Sky Hunter (18 page)

Dakad droned on about damage to the station,
which was confined to the hangar and central platform, expectations
of replacements for the lost pilots, adjusted schedules. Nova had
grasped Rolyn’s hand in both of hers but whether that was for her
comfort or his was a moot point.

She had lost fellow pilots in battle and some
of them had been friends. She remembered Chidi Lux, her roommate on
her first assignment and a decidedly free spirit, taken down by an
enemy fighter over Tannaday. There had been a training accident on
Magra that had cost two cadets. She had been in a few major
engagements with heavy casualties on both sides. But never this
many of what Dakad had called ‘ours’, all at once. Never people
with whom she had just finished breakfast. Never this pointlessly.
And why Boker? she thought and then looked over the somber,
disheartened faces of her squad mates. And why Reko?

Apparently Dakad had finished. Nova looked up
when Sulean bent over her seat. “You guys all right?” he said.

Rolyn frowned as if his words were spoken in
some other language. At length he shrugged. Then nodded. Someone
came to take him away, possibly to get very drunk.

“
You coming, too, Nova?” Sulean
asked.

She blinked. “Huh? Oh. I’m going down to the
hospital.” She hurried from the flight deck and down to the support
level of the station. The clinic there was very new; today’s
victims were the first casualties of anything more worrisome than
construction crew injuries and stomach upsets. She stopped a
service staff member to ask about Djari.

“
He’s been released,” she was told
rather curtly.

“
Can you tell me where I can find
him?”

The clerk consulted his data pad with an air
of great impatience. Nova looked around. The hospital level was
designed to service a full complement of five hundred souls once
the station was fully operational. Surely today’s half dozen
casualties did not tax their systems. She bit back a reprimand,
unsure of how one even dealt with civilians here.

“
He is quartered on Level Two, cabin
Six.”

“
How is Lieutenant Tashti?”

The clerk’s eyes swept over Nova to find the
insignia band around her bare upper arm, perhaps wondering how much
authority that carried with it. Finally, he called up the pilot’s
profile. “She is sleeping. Come back later.”

Nova left the hospital and made her way back
up to the second residential level. She found Djari’s room and
knocked urgently, not even sure why she needed to see him so
badly.

“
Nova!” he exclaimed when he saw her.
He wore only a short kilt favored by Bellac natives and a thin
plaster over his injured shoulder.

She rushed into his room and when she reached
for him he could do little more in his surprise than hold her
close. She felt his strong arms wrap around her and buried her face
in the curve of his neck, just wanting to stay there for a long
time. It felt like it had in Shon Gat and she let his presence
soothe her as it had before.

“
Are you all right?” he said softly.
His hands stroked her back.

She shook her head still pressed against his
skin. “No, I’m not. Seven of them gone. My friends. And half the
damn ground crew. General Ausan! All dead.”

“
I’m so sorry,” he said.

She finally lifted her face. “I’d be gone,
too, if it weren’t for you. I was supposed to be on that ship.”

He brushed a few loose strands of hair from
her cheek. “And you probably saved my neck with that tackle.”

“
We keep thinking this can’t happen to
us, but it does. I feel so bad! I wish there were something I could
do.”

He wrapped his arms around her again. “So do
I. I wish I could make this all go away for you.”

She looked up into his eyes. “You can.”

“
Nova,” he began, trying to look away
and failing. His eyes shifted to her lips. She felt his chest
expand with a hitching breath. “This isn’t right,” he
whispered.

“
It is.”

Djari shook his head, the gesture slow and
unfinished. He gripped her arms as if to pull them away but then he
did not. “You’re upset,” he said thickly. “Just cry.”

She pressed more tightly against his bare
chest. “I don’t need to cry. I need you. Make it better.”

Some unclear, wordless sound escaped him
before he bent to kiss her. It was not a gentle kiss nor was she
looking for that. His hands and lips were demanding and perhaps he
needed her just as much as she craved his touch. They staggered on
their feet and he pushed her against the wall. When he gripped her
thighs to lift her up she felt his growing excitement not just by
his hungry kiss but through the thin fabric that separated their
bodies.

She froze when a cold stab of fear intruded
upon the moment.

He eased back as if sensing the shift and
turned to carry her to his cot. She looked up at him as he placed
her there, moving more gently as he joined her in carefully
removing her clothes. Their hands and lips continued their
exploration and it did not take long before she reached for him,
assured once more that nothing he did could ever hurt her. She
received him joyfully, moving with him in a rising fervor of
passion that, once peaked in a blinding burst of ecstasy, left them
gasping for air and utterly spent.

He shifted her to sprawl across his chest,
making the most of his narrow bed. “You know,” he said when he was
able to speak again. “I think now I know why they call you
Nova.”

She looked up. “Hey, my daddy named me
that!”

“
It was a good choice.” His thumb
stroked across her cheek for a thoughtful moment. “Your smile is
back, Sunshine.”

She lowered her head again and sighed deeply.
“Because of you.”

“
I’ve thought about you since… since
Shon Gat. You’ve been on my mind. I’ve never known someone like
you. But you’re so far away.”

“
I’m right here,” she said, quite aware
of what he meant. “And not going anywhere soon. Well, unless your
roommate decides to come home.”

“
Don’t have one. The crew is so small
right now. We’re still experimenting and balancing the systems. The
workers won’t arrive for a while yet.”

“
Is that why you have room for all this
stuff here?” She pointed at stacks of flat, unlabeled boxes piled
on the other bed in the room. A collection of analysis tools
cluttered a narrow shelf along with small bottles of some colored
substances. “Bringing your work home with you?”

“
I guess,” he said. “Some pilfering
going on in the rings. I kept losing trays of our nutrient
experiments, so I just packed them up. The stuff is
expensive.”

“
Hey, maybe by the time the rest of the
crew gets here you’ll have your own suite. Something tells me
you’re not just a worker.”

“
Why do you say that?”

“
You don’t strike me as someone who’s
happy counting seedlings.”

“
True. I’d like to continue work on
hybridizing some of Bellac’s produce. Longer daylight hours can
make all the difference. Lots of good ideas coming from the other
ranches.”

She brushed her lips over his smooth chest.
“Well, as long as you get your own room. It’s hard to sneak into
the pilot quarters if you don’t belong there.”

A small, vertical line appeared between his
brows. “Is that what you have in mind? A secret lover among the
ground pounders?”

She pursed her lips. “Well, yes.”

“
So it’s: I like you, you like me,
let’s sleep together?”

She shifted her eyes away from his watchful
scrutiny and leaned over the edge of the bed to fish for her
discarded shirt. “Should there be more?”

He watched her pull her shirt over her head
and then attempt to untangle her tousled hair. “You don’t have to
run from me, Nova. This is not a day for promises. Take what you
want; I won’t ask for anything more.”

“
I know,” she said softly. “You make me
feel safe here.” Then she grinned mischievously. “Of course, we
might fall madly in love and then I’d have to become a farmer or
you join the ranks of neglected pilot spouses.”

“
They’re neglected?”

“
Yeah, you don’t get to take one with
you until you rank higher. It’s expensive.”

“
Doesn’t sound like much fun.” He
pushed her shirt out of the way again and then pulled her down to
nuzzle her tenderly.

“
I should go,” she said and closed her
eyes.

“
Yes,” he agreed. “In a
while.”

Her quarters were empty when she returned
there. Her roommate, a somewhat bland and overly organized Centauri
pilot, had left word that members of all three squads of their wing
were gathered in one of the lounges.

Nova felt a twinge of guilt, mostly because
the memory of Djari’s skillful hands on her body still lingered in
her memory. She dropped her clothes to the floor and stepped into
the tiny decon chamber, letting it rinse away the pain and the
pleasure that this day had brought. The thought of joining her
dispirited team mates filled her with dread but she worried about
Rolyn. Drayson was as well-liked as Boker and no doubt those who
belonged to the other squad had left a hole in their friends’ lives
as well.

She wished Djari was here to join them. His
gift for putting others at ease would be welcomed. But even as the
thought passed through her musings, she realized that it would not
be so. The distance between civilians and Air Command pilots was
more than rank. And certainly more than a matter of organizing
spouses and lovers into home bases and camp followers. She had been
right to quip about falling in love and he had responded in kind.
They were worlds apart, in the distance her next assignment may
bring, in ambition, and in temperament.

Nova dried her hair and caught it up in a
loose knot before slipping into a sleeveless blouse and knee-length
tights to join her squad. She didn’t want to feel like a soldier
tonight. She had missed dinner while in Djari’s much more
sustaining embrace but she doubted the others had eaten,
either.

When she arrived in the lounge she found them
all as depressed as she had expected them to be. Talk around the
tables was subdued; the staff kept the music somber and muted,
drinks were dispensed in large quantities. Nova slid into a bench
where Rolyn stared into his glass while some of her squad mates sat
in awkward silence.

She gave his shoulders a quick squeeze.

“
You checked out all right?” he said,
barely looking up.

“
Huh?”

“
At the hospital.”

“
Yes, I didn’t get hit. I went to check
on the others. Tashti was sedated.”

“
I saw her earlier,” Lieutenant Cierol
said. “She’s got some internal damage and a broken leg. They
transferred her to Siolet.”

“
Do we know what happened?” Nova looked
up to signal for a drink.

“
They’re still combing through things,”
Sulean, across from her, said. “It’s pretty clear that the general
was the target. We’re lucky that Thedris was still
topside.”

“
Their timing was damn excellent,” Nova
said.

He nodded. “Whoever planned this must have
known that there’d be pilots on that shuttle. Worthwhile target,
besides making Deck Two totally useless for a while.”

“
Could be a warning of more to come,”
she said. “Did Shri-Lan claim this business?”

“
No idea. I’d expect so.”

“
I wish someone would just wipe that
whole bloody faction out,” Rolyn exclaimed forcefully. There were
dark rings under his bloodshot eyes. “We know where they are half
the time. Let’s just finish this already!”

Nova moved to cover his hand with hers but he
pulled it away. “We wait till they hit us and then we slap them
around a bit. That’s it. Where’s the offence? The pre-emptive?”

“
We do hit them, Rolie,” Nova said.
“You were there when we took that Rhuwac nest out. And the
transport going to Siolet before that.”

“
Those fucking Rhuwacs are nothing! I’m
talking about taking out the damn rebel hideouts. They’re not even
rebels! Rebels have at least some goddamn ideology, like the Arawaj
faction does. The Shri-Lan are nothing but thieves and smugglers.
Let’s just get this over with.”

“
They’re tucked in with the locals,”
Nora reminded him.

“
So what! If someone’s hiding rebels
let them pay for that. We’ve got twenty-something fighters hanging
around up here doing nothing. Fifty on the ground just around the
Rim. What are we waiting for?”

“
You don’t mean that, Rolie,” Nova
said. She had seen the damage rebel presence did even when Air
Command was not bent on scorching the lot. Had he?

He looked around the circle of worried faces.
“No,” he said glumly. “I guess I don’t.”

“
We’ll be concentrating on the jumpsite
once we own it,” Sulean reminded him. “We can choke them off at the
front door. It’ll make a big difference here.”

Nova listened to talk of attacks and rebels
and sabotage until she felt like she might slide from her bench
into a puddle of despair on the floor. Unable to take much more,
she finally excused herself and left the wake, not with another
stab of guilt when she felt immediately better after the door to
the lounge slid shut behind her.