Sky Hunter (13 page)

She turned and launched herself at Beryl,
gaining speed over the short distance to hit his chest with
outstretched arms. “You fucking bastard!” He stumbled back, utterly
surprised by her attack and fell over a rock beside the path. She
landed on top of him and smashed her fists into his face, cursing,
unaware of the tears that poured over her face, unable to stop even
when blood gushed from his nose and lips. “You. Fucking. Bastard!”
she yelled again and finally someone pulled her away, needing
another soldier’s help to keep her from returning to cause more
damage.

Nova struggled with the men, too enraged to
give up her insane desire to seriously hurt the captain, a man more
than twice her size. He struggled to his feet, wiping at his
streaming face.

“
Look what you did, you stupid bitch,”
one of his men said. “What the hell was that about?”

Beryl explored a gash across his eyebrow and
then looked at his blood-covered hands. “Let her go,” he said.

“
Captain?”

“
You fucking heard me.”

Nova nearly fell when the soldier released
her with an angry shove. She breathed in sobbing gasps, her hands
on her knees, furious and exhausted. “Those are civilians trying to
get me out of this place. Why did you open fire? Look at this!”

“
He raised his weapon,” Beryl said and
then seemed to realize that he sounded defensive. “As far as we
saw, they were rebels. Our orders are to retrieve you. Now get your
ass in motion and back to base.”

“
I’m done taking orders from you,” she
said and paid no attention to the looks of astonishment among his
men. She knelt beside the unconscious Coria. “We’re taking her with
us. And anyone else who’s still alive.” She glared at Beryl. “Do
you get that?”

He grasped the back of her suit and hauled
her to her feet. “You are pushing your luck,” he said. “We’re going
to assume you’ve lost your fucking mind.” He turned to his men.
“Grell. Silas. Double-time to the gate and bring an evac back
here.”

* * *

The hours that followed passed like a
feverish dream. Too weak to continue the trek to the base, she was
made to sit in the shade while the soldiers stood guard. She did
not recall talking to any of them or seeing Beryl after this.
Someone eventually pulled up with a skimmer and the few survivors
of this latest massacre were taken away.

The medics at the base received her, someone
propped her up while she took a long shower and then she was tucked
into a cot in the garrison’s well-equipped hospital compound. Coria
was also there, asleep or unconscious, and an armed guard stood by
the tent entrance. Nova was treated for dehydration and finally
allowed to sleep before she remembered to ask why they had posted
the guard.

The following day brought a bedside debrief.
And another, conducted by someone else. She talked about Sergeant
Reko and Arter and the conditions at the crude med station near the
slums. She tried to recall the location of the anti-aircraft guns
they had seen in the hills and that still hadn’t been found. She
asked about Coria, who was no longer in the hospital tent, and was
not given an answer. Then she was left alone again, feeling
restless and ready to leave this place.

At the end of that day several officers
entered the tent. She sat up and put her feet on the floor as did
two of the more able patients that shared her space.

“
At ease,” they were told as the
general approached.

“
Yessir,” Nova said, not at all at ease
to be sitting here in a hospital gown while General Patrina Ausan
stood before her. The Centauri, who once spoke at the flight
academy on Magra while Nova was still a greenie, had been an
inspiration for her since her image first appeared on the massive
overhead screen of the lecture hall. Now she was leading Air
Command’s primary base on the other side of Bellac Tau, making the
new skyranch her responsibility. Nova had to remind herself to stop
gawking at the woman.

“
I heard you were still lazing around,
Lieutenant.”

“
I… um what?” Nova
stammered.

The general surprised her by sitting on the
edge of the cot. Her glossy black hair was tightly bound and the
uniform more crisp than any fabric had the right to be in this
weather. Nova wondered, not for the first time, how senior officers
managed this. “I’d say it’s well deserved,” she said. “How are you
feeling?”

Nova blinked up at an adjutant waiting by the
door and then back at the general. “I’m recovered. I was not
injured. Just exhausted. Ready to return to duty, General.”

“
We’ll let the doctors decide that,
Whiteside. I just wanted to commend you for your warning about the
attack on the ridge. We got some reinforcements out there just in
time. And you were correct. One of the captives there turned out to
be a very important Arawaj rebel, most notable for the fact that
he’s working directly for Tharron himself.”

Nova whistled. Tharron’s position as the
absolute leader of the Shri-Lan made him Air Command’s most desired
target. “Thank you, General. I’m glad I was able to help. I’m
afraid not much else went according to plan back there.”

“
Yes, well, we cannot gleefully call
this a victory. The militants have been routed from Shon Gat and
the hill villages but the price was too steep.” The Centauri stood
up again. “You’ll return to your base in the morning. When you’ve
been declared fit you’ll rejoin your squad and head for the
jumpsite.” She smiled. “I think we can use someone with your
resourcefulness up there.”

Nova was certain that the broad grin that
spread over her face made her look just a bit foolish. “Thank you,
General.” She bit her lip. “May I… may I ask, um…”

The officer raised an eyebrow.

“
There was someone, a Human, who helped
us. At the hospital. When we went out to send the message. And
later, when we escaped. He was lost. And injured. I wonder what’s
become of him.”

Ausan nodded to her aide. “What is his
name?”

“
Nathon something Djari. Goes by Djari.
He’s applied to work on the skyranch so we probably have a record
of him here.”

Ausan’s lip twitched in amusement. “And you’d
like to see him make his way there?”

“
Well, yes. But mainly I’m just worried
about how he’s doing.”

“
We’ll see what we can find. You just
get rested up, Lieutenant.”

“
Yessir,” Nova said firmly. She watched
the general leave through the tent flap held aside for her by her
aide and then nearly collide with a soldier trying to enter. He
stood aside and saluted as she passed him without
comment.

“
Gods, Rander, you idiot,” Nova said.
“You almost knocked her over.”

The sergeant looked over his shoulder and
shrugged. “Don’t think Lady Patrina is so easily knocked over.” He
flopped onto her cot far more casually than their commander had
just done. “How come you rate your own bedside general?” He gave
her a bowl of pudding filched from the mess hall.

She accepted the bowl and decided not to
scold him for scattering dust over her sheets. She had recently
become very fond of clean bedding. “Congratulating me, I guess. No
one even told me why she’s out here.”

“
Mopping up this mess, of course. Plus
she found out that Major Trakkas is shuffling his pilots to places
they have no business being and I think that irked her plenty. I
hear she almost had his stripes when she heard you were MIA.
Misplacing a pilot is a bit of a problem, I guess.”

“
Is that why he sent that commando
after me? With Beryl at the helm?”

“
Yah. They caught your signal. Nothing
more fun for Beryl’s bunch than tracking rebels. Must have been a
party for them. They never seem to get prisoners back in one piece.
Going to finish that?”

“
Yes. Hands off.” Nova savored the
sweet treat. “Sending Beryl must seem amusing to him.”

“
To Major Trakkas? Why?”

Nova shrugged. “Long story.”

“
Give me some gossip, Loot! I heard you
punched him out.”

“
You guys are like little old ladies. I
barely touched him.” Nova stared into her pudding. No one had
mentioned her attack on Captain Beryl. No one had asked about the
death of those civilians. Collateral damage in shades of grey where
both of them had stepped over the line. A matter best left in the
dark, perhaps.

Sergeant Rander reached over to nudge her
hand, bandaged where the skin of her knuckles had split on Beryl’s
teeth. “He got sent out with his squad, but when I saw him his face
was a shiny purple mush. An improvement, some say.”

She shook her head to push the memory aside.
“I’m out of here, too. Guess I’m getting my plane back, finally.”
She set the empty bowl on a table beside her cot. “I’m sorry about
Reko. Tell the others he did his job. There wasn’t any way he could
have avoided getting shot.”

Rander winced. “Yeah, I know. We were
briefed. He was a good soldier. We lost thirty-two troops, plus
Beamer’s unit in the hills. Almost two hundred civilians. As many
shipped off to hospitals. Could have been worse, I guess.”

“
Could have been better,
too.”

“This is the fourth time I’ve brought this
ship in here and you people ask me the same thing every single
time. It gets tiresome.”

Nova kept her eyes on the data display
scrolling a list of the new arrival’s inventory. Her scanners
reported a shipment of foodstuffs not found on Bellac Tau along
with barrels of liquor from Feyd and what scanned like bales of
fabrics, possibly clothing. There were also about a dozen
passengers in one of the cabins. Her findings were confirmed by the
sensors of Lieutenant Rolyn’s Kite on the other side of the
transport.

“
Yes, sir,” she said.

“
You know I have to go through all this
at customs,” the captain of the trade ship complained.

“
Your destination is Siolet, then?”
Nova entered the name of Bellac Tau’s largest city into her system.
Besides housing the Union’s base there, it was also its primary
trade hub. “Not the skyranch?”

“
You know damn well I’m going to
Siolet! Why don’t you go chase rebels instead of bothering
traders?”

“
Rebel activity has increased in this
sub-sector, sir. Your safety is our prime concern. Do you require
an escort to the planet?”

“
Your rebels aren’t going to chase me
for my dresses. I told you I’m going to Siolet. I don’t need you to
follow me to make sure of that.”

Her shift partner cut in, unheard by the
civilian. “You’re so polite, Whiteside. He’s going to pop a vein
for sure.”

She grinned. “Anything on voice?”

“
Yeah. Human. Not so much irritated as
scared spitless. Spiking all over the place. Can’t see what he’s
hiding in there, though. Those could be slaves.”

“
Let Ground handle this one.” Nova
returned her attention to the trader. “It’s no trouble at all, sir.
We’re glad to help you arrive safely.” She watched Lieutenant Sool
pull forward and take up position beside the transport ship, ready
to escort it to the surface. “We wish you and your crew a very
pleasant stay on Bellac Tau.”

Nova closed the com link and sent their
findings to the carrier hovering not far from the jumpsite. Their
squadron had patrolled this area for fifty of Bellac’s short days
in anticipation of saboteurs that might have dodged patrols on the
other side. The Air Command relay station near the jumpsite, still
under construction, was a likely target. Once it was staffed and
fully armed, the squadrons would leave for their next
assignment.

“
You’re a wicked woman, Whiteside,”
Rolyn said.

Nova signaled him to return to the jumpsite
to join the rest of their flight and await the next arrival. “We
were told to be courteous, weren’t we? Been a quiet day, sort of. I
like that.”

“
Since when?”

Besides a shipment from Targon of materials
for the unfinished relay, they had monitored just five arrivals
during their shift. Three had exchanged polite conversation with
the tedious but necessary Air Command checkpoint, one had tried to
bribe them and was tagged as smuggler but harmless, and this was
the only one today to complain about Union presence here.
Predictably, it also seemed to be the one with the most to
hide.

To traverse these instant sub-space
connections between far-flung sectors required powerful shields and
even more powerful processors. Commonly, massive transport fleets
provided berths to lighter vessels for the passage. It made for
crowded ships and chaotic inventories. The liners, meant for
migration and trade, often smuggled rebels between sectors and
presented the greatest challenge to Air Command patrols.

“
Black sky cruiser coming in from
Bellac,” they heard Lieutenant Sulean’s voice. “Origin Panyan. In a
hurry.”

“
Panyan, eh?” Heiko Boker cut in. “Not
a lot of traffic coming out of that continent. Is this something
new?”

“
Negative. No air fields in that
jungle. Looks like our visitor took a round trip to hide home base.
Piece of junk. Strange configuration.”

“
Your turn to get the story, Heiko,”
Nova said.

Boker and his wingman moved to intercept the
new arrival. Nova scanned the ship while he made his respectful
inquiries. “Surprised that thing made it this far,” she said over a
closed band. “But fully shielded. I can’t even get a good look
inside. Want to bet it’s carrying something it doesn’t want us to
see? Might want to get your fangs out, Boker.”