Sky Hunter (22 page)

But what did she really know about him?
Nothing at all. They had shared a few difficult days together and
she had been swept away by good looks and a concerned face like
some little greenie fresh out of the academy.

A buzzing sound from the skimmer’s dashboard
interrupted her furious rumination to alert her to the perimeter
alarm. She leaned into the vehicle to look at what approached,
likely a caravan or perhaps an Air Command patrol. Instead, she saw
two skimmer sleds closing in from the direction of the base, their
destination unmistakably this very spot.

“
This is Lieutenant Whiteside to
approaching traffic,” she said, sounding even to herself like
someone not in a mood for company. “Identify yourselves
immediately.”

There was no reply.

She set her skimmer in motion and veered
toward the rolling hills to the east, not surprised when the two
other vehicles changed their course as well. Bandits, likely,
roaming the flats in search of anyone stupid enough to be out here
on their own instead of joining a caravan. But was it possible that
Trakkas had sent someone to waylay her? She coaxed more speed out
of her machine but a glance at her sensors showed that the skimmers
behind her were faster.

She was now heading directly toward the edge
of the flats. Hiding herself and the skimmer was not possible with
both the vehicle and her com unit quite clearly broadcasting her
location. Her pursuers were still lost to the distant haze but they
drew nearer with each second that passed. “Son of a leprous
Rhuwac,” Nova cursed. “And you, too, Dakad. Could have sent Sulean.
But, no, you had to send Whiteside. And Whiteside had to get nosy.
Stupid, stupid—”

Something landed just off her skimmer’s port
side and exploded in a cloud of dust and sand. Whatever they were
lobbing at her from the distance, although not terribly accurate,
was sure to stop her skimmer, if not flatten it entirely.

Another burr from her sensors showed more
life forms ahead. “Enough already!” she shouted. But these were
scattered and there were no power signatures among them. Likely, a
caravan bedded down for the night at the edge of the desert.

Without thinking much about the likely
outcome of her unformed plan, she enter a new course into the
vehicle’s systems, working with little more than the view of the
hills in front of her. Quickly, she unclipped a gun from beneath
the console and then dropped her data sleeve to the floor of the
skimmer. Slowing only enough to avoid a broken neck, she retracted
the canopy and vaulted to the ground where she tumbled wildly,
endlessly until she fetched up against a rock.

Nova lay still, ignoring the pain from
whatever damage she had sustained, her attention only on the
skimmer. It followed her program to veer south and accelerate
toward the rock formations ahead. It was soon out of sight and then
Nova heard the distant roar as it crashed into the rocks.

She scrambled to her feet, daring to test her
limbs for breaks and sprains, finding nothing more serious than a
twisted ankle. “Where is the damn gun!” she shouted, looking
around. It had spun from her hand when she leaped from the car and
was now nowhere in sight. She decided to ignore the blood on her
arms and knee and limped toward where she thought the caravan had
stopped. Her pursuers would soon realize that she was not in the
crashed skimmer, depending on how much fuel had to burn out before
they could check the wreckage.

She fumbled her way through the boulders and
scrub, painfully aware that her career choice had made her reliant
on the latest of onboard sensors and guidance systems. Her standard
training in more primitive navigation was ridiculously inadequate
for wandering around the plains of Bellac. Trying to remember if
Bellac’s tusked, meat-eating and much-dreaded
owgs
roamed as
far west as this desert didn’t make her feel much better about
being out here. She stopped to calm her breathing and to listen for
the approaching sounds of the sleds.

Fortunately, the nomads weren’t concerned
about concealment out here. The mournful bellows and bleats of
their animals revealed the way to their camp. She pushed forward
and reached the edge of a herd ambling around the meager scrubland.
She sprinted toward one of the churries lolling in the sand. A
startled herder moved aside when she lifted the beast’s front paw
and slipped into the sandy wallow below.

She lay quietly, hoping that the animal,
unaccustomed to her, would not decide to evict her. Breathing
through the fabric of her sleeve to filter the dust and the
churry’s aroma, she waited, listening for nearby voices. Soon, she
made out the muffled vibration of a skimmer’s thrusters through the
ground. It stopped.

She flinched at the sound of projectile
weapons. It was followed by a clamor of panicked animal grunts and
bellows and then the ground shook with the thunder of hooves. Only
her sheltering churry remained, apparently trained to stay on the
ground when someone lay beneath it. Surely a convenience but now it
served only to point out her hiding spot. She felt it tremble.

A long moment later the animal finally rose
and shuffled aside. Nova turned onto her back and then slowly came
to her feet to face the two Centauri looming over her, both dressed
as civilians. She did not recognize either of them. Their guns,
however, were of military issue as were the two nearby
skimmers.

She looked to her right and left to see that
the nomads were silently approaching from the direction of their
camp to investigate the cause of the stampede. They looked like
thin, ghostly figures of dun-colored cloth in a dun-colored
landscape. Most covered their dyed hair with a burnoose worn
against the drifting sands and she did not see their faces. They
approached warily, as if waiting to see what would happen here
today.

“
What do you want,” Nova said to her
pursuers, doing her best to sound belligerent.

One of the Centauri grasped her arm to pull
her toward their vehicles. She moved defensively, drawing on years
of close-combat training to escape the man’s grip. She got free but
he simply raised a fist and slammed it into the side of her
head.

The response to that was immediate. Nearly
every one of the nomads stepped forward to raise a weapon. They
moved like a tide of dusty rags and shiny barrels to propel the
Centauri away from Nova, without words and without touching any of
them. Her assailants staggered back, arms and weapons raised in
surprise as much as surrender.

The nomads surged forward and forced them to
the ground. Dazed, Nova sat in the dust and watched the scrim,
waiting for the sound of fists and the screams of pain. None of
that happened. Instead, the nomads withdrew after a while, having
stripped the men nearly bare of anything even remotely valuable or
useful. For one of them, that meant a pair of expensive leather
trousers.

The Bellacs waited, weapons poised, while the
Centauri returned to their skimmers, cursing and glowering but not
inclined to linger. One of them shoved aside a young nomad who was
busy raiding the skimmer’s storage compartment. They departed in
the direction of Shon Gat.

Hands reached out to pull Nova from the sand.
She let them, crying out when someone gripped her abraded elbow. A
searing pain in her foot told her that something wasn’t quite right
on that end of her body, either. She was made to sit on a
rough-spun blanket and someone gave her a drink so strongly
fermented that she nearly gagged. After a moment she took another
sip, grateful for the soothing heat that spread through her limbs.
A young man with long braids dyed an earthy red took her arm and
smeared her wounds with some sort of sticky paste. Nova shook her
head in disbelief when she realized that both the drink and the
salve were made from the cactus also used to make
mince
.

Others had come to sit nearby, watching
silently while the herders strolled off to retrieve the scattered
animals. Nova returned their curious gaze, never having been among
a tribe of nomads. Union soldiers were not the most popular
visitors to Bellac but the plains people were not known to be
hostile toward them. Living in this harsh desert had taught them to
make the best of both rebel and colonist presence.

An older woman, this one with green tufts of
short hair and wearing a gown that had probably been fashionable in
Siolet many years ago, reached out and poked a gnarled finger at
Nova’s insignia. Her long nails were yellowed and thick and
resembled claws. “You’re an officer,” she decided.

“
Yes.”

“
They, too?” The nomad showed Nova one
of their new prizes, an Air Command data sleeve. It was a basic com
unit without security access or identification.

“
Looks that way.” Nova watched two
nomads admire each other’s newly acquired duster and leather pants.
“You’re well-armed.”

“
As it must be. Now we’re armed even
better.” The woman laughed, her voice rough with age and desert
grit, and pulled the Centauri’s rail gun from beneath her
once-stately dress.

Nova joined the laughter. By the deep
wrinkles around some of the other nomads’ eyes visible above their
wraps, it was clear that the others were also amused. It seemed
that, instead of a caravan of traders and herdsmen, she had
stumbled upon a pack of desert bandits. She was untroubled by the
distinction. “I need to get to Shon Gat.”

“
Your plane is broken.”

“
I’m afraid so.” Nova looked around the
camp and saw a dilapidated skimmer among the wagons. “Does that
thing work?”

“
Well enough.”

Nova reached into her pocket and withdrew
Trakkas’ package. Having those men sent after her had added a whole
new dimension to things today. Perhaps this thing held some
answers. “Do you have something sharp? A blade?”

The matriarch beckoned one of the other
nomads who produced a ferocious-looking dagger.

Nova took it gingerly, not without first
admiring its design. The handle was a traditional carving although
the blade itself was bartered from an off-world supplier.
Carefully, she sliced into the seal on the box, aware that those
around her were as curious as she was about its contents.

“
Well, now we know,” she said when the
broken case revealed colored and etched metal rods bound with tape.
Her new companions exclaimed in wonder at the currency but it meant
little to Nova. As Soren had said, a stack of money was proof of
exactly nothing. Disappointed, she held the sticks out to the
woman. “Will this buy me a quick ride back to the
garrison?”

“
And dinner, if you wish.” The Bellac
showed her few remaining teeth. The rods, like her gun, disappeared
into the depths of her gown. “Every day for the rest of the wind
months.”

Nova decided that churry would not be on her
menu today. She came to her feet, happy to find her ankle more or
less in working order. “No, I need to get back fast.”

The broken-down skimmer chugged away from the
camp on thrusters so misaligned that the nomad at the controls had
to continually correct its course to keep it going straight. But it
moved at a decent speed and the perimeter scan worked, even if its
protective dome was long gone and Nova had to avail herself to one
of their dense head-coverings to shield her face. Another Bellac
rode behind them, legs dangling over the back end, a long rifle
held across his chest. They left her at the edge of the garrison
with a wave and a smile. She looked after them for a moment before
limping to the gate.

She stayed carefully within view of the
buildings along the entrance into the base and was soon met by
several surprised soldiers and ground personnel. She exaggerated
her limp and allowed them to usher her to the small hospital, a
place she had hoped to never visit again.

Major Trakkas burst into the room, ignoring
the medics’ protests as he strode to the table where she was still
being patched up. “What the hell happened, Whiteside?” he
thundered.

She lowered the cooling pad from her lip and
stared at him, wide-eyed. “It was terrible, sir! Bandits! I was on
the way back from visiting Sergeant Rander and the others at Rim
Station when they hit. Out of nowhere! Not a single patrol in
hailing distance. I bailed just in time before my skimmer went
down.”

He glared at her and she practically saw the
gears turning in his head. “The package?” he said finally, very
quietly.

“
Went up with the skimmer. I’m so
sorry, sir. Was it important? Don’t worry; those brigands probably
didn’t get their hands on it.”

“
No,” he said and forced a smile. “It’s
nothing that can’t be replaced. We’re all glad that you escaped
those pirates. I think it’s best if you stayed with us overnight,
though.”

“
Thank you, sir. I appreciate your
concern.” Nova swung her legs over the edge of the stretcher and
put her feet on the floor. She reached up to twist her hair into a
knot, mainly to hide a grimace of pain when the stretched muscle in
her foot agreed with the major. “I’m perfectly fine. Colonel
Thedris is expecting me to return promptly with the pilots.” She
was certain that Thedris had no idea who was piloting the shuttle,
if he even knew it was down here. Whatever color was left in the
major’s eyes had dwindled at the mention of that name. She beamed
at him with a deliberate glance at the nearby medic. “I would
appreciate if your depot could spare a fresh uniform, though. I’m a
complete mess.”

His eyes narrowed even as he nodded his
agreement. “Of course.”

She stood up and found that her foot was
likely to cooperate until she got to the shuttle and on her way
back to the ranch. If she could manage to get there without finding
herself alone somewhere with one of Beryl’s thugs, she might even
end this day in her own bed behind a locked door.