Sky Hunter (11 page)

“
What is all this?” he said, looking
over the boxes behind her.

“
Hopefully something useful. Oh, look!”
She picked up a canvas bag that had caught her eye. “Med supplies.
See if there’s anything in there for Reko. I could use him on his
feet.”

Nova walked over to the console and pushed
the rebel’s chair out of the way before looking over the displays
to tap into the com system. Random conversation dribbled from the
speakers in sporadic bursts, none of it the sound of battle. Some
expletive-laden exchanges among patrols, a more cerebral
conversation regarding the hill villages, a lot of static.

She smiled when she spotted a portable
perimeter scanner dangling in its case from a hook. “You know,” she
said to the lifeless rebel as she pulled the woman’s data sleeve
from her arm and a pistol from her belt. “If you’d watched your
scanners instead of your art project you would have seen us
coming.” Grunting, Nova shifted the body to the floor and pushed it
under the cot. It meant a small delay if someone came by here, but
desertion was common among rebels and would be assumed before
they’d start looking for bodies.

Nova connected her neural interface to the
com system and entered a coded signal, barely a blip among the
traffic. She waited. After a few seconds of peering out of the
shack’s grime-smeared windows, she sent another.

Finally, an answering signal came back to her
from the base. She closed her eyes, concentrating on chatting in a
bored, Feydan-accented voice about the miserable conditions out
here and what she thought of Air Command. She carefully embedded,
through code words and timed signals, the information about a
possible prison break on the ridge and the name she had gleaned
from the Caspian rebel. Whoever this Pe Khoja was, he was surely
important enough to stage an assault against a guarded Air Command
installation.

A hissing noise from the door caught her
attention.

“
Thought I heard something,” Djari
whispered when she came to stand behind him.

“
Rhuwac, guessing by the size,” she
said after adjusting the scanner she had found. “Just one. Over
that way. Let’s get back to the clinic.”

“
Huh? Just shoot it.”

“
Ever try to lift a Rhuwac? We’ll never
get him hidden away. Besides, they smell, alive or dead. Those
boxes are locked. Let’s get out of here.”

“
Could be supplies in
there.”

She aimed her gun at a lock without using the
tracer. It hit the spot, anyway, and the lock melted. “What’s all
this?” she said when the container revealed stacks of tightly
packed tubes, coiled like some sort of green sausage. She pried
another box open and found the same.

“
Mince
,” he said.

“
What?” She turned her head to survey
the stack of similar crates along the wall. “All this is
dope?”

“
Looks like it.”

She sighed. At least this made some sort of
sense. The demand for
mince
, a paste made from one of
Bellac’s succulent plants, was boundless in other parts of
Trans-Targon. The local, sturdy desert population enjoyed a chew of
it as much as she might enjoy a glass of wine. Certain other
species, notably Centauri and Feydans, achieved far more
significant results with the drug, none of them healthy.
Mince
was extremely addictive. It was frowned upon in some
places, illegal in others, and a very significant source of income
for the Shri-Lan rebels.

“
So that is what this is about? The
reason why there are so many rebels in Shon-Gat?”

“
Been going on for years. Long before
the Union even started to build the elevator. The stuff gets
smuggled across the hills through Shon Gat and by caravan to the
coast. Once it’s on ships to Panyan they’re in the clear. It’s not
illegal there. There are caches like this all over town. Some of
the locals process it into other forms, too. Of course a lot of
this gets smuggled off-planet as well. Your new garrison is
complicating things.”

“
I had no idea. I suppose that’s why
everyone got so upset when Air Command started knocking on
doors.”

“
Keeping you in the dark like a proper
grunt, are they?”

She shrugged. “Just one more reason to rid
this place of Shri-Lan. I don’t care.” She gave him a sheepish
look. “Well, I do. Are they using the elevator for this?”

“
Doubtful. Not with the kind of
security you have. I mean, the elevator is standing right in the
middle of your base. The governors are touchy about Air Command
harassing the nomads, so the caravans are pretty safe.” He lifted a
length of mince from its box. “We’ll take some of this. If we run
out of pain meds for the Centauri at least we have this to get them
through.”

Both of them ducked for cover when the sharp
rapport of a ballistic weapon cut through the night silence. Nova
leaped from the doorway and pulled Djari into the shadows between
two buildings, expecting rebels to return to this station. More
gunfire reached them.

“
Is that from the hospital?” Djari
said. “Is that Air Command?”

Nova shook her head. “They wouldn’t just
blast in here at night. I’m not that important or they would have
done that already. Let’s get closer. Stay in the shadow.”

A terrible roar rose up behind them, like
something huge and angry and possibly in pain.

“
Rhuwac,” Nova said just as the
creature ran at them from the alley. He was wielding a massive club
in massive hands and Nova suddenly felt very very small. The brute
shouted something about Humans and they saw spittle fly from
between the slabs of teeth he bared. “Ugh,” she said and aimed her
weapon. It took a few passes from her gun before he fell,
silenced.

Shouts reached their ears, closer than the
gunfire still sounding in the distance. The Rhuwac’s noise had
alerted someone.

Djari stepped away from Nova and readied his
sling. He let it swing a few times before it rotated around his
wrist. At the correct moment he heaved back and let the projectile
fly high into the sky. They heard it detonate in the distance,
surely drawing attention for a while. As one, they turned and fled
in the opposite direction, along the wall and into the slums.

They were breathless by the time they had put
a safe distance between themselves and whatever was going on back
there.

The door to one of the deserted homes did not
yield to her pick but Djari forced it open with a few well-placed
kicks below the lock. The single-room dwelling looked like whoever
had lived here left in a hurry. Pieces of clothing and household
items cluttered the floor and several storage boxes stood open and
empty. The corner used for cooking was empty and cold. Djari poked
around the looted shelves and found nothing edible.

Nova placed the scanner stolen from the rebel
station onto a windowsill and found it in working order. There was
no one nearby. “Safe here for a bit.” Although there was still much
interference from the rebels’ jamming systems, she detected moving
bodies throughout the quarter, many more than she had assumed to be
here. Shots still rang out at intervals but the sound of voices and
the ugly growl of Rhuwacs had faded away.

“
What do you think happened?” Djari
looked over her shoulder at the screen. “Are you sure those aren’t
soldiers?”

“
Those guns are not military issue. I
know the sound. Those are rebels. Maybe they noticed us gone.” She
winced. “Maybe they took that out on the others. Coria was right,
perhaps.”

“
Don’t think that way,” he said.
“There’s nothing to be done about that now. That might not even
have come from the hospital. We probably got turned around back
here.”

“
Wish I could do that,” she said
dully.

“
Do what?”

“
Look at things the way you do. Don’t
you get scared?”

“
Are you scared?”

She adjusted the display screen on the sill.
“Of course I am. We’re surrounded by rebels. Completely
outnumbered.”

“
You do very well for someone who’s
scared. Not too scared to kill a man with your bare hands and a
piece of string. Not too scared to shoot a Rhuwac like you’re
swatting a bug.”

She lifted her shoulders slowly in a shrug.
“That’s just training. It kicks in. You must think that’s all
pretty awful.”

“
I do and it is. I could not do this…
work. But being scared doesn’t help things.”

She turned to face him, suddenly aware that
he was standing very close to her. His grey eyes were fixed on her
own and there was a half smile on his dark face.

“
You’re scared right now?” he asked
again.

She nodded.

“
Wait a moment.”

She frowned, mystified, but waited quietly
for a long interval where only the sound of their breathing broke
the silence.

“
Now,” he said at last. “Are you still
scared?”

“
Yes.”

“
So what good did it do you to be
scared the first time I asked you? We’re still in the same spot,
with the same problem.” He tipped his chin toward the town. “Be
scared when you need to be. When it’s actually useful.”

“
And when is it useful?”

He tapped a finger against her forehead.
“When it keeps you from doing stupid things that’ll get you killed.
Good thing you have the training to keep up with your willingness
to take risks, Lieutenant.” His hand, roughened by work but gentle,
moved to cup her chin.

Nova recoiled from his touch, her mind
suddenly filled with a grim reminder of the last time a man had
touched her that way. She stared at Djari’s astonished face,
momentarily and utterly disoriented, heart pounding.

“
Nova?”

She shook her head to banish the memory,
unable to recall what the head doctors at the base had told her to
do with it. At the time it hadn’t seemed so important to listen to
their advice. “We have to keep moving,” she said. “If we can scan
them, they can see us, too.” She snatched up the scanner and slung
it over her shoulder. “If we keep moving they might think we’re a
rebel patrol. We need to get back there.”

“
Are you all right? I’m sorry if I…
startled you.”

She shook her head, wishing for nothing more
than to go back a few seconds to feel his touch again. “No. You…
you didn’t. I’m sorry. Being silly. Jittery and tired.”

“
We should try to leave the town. Find
a place to get some rest and then make our way around the foothills
to your base. You can’t go on like this. I’m barely able to stand
on my feet, either.”

“
I have to see what’s happened at the
hospital. I won’t leave Reko to them. Or the others. Coria doesn’t
much like me, but she’s your friend. We have to try to help them
now that we have some weapons.” She pulled her gun from her belt
and headed for the door.

“
Nova.”

She turned back again.

Djari took her arm to draw her close and this
time she did not flinch when he bent to kiss her softly. He touched
only her arms but Nova returned the kiss, letting the moment spin
out deliciously to banish the hate-filled night from their minds,
if only for a little while. More than that, she felt herself
respond to the closeness of their bodies, of wanting him to touch
her. The sudden and happy realization that this need had not been
destroyed by Captain Beryl, after all, allowed her to reach up to
wrap her arms around his neck.

But when she felt his arms move around her
waist to draw her closer to this powerful body she pulled away at
once, the fear and memory a dash of cold water in her face. They
stared at each other for uncounted moments, neither sure of the
other.

He finally cocked his head and gave her a
gentle smile. “Should I apologize?”

“
Huh? No! I mean…”

He raised a single finger to point toward
her. “Not going to shoot me, are you?”

She looked down to see that she now gripped
her pistol close to her chest, one hand around the barrel, the
other ready to engage the trigger. She exhaled forcefully and
lowered the gun.

“
This is what you look like scared,” he
observed. “But why?”

She looked away and then up into his face
again, seeing only concern and curiosity. “I’m sorry. I… I got
hurt, not so long ago. It’s made me jumpy, I guess.”

“
Boyfriend trouble in the military? Is
that allowed?”

She shook her head. “Not that. Not a
boyfriend. I mean really hurt. On the base.”

The soft smile faded from his lips. “On the
base?”

She nodded.

He took a step closer, slowly as if worried
that she might run away. He brushed her cheek with the tips of his
fingers. “You have nothing to fear from me,” he said. “You know
that, don’t you?”

She nodded and reached up to cover his hand
with her own but then pulled away to open the door behind her.
Perhaps there was time for this later, when she could allow herself
to find out what his touch just now had meant. When she could admit
to herself how much she needed it. She ground her teeth and shoved
aside an overwhelming desire to hide in his embrace and, if even
for just a little while, forget that she ever set foot on this
planet. No time for any of this now.

“
Let’s walk slow so we don’t look like
we’ve got something to hide on the scanners,” she said. “If we move
fairly at random we could get close to the hospital without being
noticed.” She paused to consider. “Actually, let’s not be seen by
anyone. Ours or theirs. If they did send Union patrols they’ll
think we’re rebels, too.”