by Chris Reher
Deferentially, he went through the steps of identifying himself and his quest to find a new patron among them. A bearded Centauri gestured for him to sit with them.
“I’m Tieko,” he said. “Faran’s word is good enough for me. If he sent you, he must have reason.”
Seth shrugged. “He has some concerns about all this.”
Tieko chuckled. “Aye, but the money is good. Shri-Lan pays when due and they don’t get pissy about it. At least if you make it back here.”
“Fill me in.” Seth accepted a cup from someone passing out drinks.
“What’s that?” Khoe asked.
Kind of busy here, he replied but then relented and sniffed the offering. Whatever it is, it’s horribly fermented.
“Try it!”
Not likely. Never had much interest in drink. Can you direct your maddening curiosity to that man’s data system, please?
Tieko quaffed his drink with considerable enthusiasm. “Some experiment going on that the Commonwealth isn’t to know about,” he explained. “Shri-Lan is equipping pilots with some sort of device to take through sub-space. That’s all I know, really. Collecting data, I guess.”
“You have those devices?”
“No. We’re waiting for someone to get here with them. Sounds like an easy job to me, but there’ve been accidents.”
Seth shrugged. “There are always accidents. I’ve got a solid ship and a good navigator.”
“That’ll do it,” Tieko said agreeably. “If you pass the muster, you’re in.”
“What muster?”
“Faran’s endorsement is a good thing, but they’ll want to know who you are. You’d better check out or your ship is going to be their ship before the end of tomorrow.” He turned away to talk to another one of his compatriots.
“Was that a threat or a warning?” Khoe wanted to know.
Bit of both, I guess. Find anything?
“Those caves extend all the way to below that ruined ship. Full of stuff they’re trading to rebels. Or storing here for them.”
What stuff?
“Guns, some sort of machine parts, armor I think.”
Interesting. Seth’s eyes moved over the crude accommodations around them. And well-disguised.
“Tieko’s been here for about four years. Sort of a boss down here. He’s recently had contact with someone named Tov Pald.”
Seth winced.
“You know him?”
By reputation.
“Hey, this Tieko has three wives. I didn’t think Centauri had families like that.”
We don’t. Things get blurry out here. We’re a long way from home.
“Have you ever been in the Centauri system?”
Nope. Takes years to get out there. I’ve never been that curious. Plenty of Centauri here in Trans-Targon. We’ve been here almost three hundred years. Considering that we didn’t originate here, there are more of us scattered around planets where we don’t belong than any other species.
“I guess you stop being Centauri after a while,” she pondered, indicating their host. “You’re probably a whole new race by now.”
He sent a smile. You would probably know more about that than me by now.
“Aren’t you curious?”
No. I was raised by Humans back there on Magra Torley. If there is a mongrel among us, it’s me. Besides, I’m officially a Dyad now, remember?
“You look Centauri,” she said. She touched a strand of his hair that was forever falling over his eyes. “But you’re a lot more than that.”
He was still searching for a reply to that when Tieko turned back to him. He held up a skewer with some sort of half-roasted rodent. Seth accepted gamely and tasted the meat, more to give Khoe a new experience than to satisfy any real need for food.
“Better than the stuff on your ship,” she commented. “But not as good as the Delphians had. That’s a gonad you’re about to eat. Your people don’t like that.”
Seth put the skewer down with a sigh. “When do you expect that delivery?” he asked Tieko.
“Should be here by morning. You’re welcome to stay down here, if you like. Nice and warm.”
“Five hours to dawn,” Khoe supplied. “It’s dark outside now.”
“I think I’ll head back to my ship.” Seth came to his feet. “But I thanks for the offer. I’ll see you when the envoy gets here.”
He made his way back to the ladder leading to the surface. “Did you find anything about how many other pilots have passed through here lately?”
“Now many yet,” Khoe replied. “They just started to shift things from Rishabel to here. The smugglers drop the disks off here and the rebels take them elsewhere. Tieko is getting paid for putting them up while they wait.”
“No wonder they’re so friendly.” Seth drew his cloak closer around himself when he started the walk back to the Dutchman. A few locals were still about, moving from one shelter to another or standing around fire pits in quiet conversation. Although people had lived in this settlement for many years, something about this place seemed oddly transient, like a refugee camp where no one ever found their way home.
Someone waved to him as he passed. He slowed to see a Human woman sitting alone near her fire, gesturing to him. He nodded and accepted the offer, holding his hands to the flames. “A little cold out here,” he said by way of conversation.
“It’s my turn on the watch.” She pushed her ragged fur hood from her head. “Only another hour.”
“What are you watching out for? Doesn’t seem possible to get near this place undetected.”
“We have scanners for that. What we look out for are the four- and six-legged sort that’ll creep into camp to make off with food stuffs and small children. They’ve become bold lately. It’s the season. They’re desperate for food.”
“It’s a harsh place to live,” he said. “Why are you out here?”
She looked into the flames as if debating her answer. “I was less free where I came from. I’ll return some day, I’m sure.”
“To where?” he asked. Humans had long ago joined the Centauri expansion into Trans-Targon and, although few in number, formed colonies on just about any habitable planet in this distant sector of their galaxy. This Human, more delicate and pale than the desert-dwellers, seemed out of place on this lonely outpost. He suspected that she had not been on Belene for very long.
“She’s pretty,” Khoe said, hunkering down on the woman’s other side.
Yes.
“My home was Aikhor,” the woman said. “But I think I have family on Pelion. I’d like to see them some day.”
“Pilots come and go even out here. You’re not stuck in this place. Just go.”
She smiled wistfully and placed more fuel on the fire. “They all want payment,” she said. “I don’t have that. There is no work to be had on these small ships.”
“There must be something you can trade,” he said, then groaned inwardly at what surely sounded like a crass suggestion.
She did not seem to mind. “Yes, of course.” She gazed at him and said nothing more.
“I think she’s making you an offer,” Khoe said.
I noticed.
“Are you going to take her up on it?”
What? No.
“Why not? She appeals to you.”
She’s probably made this same offer a few times today already. He exhaled impatiently. Is that another new experience you’re looking for?
“Maybe,” she replied after a moment. “I’ll never know, will I?” She lifted a hand to the woman and watched with his eyes as it passed unnoticed through her shoulder. “How it feels to be touched, I mean. Really touched. You find the thought of touching me repellent.”
Seth frowned, ready with some denial or platitude or perhaps even rebuke but the look on her impish face was of such pain and sadness that he could not. Gods, Khoe, is that what you think?
“You made it clear. But if you take her, I’ll know. Maybe that’s all right, too.�
��
That is not even a bit all right. Why are you talking like this?
She rubbed her hands, feeling the heat of the flames through his fingers. “I’m so worried about this. About you. If you can’t get rid of me you’ll start resenting me. You’re never alone. At some point you’ll want a real woman, won’t you? I know how you look at me, sometimes, when you think I’m not paying attention. I know what it means.” Khoe ran her hand through some of the braids of white hair hanging over her shoulders. “I should change how I look. I can be anything. I can just not appear at all, or maybe be a pet or something. That would make things easier for you, wouldn’t it?”
The woman leaned closer to Seth and placed her hand on his forearm. “Hey,” she said gently. “Are you in there, somewhere?”
He considered the invitation clearly written on the Human’s face and then his eyes travelled back to Khoe. She was also intently studying the woman, but not with the vibrant curiosity she exhibited for all other things. Khoe was becoming as much of an enigma as most women were to him but what he saw on her face now was simply apprehension.
Seth stood up. “I can’t help you,” he said to the Human. “I’m not going back that way.”
He walked with long strides back to the Dutchman, ignoring the few people he passed along the way. He slapped the ship’s keyplate and stepped inside the cargo hold.
“You seem agitated.”
He spun to face Khoe. “Do you really think I’d rather be with that camp follower than touch you?”
She lifted her shoulders. “I don’t know. Having me in your head must be a bit creepy.”
He frowned at her, uncharacteristically and overwhelmingly at a loss for words. She gazed back at him, waiting for, perhaps dreading, his reply without a clue on her face about her thoughts. Creepy? He saw only the strange beauty, the innocent wisdom, the shy courage with which she’d been turning his life upside down since she came aboard. With every day that passed she seemed more a part of his life, like someone who had always been there and always would be. Had he been so damn blind to something far more obvious because she did not belong in his world?
“How can you say that? You’re anything but creepy.”
She smiled thinly. “Just a little alien, then?”
“Stop that, Khoe. I don’t resent you. And I’m not trying to get rid of you. I want to help you if I can and that means helping you get free and go home. That’s not the same thing.”
“Isn’t it?”
“No!” he said immediately. “If you asked me before all this happened I would have said otherwise but now I’m a Dyad, whatever that means, and you belong exactly where you are.” He struggled for words, not even sure what he meant to say to her. Finally he reached for her and held her pale face in his hands. “You are a real woman, Khoe. You feel so unbelievably good inside my head. Don’t change how you look. You’re beautiful and amazing and I’m sorry if I made you feel any other way.”
“Beautiful?”
“Yeah.”
She held his gaze for a long moment. “Then touch me now.”
Even if she had not spoken, nothing would have stopped him from kissing her the way he should have on Magra, without second thought or hesitation. The body pressed to his felt as real as it had those few days ago and the hands that touched him now seemed on fire. He groaned when that magnificent sense of rightness suffused their minds and senses, this time fuelled by a need neither of them hid any longer. Her clothes melted away a layer at a time even as he fumbled through his own and it took just moments before he lifted her up, unwilling to wait another second to feel her body wrap around him. Neither noticed the cold wall against her back or the hum of the generators out here – nothing existed but the sensations their tangled minds created for each other. Both of them cried out when he found his release, sharing that exquisite moment as if they were one.
Countless moments passed before Seth caught his breath and felt his heart slow to something manageable, his head still lowered onto Khoe’s shoulder. “Cazun…” he managed.
She disengaged herself gently and slipped from his embrace. He stumbled after her into the main cabin, numbly rearranging his clothing as she tugged him toward the lounger. He collapsed onto it with a grateful sigh and drew her into his arms.
“I see now,” she said, smiling.
He swallowed hard around another gasp of air. “I don’t know if you do,” he said. “You feel what I do, right?”
“Yes.”
“But not what you should?”
“I don’t suppose so.” She raised her head. “But maybe… Let me try something.”
“What?”
“Close your eyes.”
He did so but this did not shut out the world around him. He still saw her and this cabin and the exposed gas and circuitry lines running along the ceiling as though his eyes were still wide open. “What are you doing?”
She smiled and raised herself up to kiss him softly. “Now show me.”
Seth reached for her and it seemed to him that something had changed inside his head, feeling almost like the close link of the Delphian khamal but, as she responded to his touch, far more intimate. He applied his hands and lips, teaching her, letting her teach him, and they soon came together again with as much fervor as before, followed by gentle bouts of playing games all lovers play. Hours passed in this way until, at last, he simply passed out in her arms.
* * *
“Centauri! Time for that ugly tea you like so much!”
Seth did not wake up so much as he regained consciousness from what felt like some drunken stupor. He blinked into the overhead lights, unsure of where he was and who was talking to him. He gasped when he realized that it was Caelyn who was cheerfully puttering around the small galley aboard his ship. In groping for his blankets he came to realize that, strangely, he was fully dressed, if disheveled, and that Khoe was nowhere in sight.
“Big cruiser just landed,” Caelyn said. “I’m guessing Shri-Lan, judging by some of the characters marching around out there. Why do their foot soldiers always look like they’ve gone a few rounds with a Rhuwac?”
“They probably have,” Seth grumbled, running both hands through his hair. Khoe?
“Did you get anywhere with those people last night? I must have slept right through.”
“We didn’t wake you, did we? Khoe and me?”
Caelyn raised an eyebrow. “If you mean with your snoring, I’d say it takes more than that to wake a Delphian. You slept with your boots on, by the way. If I didn’t know better I’d think you had a few cups last night.”
Seth crawled from the lounger and into the decon chamber, dropping his clothes as he went. In there he braced his arms on either side of the mirror while he let steam roll over his body, still dazed by the previous night. Had he imagined all of it? Although tired, he did not feel the gloriously strenuous hours that had passed. He would have suspected a bruise or two, perhaps a scratch. There was nothing. He folded his arms against the wall and leaned his forehead against them.
“Seth?”
He pulled back to see Khoe beside him, impossibly contained by this small room barely large enough for one person. He looked into her curious and worried face for a long moment before returning his stare to the mirror. “I think I’m losing my mind,” he said, barely audible.
“Why do you say that?”
He leaned against the door and tipped his head back, closing his eyes. “Because I am,” he said with half a helpless laugh. “I’m walking around in a dream. I don’t know where I end and you begin. That must mean I’m losing it.”
She hovered closer to him and he felt her gentle hands move up along his arms, then her lips on the skin of his chest. “You still don’t think I’m real? After last night?”
He took her face into his hands to kiss her gently. “Nothing unreal about you,” he said. “That’s what scares me.”
She nodded. “Me, too.”
Chapter Nine
The
morning outside was colder than the night had been and even the sun, hanging listless in a pink and hazy sky, seemed to have given up on the place. Seth stepped out of his plane, breathing deeply of the air that wanted to freeze him inside out. It felt great.
He had shaken off his odd mood during breakfast with Caelyn. Khoe joined them in the Delphian khamal to allow all three of them to share a conversation. This caused Caelyn a bit of a headache, as it had on Magra, but he was too fascinated by this alien being to let that deter him. She had found her way through his aloof exterior and even coaxed laughter from him with some well-placed quips about the planet of his birth. They decided that the recently arrived cruiser likely brought rebels who were more familiar with Delphians than the locals. Caelyn resigned himself to staying aboard while Seth and Khoe met their new employer.
Something had changed out here on Belene. Yesterday this had been a humble shanty town inhabited by people who were largely at peace with their lot, today the tension cut deeper than the harsh winds from the north. Few of the locals were about, none loitered around the sputtering fires, and armed rebel guards dispensed threatening glares to anyone daring to come too close to their ship.
Seth crossed the open space between the planes and the shelters and stepped into the entrance of the wrecked transport. He assumed Tov Pald to be holding court here, given the two massive Caspians guarding the entrance. He gave them a mock salute as he passed.
“Kada!” he was greeted by the Centauri leader of the colony. Tieko waved to him from the gloomy depths of this entranceway and through a door leading to the interior. Some of the rebels stood around a plastic crate being carefully unpacked. Seth recognized Tov Pald among them, looking more menacing than any image he had seen of him.
Grab what you can. Be careful!
“On it,” Khoe replied.
Seth stumbled over a broken ramp, drawing everyone’s attention while she tapped into the data sleeve of a nearby rebel. A light stripe blinked in mild protest and then forgot about her intrusion.
“Too much of the party juice for you, Kada?” Tieko said. “I’m hurt. I cooked that up myself.”
