Sky Hunter (2 page)

“
Holy shit!” Tonda’s voice was a
high-pitched squeal. He peered at the inferno below them as the
mossy trees caught fire, fully aware that, if not for her abstract
interpretation of Dakad’s orders, he would have gone up along with
them.

Nova did not reply. She brought the plane
around and headed for the coordinates of the bunker. There was one
more gun out here somewhere but she hoped that everyone was too
busy thinking about what had just happened to look up at the silent
Kite over their heads. She unloaded her entire arsenal at the
bunker entrance and watched the side of the cliff collapse onto the
tunnels below before breaking away to rejoin their squadron.

It was only when they had cleared the
badlands and saw the plains before them that she noticed her hands
shaking on the control panel. “I might puke,” she said.

“
Whiteside,” Tonda grunted around
clenched teeth. “If my bits are still where I last saw them, will
you have my babies?”

She laughed, aware of the note of hysteria
that accompanied it but needing to laugh anyway, whooping with glee
to burn off the overwhelming adrenaline that still surged through
her body. Gradually, her heart rate returned to normal, at least
according to the Kite’s sensors, and she was able to breathe evenly
again.

They soon reached the devastated rebel
compound where the battle had ended not long ago. She circled for a
moment to look over a field strewn with building and machine parts,
Rhuwac bodies and, sadly, a large scorch mark where another of the
expensive Kites had met its end. Nothing moved down there although
her sensors showed life forms not far from the perimeter. Escaped
rebels, perhaps, or just Bellac scavengers. “I think I’m in
trouble,” she said.

“
Damn right you are,” a harsh voice cut
across the com link. “Get your ass back to the base.”

An hour or two later Nova did just that. She
had stopped only briefly atop one of the mesas scattered over the
plains to patch Tonda up as best as she could with the basic kit
available to them. The rest of her squad had slowed to let her
catch up and no one spoke until they reached the installation.

Rim Station served as a temporary sentinel at
the edge of the great equatorial plains of Bellac Tau, far removed
from anything even remotely civilized. It dispatched airborne
patrols to rout rebel hideouts along the edges of the barren
expanse of scrubland and two units of ground combat troops provided
security for the handful of towns nestled in the badlands. Most of
those stationed here assumed that the word ‘temporary’ had been
tagged on to excuse its neglected state of windblown shabbiness.
That there was no end to the need to control rebel incursions was
made clear every day.

A trolley dispatched by the base clinic was
waiting when she touched down and she loitered while Tonda was
loaded into it, hoping to avoid her squadron leader for a few more
minutes.

Tonda reached out to tug on her sleeve.
“Whiteside, if you get field boarded I’ll come visit you in lockup.
I’ll bring candy.”

“
Just glad you’re still with us, Tonda.
Get gooder soon.”

“
Are you injured, Lieutenant?” a medic
asked her. He patted her face with a cloth that smelled of
disinfectant.

“
No, it’s all his,” she said and
allowed him to wipe the streaks of blood from her face and hands.
Her flight-suit, too, was smeared with it but there was nothing to
be done about that now. Quickly, she shook her hair out and retied
the unruly red strands without the benefit of a mirror.

Once Tonda was carted away she nodded to the
mechanics to go ahead and tow her Kite to the hangars where someone
would have to remove a whole lot of blood from the rear
compartment. When it moved out of the way she saw Captain Dakad
waiting for her. For a giddy moment she imagined that it was the
glower on his face, not the heat of the day, that made the air
shimmer between them. He disappeared into the outbuilding that
served them as a ready room at the edge of the airfield.

The debrief had already begun when she
arrived there. Dakad paused for only an instant before returning
his attention to the display screens. She walked to the back,
briefly tapping the raised hand of one of the other pilots as she
passed. She was a little surprised when the man beside him,
Lieutenant Heiko Boker, moved over to make room for her. As the
only female pilot on this remote outpost, acceptance among them had
been a struggle since arriving here weeks ago.

“
You got the stones, Whiteside,” he
whispered without looking at her.

She hid a smile when she dropped into the
seat beside him.

The debrief moved on with detailed accounts
of numbers and casualties, speculations about the unusual weapon in
rebel hands, maneuvers carried out and targets missed. Their
planes’ video and sound recordings were studied in detail. She
winced when she heard that Lieutenant Avlin, a friendly and
well-liked wing mate, was the one whose plane was downed by the
surprising defense staged by the Shri-Lan rebels. At length,
Dakad’s eyes found her in the back of the room.

“
Perhaps Lieutenant Whiteside will
offer some insights into her decision-making abilities
today.”

Nova stood up to face their squadron leader,
a rangy Centauri whose long and undistinguished career had shifted
him from one front-line tour to the next. “Sir, there was time to
retrieve Lieutenant Tonda. So I did.”

“
Were those your orders?”

“
Not precisely, sir.” She squared her
shoulders. “You ordered mitigation. I mitigated. It worked.” She
heard Boker, beside her, exhale audibly and sink lower in his
seat.

“
So it did,” Dakad said. His violet
eyes moved over the other pilots. “By risking another pilot and
another plane in deciding to land a Kite on unknown terrain in
rebel-held territory for which you knew we had faulty intel. Is
that your idea of mitigation?”

“
As I said, there was enough time
before the skimmers reached the site. My intent, until I saw the
damage, was to switch planes with Lieutenant Tonda.”

“
Really,” the captain said. “And why is
that? Because you’re so much better a pilot than he is?”

She frowned briefly. All of them knew that
she was the better pilot. “Well, yes. Sir.” She noted a dangerous
twitch in his eye. “And he was injured, sir. It seemed a good idea
at the time.”

“
A good idea is for you to stick to
SOP.”

“
Yessir.”

“
Why are we here,
Whiteside?”

“
On Bellac, sir?”

“
Are you someplace else?”

Nova felt herself begin to sweat, wondering
what point the captain had to make in front of her squad. “No,
sir.” She glanced at the other pilots. “Air Command’s mission on
Bellac Tau is to remove the Shri-Lan rebels from the rim towns and
provide security while the elevator to the new orbiter is
constructed.”

“
And why do we give a damn about a
bunch of cattle herders on the other end of this godforsaken
desert?”

“
We need Bellac Tau to join the Union,”
she began by rote. “The new jumpsite we just mapped will cut
interstellar travel to Magra by half but it’s situated inside
Bellac air space. Taking stewardship of the site will let us
control rebel activity in this sub-sector. Bellac won’t let us post
a manned relay near the gate until the rebel is neutralized on the
surface and the skyranch is complete.”

Dakad nodded. “And what problem do we have
here, Whiteside?”

She suppressed a sigh. “We’re shorthanded,
under-equipped, under-supplied and outnumbered by Rhuwacs,” she
said, echoing a complaint he voiced at every opportunity but
leaving out the expletives that usually accompanied it.

He raised his arms and addressed the rest of
the group. “And so you decide to be a hero and gamble another pilot
and another plane because you think you know how long it takes to
extract an injured pilot from a crash site.”

“
Given the option…” she
began.

“
Yes, Whiteside? What were the
options?”

She winced. “Mitigation. Destroying the plane
on the ground. With Tonda in it.”

“
Which you refused to
consider.”

“
You told me to handle it,” she said,
irritated now. “So I did.”

“
By risking your life and plane over a
rookie pilot. A greenie,” he added, referring to the green uniforms
issued at the flight academies. His eyes narrowed. “Because you
don’t have the nerve to make that call when it gets down to
it.”

She took a deep breath, now only moments from
losing her temper. Before she could voice her views on teamwork and
duty to one’s squadron she felt a tap on her foot. When she glanced
down at Boker she saw him shake his head in a minute gesture. She
remained silent.

“
You’re escorting the Yasser transport
for the next five days,” Dakad said. “Dismissed. All of you.” He
stomped from the shed without looking at any of them
again.

Nova dropped into her seat with a groan and a
curse while the other six pilots slowly moved to the exit.

One of the Centauri, Lieutenant Sulean,
turned back. “Thanks for getting him out, Whiteside,” he said.
“We’ll go check on him.”

She nodded and watched them leave. Their
Caspian wingman shuffled by and slowed to tap her shoulder, as did
Lieutenant Sulean. Finally only Boker and the other Human, Rolyn,
remained.

Boker turned to her. “You took that beating
well, Whiteside,” he said.

She closed her eyes for a moment. “What the
hell was that about?”

“
The man’s an ass,” he shrugged. “He’s
wrong and that’s his way of making sure we get our story straight.
He couldn’t hold it together trying to run the scramble in town and
manage you out there as well. You called in just after Avlin went
down. Easier to just pull the plug on your problem. If you had
actually followed procedure we’d be short one Tonda now and it
would have been Dakad’s fault for losing his wad.”

She sat up. “Did he really expect me to give
Tonda up just like that? Is that what you do here?”

He shook his head. “Any pilot worth his plane
would have tried to extract Tonda. You did right. You had enough
time but Dakad’ll never admit it. But this isn’t Targon or Magra or
wherever you came from. Best to just shut up and let it happen.
It’s only a six month tour.”

The pilots gathered up their gear and left
the building. A hot breeze pushed dust across the tarmac and the
sun glared red over the horizon, about to drop off the plateau on
which the base was built. The ground crew, nearing the end of their
shift, seemed less energetic now in preparing for the last of the
returning squads.

“
Do you think I’ll have to hear more
about this?” Nova asked.

“
Nah,” Rolyn said. “He doesn’t want any
attention on this or he’d have given you more than babysitting
chores as punishment. But watch him take the credit for saving the
pilot, if not the plane. By tonight what you did will be what he
meant by ‘mitigate’ all along.”

“
And no mention made about the bunker
you took out by yourself,” Boker added.

“
That flight better count!”

“
Has to,” Rolyn assured her. “We saw
the video. How short are you now?”

Nova pretended to calculate the numbers she
carried engraved in her heart and mind. “If I get proper credit for
this sortie, I’ll need sixty more hours to qualify.”

Boker whistled. “Almost there, then. We’ll
have a bona fide Hunter Class pilot in our midst. Don’t get hard to
talk to.”

“
Well, that’s just to qualify. I still
have to get through the tests.”

He waved his hands in a dismissive gesture
that nearly caught Rolyn across the forehead. “Bah, can’t be harder
than pulling a greenie out of a downed plane on the side of a hill.
Been a long day, Whiteside. How about you join me and Rolie for a
bottle of the rotgut after chow?”

Nova smiled at the officer. This was the
first time she was so casually included in their downtime since she
had arrived here. She felt like something had changed here today,
finally. And if it meant taking a dressing down from the captain it
had been worth it. But she had long ago decided to keep a careful
distance between herself and some of the male pilots’ afterhours
entertainment. Unfortunately, other than a few mechanics and some
base staff, there were few women here, none of them pilots, with
whom she could share her free time. Something else she had to get
used to out here, she supposed. “Thanks, but I think I’ll go hug my
pillow. If I have to shuttle to Yassar and back all day I’ll need
to stay awake.” She waved and jumped onto a runabout heading to the
hangars.

The smile still hadn’t left Nova’s face when
the service cart turned toward one of the outbuildings, leaving her
at the main hangar. Cutting through the repair bays would take her
straight to the pilots’ dorms before the others beat her to the
decon facilities. A quick bite of whatever was to be found in the
mess hall followed by a long sleep was the only thing on her mind
now. Despite the captain’s tirade, this had been a remarkable day,
indeed.

The main work shift was winding down in the
bays, too. No night flights had been scheduled and the techs had
put away their tools until the morning. Bellac’s swift rotation
made for short nights and all species used to longer rests tried to
manage as much of that as possible.