.
"I'm afraid."

"You? Afraid that Tharron'll blow up
another skyranch or two? You've done that much yourself." He chuckled over
some unseen joke. "Not with your head, though."

Comori glared at the Caspian. Of course he
was afraid. He was afraid because Tharron was dangerous and Pe Khoja was
dangerous and neither of them needed another bomb to play with. Yes, he would
have liked to meet this wonderful creation. But not ever while it was on Pe Khoja's
leash. Because Pe Khoja just might find it interesting enough to let Tharron
use it. "I am afraid that Tharron is too obsessed with it to be cautious.
He could endanger us all."

Pe Khoja cocked his head. "He's
already done that, Mr. Comori. It's what's making us all very rich, isn't it?
You'd just as soon work for the Union as you do for him, wouldn't you? But
he
,"
Pe Khoja nodded toward the mansion. "He lets you do
things
, doesn't
he?"

Comori closed his eyes, willing this man to
go away. Leave, take his murderous habits and knowing, ever-knowing, eyes and
go away so that he, Comori could take the Delphian body to his lab and dissect
its brain.

"I must be going," Pe Khoja
sprang lightly from his perch. "I'll leave you to your doctoring, doctor,
and see to my piloting. I think I'll head over to Delphi to see if I can't
figure out where they keep this awesome personage. I seem to remember hearing
something somewhere about that Delphian. It'll come to me, I'm sure."

Neither Tychon nor Nova was in a particularly
good mood when the ship’s system woke them on the next morning. Nova was unsure
of how she ended up on the lounger instead of her own cabin and her
recollection of the previous day was hazy. He told her most of what had
happened on Feyd and she felt angry at having come through it like a greenie.
Not only that, but he had jumped toward K’lar unassisted and without even
jarring the ship enough to wake her, making it clear once again that her
presence aboard his ship was unnecessary.

Tychon was more taciturn than ever. He flew
the Eagle manually and needlessly and barely glanced at her while she sought to
keep herself occupied during the long flight. No doubt he was irritated by her
stupidity that could have delayed their mission, perhaps even endangered it. He
finally left the cockpit when she asked him if he wanted to eat, which he did
not.

He dug through some bins. “Just got
confirmation and changed course for K'lar. It's on. Going to bust out a friend
who was kidnapped by Rhuwac rebels. Make sure that your guns are working
properly. We will be running into trouble."

"So you do have friends?"

"What does that mean?"

"That someone will put up with your
quite unpredictably fluctuating levels of rudeness," she said pointedly.
“You haven’t spoken to me all day. Then again, that isn’t so very different
from most days.”

He scowled. "I am not paid to be nice
to you, Captain."

She glared back at him, refusing to yield.
“And I’m not paid to be ballast around here, Major!”

His eyes narrowed and for a moment Nova wondered
if she had gone too far. She had never spoken to a superior officer like this
and she was well aware that outward courtesy was something all Delphians valued.

He took a deep breath and his tense
shoulders relaxed visibly. “You are not heavy enough for ballast. And my name
is Tychon. Do not use my rank when we’re down there. In fact, don’t use it at
all.”

“As you wish,” she replied, barely
mollified.

"We'll be on K'lar soon. Have you ever
been there?"

"Once, briefly. Desert, isn't it? Salt
flats?"

He nodded. "One big dried up lake
system. Not like Targon, though. Gravity is a bit light but that will give us
an edge."

“What is your plan?"

He motioned her to follow him to the map
table in the center of the room. The slide he selected was at once illuminated
from below. A rough, hand drawn map appeared on the surface of the table,
altered here and there and marked with notes and landing coordinates. He bent
over it, tracing a line with a long, blue-nailed finger.

"I hope that this is still pretty
accurate. I am sure that I can get a few friendlies to create a diversion over
here. If I have the correct information here, they are keeping him in one of
these buildings. With luck we can do this quietly. We are building an orbiting
station over K'lar and I don't want Tharron deciding that he doesn't want it
there. I don't know who is being more audacious: The Union for putting a base
over Tharron's home planet or Tharron for holding a Union member captive right
under our noses."

"Maybe we're crediting the rebels with
too much organizational skill," Nova said. "They might not even know
what we're building up there. I mean, look at the layout of this
compound!"

"Not unusual for Tharron. Most of his
stations are no more than garrisons. What cities and airfields he holds he took
by force from either our people or neutrals. He does not care for niceties. It
will not be difficult to find Anders."

"Anders?"

"Anders Devaughn."

"Devaughn, like the General?"

"His son. He works as a liaison on the
Union base on Delphi. Xenologist and language expert, ranked Captain. Any of
that makes him valuable enough to be bartered."

"You think he's still alive?"
Nova doubted that Tharron would bother to keep a hostage in good condition. All
of his own men were expendable.

"He better be or they'll pay for that,
too."

She studied his face. "What else are
they paying for?"

His shuttered expression cautioned her to
mind her own business. She stood her ground.

"Kiran's mother," he said
finally, his eyes finding some object of interest across the room. "We
were both regular Air Command pilots back then and escorting some settlers to a
new colony in the Outlands. Easy assignment. Practically a vacation. We had to stop
over on K'lar Four." Tychon paused to examine his nails.

"Go on," she said softly.

"We'd been laid up by a sandstorm and
when it finally cleared Dana took some of the civilians outside. Rhuwacs caught
them. Dana held them off while most of the others got away. She took three
Rhuwacs out, then she was cornered." His eyes focused beyond Nova and he spat
out the last of his words. "The other two raped her. Right there among the
dead. I found her body not long after. Or what was left of it. Took me longer
to find her head."

"Gods, Tychon..." Nova whispered.
She touched his arm, sickened by the images forming in her mind.

"I should not have taken her
there," he said, now looking at Nova. His gaze took in all of her.
"And now I have to go back and they give me another woman to take with
me."

“Is that why you were against having me on
board?"

He shrugged.

"I'll be careful, I promise,” she
said.

"That's not always all it takes."
He tapped the table surface. "Let’s get back to this. I have some background
about the rebel on K'lar."

Nova waited while he consulted with the
data system. "How long ago was this?" she asked.

The hands on the screen hesitated in their
rapid motion. "Four years."

"Is this why you're still Vanguard?"

"And will continue to be until I drop
dead or the last of the Rhuwacs beasts is decomposing somewhere."

Nova looked at the screen he showed her and
listened numbly to his explanations of the displayed information. But she
pondered her own life up to this point, surely as exciting and eventful as she
could make it, but had any of this really touched her?

She had killed and she had been wounded in
this war. Someday, she supposed, it would kill her, too. She had seen mindless
destruction caused by Tharron and by her own people. Were these even her
people? Trans-Targon was nothing more than a frontier in which the Centauri
sought to establish civilized order as they had everywhere else they went. Their
Union Commonwealth was above all a Centauri trade organization that ruled,
prospered, and was welcome everywhere. Everywhere but here, in this tiny part
of their galaxy.

When the Centauri had stumbled upon this
concentration of inhabitable planets they had invited their Human friends along
to help realize the vision of an expanded Union of planets. They had found
allies among the people of Bellac Tau, Feyd and Aram and, eventually, Delphi
and soon would be allied with Pelion and the fiercely contested Magra Alaric as
well.

 But then they had found Tharron. The small
opposition he represented had turned into a rebel force and finally into a
considerable enemy. The war had started when sabotage and assassinations had
escalated into the destruction of Union bases and colonies. Tharron did not
discriminate between army personnel and peaceful colonists.

 But what did this war matter to her? It
was a job, nothing more. She was a Terran who had never seen Terra, raised into
the army by soldier parents and trained to hunt rebels. She did this willingly,
followed orders blindly and asked no questions. She was playing warrior, never
understanding the cities that burned and the worlds that were changed forever.
Nothing personal ever came between her and her target.

She thought back over the past ten years of
her life and saw only a blank series of days and weeks and months. Time spent
in training, in police actions, in defenses and in offenses. She had never
experienced civilian life and had only a rather abstract idea of what civilians
did, if anything.

Through it all, Tharron remained only a
vague concept to her. Tharron, the great enemy, was an objective set up in this
game and she was one of the players whose aim it was to eradicate him and his
rebel following. His Rhuwacs, to her, were little more than slow-moving targets.
She felt no personal hatred for them, as Tychon did. Terrible things happen and
people die somewhere, sometimes. It was her job to stop that, nothing more.

 But now she was not so certain of that. If
Tychon had more than just a scorecard to fill, did that mean that the rebel
did, too? Had anyone ever really explained to her
why
their enemy
insisted on fraying the edges of the massive Union conglomerate?

She was glad when the Eagle finally moved
into a high orbit over the arid wasteland that was K'lar Four, forcing her to
concentrate on less abstract matters and do what she had been trained to do.

* * *

 She noted an odd mood surrounding Tychon like
an aura of fever when it was time to begin their descent. She knew by now that
nervousness was against his Delphian nature, yet she felt a sense of
expectancy, a keen alertness as they readied their weapons and equipment.