Guerilla (13 page)

 

FOURTEEN

Security Building

Fort York

1701 Hours Zulu Time

S
he's tough,” Halladay said as he stood beside Sage at the observation window that peered into Interview Room D. “I've got two daughters, both about Noojin's age, and despite being gone as much as I am, I still have a good relationship with them. I know girls.” He sipped his coffee. “I spent a ­couple of hours with Noojin. Came at her from every angle I knew. She's not going to crack. I think we're wasting our time here. She's not going to give up what she knows. If she knows anything.”

Sage peered at Noojin as she sat in the chair inside the small room. In her mind, he knew, she wasn't in that room. She was someplace else, maybe on a hunt or talking to Jahup. She had a predator's mindset, a sniper's cool calm. She would understand how to sit still and not think and just let time pass because time worked against the ­people who were holding her and she knew it. Quass Leghef had given permission for the Army to keep her for now, but that wouldn't last.

“With all due respect, there's something you're forgetting, sir.” Sage focused his mind, knowing he had to be sharp to talk to Noojin. He was freshly showered and wore a clean set of ACUs, not the hardsuit, which was getting repaired. He would have been better if he'd managed to get some sleep before interviewing the girl, but that wasn't going to happen.

“What do you think I'm forgetting?” Halladay asked.

“That she's not your daughter. That she's not just a kid. You have to approach this girl a different way. We have to raise the stakes and take off the kid gloves.”

“I came down pretty hard on her. Threatened her with locking her up no matter what the Quass says.”

“She figures she's going to be able to handle anything you throw at her. Especially with the Quass looking out for her. You have to move the threat off of her and let her know that she and the Quass can't control everything. She's not the only one in danger. She just hasn't seen that yet.” Sage adjusted the meal box he had under one arm, palmed the security panel to release the locks, and opened the door.

Noojin flicked back to awareness as Sage entered the room. Her eyes took him in, then darted to the door behind him as if she was expecting someone else. She only looked disappointed for a moment when the door closed behind Sage, then she wiped that response from her face. She wasn't going to let him see weakness.

Without a word, Sage sat on the opposite side of the table from her and put the meal box in front of her. He took two disposable sporks out of his pocket and placed them, and napkins, on the table as well. He'd brought enough food for both of them. The sandwiches in Halladay's office earlier had taken the edge off his hunger, but hadn't filled him up.

Blazing with unspoken defiance, she pushed meal box away.

Patiently, Sage reached for the box and opened it. The meal consisted of Makaum food, roasted lizard meat and jellied insects that Jahup had sworn were Noojin's favorite. The spices in the meal filled the room. Sage removed two bottles of amber
corok
juice. The small melons were popular on Makaum and grew readily. He twisted the tops off the bottles and slid one over to Noojin.

“You should eat,” he told her.

“I'm not hungry.” Her tone dripped with rebellion.

“You're hungry, and you're thirsty. Colonel Halladay says you haven't eaten or drunk anything since you've been here.”

“I am a prisoner, not a guest.”

“Yeah, you are a prisoner.” Sage looked over the breaded meat in the meal box. The pieces were finger length and about as thick, and the breading was golden-­brown and flecked with red and purple spices. “Jahup said
slor
was your favorite meal because it was so dangerous to hunt.”

Noojin sneered at him. “You don't hunt
slor
. You kill those that hunt you—­if you can. We're just fortunate that they're edible and that killing them isn't wasteful.” She shot him a look of disdain. “If you were to encounter a
slor
without your combat suit, with only the weapons we use to hunt, it would kill you.”

“Maybe.” Sage tore into the meat and discovered that it was surprisingly good. He chewed and swallowed. “This morning I killed an
omoro
with an
etess
before it got to Jahup. Probably saved his life. Maybe an
omoro
isn't as big as a
slor
, but it's faster and more lethal in some ways. And I managed that without the help of other hunters.”

She blinked as emotions twisted within her. Sage had deliberately told her about the attack on Jahup to get her head out of her own situation.

“You're lying,” she said.

“No. You can ask Jahup. After we're finished here.” Sage took another bite and chewed.

“You're going to let me out?”

Sage swallowed. “After we've finished talking, sure. If you had answered the colonel's questions, you could have been out of here a long time ago.”

She crossed her arms. Her pointed chin rose in open defiance. “The Quass is forcing you to release me.”

“Nope.” Sage wiped the grease from his hands on a napkin.

“She will.”

“Not till after we've finished this talk.”

“Do you think you can get me to answer you when the colonel couldn't?”

“I know I can.” Sage didn't look at her, didn't give her any kind of direct confrontation. She would have become even more sullen over a challenge like that. He just spoke the words like it was already the truth. It was. She just didn't know it yet.

“Try all you want. I'm not saying anything. I can wait until Quass Leghef orders my release. Which will be soon.”

Sage gave her a flat stare, the kind he used on a green soldier in boot who had just failed an inspection. “She won't do that. Not until we release you.”

Noojin worked her jaw like she was going to say something, then she chose to remain silent.

“That attack this morning blurred a lot of lines between the Army and the Makaum ­people,” Sage said. “The Quass knows those lines have to be straightened out again if we're to be effective. And she wants us to be effective. Otherwise the Phrenorians will take this planet.”

“You keep making the Phrenorians out to be monsters. The only thing I've ever seen them do is save you when you confronted DawnStar the second night you were here, and they put out the fires that burned part of the marketplace after your fight with the DawnStar Corp triggered that. Terrans are the monsters.”

“Terrans didn't attack the fort last night and nearly kill two of my soldiers. So maybe we need to figure out who the monsters are.”

She ignored him. “Where is Jahup?”

“In the med center.”

Concern wiped away her rebellion and fear gleamed in her eyes. Her voice tightened. “Is he all right?”

“He's fine. He fractured a ­couple of ribs when he crashed the RDC after some biopirates tried to kill us. The doc is looking after him. In a few hours, he'll be fine.” Sage was scheduled for a med visit as well, as soon as he finished the interview. The shoulder separation he'd suffered from the fall he'd taken from the RDC and the impacts from the gunshots were painful now that the stimpack had worn off.

“What happened?”

“I guess both of us want to know that.” Sage reached into the meal box with one of the sporks and picked up a chunk of vegetable he didn't recognize. Like the meat, the vegetable was well seasoned. He popped it into his mouth and ignored Noojin glaring at him.

Her stomach rumbled and she looked embarrassed, just like a girl again, not a hunter or a young woman.

Sage finished swallowing and took a sip of the
corok
juice, finding it cool and sweet. “You saw who attacked the fort. I need to know who it was.”

“What would you do to them if you could find them?”

“I don't know yet. Let the Makaum ­people know they can't do that kind of thing again. Turn them over to Quass Leghef for punishment. The Army doesn't care what happens to those ­people, they just want to send a message that something like this morning won't be allowed to happen again.”

“Would you kill them?”

“Only if I have to.”

Noojin reached out for a piece of meat and began to eat. She paused her chewing long enough to say, “The Quass won't be patient forever.”

“After the attack on the fort, Quass Leghef has to make a statement to your ­people, and to mine too. She made a treaty with the Terran Army that we would be welcome here. That her ­people would accept soldiers being here. Last night, some of her ­people broke that treaty, and Quass Leghef and her peers are responsible for that.”

“Some of the Quass members no longer want you here.”

“Yeah, I know that. After this morning, there are a lot of soldiers who don't want to be here either.” Sage had already heard some of the grumbling that was taking place.

The soldiers at Fort York, for the most part, were green and not used to getting shot at. Only the teams that Terracina and Sage had taken into the jungle had been tested under fire, and the attrition rate during the ambush that had killed Terracina had given pause to a lot of soldiers.

“I've been told the general is talking to military intelligence about the wisdom of keeping Fort York open for business since we apparently don't have the support of the ­people the way we did in the beginning. Military command is trying to decide how badly they want to help you ­people maintain your freedom. The Phrenorian War is spreading, getting bigger, and some of it is headed this way. This planet's resources make it a prime target for exploitation. The Phrenorians won't say
please
and
thank you
when they get here.”

“Trying to scare me isn't going to work. You're just as bad as the Phrenorians. You weren't killing Phrenorians out in the jungle, you were killing Terrans and other offworlders. And it wasn't a Phrenorian who captured me and tried to—­” Noojin dropped her eyes and wouldn't meet his gaze. Her hands shook just for a second, but she quickly regained control over herself.

Sage kept his voice flat because they were going to deal with the truth. “No, it wasn't a Phrenorian. You're right about that, but it was the Army who got you out of that.”

“It was you that nearly got us killed. Jahup had the band out there looking for drug labs as much as we were looking to take meat. He wanted you to notice him. He misplaces his trust in you.” Noojin took a ragged breath. Part of the reaction was going without food for so long, but part of it was the residual trauma. “You were there to kill Velesko Kos. You only happened to find me while doing that.”

“Jahup found me and told me they'd taken you. We came looking for you. Saving you became part of the mission. Jahup made certain of that. He saved you. We helped. We wouldn't have gotten into that drug lab if it hadn't been for him.”

She looked away from him and made herself eat.

Sage let silence hang in the room for a time while she ate. She was back in that underground lab, a prisoner again, a victim. He knew he had to let her come back from that on her own, and he trusted that she would. She was tough.

Besides the meat and vegetables, the meal box contained flat bread that was chewy and had a nutty taste. Sage took a piece and continued eating and watched as Noojin calmed herself.

“I want to tell you a story,” Sage said.

She rolled her eyes at him, and Sage had to wonder if that was something she'd picked up from offworlder women or if the eye roll was a trait of all females.

Sage sipped the juice and wished he had coffee. He also wished he didn't have to dig inside himself so much to convince her, because he didn't like talking about his past, but he knew he had to be honest too.

“I grew up in a village not much different than yours. It was called Sombra de la Montàna, which means, more or less, ‘Shadow of the Mountain.' It was called that because it was located in a mountainous area of Colombia, not far from Bogóta. It was a rough, inhospitable piece of country, but it was where my mother and several generations of her family had lived working crops and herding goats.”

Noojin narrowed her eyes at him in disbelief, no doubt thinking he was lying to her.

Sage took his PAD from his thigh pocket and laid it on the table. He tapped the screen and the holo program popped up an image of a small village. Dusty roads wound through thatched huts clinging to the side of a long hill. Vegetation was sparse and the trees were twisted things that looked spindly and weak. Goats and chickens walked freely around the yards. The ­people dressed in simple white cotton clothing. The children were barely dressed at all, and their skin was dark from the sun, like Sage's own skin. With the blue sky overhead, the scene looked calm and restful, not at all like the hardscrabble life Sage had experienced there.

Despite her attitude, Noojin stared at the image and watched the ­people and animals walking around the village. Everyone had jobs. Goats had to be tended, gardens had to be worked, and laundry had to be done in the stream that flowed nearby.

Most of the vids released in the marketplace through offworlder vendors offered immersive experiences for tourist spots. ­People who used the vid equipment could walk on sandy beaches, play games of chance in elegant casinos, surf white waves near Hawaii and the pink waters of the Bay of Uskosh on Rodapol and the frigid, ten meter waves of the Enthormwar Sea on Belseris. Or they could ride horses or fly on
delusks
on Rydis or swim with
skelale
on Claseras.

The simsense vids allowed users to go to pleasure spots. No one wanted to go to places like Sombra de la Montàna.

“My father was assigned to a scout unit during Mexico's war with Colombia. The United States had joined Mexico against the terrorists that were launching attacks on the both of those countries from Colombia. Sombra de la Montána was a lot like Makaum in the early days. Not involved in the war, but it affected my mother's ­people.