Sky Hunter (16 page)

“
Sure. Got a name?” The tech tapped on
his screen to pull up a duty roster.

“
Djari,” she said and held her breath
while he consulted his system. “Nathon Djari.”

“
Oh, I know that one. Human but from
Bellac. You’ll find him in the upper ring.” He noticed her
hesitation and gestured toward a service access ladder nearby. “Go
on. Not restricted.”

She followed his direction and climbed up
into the transparent tunnel reaching out toward the farm rings.
Humid air met her and she soon wished that she had left her jacket
behind. Gradually, the pull of the station’s gravity released her
and she bounced lightly as she moved. Open service carts lined the
wall to transport produce and supplies and probably some of the
more adventurous staff to the ring. A transparent door swished
aside when she approached and she was greeted by another draft of
hot and humid air.

Some workers, more sensibly dressed than she
was, looked up with some alarm but soon identified her by uniform
as a pilot, not a security detail armed with some dreadful
news.

So far, the growing platforms were empty
except for a few racks of experiments. To Nova’s untrained eye, the
seedlings looked perky enough to eat, whatever they were. The
transparent shell of the ring was fogged in places, hinting that
some balancing and fine-tuning was still to be done here.

She bounced along the central pathway,
respectfully dodging workers and their carts, prepared to pace the
entire circumference of the ring to find Djari. Aisle upon aisle of
trays marched off into the distance and she paused at each one to
see if he was to be found. He would stand out among the
garnet-skinned Bellacs working up here.

She had come about halfway, starting to get
bored of this, when she finally spotted him near the end of one of
the aisles. He was turned away from her, busy with some sort of
system of tubes and gauges. He wore the loose-fitting white
coveralls made for this climate but she recognized his powerful
build and the shock of sun-bleached hair even from this distance.
It came as a bit of a surprise to her to feel a surge of excitement
upon seeing him again. She hurried past the shelves to where he
stood.

“
Djari!” she called out.

He turned and a broad smile spread over his
face when he saw her. The one that could light up the dark and that
had kept her from utterly despairing during their brief captivity
in Shon Gat. But as quickly as it appeared, it vanished and when
she reached him he turned his face away from her.

Nova faltered. “Djari? No hug for your
favorite officer?”

He glanced at her only briefly. “I… I hadn’t
expected to see you up here. They said you were at the gate
now.”

She frowned. “Yes, but we rotate often.
What’s wrong? Aren’t you glad to see me?” She peered at him more
closely. He did not resist when she reached out to turn his face
toward her. “Gods, Djari,” she breathed.

He faced her for a moment before turning away
again. “Didn’t turn out so pretty, did it?”

“
Don’t hide from me,” she said. The
laser blast that had strafed his cheek and jaw had left a brutal
wound on his face that was only now healing. “Why didn’t you have
that breezed,” she said. “That’s going to leave a scar.” She looked
down to see that his arm, below the rolled-up sleeve, was also a
mass of twisted flesh.

“
Too late now.” He shrugged. “I don’t
need a pretty face up here.”

“
Can’t you look at me when we’re
talking?”

“
Can you?” He turned and she had to
bite back a startled gasp. It wasn’t the wound that troubled her;
she had grown up among battle-scarred veterans and had seen worse
than this. It was the look on his face that suddenly seemed so
foreign. Something had erased the mild, open expression she had
come to like so much and replaced it with anger and
distrust.

“
It’s not so bad,” she stammered,
wondering if she sounded as lame to him as she did to herself. “Can
they do anything for that?”

He shook his head. “No. After… after I left
you at Shon Gat with your people I got caught up by a rebel group.
They kept me for days, up in the hills. I don’t know why. I was
sick. And in pain. I finally got away and made my way back down and
to the garrison.” He bent to tuck some tools into a box by his
feet. “By that time it was too late.”

“
We have an amazing exobiology clinic
on Targon. There’s a whole department specializing in
Human—”

“
Just leave it alone, Nova! I’m a
civilian. How do you think I can get to Targon? Like you said, it’s
not so bad. It doesn’t matter.”

“
Seems to matter to you or you’d look
at me,” she snapped back and regretted that immediately. “I’m
sorry,” she said more softly. “I’m so sorry about the whole thing.
I wish they hadn’t started to shoot. I wish you had
stayed.”

“
I’d be dead now. Like the other
civilians they murdered.”

“
They were… confused. It seemed like
you were all armed.”

His eyes narrowed. “There was no need for
that and you know it, Lieutenant. That’s what your people do if you
give them the chance. And if you think that this was just some rare
misfortune, you’ve been up in your plane for too long.”

She reached out to touch him but he pulled
away. “Please, Djari. I don’t know what to say. How to make this
right.”

“
You can’t fix the world, Nova. This is
what you’ve chosen. So live with it. You saw them down there!
Maimed civilians, sick children, bodies in the streets. That’s your
war. Not Bellac’s. Yours. You can’t make it right any more than I
can.” He threw his hands up in a helpless gesture. “Why do you make
excuses for this? Civilians get in the way. Your own people tried
to break you. And you don’t think there’s something wrong with
that?”

She frowned. “The Commonwealth was never
meant to be a military force. It’s about trade. Gods, Djari, if it
weren’t for groups like the Shri-Lan we’d need no military at all.
We’re spread out with few resources over just too much space. It
can’t possibly be perfect, no matter how hard we try.” She looked
around the endless rows of racks as if to find answers among the
drip trays. “If… things happen so far out here, it’s because of
people. People who don’t care about rules. People who are in this
for their own profit. And that includes Union members.”

“
More excuses,” he grumbled,
unconvinced. “I’ve seen enough. Neither of us belongs
here.”

“
And yet, here you are,” she said,
gesturing at the farm flats with a sweep of her arm. “Working for
the Union.”

He said nothing for a moment. His eyes
shifted to the orbiter seen through the transparent dome of the
grow ring. “I’m working for Bellac,” he said finally. He turned
away. “You’re working for Air Command.”

She grasped his arm. “Don’t do this, Djari,”
she pleaded, hurt by his dismissal of her and worried by the pain
that obscured the gentle, nurturing man she had met in Shon Gat.
“Please.”

He turned back. For a moment she thought he
would say something to show her that he was still in there
somewhere. He searched her face and raised a hand as if to touch
her. Her breath caught when the angry tension shifted to something
softer, perhaps something she recognized. Instead he snatched that
hand away and covered it with the other as if to hide the scars on
it. “Leave me alone,” he said, his voice nearly a whisper. “Please
just go away.”

“So that’s why I drink,” Nova said and
tipped back another thimble of what was not at all rotgut. Nor was
this quiet, elegant lounge aboard the brand new orbiter even
remotely comparable to the echoing rec halls that passed for bars
around the ground bases. A skyranch was built for civilians and,
given the isolation that comes with living in space, amenities were
at the top of the health and wellness arrangements. It suited the
pilots just fine.

Lieutenant Rolyn propped his face onto his
palm and observed her critically. “Except that you don’t.”

“
Don’t what?”

“
Drink. Much, anyway.”

“
I’m starting today,” she said and
tipped the jar over her glass for another shot.

“
You’ll puke,” Heiko Boker, the other
officer at the table, warned.

She shrugged. The two of them had lured her
to the lounge at the end of today’s shift, determined to cheer her
up, or so they said. She suspected that they were mainly driven by
curiosity.

The days since her painful encounter with
Djari had passed like sand through an hour glass. She did her work
steadily and without enthusiasm, letting the time pass between
shifts with morose walks along the station’s exercise ring or by
sleeping too much. She wanted to return to him, talk more about
what had happened, perhaps even convince him to turn to the
post-trauma team to help him get over his anger. Shon Gat had
changed him, somehow, of that she was certain.

Boker and Rolyn were less convinced of that.
They had dragged the story out of her over several shots of very
smooth spirits, which actually made her feel a little better, and
then set to analyzing the problem as if they had gathered for a
debrief.

“
You gotta deal, Whiteside,” Boker
said. “For all you know he’s a right bastard all the time. You were
stuck with him for just a couple of days. Maybe he was trying to
impress you.”

“
And get himself some bag time with
you,” Rolyn added. “Let’s not forget that.”

She shook her head. “I can’t believe
that.”

“
You don’t think he was?” He raised a
hand and counted off on his fingers. “You’re behind front lines.
It’s tense. You’ve come to count on him keeping his shit together
when others aren’t and you’re a scrumptious example of femality.
Now you’re alone. Boom. Nothing takes the pressure off more than a
good hard…” He checked himself. “…love-making.”

Nova rolled her eyes although the sporadic
attempts of her squad mates to curb their more colorful language
were as amusing as it was condescending. “That’s not all it
was.”

“
I’ve seen him around,” Boker said.
“That’s one nice looking pedestrian.” He batted his eyelashes at
the ceiling. “Shoulders out to here, dreamy streaky hair, a smile
that’ll melt Feron’s core and, I have to admit, a shapely backside.
Nice catch, Whiteside.”

“
That is not all it was!”

“
No?” Rolyn said. “Now you’re up here
where it’s safe. Lots of other bedmates to be found. You’re a pilot
and he’s crew. Civilian, like Heiko said. Those worlds don’t even
fit together.”

She frowned. “Does it always have to come
down to just that?”

“
Yeah,” Boker watched her take another
shot. “Come clear with us, Whiteside. You’re not bemoaning a lost
love. You’re pissed because he ditched you.”

She scowled at him.

“
Ah, I’m right,” he grinned. “You’re
too tough for this shit, admit it. You don’t get mad crushes on
some pretty thing that you barely know. I can name a few
fine-looking slabs of officer-hood that’d take you home in an
instant and you barely even look their way. It’s not what you’re
here for, Lieutenant, and they know it. But then you fall for
Farmboy? I don’t buy it.”

She pushed her glass around the table.
Compelling or not, attractive or not, Boker was probably right
about Djari. His rejection of her had stung. She hadn’t encountered
anything like it since a brief infatuation with a senior at the
academy on Magra. “I just want to help him,” she said. “He seems so
lost.”

“
You’re not helping anyone by letting
this get to you,” Rolyn said. “Let him sort out his own issues.
You’ve got enough to deal with.”

She looked up, sharply. “Like what?”

He smirked and elbowed Boker. “Do we tell
her?”

His friend took a surreptitious and at the
same time terribly theatrical look around the lounge. A few
officers chatting over the drinks, a few couples having dinner,
some civilians enjoying some sort of celebration. No one seemed
particularly interested in overhearing their conversation.

Nova gave his arm a playful punch. “Come on,
Rolie. Now you got me curious.”

“
Don’t tell the others. Lady Patrina is
coming up. Inspection. Some engineers came in from Targon to go
over the rings but she’ll be here to give us a
comb-through.”

“
The general?” Nova whispered loudly.
“How do you know?”

“
We have our sources,” Boker said
loftily. “Make sure your shoes are polished. She’s not been
pleasant since the Shon Gat thing.”

Nova sat back. “Please tell me we’re doing a
red flag for her!” A major military exercise like that counted
fully toward the flying hours she needed for her next
qualification.

They understood her excitement. “So it’s
told,” Boker said. “And we’ll get one day notice. The pilots, I
mean.” His expression grew a little more somber. “Dakad’s going to
need you to shine, Nova. He’s going to put you on the Red team, I’m
sure. Forget about your farmer. This is business.”

She nodded. Red team meant that she would fly
an enemy Shrill rather than her far more familiar Kite. A
disadvantage in this mock battle but a position granted to only the
more esteemed pilots. Another very solid highlight on her record.
“I’ll go crazy if he doesn’t. When’s this happening?”

“
A few days. They’re delivering the
Shrills to the Old Man so we don’t get wise to this. Already have a
command center set up.”