Sky Hunter (25 page)

But he had not once asked her about Coria.
Did he know what happened to her? When he escaped Beryl’s men at
Shon Gat, was it to flee for his life or to avoid being taken to
the garrison? Had the rebels captured him after that, or had he
joined them on his own accord? She had heard him rail against the
Union and against Air Command methods. She had dismissed it as
weary grumblings in a miserable situation.

And maybe, she thought, this was the reason
why he had showed so little concern over her flippant comment after
he had first made love to her. If the colonel’s accusation were
true, Djari knew that there was no future here on this orbiter for
him and that there was none for them together. At best, she
thought, he cared enough to want to stop her from boarding the
doomed shuttle. And she had responded by practically flinging
herself into his bed.

“
Idiot,” she whispered. Gullible,
unthinking, impulsive, stupid! How she ached to confront him this
minute, wherever he might be. She went back to where the others
waited, unmoving. “You wouldn’t be telling me this if you thought I
was compromised, too. What do you want from me?”

Thedris waited until she had taken her chair
again. “Normally, I’d relieve you of duty, arrest him and see how
the investigation shakes out.”

“
And abnormally?” she said, too angry
and disappointed for military etiquettes.

“
I’ve spoken to your past commander.”
He peered more closely at his screen. “Andridge on Tannaday. The
two tours you did there were well spent. She speaks highly of you.
For the most part. Your loyalty to the Commonwealth is not in
question.”

“
I’m glad,” she said flatly.

He pursed his lips and shifted them around
for a bit as if making up his mind about something before speaking.
“You’ll continue your friendship with him. None of our agents have
been able to get on anything more than a sociable footing with him.
He’s polite but we get nothing but a blank wall from him.”

“
You want me to spy for
you?”

“
Yes. We think he might be able to lead
us to more higher-placed rebels in the Bellac Shri-Lan group.
Perhaps even outside of Bellac. There is nothing to be gained by
arresting him just yet. He’s a minor piece. We’re not even sure
that he was responsible for the explosion in the
hangar.”

She looked up at Captain Dakad as if for
help. “I’m not trained for covert ops.”

“
We’re not sending you into Shri-Lan
headquarters.” Thedris smiled up at the Feydan major. “Although it
would be a day for celebration if you found out where that is these
days.” His expression sobered when he returned to his screen. “You
have enough training in languages, surveillance equipment and
security protocol to be useful. We want you to engage him, discover
what you can about rebel activities on Bellac or
elsewhere.”

“
Is he dangerous?”

“
He’s not a farmer.”

Nova had to make an effort to maintain her
erect posture, wanting nothing so much as wilt in her chair,
perhaps with a cozy blanket wrapped around her. Oddly, her thoughts
wandered to Lieutenant Boker. Heiko Boker, who would surely come up
with some disrespectful comment about this, who would ultimately
comfort her with something fairly sensible, and who was dead now.
Perhaps because of Djari. How she wished for him now, the only
person here, other than Lieutenant Rolyn, to whom she might admit
her stupidity for having trusted the man.

“
What is he, then?” she
said.

“
We don’t know. He’s been in Shon Gat
for some time, waiting for a work placement up here. None of the
rebels we captured there had any information about him.”

“
Including Coria?”

“
Including her.” He observed her for a
moment. “Lieutenant, I can imagine it is difficult to hear that a
friend has fallen under suspicion. We all know that saboteurs have
been able to infiltrate many levels of both Air Command and Union
governance. That doesn’t make it easier to find out that a trusted
person is not who they appear to be.”

She nodded but his words brought a small
whisper of hope. “What about our people? Is it possible that he’s
an agent? One of ours? Working in Shon Gat?”

The colonel shook his head. “We checked with
Targon. There are no special ops going on that we aren’t aware of.
Our own plain clothes are accounted for.”

“
May I ask why you suspect him? Other
than that he’s not a farmer?”

The major standing beside Thedris finally
found her voice. “As part of the investigation we have been tracing
the movements of all station personnel over the past few weeks.
Nathon Djari made two trips to the surface to arrange for plant
material. In both cases, he met briefly with the growers and then
took a private skimmer into Siolet. Accurate facial recognition is
very easy right now, given his recent injury. He was spotted in
several locations that are known to be sympathetic of Shri-Lan
members. He sent coded messages from here to a mobile operative on
the surface not long before the explosion. We suspect a receiver
hidden among the caravans. A closer examination of his background
turned up a number of discrepancies, although artfully concealed.
Unfortunately, we did not check this until after the explosion in
the hangar as part of the investigation. He is now under
surveillance.”

Nova was still processing the information she
had just been given. “Huh? What?”

“
We are tracking his movements and have
placed surveillance at key points along his daily
routine.”

“
You bugged his room?” she gasped,
aware of a furious blush creeping up along her neck.
“When?”

“
Yesterday. When we received the report
from Command.”

Nova dared to breathe again, suddenly very
skeptical about Djari’s motive for taking their private encounters
elsewhere on the station. So much for star-dappled poetry! He just
wasn’t much for having his love life recorded. If he did, indeed,
work for the Shri-Lan, checking his room for hidden devices would
be routine.

How she wished she still thought of him as
just a smuggler! Captain Beryl and his self-serving operation
suddenly seemed very insignificant.

“
Colonel, I’m not sure that I’m
comfortable with—”

A strident, pre-emptive whine from the
colonel’s com system cut her off in mid-sentence. He tapped his
sleeve to receive the message without voice. His brow furrowed.
Several minutes passed before he closed that communication and
began another, this one audible.

“
Shri-Lan forces have attacked the Rim
Station with a shipment no Rhuwacs,” he transmitted. “Shrills are
reported over Siolet near the commerce center. A carrier just came
out of sub-space at the jumpsite and has engaged our fighters out
there. All are requesting reinforcements.”

Dakad and Nova exchanged a startled look. He
engaged his own communicator to sound an alarm in the pilots’
quarters and on their com bands. “We’re deploying. Pilots only. Not
a drill. Upper flight deck in ten.”

“
Sir, what about the elevator base?”
the Feydan Major asked.

“
Shon Gat is quiet,” Thedris replied
and turned to Dakad. “Take your squad to the jumpsite. We’ll send
Caga down to Siolet.”

“
Aye,” Dakad replied. “You’re with me,
Whiteside.”

“What’s going on at the jumpsite?” Nova
asked when she arrived at their rally point, still fastening her
flight suit. A glance at the overhead screen showed that the other
two squads stationed here were also mobilized. She held a new data
sleeve up to let its sensor record her retina and begin to download
her programs. “Is everyone deploying?”

“
Yes,” Rolyn answered. “Dead silent
around here. It’s all going down at Siolet and the ‘site. There’s
going to be one big rebel ass-kicking when I get out there, I
promise you.”

They listened to the urgent messages
reporting the sudden appearance of one of the Shri-Lan’s rare
carriers at the jumpsite. A hail of Shrills had descended upon the
Air Command ship stationed there, forcing them to scramble both of
the local squadrons to protect the partially complete relay
station.

“
How far out are we?” Nova’s screen
showed that the planet’s position along its orbit put them in
fairly easy distance to the jumpsite. They could arrive there
within the hour. “You’d think they’d wait until we’re
elsewhere.”

“
They’re brilliant tacticians,” Rolyn
said as he pulled his helmet over his head. “Looks like you’ll be
collecting a few points today, Whiteside.”

“
Yeah,” she said, but even to herself
sounded lacking in enthusiasm. The colonel’s accusation buzzed
around her head like some annoying insect. She tried to swat it by
remembering why she was here. This was about joining her squad and
doing her job and maybe dispense a little justice to those who had
murdered their friends. “Make sure to say ooh and aah when Dakad
can hear it.”

“
Ladies,” Dakad shouted when the
displays showed that his squad was assembled and their sections
confirmed. “Saddle up. Let’s get this furball swept up before they
get here. They took out the relay at Callas so who knows what else
is coming through that hole.”

Nova tapped Rolyn’s helmet and rushed for her
Kite. Nikki, her favorite hangar jockey, gave her a leg up onto the
wing and she slid into her pilot couch with a giddy sense of
anticipation that she quickly suppressed. The Kite recognized her
neural link when she engaged the interface and all systems came
online. Like the others, she would wait until they reached the
battlefield before deciding to rebalance the command functions of
the plane. Nova preferred to handle her Kite manually and target
enemy ships via the mental interface while some of the other pilots
did the opposite. She hovered off the ground and listened to the
count as each section moved into the chutes and from there into
space.

“
Section Four is a go,” Flight Control
announced.

Nova halted outside as she waited for the
other two in her section to fall in. “Come on, come on,” she said,
impatient to be gone. “Let’s slice up some of those lame-assed
Shrills!” She turned briefly to give a thumbs-up to Rolyn when
something far below the flight deck caught her eye. A cruiser
attached to the shipping docks seemed strangely out of place there.
Usually, those spaces were taken up by the boxy transporters that
never entered the atmosphere as they plied their trade between
orbiters and base stations. Occasionally, a cargo ship from outside
the system docked there to save the expense of landing. But the
ship down there now was a private passenger cruiser of Caspian
build, not the sort of plane used by Air Command. Certainly not a
plane meant to haul
anai
oil or frozen fish.

She considered only briefly. If that ship was
a smuggler, choosing this moment to remove the
mince
from
the station, any evidence she had against Trakkas and his men would
be gone. She swooped out from the station and then immediately cut
her speed. “Whiteside lame,” she said. “Returning to base.”

Dakad kept his usual expletive-laden comment
to himself. “Shake it out or pick up another plane, Whiteside.”

“
Heard. Don’t wait for me.” She circled
wide and ran a few tests that would seem legit on sensors while
taking a closer look at the shipping docks. “Tower, is there a
shipment coming in today? Any type?”

“
Affirmative,” she heard the harried
reply from the tower where everyone was too busy with the remaining
launch to worry much about a kink in her wing or questions about
shipping. “Are you coming in?”

“
Yes.” She hovered into a chute on the
upper deck. A private cruiser on the shipping level? None of this,
including the attacks on the jumpsite or Siolet felt right. “Do
your job, Whiteside,” she mumbled even as she slid over her wing
and to the ground. “They know what they’re doing. You just go shoot
some rebels.”

“
Lieutenant?” Her squad’s ground
mechanic had come over to where she stood.

“
Check the port lifts, Nik. Wagging all
over the place.”

“
Where are you going?”

Nova raised a hand to signal an urgency of a
personal nature and dashed off into the direction of the deck’s
hygiene station. She passed it and, still berating herself for this
departure from protocol, entered a lift and dropped to the shipping
level.

It was quiet down here. No clanging of
transport containers, no shouts, curses or laughter from the work
crew. With the alert, the docks had likely been cleared of
non-essential personnel and only the elevator hub would still be
staffed. The security team assigned to patrol these passages was
nowhere in sight. If she was right about them, today presented the
opportunity to load up the cruiser moored to the locks. Perhaps
they had even been aware of the impending Shri-Lan attack.

But was that likely? Trakkas was a greedy
opportunist but also a seasoned Air Command officer. Beryl and his
group were crude and pitiless, but each considered himself as the
embodiment of soldierhood. Perhaps that included smuggling and even
murder but never treason. Any news of a rebel attack would not go
unreported.

Nova hurried to the end of the corridor and
to the door leading to the bays. She slipped into the shipping bay
and, instead of climbing the scaffold to the unfinished catwalk,
she moved silently down the ladder and onto the floor. There was
still not much to be heard but the steady hum of well-designed
machinery. The relays feeding electric power down to the planet
were green-lighted and the elevator itself was in motion.