The Catalyst (Targon Tales) (14 page)

“I’ll wait till they take a shot,” Nova said.

“Why? You don’t think they’re hostile?”

“No, because I think they are Union agents and I am in enough trouble without firing on my own people without provocation.”

He grinned. “Probably right. Not your fault if they don’t identify themselves, though.”

“Like that nurse back on Targon?”

“Fire at will,” he replied.

The two cruisers swooped low over their heads and resolved Nova’s quandary by rattling a volley of projectiles off the Dutchman’s shields. They continued onward to strafe the metal building on the ground.

Seth rotated the Dutchman and raced toward the lead plane at breakneck speed as it came about for another barrage. Nova guided their fire via her neural link, moving seamlessly with Seth’s maneuvers until the enemy ship’s shields had shredded and her guns impacted their hull. Seth whooped in excitement when the cruiser cartwheeled out of control and smashed into the moon’s surface.

“The other one!” Nova yelled. “Where’s the other one?”

Seth came about and raced back to the facility. The second cruiser was looping over the buildings lobbing projectiles into the dusty ground. They saw half-hearted and disorganized laser fire from the direction of the mining ships, still on the ground, as the Delphians’ neighbors realized that an attack of some sort was under way. A direct hit from the attack ship slammed into the lab’s air lock and destroyed the hatch. Nova cursed and switched to laser fire to drive the cruiser out into space but it swooped around to take another run at the building.

“Missile lock!” Nova shouted when her sensors conveyed the enemy ship’s arsenal configuration. “Gods, Seth, they’re going to–”

Too late. Both Seth and Nova gasped when their sensors followed the trajectory of the missile and its terminal impact on the building. Shrapnel spun into the sky, barely slowed by the moon’s minimal gravity.

“Bastard,” Seth took up pursuit again, this time chasing the cruiser away from the moon. “Kick his ass, Nova.”

She blasted her guns into the fleeing ship, probably more than necessary, and felt little satisfaction when it rolled and fell to pieces under her assault. Seth immediately turned back to Tyra moon.

But there they were greeted with a barrage of laser fire as the few ships belonging to the mining companies aimed their weapons toward the returning Dutchman. Nova scanned the location of the Delphians’ lab, seeing only a new crater on the moon’s surface. “Let’s get out of here,” she said glumly. “No point in trying to explain who we are.”

Seth nodded and swung away from Tyra. He punched dispiritedly at the controls to set the autopilot’s top speed toward the jumpsite to Magra. They sat in silence for a long while before Nova climbed out of her seat, hampered by the bulky suit she still wore.

“All this just over money, Seth,” she said. “There has to be a way to stop these people.
My
people! If they can do this over some trade goods, imagine what else is happening.”

He joined her in the main cabin. “Our only proof of any of this just got blown to pieces. We have only your word about what you heard her say about Drackon.”

“And yours.”

He loosened her neck clamp, his eyes on his hands. “Well, my word probably won’t count for much,” he smiled wistfully.

She nodded and set to removing the seals on his suit as well. They worked quietly, almost absent-mindedly, lost in their own thoughts until Nova realized the strange intimacy of their task. She looked up at him when her suit dropped to the floor to pool around her feet. He had already stepped out of his and bent to pick them both up when she stopped him.

He looked into her face. “What is it?” he asked, smiling uncertainly. He watched in astonishment as her fingers slipped into the fastener of the shirt she wore and parted it from her neck to below her navel. No other clothing was visible in the tantalizing glimpse of bare skin she exposed. He recognized the soft look in her deep green eyes although it had been a long time since he had last seen it. “I... I thought you didn’t like me anymore,” he said thickly.

“But I need you. Now.”

He took a step backward, unable to look away. “No, you don’t.”

She held out her hands. “Don’t you want this? Don’t you want me?”

“Not like this,” he breathed, his eyes on her lips. “Not if—”

She touched his chest and moved closer to him. He put his hands on her shoulders, meaning to keep her away. Instead, he watched breathlessly as his fingers pushed her shirt aside until it, too, fell to the floor. He exhaled audibly when she stepped into his arms and tilted her head to brush her lips over his. All reason fled when he bent to kiss her and felt her arms around him, her strong body pressed against his. It was only a few steps to the lounger on which he had slept alone for too many nights.

He was rough, his movements impatient, and his embrace as hard as the lips that crushed hers. Nova responded in kind, seeking the oblivion his tough body offered, even if only for a moment. The awful melancholy both of them had felt since leaving the moon vanished, replaced by the basest of needs that each knew the other could answer. Their bodies met in a violent tempest, leaving both of them exhausted and out of breath when, at last, he collapsed at her side.

"I don't think I've ever seen you sweat before," she grinned.

 He pushed his hair out of his face and reached to pull her closer. She winced at his touch on her hip.

 "What? Did I hurt you?" he said. "I think I got a little carried away. I've wanted to do this ever since the last time we did this." He leaned over her. "Here, I'll make it better."

 She closed her eyes when his lips stroked her body. The hands touching her now were calm and skillful, setting her senses on edge as they explored and remembered and discovered anew. She soon writhed under his touch, urging him on until her body responded in shuddering waves of pleasure. He watched her smile dreamily while she found her way back to him.

 "Does this mean we're friends now?" He propped himself on his elbows.

She stretched and purred and smiled at him. “Does it have to mean something?” she said. “I needed this. And I think you did, too.”

His forehead furrowed into a mystified frown. “Is that what this was? A shot in the arm like your meds to keep you functioning?”

“In a way, I suppose.”

He sat up and fished through a tangle of clothes at the end of the lounger to find a loose pair of trousers. He slipped into them and paced across the cabin. She watched him check their course before turning back to her. The cold expression on his face startled her.

“Dammit, Nova, why did you do this?”

She sat up but did not bother to cover herself. “Why are you upset...”

“How about you stop using me to get what you need. Is this really so easy for you?”

She frowned. “I did not hold a gun to your head.”

“Because you know you don’t need to.”

She dropped her eyes. “I didn’t think it would matter that much to you.”

He took a deep breath. “You don’t know me at all, then. And I don’t understand
you
anymore. You, of all people, fall into bed with a rebel? You’d rather get busy with a damn Rhuwac.”

“That is not true! How dare you!”

He turned away. “Put some clothes on.”

Only her long waves of hair covered her when she walked to where he stood. “Seth...”

He shook his head. “Leave it alone, Nova. You hate what I’ve become. What I do. I am nothing to you anymore. If I were anyone else you would have shot me when you had the chance. Don’t make things worse by playing games.”

She touched his arm. “It doesn’t have to be like that,” she said. “You don’t have to do this.”

He pulled out of her grasp. “I can’t change what I am any more than you can, Lieutenant.”

Chapter Nine

“Do you see the pattern, Kada?” The Caspian in the center of the spherical room indicated the illuminated wall with a sweep of his arm.

Seth stepped into the display and closed the door behind him. He remained there but joined Pe Khoja in admiring the view that surrounded them. If not for the floor on which they stood and the gravity that made that possible, both men seemed to be floating in space, illuminated only by the three-dimensional field of stars. He recognized Trans-Targon, viewed from some distance and showing most of the solar systems within reach of the jumpsites.

“Pattern?” he said. Was the Caspian looking for constellations?

Pe Khoja twisted to look at him briefly before turning his gaze back to the panorama. “Yes, a pattern,” he said in unaccented Union mainvoice. “It’s there, if you know how to look.” He brushed a six-fingered hand over the wall which responded to his touch. The image shifted and zoomed closer to Targon, the planet that represented the center of the Commonwealth in this sector. “See, over here is Delphi.” Pe Khoja tapped a solar system to add a red marker to the display. “Just one short jump from Targon. And here, Feyd. There, Magra. And Bellac, K’lar, Pelion and my home, Caspia.”

Seth raised his arm to let his hand travel through the hologram. “And you see a pattern there?” he asked, allowing himself to be intrigued by Pe Khoja’s musings. It was not often that the Caspian was in a mood to talk but when he did it was worth listening.  

“No, because I don’t know what I’m looking for. Nor do your people, but it’s here. Or maybe out there.” He gestured to the opposite side of the sphere displaying distant galaxies. “That one single thing, that one moment that decided to make brothers of us all.”

Seth raised an eyebrow. “It’s not like you to get philosophical.”

The rebel shrugged. “Creation myths don’t interest me. Facts do. Like the fact that you, Centauri, and your Humans decided to come all the way out here to meddle in our affairs.”

“Well, that’s more like you,” Seth grinned.

“The sooner you are wiped out of this sector, the better. But that’s not likely, is it? Three hundred years here in what you named Trans-Targon and you’ve taken hold like a fungus. You multiply like rodents and you bring more and more of your people here. Conquering and plundering, claiming entire worlds for yourselves in pretended kinship.”

“You’ve done a bit of that yourself,” Seth reminded him.

Pe Khoja finally turned from the display that surrounded them to observe Seth with flat yellow eyes. Seth had to remind himself that he did, indeed, share most of his DNA with this person even though, of the races Pe Khoja had named, the Caspian was the most dissimilar. Unlike the others, his body was covered with short and dense yellow hair, darker on his head and back. Where his hands had six fingers, his large bare feet were three-toed, calloused and clawed. The golden eyes slanted in a streamlined, elongated face. For all of this, he was as closely related to a Delphian or a Feydan as Seth himself was. “I don’t pretend kinship,” he said.

“Your Arawaj followers might be mostly Caspian but half of the rebels recruited for the Shri-Lan are Centauri or Human. Tharron has benefitted from the migration.”

“Bringing together all of the rebel factions to stand against your Union is just a matter of time and patience. Our union against yours.”

“Almost poetic.”

The Caspian let the display zoom out until it included the distant Centauri binary system. Another tap on the display added a network of well-charted jumpsites that made travel between Trans-Targon and Seth’s ancestral home possible. “Some day someone will find a keyhole that will make all of these gates unnecessary. Who knows? Perhaps you will be able to jump the distance in a single span. Isn’t that what your explorers hope for?” He marveled at the display. “Perhaps it’s always been there. Perhaps that is how we all came to be here, at the same time in our evolution. A single door, out there somewhere, looking only for the right combination of numbers to make it possible. And passable. Surely a miracle.”

Seth considered the possibility. A single gateway between the two sectors would change everything. Twenty billion Centauri and nine billion Humans, all one single leap away from the rich and fertile planets of Trans-Targon. It would not take another three hundred years to bring them here.

“What I fail to understand,” Pe Khoja continued. “Is why not more people of this sector rise up with Tharron to annihilate your species and take back what is ours. You are a plague.”

“With better guns.” Seth turned quickly when the door behind him opened. He threw a questioning glance back at Pe Khoja but the Caspian showed no surprise at the intrusion.

“Colonel Drackon,” the rebel said. “We were just talking about you. Or, rather, your esteemed kinsmen.”

The Human stepped into the room, squinting to make out their shapes in the dark. His civilian clothes looked as out of place on him as a uniform would look on Seth. “Not only am I forced to look for you inside a damn museum, but you have the nerve to use my name. You are taking a gamble with our good will.”

“Your good will is the product of our willingness to do your dirty work. And here you are, asking for more favors.”

“Which are well paid for. Who’s the Centauri?”

Seth had taken a small step back into the deeper shadows aware that, in this light, his eyes were giving off their identifying glow. He was suddenly glad that he had won his argument with Nova when she had questioned his decision to seek out Pe Khoja alone. At the time he had simply wanted to put a safe distance between them for a while. Now it seemed that his intuitions had once again averted disaster. She had been identified on the video taken from the
Dyona
and surely Drackon would recognize her from that. He hoped that the Colonel would not recognize him, as well.

“Going to need a pilot to ship those ten thousand lovely flash mods you’ve brought with you,” Pe Khoja said. “Now what is it you’re wanting from us this time?”

“I’m looking for two people. Mostly, I want the Delphian your men took off that cargo ship out of Pelion. Once I have him, you can have the modules. They’re here on Magra now.”

“I think the modules were a gift to put us in a mood to keep the keyhole coordinates to ourselves, were they not?” Pe Khoja said, appearing to enjoy himself immensely. He searched his memory for a moment. “I’m not sure that we currently have a Delphian in our inventory.”