by Chris Reher
“Sethran,” Caelyn said. “Wait.”
“We have no time to wait!”
Khoe tipped her head in Caelyn’s direction. “Tell him not to worry.”
“Huh?”
“Please.”
Seth looked from her to Caelyn. “She said for you not to worry.”
Caelyn seemed just as confused for a moment. Then his brow smoothed. “Oh.” He leaned back into the ship’s headset and busied himself with the cockpit controls. “All right, then.” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Not a tough jump if the shields hold. I have my doubts about that, though. Are you ready?”
“He’s a good friend,” Khoe said. “You shouldn’t get him into so much trouble.” He eyes grew distant when she returned her attention to the Alpha. “It’s so beautiful,” she murmured. Her smile became radiant. “And so simple.”
“What is?”
“The Alpha. Its harmony. I understand the resonance we need to separate the Dyads again. Oh, Seth, we can do this! We can send them all home.”
He kissed her face, caught up in her joy. “Let’s do this, Caelyn,” he said, using his interface to direct the ship’s resources into the breach. Slowly, the keyhole before them expanded. Khoe gripped his arm when another volley from the Air Command ship blasted their failing shields.
Seth flipped an overhead control. “Prepare for jump,” he warned the others aboard. “Brace for impact,” he added belatedly.
“Going negative.”
Khoe cut off the strident voice of the officer who continued to nag them to stand down and be boarded. The cockpit fell silent when they reached the threshold into the void.
“Thank you,” she said to Seth. He felt her soft lips brush over his. “It’s so hard to understand from your books, but I think I got to feel love.”
His smile was short-lived when he saw her tears. “Khoe…”
“I can’t stay with you,” she said. “The Alpha is with me now. I had to take it from that man or we would have lost it. It is the only way. I will make sure my people are safe.” She ran her fingers through his hair. “And yours, Sethran. Without the Alpha here we will both die. I know that now.”
“Khoe, no.” Seth felt the air punched out of his lungs. “There has to be a way.”
She kissed him again and the touch lingered when they entered the breach. The Big Empty. Where no sound or light existed. Where reality ended and only a growing terror remained when all senses failed.
And yet he perceived an eerie note thrumming through every atom that made up the ship and their bodies. It was both sound and color and it was beautiful. So immeasurably beautiful without form or dimension or any of the things she had found so fascinating in his world. He sighed, possessed by a sudden, painful longing to remain here, too. He felt her withdraw to expand into some infinite vastness even as he still held her in his arms.
Then she slipped away, releasing his mind with a gentle whisper as she drifted out of view. The last thing he felt was her smile.
Epilogue
From up here, it was almost possible to believe that no other place existed.
Seth propped his elbows on the sun-warmed stone parapet of the tower and gazed out over the valley to Magra’s endless horizon, moving from mountain wilderness to lush farmland and finally to the ocean itself. The spires of Magra Alaric’s towns rose glittering in the distance like smooth stalagmites reaching for the sky. One could imagine that the ships buzzing around those spires looking for places to land were birds coming home to roost. He closed his eyes to smell the trees and let the sound of the wind fill his mind.
“Not going to jump, are you?”
Seth smiled when Caelyn came to stand beside him. He looked down to the foot of the research tower, pleased to find that the last of the annoying vertigo had finally released him. The headaches, too, had ended. “One gets tired of all these stairs, Delphi.”
“That’s why we’ve installed the elevator, Centauri,” Caelyn replied. “Shan Quine sends greetings. He came by Delphi the day I was leaving.”
Seth took a closer look at Caelyn’s hands resting on the stone wall. “They did a good job with that.”
Caelyn lifted his hand and slowly closed and opened it again. It obeyed his mental commands to pick up a tiny sliver of stone from the parapet and move it deftly between his fingers. The engineers had matched his other hand in detail down to the texture of his hairless skin and the blue cast of his fingernails. “It’s almost like it belongs there,” he said.
Seth watched him for a while, feeling an unpleasant mix of guilt and a bizarre, unreasonable envy at seeing Caelyn’s loss replaced while his own would never be.
“I didn’t think I’d still find you here,” Caelyn said.
“Would have been gone but Shan Saias said you were coming back early so I thought I’d wait to have a look at that paw. It’s amazing work.”
“It is. And you? How’s the head?”
“Back where it belongs.” Seth did not look at Caelyn when he said that. Quine had arranged for another Shantir, one schooled in the ancient Delphian methods of dealing with neurological conditions, to attend him here at the tower. Out of reach of Union interference and out of sight of Air Command, Seth allowed him to heal the physical scars left by Khoe on his brain. The ones left by her on his mind would probably never heal and he didn’t even mind that very much.
Some strange ghost of Khoe still haunted his thoughts now, weeks after leaving Csonne in Air Command custody. At times he almost saw her face or felt her smile tickle something deep inside his head. She was not the first woman to have touched him this profoundly but none had left him as empty and rudderless as she had.
He berated himself for having fallen like a schoolboy for the strange being who excited his mind and had done incredible things to his body. They had shared a few thrilling days of his life, but she was gone now and it was time to get back aboard the Dutchman. Still, he loitered here, among these kind but distant people, reluctant to face the empty space waiting for him inside his ship.
But more than that, and not something he had been able to express even to the Delphian Shantir, was the certain feeling that Khoe had not left him as he once was. For a short while, he had been someone else, a member of a strange new species who might never be seen out here again. It had forever changed him into something he did not yet understand. Perhaps some piece of her still lodged in his brain or maybe it was that brief glimpse he had had of sub-space that filled him with a peculiar sense of otherness.
“Shan Chion detected some strange structures still in my head that they can’t figure out, but it doesn’t seem to cause any problems.”
“Structures?”
“Yeah. Maybe some part of Khoe’s neural net.” He tossed a stone chip off the parapet and watched it disappear among the trees below. “It’s just there. Nothing that’ll let me hack into rebel networks, unfortunately.”
“I was about to ask.”
“I’ll stop by the enclave on Delphi if Quine can talk them into taking a look. They seem interested. But it’ll mean landing the Dutchman on the Air Command base there. So that might be a while.”
“Don’t leave it too long. You could take a commuter.”
“I could. As soon as you people let tourists in.”
Caelyn grinned good-naturedly. “Not likely.” He regarded Seth for a while before speaking again. “I worry, my friend. She’s still on your mind.”
“Nothing to worry about. She’s not the first woman to dump me. Won’t be the last.”
“She was not just any woman.”
“No, not just.”
“She would have killed you if she’d stayed. Or destroyed her own kind if you’d kept the Alpha here. That isn’t a choice.”
Seth nodded. Shan Saias had spent many hours reviewing the Delphian research that had originally discovered Khoe’s strange species and poring over Reylan Tague’s rambling notes. Rushed, blemished by speculation and guesswork, they offered a few mor
e insights into the formation of the Dyad here in real-space. All of it depended on the presence of the Alpha either here or in sub-space but not both.
It was only behind closed doors, in collaboration with Targon’s own physicists, that the possibility of more than one Alpha was raised. Such an event was likely a necessity if Khoe’s species were to survive and thrive, but what did that, eventually, mean for real-space inhabitants?
“At least you can say that, for a few days, you were a member of a whole new species.”
“Can’t,” Seth said. “Classified, remember?”
Caelyn laughed. “So you’re heading out now?”
“Tonight. I’m going to meet Colonel Carras on Aikhor.”
“Carras! The Vanguard commander? I’d think you’d want to avoid him for a while.”
“All is forgiven, apparently. Vanguard agents don’t exactly enjoy a long lifespan.”
“You trust him?”
Seth turned his back to the valley and leaned against the parapet to look up at the glittering antenna array above them. A row of grey-plumed birds peered back down. “Yeah. I do. He’s the one who pointed out to Air Command that I got those people back safely. At least the ones that survived the first trip.”
“Nothing said about stopping an alien species from invading Trans-Targon?”
“Nothing they’ll admit to. Carras is going to make me an offer, I think.”
Caelyn raised an eyebrow. “Will you accept?”
Seth shrugged. “I’ll see what he has to say.” He grinned. “Probably their way of keeping tabs on me.”
“Clever. I’m sure getting back into some sort of mischief is exactly what you need right now, Centauri.”
“You’re damn right, Delphi.”
* * *
*
Dear Reader:
I hope you enjoyed Quantum Tangle. If you did, perhaps you will take a moment to leave a review to help others find this book, too. It is very much appreciated! His next adventure is Terminus Shift, now available at Amazon.
Sethran Kada is an integral part of the Targon Tales series. He previously starred alongside Nova Whiteside in The Catalyst and did his part in Rebel Alliances (see below).
My web site at www.chrisreher.com includes more information about the Targon Tales, excerpts, images, contact information, as well as links discussing the technology and scientific inspiration used in this story.
Click here if you would like to be notified about new releases.
Terminus Shift, Seth 2
Seth Kada joins forces with an Arawaj rebel whose unique gift for navigating subspace is pivotal to the balance of power in the sector. Caught up in a violent clash between rebel factions, Seth and Ciela's divergent loyalties must be put aside to prevent the destruction of a peaceful civilization - and find her people before their ultimate destiny is realized.
Sky Hunter, Targon Tales Book 1
Note: at this writing, Sky Hunter is offered free as an introduction to the series.
Air Command pilot Nova Whiteside is assigned to a remote planet in the war against rebel forces. There she in confronted not only by the enemy but by the worst among her own people. She uncovers treachery and illicit schemes which leave her alone to prevent the disastrous consequences of not just rebel attacks but also her own choices.
The Catalyst, Targon Tales Book 2
Lieutenant Nova Whiteside, on an apparently routine mission, finds herself the target of an assassination attempt. Her escape leaves her with no option but to rely on Seth, a former lover, for help. In trying to find who is threatening her life, they discover a plot to destroy a distant planet - a world inhabited by creatures that are the key to Nova's survival - and a conspiracy that threatens the stability of the Union Commonwealth.
Only Human, Targon Tales Book 3
Captain Nova Whiteside is teamed up with Tychon, a straight-laced Vanguard commander. In their pursuit of a ruthless rebel leader to recover a dangerous, living weapon, the line between their personal lives and their mission quickly begins to blur.
Rebel Alliances, Targon Tales Book 4
Captain Nova Whiteside receives new technology designed to change the dynamics of the Commonwealth wars. Enemy factions conspire and so Nova finds herself aboard a rebel ship where her value as hostage isn't nearly as great as her value as a defector.
Also suspected of collaboration, her Delphian Vanguard partner Tychon sets out to track her down. He discovers a puzzling piece of Nova's past when a motley alliance of strangers comes to his aid and their search leads him deep into rebel territory.
Delphi Promised, Targon Tales Book 5
An immense asteroid field is on its way to deliver a torrent of pathogens into this galactic sector, guaranteeing the destruction of any civilization in its path. Cyann, astrobiologist and Human-Delphian hybrid, is eager to join the research expedition dispatched to investigate. She is not prepared when they are stranded among an alien species whose motivations are enigmatic at best.
http://www.chrisreher.com/
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Epilogue
