The Disappearance of Benyamin Eranaia

Chief Navigator Yitzhak Eranaia has the Korban virus -- one of the only things in the galaxy that can cause actual, permanent death.

Fortunately for him, the planet he's stranded on is Earth, which, while being a wasteland this many years into the future, still has some people living on it. Some of those people are the Towers of Silence -- humans bonded psychologically to a futuristic version of the ancient Zoroastrian burial monuments.

One such human, Broken Hill, is the one whose Tower Yitzhak's ship leaves him behind on, shooting away into the sky and leaving her with a barely-clinging-to-life Yitzhak.

Now, she's forced to bring him back from the brink of death, while also learning of Yitzhak's horrible secret.

The first novelette in the TOWER OF SILENCE series.