by Chris Reher
“Don’t talk,” Cyann said. “Just rest, all right?”
They turned to scrutinizing their own systems for hostile organisms but it seemed that Nigel’s decontamination concoction had done its job.
“You’re also very pretty on the inside,” Jovan said in low murmur when he reached around her to run a scanner along her back.
She caressed his cheek and then ran her fingers over his neck with an alluring gaze deep into his dark blue eyes. He winced when the sampler in her hand pieced his skin and removed a blood specimen.
“That is pure mischief,” he said, rubbing his neck.
“I’m not sure why we’re bothering. We’re going back out there.”
“You’re what?” Cyann and Jovan turned from the medical displays to see Anders regard them curiously. “Back to the dome?”
Cyann stepped away from Jovan and leaned out into the corridor. “Nigel, can you come in here, please? If you got that tea made.”
“At your service, Mistress,” he called back to her. Indeed, he soon entered with a tray of tea, juice, and bowls of a thick stew they called Chunky Gunk outside of earshot of those who supplied the Scout with quick-prep food portions.
“There is no one outside now,” he reported. “Guess our hosts haven’t figured out that you’re back here by now.”
“They can’t go outside in these temperatures,” Cyann said. “We should be fine for a while.”
While they ate, Jovan and Cyann took turns in telling them about Kiran and his plan to divert the cloud. By Anders’ and Nigel’s stunned expressions, it was clear that their hopes for success did not exactly surpass their own. Cyann noticed that Jovan did not dwell on Kiran’s mental state other than to call his legendary Tughan abilities hampered by conditions here on the asteroid. In a way, she supposed, that was true.
“Is this the part where you tell us you’re kidding?” Nigel said when they had finished.
Cyann sipped her tea, savoring its sweet warmth. “Nope. Kiran is as convinced as our guide Jur that Nova isn’t going to be able to neutralize the asteroid. I am inclined to believe him. We can’t let this thing get to the Trans-Targon. They’re probably only beginning to worry about us. They don’t even know how close it is to the keyhole. For all they know, it’s not going to arrive for years yet. How much time do we have?”
Nigel consulted a screen on his data sleeve. “To the keyhole? About twelve hours.”
“Our best chance is to go back and bring them here,” Jovan said. “And since the Scout isn’t going to get us very far, one of those pods might do it. I’m guessing that Kiran’s going to use those energy emissions to launch it.”
Nigel sighed. “Mother told me not to get mixed up with Delphians. But did I listen? No, I said, going to get a job on Delphi! Pure science and none of that Union resource exploration drudgery. See where that got me? Beyond the Badlands without crossdrives.” He shook his head in wonder. “We’ve got a few hours before sunrise. You two get some rest. I’ll stay up here with Anders.”
“I’m fine,” Anders protested. “No need to play nursemaid.”
“That’s not Cyann’s diagnosis, Old Man, so you’ll just have to endure my presence at least until you’ve shaken off that headache.”
Cyann bent to kiss Anders’ forehead before leaving the small med service. Jovan walked behind her but when he moved past her at the door to her room she snatched a corner of his shirt and pulled him inside.
“Where are you going?”
He smiled. “You said you were tired.”
“I lied,” she said, suddenly very unsure of herself. Or of him, standing here in her cabin. The things he had told her in the dome had seemed so wonderful and uncomplicated but now she had no idea what to say. “Jovie...”
He reached out to shut the door to the corridor and pulled her close to erase every doubt from her mind with his kiss. She responded to his touch, holding nothing back when she felt the length of his body press against hers.
He lifted the hem of her shirt and pulled it over her head before drawing her close again. His kiss grew more demanding and then she felt the firm touch of his mind on hers, more intimate than the hands on her body.
She gasped when the khamal shoi he had initiated strengthened the link between them until she was unsure of exactly where his being met hers. His lips trailed to her throat and then his mental touch conveyed the sensation of his fingers moving slowly over the sensitive ridge along her spine. He followed this immediately by actually touching her that way, forcing a moan from her lips. She felt his smile on the skin of her neck when he repeated this, again and again until her knees threatened to collapse under her and she was no longer sure which touch was real and which was in her mind.
Tentatively, she tried for herself what he had shown her, touching his mind this way, pleased when he arched his back with a moan. “Gods, Cy...”
She pulled him to her narrow bunk and it took only moments for them to discard their clothes to continue this wonderful new way he taught her, exchanging both mental and physical touch, using fingers and lips, thoughts and words in rhythmic waves of pleasure until both of them reached a matchless plateau of ecstasy from which they leaped together.
She sprawled over him, gasping for breath, unable to speak for a long time after the last shudder subsided. “What..,” she managed, “was that?”
“Ancient Shantir secret,” he said breathlessly, equally thrilled by what they had shared.
She looked up. “We... umm, we didn’t even...”
He grinned. “Guess we’ll have to practice some more to get there.”
“Lots of practice!”
“Oh, yes, I think so.” He glanced at the time display near her door. “Later.”
“I’ve waited so long for this,” she said, watching her fingers stroke his face. “I... I was right to wait for this. For you.”
“Are you sure?”
She raised herself up. “I’ve been sure since around the time I first noticed these,” she said.
He admired the view for a moment. “I’m serious. You’re not yet thirty.”
“I’m also not all Delphian. Do I seem like a little girl to you?” But she knew what he was asking. Simply taking a lover was not on his mind. Both of them had their choice on Delphi, where browsing among them was accepted and expected long before choosing a life mate. But they had, for all of his absences, shared all of her life together and to simply end up in bed was just not enough for either of them.
She leaned down to kiss him slowly. “I’m sure,” she said.
* * *
Sunrise. “There she is,” Jovan said when a movement outside their ship alerted their sensors. He looked up at the cockpit’s main screen showing the little Jur hiding behind an outcropping, unaware of the thermographic scanner that found her there. “She’s awfully cold, though. I wonder how much they can tolerate.”
Cyann came to stand behind him and ran her fingers through his hair. It had suddenly become very difficult not to touch him. “Where? Oh, I see her. I guess it’s time to go.” She was also suddenly very much against what they were about to attempt.
“Is there no chance of talking you out of this spectacular and suicidal jaunt through what we know to be a ridiculously long jump?” Nigel said behind them, voicing her thoughts.
He entered with a suit he had altered for the journey. Since Jovan would not fit into one of the alien pods with a full space suit, Nigel had made some improvement to temperature and pressure controls as well as the air supply conduits. He held it up for their inspection. “I even picked your favorite color.”
Jovan stood up. “You don’t know my favorite color.”
Nigel winked at Cyann. “Yeah, I do.”
She busied herself with climbing into her own suit, wondering how much noise had made it past her cabin door these past few hours. “Keep us on your scanners and let us know if you think they’re onto us.”
They stepped into the airlock and soon ducked around the
Scout to where Tik was waiting for them. She gestured for them to follow her and slipped around the steep outcropping that sheltered the domes. They moved quickly, able to take broad leaps over obstacles and trenches, until they had skirted the crater. Tik motioned to them to keep low when they crossed an open area until they reached the edge of one of the domes.
As soon as they arrived, a narrow slit opened in the wall and a dark shape rolled toward them. It was one of the pods, now tumbling more quickly as several of Tik’s people pushed it out of the dome. They all looked very much alike, dressed in rough rags and wearing poorly-fitted respirators that had seen too much use. “Here’s your plane, Shantir,” Kiran ducked out of the shadows. “Just need a little fuel now.” He gestured to Cyann. “Come, help, it’s too heavy for the little people. Too heavy for me, now that I think of it. Can’t roll it up the hill.”
“Where are we taking this?”
“Up there,” Kiran said without pointing in any particular direction and strode away from them on his stilt-like legs. His companions, with the exception of Tik, disappeared back into the dome.
Cyann and Jovan grappled with the pod, able to lift it up between them, and awkwardly stumbled after Kiran. By the time they had made it halfway up the hill he had chosen, both were out of breath and feeling the strain of carrying the pod despite the asteroid’s weak gravity.
“Come look!” Kiran called. “Very pretty up here.”
They struggled onward, cursing and gasping, slipping on the rough terrain until, finally, they were able to set the pod down without fear of it rolling back down the hill.
“What if they see us up here?” Cyann said.
Kiran turned back to look down at the domes. “They have no windows. Try to be observant. Look!” He waved for them to come up the last few steps to the crest.
Jovan and Cyann joined him and saw a massive, lifeless expanse of weathered hills, tall outcroppings showing more recent erosion, and deep furrows and grooves worn into the surface. Above them and all around drifted the cloud of companion fragments, obscuring the endless canopy of millions of stars.
Cyann glanced at Jovan. “Umm, nice asteroid...”
“You can’t see that?” Kiran said, pointing toward the far end of the rock.
“See what?”
Jovan looked down at his data array. “He’s looking at the energy field. It’s still just showing up as plasma interference on our scanners.”
“It’s not interference.” Kiran reached out to them and briefly touched their heads. Both of them flinched in surprise but when they looked again to the horizon they saw a corona of green, white and blue bands of color streaming through space. “Pretty, huh?”
“So there are particles? Not just radiation?”
“No, it’s radiation. Tiny little anomaly at the front of the asteroid, pulling us. Making energy backwards. Very busy with that.”
“How tiny?”
Kiran held up his thumb and forefinger to describe a small space. “Keyholes call to it, attract it. Pretty sure this cloud used to be a planet. Before it met the little anomaly. Boom! Now it’s just along for the ride. You have to go now.”
Jovan was still staring up into space, seeing the shifting display of light through Kiran’s eyes. At times, a flare shot out to whip violently into a new direction. “This is what brought down the ships?”
“Yes. Your pilots are not agile.” Kiran leaned over the pod and folded the top of it outward. “All aboard!”
Cyann grasped Jovan’s arm. “This is scaring me.”
“Yes, me too,” he admitted and tapped the visor of his hood. “This is awkward. I’d really like to kiss you goodbye before I cast off into the unknown.”
She smiled and touched his arm, sending a gentle touch from her mind to his. “I’d like that, but you don’t have to.”
He grunted briefly when she added a mischievous tweak to the end of her mental caress. “You learn quickly.”
“All right, all right,” Kiran said impatiently. “My turn.”
Jovan stepped away from Cyann and faced her brother.
“What do you mean?” she said, puzzled.
“No kisses for the Shantir, but a hug will do,” Kiran said.
“I’m going to have to link with Kiran,” Jovan said. “With... with the Tughan.”
“What?” she gasped. “No!”
“Did you think he can just hop into that keyhole by himself?” Kiran said. “Sure he can, sure he can, but he won’t get out. Needs to do the math. Needs to find the exit.”
Cyann watched fearfully as Kiran placed his hands on either side of Jovan’s head. Jovan took a stumbling step forward, nearly knocking Kiran over, but then grasped the edge of the pod to steady himself. “Let’s do this,” he said through gritted teeth. He turned back to Cyann and then looked down at Tik. “Get back to the Scout before the sun comes up, in case some of those guides decide to go outside to look for us. Try to keep Kiran calm. He’s making my head spin already.”
“I will try,” Tik said. “Maybe he can sleep until you get to the dead place.”
“Won’t take long to get there,” Kiran said, watching Jovan fold his limbs into the cramped space. “You’ll see. No time for leisure cruise.”
“I hope not. My feet are falling asleep already.”
Cyann rearranged his air supply in front of him and tested the connections. He gripped her hand and their eyes met briefly before she moved away to let Kiran close the pod.
“Heat will seal exterior like fifty layers of graphene,” Kiran said proudly. “See that black thread in the lining? When you want to get out, put that hand on the thread, and the other hand on this one here. See it? I made that myself. Releases catalyst to dissolve the exterior. Nothing else will, so don’t lose your hands anywhere. I guess you could use a foot, but you’re not flexible. Too many joints. Not like the Jur. They bend.”
“Kiran,” Jovan said, irritated.
Kiran laughed and folded the top of the vessel. “Time for the show!” He stepped back and shoved the pod with his bare foot.
Cyann cried out when it tipped over and then began to roll down the far side of the hill. “What are you doing!”
“Watch, little sister,” Kiran raised his hands and a wide, undulating stream shot toward them from the energy field in shades of blue and white. Tik made a squeaking noise and threw herself to the ground. But the flare angled sharply toward the tumbling pod and, under Kiran’s direction, enveloped it completely before whiplashing back again to the far end of the asteroid, leaving nothing behind.
“You were serious,” Cyann said. “You really just threw him.”
“Did you think I was hiding rockets out here? Too slow. Too slow. Time is wasting.”
“Is that how you’re going to get the Jur off this asteroid?” she said, still looking into the distance, where, somewhere, Jovan was hurtling toward an invisible fracture in space.
“No. They don’t have to go that far. Just enough to escape the gravity.” He bounced a few times to demonstrate what he meant by gravity. “They can do that themselves.”
Cyann looked back to the domes. “How?”
He bent to put Tik back onto her feet. “I showed them how. Had to build a machine, though, to capture the flares. Not easy to do but once you know what to look for, it’s one two three.”
“Kiran,” Cyann said slowly, fighting a very definite need to panic. “These Jur have the technology to affect this energy?”
“Yes.” He looked into the distance. “I can see your plane from here. I used the Jur planes to build the machine. Crossdrive would be better, but I only had mine.”
“Stop talking for a minute.” Cyann tapped her data unit after making sure that her translator was offline. “Nigel, see if you can scan this side of the domes to see if you can pick up any sort of technology that’s not made of glass and whatever this stuff here is. Mechanical parts, electronics even. Not a power source.” She frowned at Kiran. “We’ve found our power source.”<
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“Can’t scan very deep,” Nigel replied.
“It’ll be near the surface, but maybe on one of the other fragments. It might even just look like junk if it’s not turned on.”
“It’s not junk,” Kiran said.
She took his hand. “Kiran, listen. Has it not occurred to you that they might be using your machine as a weapon? That they shot us down on purpose? And that they might shoot Jovan down when they get back here?”
He frowned at her. Glanced at Tik. Then back at Cyann. “That is not the purpose of its design. Its intended use is for the transport of refugees from asteroid surface to destination planet. Proceed when in range.”
“Kiran, where is this machine?” she asked gently, remembering that the only thing that kept Jovan on target right now was the Tughan’s limited attention span.
He sat on the ground and drew his knees up. “My fault. See? I try to help and everyone is hurt. I break everything.” He looked up at her and she saw tears on his face. “Dadda is going to be angry if the Shantir doesn’t get home. He’ll go away again and leave me.”
Cyann crouched down beside him. “Kiran? Please don’t cry. Come, show me where the machine is. This isn’t your fault. You didn’t know. No one is angry.” She stroked his stringy hair, wondering if she was seeing the six-year old Kiran, buried by the sheer mental weight of the adults he had killed. Had he ever had the chance to grow up? She pulled him close. “Shh, come now. We need your help.”
He sat stiffly in her embrace and did not reply. Cyann looked up at Tik who stood helplessly nearby, flashing violet ripples.
“You know,” Cyann said. “I want to see your machine. It must be amazing. Tik wants to see it, too. Won’t you show us how it works?”
“It works fine, I’m sure,” he snapped.
“But is it pretty?”
He turned his head. “It’s a focusing aperture using negative energy. It’s beyond simple, once you figure out the containment issue. How pretty can something like that be?” He scrambled to his feet. “Come, I’ll show you.”
