Delphi Promised (Targon Tales Book 4)

by Chris Reher

  He seemed to understand her thoughts and pulled her hand away. “That’s my job, isn’t it?” he said lightly and stood up. “I pledged my life to your clan, including you. And so I will beat up your assailants and stay silent to keep you employed.”

  “Like a big brother?” she said, smiling.

  His eyes darkened and he regarded her wordlessly for a too-long moment. “I’m not your brother,” he said finally.

  She looked away. Of course he wasn’t. He was Tychon’s vassal and a Shantir as well as a top-level navigator, the sort used to span the most impossible distances through space. And here she was wasting his time with her stupid experiments. She felt a surge of embarrassment. She never wanted him to see her like this.

  “Is this why you haven’t wanted to join with Shan Regin?”

  She nodded. “She’ll be able to tell. I don’t want them to know. They’d be so angry.”

  “Yes, they would be. Will you let me help you, then?”

  She looked up. “You would do that? Aren’t you leaving again?”

  “I’m not leaving until I know you’re done with this, Cy. That’s a promise.”

  She smiled tentatively.

  “Come,” he said abruptly and held out his hand to pull her to her feet. “If you’re up to it, I’ve got a trip to the moon for you.”

  “Moon? Which moon?” she said as she followed him from the room.

  “Sola. The asteroid crashed and Anders wants you up there.”

  He was unable to answer any of her questions as they took a skimmer from the enclave to the Union air field where Nigel had already directed the ground crew to prepare the science vessel for departure. It was a short trip to this largest of Delphi’s many moons and Cyann was still programming the needed equipment when Nigel announced that they were touching down on the surface.

  “Point six G’s,” Nigel reminded them. He leaned over the cockpit controls to peer out of the thick window beside the main screen. “Is that it?” Below and ahead of them a restless assortment of awkwardly-suited researchers and Air Command personnel scurried around a fresh depression in Sola’s arid ground like so many insects around a particularly tasty morsel. Instead of remaining in orbit, the research ship from Targon had been brought down to the surface. Several cruisers parked nearby and people came and went from those as well.

  The moon itself was uninhabitable and valued only by poets and of course the Delphian population so used to their moons’ reflected light that they had evolved with nearly no night vision at all. In deference to the Delphians among the astrophysicists, the area surrounding the site was illuminated by several light standards.

  Cyann squeezed in beside him. “Not much of an impact crater. They must have brought the meteorite into the clean room already.”

  Jovan reached up to turn on the cabin speakers when he received a signal from the ground.

  “About time!” they heard Anders excited voice. “Dock right onto the orbiter. We’ll need the chip lab and a diffuser. Nigel, fire up the small dialyzer.”

  Cyann grinned. “You’re so excitable, Uncle.”

  Nigel eased the Scout to snuggle up to the boxy Union vessel, aided by signals from below. “I wonder what has him so wound up,” he said. “You’d think he’d never seen a meteorite before.”

  “Not an organic one,” she said. “And not one with a mind of its own.”

  It took a while before the three, loaded up with equipment, stepped through the Scout’s airlock into the larger Union ship. Cyann handed a large equipment box over to one of the ground crew and then hurried ahead of the others along the central corridor to follow the directional signs to the main lab.

  “Do we know what this is?” she asked as soon as she walked into the observation room. Ring-shaped, it surrounded a large central space, separated from it by floor-to-ceiling shielded glass. She did a complete circuit, alternately looking up at the arrays of displays and monitors near the ceiling and at the irregular chunk of greenish-bronze material at the center of their attention. Several thickly-suited technicians surrounded the chest-high fragment, their air hoses tethered to the delivery system in the ceiling.

  “Not yet,” Anders said when she had completed her tour. His eyes were on one of the screens. “Come take a look.”

  She ducked in front of Jovan, who towered over her anyway, to peer at the display. It showed a magnified view of the fragment’s dented surface showing a dense network of scratches and gouges.

  “It’s entirely natural,” Anders said. “No technology. No openings that we’ve found. We have no idea how it managed to change direction. Or even what kind of propulsion it has.”

  “Anything alive in there?”

  “Yes!” he said at once. “But we have no idea what it is. We don’t seem to be able to scan into it very deeply.”

  “Now you’ve got me interested in this lump,” she said. “What’s the plan?”

  “We’ll see after we’ve analyzed the outside. Want to get some sort of idea where it came from and how old it is. I’m afraid Cet-Norwan will have to wait.”

  “I’m sure the Spotted Leatherbutts won’t mind that one bit. Are we going to take this to Targon? Much better equipment there.”

  “We’ll have to wait for the hazard reports. And Delphi’s permission. It’s your rock.”

  “We’re not leaving this to Targon, though?” Cyann said. “We’ll be part of the team?”

  “I’ll be insisting on that, don’t you worry.” Anders tilted his head to observe her critically. “You still look a little pale. Are you up to this? Going to be some long hours.”

  “Try to stop me!” she grinned and then nodded toward the alien pod. “I need to get in there.”

  “Of course you do.”

  Everyone looked up, startled, when the brilliant overhead banks of lights flickered and a mildly-glowing strip running along all bulkheads changed from pale blue to orange. Jovan turned to them, a question on his face.

  “Quarantine,” Cyann said, more excited than disturbed by the news. “So much for taking this to Targon.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “No one’s leaving Sola until every atom here has been decontaminated,” Anders supplied, equally unperturbed. “Looks like they found something unhealthy on our visitor.”

  “That isn’t how I meant to spend the evening,” Jovan said.

  “You can bunk with us,” Anders said absently, scanning the overhead screens for an explanation. “Plenty of room on the Scout. There, look.” He pointed upward. “They’ve scraped up some really interesting extremophiles. Anaerobic bacteria and endoliths, mainly. Survived quite nicely just below the crust. And liquid water.”

  “Not ice? Is it melting?”

  Anders shook his head. “No, we’re maintaining the temps in there for now. I’m sure our tech team could use a hot cup of something by now.”

  “You can say that again,” came a grumbling reply. “Sir.”

  Cyann chewed thoughtfully on her lower lip. “Do we have anything more complex than the endoliths?”

  “Not on the surface. And the real mystery is what’s on the inside. What brought this pebble here to begin with. What steered it.”

  “That’s what interests me,” Jovan said. “I’ll leave you with your bugs and head over to astrophysics, seeing how I’m stuck here anyway.” He placed his hand briefly on Cyann’s shoulder. She felt his mental contact, as always amazed by the soothing skillfulness of the Shantirs compared to lesser trained Delphians. His dark blue eyes searched her face for a moment. “I’ll see you in a while, Cy. To make sure Anders doesn’t have you up all night counting microbes.”

  She smiled after him as he left them, surprised by a sudden urge to follow him as if some vacuum had been left by his passing. Had she really missed him this much over these past eight years?

  “What was that about?” Anders said.

  “Huh? Oh. Had a headache earlier.”

  He nodded. “Well, suit up and go play in there.
We won’t have anything to work with, though, until we get this data crunched.”

  Chapter Four

  Cyann wanted to weep. Or pace around the station. Or maybe break something. It had been hours since she left Anders and the other technicians to find a bite to eat and then retire to her small cabin aboard the Scout. But sleep hadn’t come, nor would it until she found a way to calm herself. She had tried to immerse herself into a meditative khamal in the hopes of slipping into something resembling sleep. Nothing.

  This wasn’t new to her. It was a nasty side effect of the forbidden khamal, the one that had no name, that left her restless and agitated. If she were on Delphi, she’d be even now finding a way to seek out Tava to ask him to ease her tension. Sometimes he complied. Sometimes he refused, perhaps out of spite. And when she wasn’t on Delphi she’d be awake. And pacing. And wondering if she should go to the ship’s dispensary in search of something that would help her sleep.

  She sat on the edge of her bed but soon got up to pace to the window overlooking Sola’s pockmarked surface. No one was out there, but she could see internal lights from two of the nearby cruisers. Bored Air Command pilots, likely, already tired of the quarantine. She picked up a comb and ran it impatiently through her tangled blue strands. The color was her father’s; the stubborn resistance to any sort of order clearly her mother’s.

  She whirled when the door opened without warning. “What!”

  Jovan stood in entrance, looking alarmed. “What are you up to?”

  “Me? Nothing.”

  He looked around the cabin as if doubting her words. “You brought me out of a dead sleep,” he said, worried. Anything able to rouse a Delphian from a sleep state was certainly cause for alarm. “What’s wrong?’

  “What do you mean?”

  He frowned. “I don’t know. I felt you, somehow. You’re strung awfully tight.”

  “We are not in khamal,” she reminded him, somewhat pointedly. “I don’t know how you’d think you can feel me.” She gestured for him to step inside her cabin. “I just can’t sleep, that’s all. Feels like bugs crawling in my head. Claustrophobia, too. That’s all I need!”

  “Why didn’t you tell me,” he said. “That’s Tava’s work. I can help you.” He lifted his hands to her temples and she again felt the calming touch of his mind on hers, using the healing ways of the Shantir to allow her to relax. “Don’t fight me. You can do this,” he murmured.

  She listened to his calming voice, all too aware that she was wearing only a thin, loose-fitting shirt and tights and that he stood close enough to feel the warmth of his body. Her breath caught when his hand moved to rest briefly alongside her neck.

  He dropped his hands. “You should be able to sleep now,” he said. “Or at least let me sleep,” he added with a grin that didn’t seem quite genuine.

  “Um, could you...” she said. “I mean, could you not...”

  “What?”

  “It might help if you could, maybe, um, give it a little more.”

  “You seem fine now.”

  She looked away. “I mean, you could, you know...”

  His eyes darkened and he stepped away from her. “You want me to spike you? Is that what you’re saying?”

  She lifted her shoulders slowly in a half shrug. “Just a little. It’d help me sleep for sure.”

  “Have you lost your mind? Do you have any idea what you’re asking?”

  “All right, forget I asked.”

  He sat down on the bed and tugged on her arm until she sat beside him. “You have to get over this thing, Cy. These are just side effects. They’ll go away. I’m here to help you. But I won’t allow this to go on. I can’t. Not as a Shantir and not as your friend.”

  “Or what? You’ll tell Anders so he’ll kick me off the team?”

  Jovan sighed impatiently. “If you continue this he’ll figure it out for himself. He might be Human but he’s spent his entire life on Delphi. Few people know you better than he does. Do you really want him to find out that you’re deliberately hurting your brain?”

  “Nova and Tychon do it,” she snapped.

  His brow furrowed in puzzlement. “What? Why do you say that?”

  “I know they do. You can tell if you pay attention. Not that they hide it very well.”

  He stared at her for a moment before a slow grin tugged on his lips. “Silly girl. Your parents are sneaking in a little khamal shoi now and then. Nothing more.”

  “What?” The khamal he had named was a mental connection made between Delphians during their most intimate moments. Entirely physical, it added a deeply personal and pleasurable dimension to the lovemaking of people who rarely allowed their emotions to show in public. In some circles, achieving the perfect khamal shoi was something of an art form.

  Jovan nodded. “I noticed that long ago. Tychon’s isn’t exactly the most demonstrative individual and your mother is the complete opposite. So they’ve taken things, well, out of sight. Besides, Tychon is over a hundred years old. This khamal gets more important as you get older.”

  “I had no idea you could do that.”

  He cocked his head. “You didn’t? No wonder you’re so confused. Someone needs to have a word with your mentor.”

  She stood abruptly to pace to the window before turning around again. The mentor he referred to was the shoi-gan, part of the Delphian coming of age years when youths chose a more experienced partner to learn about sex. Besides discovering the complex connection between mind and body, young people were less likely to rush into choosing their mates, a lifetime and monogamous commitment. “Some mentor! I had two of them. One could barely stand to join in khamal with me and the other refused outright.”

  “They would hardly have offered to mentor you if they did not intend to teach you,” Jovan said, baffled and annoyed that she had found such inept teachers. “No lovers, either?”

  “You’re not hearing me, Jovan. No one wants to touch the half-breed’s mind that way. Even Tava said I was an abomination. A disgrace to Delphi.”

  “That excuse of a Shantir is not really the best judge of what disgrace is,” Jovan said sharply.

  She came to stand before him. “You show me,” she said.

  He looked up. “Show you what?”

  “The khamal shoi. How it’s supposed to feel.”

  “What? Now? Here?”

  “Yes. If Nova can grope Tychon in the middle of dinner I think you can show me here in my room.”

  He stood up and hesitated for a moment before reaching out to, quite formally, touch the side of her head. She felt a brief sensation, utterly pleasurable, that dissipated as quickly as it had appeared.

  “Nice,” she smiled. “Like being kissed inside my head.”

  He nodded.

  “But that’s not what we were talking about, is it?”

  “No,” he said after a moment.

  She closed her eyes when she felt his contact again and her breath caught when his touch seemed to reach deeper, exciting her senses without changing her mental state the way the forbidden khamal had. She shivered with delight when the sensation he created for her was precisely the feeling of gentle finger moving up along her spinal ridge.

  She gasped when he abruptly broke their mental link.

  “I think I better go,” he said, not quite steadily.

  “Why?”

  “I should not have done this. This is not... appropriate.”

  She frowned. “Because you don’t want to touch me, either.”

  “What? No, that isn’t—”

  “So you do?”

  “I am not your shoi-gan. You’re not—”

  She waved her hands. “I know. I’m not Delphian and you don’t like it. Tava told me that I’m like an alien in there. Just stop. I understand just fine. Messed-up synapses and voices in my head that no one can figure out but it’s all just because I’m half Human. You are all so concerned about me, but in the end I am not Delphian. I will never be Delphian enough for anyone here.”


  “That isn’t true!”

  “Yes,” she said. “It is.” She went to the door but instead of showing him the way out, she stepped into the corridor. “Just don’t talk to me right now.”

  “Cy,” he called after her but she hurried through the narrow passage to the open airlock joining the Scout to the Union ship, not terribly concerned that she was barefooted and rather casually dressed. She did not stop until she had reached the clean room that housed the meteorite.

  The space was silent except for the whirring of life support systems and a few clicks and squawks from some of the equipment. One lone technician tapped on a screen in his hand, monitoring things in what was surely utter boredom. He looked up when Cyann entered, both eyebrows raised in surprise.

  “Hello,” she said and quickly masked any evidence of her upset before he, with the typical and endearing Human mix of curiosity and concern, could ask her if something bothered her. “You’re up late.”

  “Around the clock shifts so we can get it off this moon. Found some interesting crystal.”

  “I thought it was all organic.”

  “Exactly. Can’t wait till we get a look inside. So far it’s not giving up any secrets about what’s in there, if anything. What are you doing here?”

  “Wanted another look,” she said although up until this moment she had not even considered doing that. She peered through the glass at the meteorite that, despite its unassuming size, carried a payload of pathogens that they had not even begun to analyze. It looked heavy, solid. She pressed her hands against the window. It seemed to be waiting.

  “You might want to put on something a little more suitable for that.”

  “I think you might be right.” She went into the decon corridor where she climbed into a clean suit. After a quick blast of treated air and a thorough scan she was allowed into the circular room housing the rock. After walking around it, she reached out and placed her flat hand onto the surface. It was deeply dented and scratched yet even through her glove it felt strangely smooth, likely from the heat it encountered when entering Sola’s thin atmosphere.

  “We still can’t scan it?”