Only Human Read Free Page B

make him one of the better soldiers
sent out from Myra."
    "Father, he is only..." Nova
sprang to his defense but found no words that honestly described any quality
that would endear him to the Colonel. "Well, he's a little careless
sometimes, maybe," she mumbled instead.
    Whiteside shook his head in dismissal,
wondering why he was using that worthless pilot to stall for time. "He will
be given a chance aboard the Isora . It’s up to him to make it
there."
    Nova chewed her lip. "What about me?
Will I be transferred to Targon?"
    "Not directly."
    "A battleship?" she asked
hopefully.
    "No."
    "A carrier, then," she said,
disappointed.
    The Colonel shook his head and wandered to
the large window that dominated the room. He observed the activity on the
airfield below with the same expression he reserved for facing his most
difficult recruits. Staff and mechanicals scurried from hangars to planes, from
planes to service stations. Most of the craft belonged to the academy, representing
a variety of shuttles, old cargo frigates and retired kites now used for
training. Even a few enemy shrills were used here to teach maneuvers.
    There were two very different planes down
there now, blocking one of the fueling stations. A third plane of that class
was due to arrive soon. Whiteside stared at them with loathing. They were fine
ships, possibly the best ever engineered, but he felt that their presence here
was costing him too much. Costing him everything.
    "You know," he said, his eyes now
searching the horizon for the two moons visible in daylight. "I have often
wondered if bringing you and your mother to Trans-Targon was fair to you both.
Although, I am sure, you do not feel like a stranger here."
    "Stranger?" Nova said. "Most
of the people here are Human."
    He shrugged. "Here, yes. A small
planet in the safest sector of this Union territory. A good place for Humans.
But this war belongs to the Centauri and to Tharron. I have sometimes thought
of taking you back to Terra, our Earth."
    Her eyes widened. "Back? That reach
takes years to cross! The jumpsites are so far apart that you'd be in deep
sleep for most of the way. Why would I want to go Terra? I don't belong there."
Nova could not have been more indignant if he had actually asked her to return
with him.
    Whiteside agreed. Nova had never known the
peace and prosperity that her mother had missed so much. So green and so rich,
that place where she might have come of age not knowing the heft of a gun or
the face of a Rhuwac. But instead of growing up in a gentle world to become a
gentle woman, Nova had turned from army brat into warrior. A fairly deadly
warrior, according to the reports of her superiors.
    She looked so much like her mother, he
thought. Long waves of flaming red hair forever escaping whatever bonds she
tried to devise for it, pale skin that saw the sun too rarely. Green eyes that
missed nothing and a broad smile that no one escaped without echoing it. But
Nova's hands were trained to kill while her mother had used hers to create with
paint and music. He sighed, feeling old. "Since your first trip aboard a
shuttle I'd known that it would come to this."
    "Come to what?" Nova was worried
now. It was not his way to be vague and today he did not make any sense at all.
    His gesture invited her to join him at the
window. She looked over the afternoon routine below, seeing nothing out of the
ordinary until her eyes led her to the far hangar.
    Two cruisers perched ready for takeoff. They
looked out of place here on the base where civilian planes had no business. One
looked like a Feydan transport of some age, the other seemed to have been
cobbled together out of spare parts. They were small, likely carrying a crew of
no more than three or four with a little room for cargo. Her trained eye
spotted multi-terrain landing gear and contours below the wings that could only
be crossdrive intakes. These inconspicuous ships were designed for long
distance flights far beyond the groomed