Sky Hunter (26 page)

She heard voices to her left and slipped into
a space between the orderly stacks of bins. Someone hurried past
her. He came from the direction of the locks, a cylinder in his
hands. She stepped forward again to see where he was going with it,
whatever it was.

Then she saw a pair of legs, clad in the
cargo hands’ orange coveralls, splayed out on the floor. The rest
of the body was bent around the edge of the companionway to the
main entrance from the station. Beyond him lay someone else, this
one unmistakably dead, the upper body crisscrossed with laser
burns.

Nova’s hand moved to her side only to realize
that she was in her flight suit and, appropriately, her gun belt
was still back in her cabin. She raised her arm to activate her com
unit. “Security, Whiteside—”

The barrel of a gun stabbed below her ear
hard enough to bring her teeth down onto the tip of her tongue. A
hand shot out to grasp her wrist before she could complete her
call. Two people in civilian dress, one Bellac, the other Caspian,
dragged her into the open space near the tether. Someone pulled her
data sleeve off her forearm and searched her for additional
devices.

“
Get rid of her,” someone nearby said.
The voice belonged to a Centauri woman standing near the elevator
monitoring station.

“
Stop!” another voice, this one much
more familiar, rang out.

Nova turned to see Djari rush toward them. He
was not wearing the coveralls identifying him as ring crew and the
gun at his thigh was also not standard issue.

“
Leave her to me,” he said. “I’ll take
care of this.” He grasped her arm to pull her away from
them.

She twisted out of his grip. “What is this?
What are you doing?”

“
The question is: what are you doing
here? You’re supposed to be with your squad.”

She looked around. “Is this part of what’s
happening out there? The attack at the jumpsite? Djari, what is
going on?”

He glanced over to his companions. “You have
to get out of here, Nova. I never meant for this to happen with you
here. Please! There is still time.”

“
Time for what?” She was suddenly very
alarmed by the fear and worry on his face. “I was just told that
you’re with
them
. With the Shri-Lan. I can’t believe
that!”

He looked away. “You really had no idea? You
never suspected?”

“
No! Gods, Djari, I trusted you!” She
reconsidered. “Well, I thought maybe you were getting into the
smuggling going on here with Beryl’s gang. But Shri-Lan? Those
animals?”

“
Animals? It’s your people who are the
animals on Bellac, Lieutenant. And that’s not being kind to
animals. You have destroyed the peace of this planet.”

“
You wouldn’t even be on Bellac if not
for the Union,” she said, not really interested in rebel rhetoric
at this moment. She glanced at his gun.

“
You’d be dead before you can even
touch that,” he said with a glance at the nearby rebels who,
although out of earshot, were watching intently, weapons
poised.

“
Why, Djari? Please just tell
me.”

“
I told you why. You don’t belong
here.”

“
You’re not a rebel. I think I know you
better than that. You care too much. I’ve seen it.”

“
Don’t try that on me, Lieutenant,” he
said. “Leave the head stuff to the non-coms. But if you have to
know I’ll tell you that I used to have a family before Air Command
came into the Rift. Blew away half the town looking for a rebel
depot. My town.”

She looked up into his tortured face as he
remembered. “I’m so sorry, Djari…”

“
So I went to Shon Gat. Maybe to try to
figure things out. Met Coria and some others and the things they
said sounded right. Then you came and I thought maybe they were
wrong.” His hand moved to the twisted scar along his cheek. “For a
while, anyway. Then I learned more about your precious Air Command
than I wanted to know.”

She shook her head. “Doesn’t have to be like
this,” she whispered.

“
It doesn’t?” he said angrily. “You
were there! You held torn Bellac guts in your hands, making do
without the tools only your people own. How can you still do
this!”

“
Nearly time, Djari,” someone
called.

“
Time for what?” Nova said to
him.

“
Time to go.”

She looked over to the Centauri at the
elevator monitors. The climbers were controlled from the main
command station on the admin level but this console dealt with
emergencies. “What did you do? Is there going to be an attack on
the station?”

She shook his head. “We can’t even get close.
But we can still take it down.”

“
What? How? This place is a fortress.”
Would a scream from her alert anyone to their presence? The
dampening around this area was designed to keep noise levels low.
Were there even guards within earshot? Had they also been
killed?

“
The elevator. The climber is stacked
with explosive. The sort that’ll blow on impact, like your
concussion charges. It’s been on its way here for three days. It
only has to hit the shields hard enough to detonate. I don’t want
you here when that happens.”

“
What?” Nova whispered. She gaped at
him in terror and wonder. It would work. The shielding at the
tether connection doubled as an emergency brake in case of climber
failure. But had anyone considered an impact detonation at
precisely that point? A large enough blast could disengage the
elevator from the station, sending the ranch into space and,
eventually, wrap large swaths of the tether around the planet at
terminal velocity, like a whip across the landscape. “That’s why
you went down to the surface the other day?”

He nodded. “And to make sure it’s done right
we’ve got a few bottles of the boom juice up here as well.” He
gestured toward several clusters of unmarked cylinders piled up
near the tether’s terminal. “It was easy to figure out what Beryl
was up to and get onto his crew. People stupid enough to give me
access to this place. And too stupid to realize that dope wasn’t
the only thing coming up the tether.”

Nova groaned. The bins allowed to pass
through here without inspection by Beryl’s men would also have
contained the explosive. Djari’s presence here, as a frequent
receiver of goods from below, would be unremarkable as he removed
his portion of the clandestine shipment.

“
And the general? Did you murder her?
Did you kill my friends, Djari?”

“
No. That charge was set by one of the
civilians that came up with her. I tried to get you out of there
when I was told about it. I don’t want you hurt.”

“
Listen to yourself! You’d murder
hundreds of people up here but you’d feel sorry about me? This is
crazy! Please don’t do this, Djari. What about those on the
surface? This will be terrible for them.”

“
And a lesson will be learned!” he
snapped. He took a deep breath as he looked over to the air lock.
“You can come with us, Nova. With me. You can leave all this. There
is a better way.”

“
How can you even ask me this? This is
wrong, Djari. You know it’s wrong!”

“
In the end it won’t be. There are
always victims in a war. And this is a war, even if you choose to
call us rebels.” He held his hand out to her. “Please come with me.
I care about you. I want you with me. You matter.”

“
You lied to me,” she said. Where was
security? Did no one realize that there was something going on down
here? “I don’t matter at all.”

“
You’re right to feel… betrayed, I
guess. Once all this started I didn’t want you to get involved with
this. But I wanted you so bad. You’re so… I just wanted…” He ran
his hand through his hair, looking for just a moment like the man
who had caught her attention and her heart in the slums of Shon
Gat. “I’m sorry it went this far. I should have stayed away from
you.”

“
Djari, dammit,” one of his cohorts
called. “We’re done. Let’s get out of here!”

“
You can still stop this,” she
whispered urgently. “Shut down the elevator. Please!”

“
Not possible. The com link to the
climber is down. The relay is recoded so the command center won’t
notice. Nor will ground control. There are no brakes on that thing
now. When it gets here it’s going to crash. We’ll take you away
with us. I want you to live, Nova.”

Before she could reply, something large and
dark and flying through the air drew their attention. The object
landed with a thud among them and they all saw that it was the body
of a Centauri. Everyone looked up to see four Union soldiers along
the catwalk above them, guns aimed.

The rebels scattered at once, fleeing into
the stacks where more soldiers awaited them. Laser fire lit up the
air as the tracers found their targets. Nova spun and ran into a
row of waiting shipping containers near the locks. She slipped
through a gap too narrow for Djari and headed for the doors. The
overhead lights had turned orange as the rest of the station was
alerted to a security problem.

She stumbled and fell over a prone body on
the ground. Ignoring the sharp pain driving up from her knees, she
groped for a gun among the dead man’s clothes but he was unarmed, a
deck hand taken down by the rebels. She leaped to her feet when
Djari came around the bins.

He raised his gun. “Our pilot is dead. Come
with me or we both die here today.”

“
I’m not going anywhere with you,” she
said, furious. Behind them, someone screamed. Another voice shouted
something. The flashes of light through the air grew more sporadic.
It had taken only seconds for the soldiers to contain the untrained
rebels.

He gripped her arm and shoved her toward the
air lock.

Before she had a moment to consider a
desperate lunge for his pistol, a hulking shape stepped between
them. “That’s our pilot,” Captain Beryl said and twisted the weapon
from Djari’s hand before sending him to the floor with a chop of
his powerful fist.

“
They’ve cut the brakes on the
climber,” Nova said quickly. “It’s going to blow when it gets here.
I’m going to go after it.”

Beryl handed her Djari’s pistol. “What?
How?”

Djari sat up, dazed by Beryl’s blow. He felt
for his boot and withdrew another gun. Beryl spun around faster
than she thought someone of his size could move when he saw her
eyes widen in surprise. He grabbed the front of her flight suit and
tossed her behind a bin as if she were weightless. The first blast
from Djari’s pistol tore a hole into the container, the second one
a hole into Captain Beryl’s throat. The giant grunted in surprise
as he lurched away, coughed a spray of blood, and collapsed.

Nova fled across the loading platform to the
air lock. The interior door was open but when she turned to reach
for the controls she saw Djari racing after her.

“
Stay away!” she shouted and aimed her
gun.

He raised his arms toward her and let his
pistol fall to the ground. “Don’t leave me, Nova,” he made a
shambling half-turn to look back toward the tether. “This is… I
didn’t mean…”

Several soldiers rushed toward them, looking
primed to tear Djari’s limbs from his body in frenzied retribution
for their fallen leader. She saw bared teeth and balled fists and
now- holstered weapons on these men who had no intention of
capturing Djari alive. Her jaw tightened until she heard her teeth
grind. “Mitigate, Whiteside,” she said and fired. Djari stopped and
she shot him again.

She ran back to where he had fallen and knelt
beside him. He turned his head briefly, squinting as if to fix her
in his mind, and then he lay still.

“
Alert the station that the climber is
out of control and packed with explosives,” she snapped at the
soldiers. She saw Ancel beside the writhing shape of Captain Beryl,
his hand clamped over the man’s neck. “Tell them to open a secure
channel to the cruiser out there. I want the Air Boss, and whatever
damn engineer is still alive to talk to me.”

They gawked at her, considering her news. “On
the fucking double!” she shouted, choking back tears of anger and
regret and disappointment and all the other things that had no
place in this moment.

She did not wait to see if they complied. She
fumbled her way through the air lock sequence and entered the
private cruiser moored there. Although the ship was a standard
model used for small hops and a minimal passenger load, she saw
immediately that its modifications were powerful and likely to be
reckoned with in a firefight. Its design was familiar and, like all
planes of this class, equipped with a neural interface. She placed
the headset over the contact module at her temples to connect with
the plane. Closing her eyes, she prayed to some of the local gods,
just in case, but the system recognized her flight grade and
allowed her control.

She released her grip on the air lock and
punched out of the station’s gravity well. The ship maneuvered well
to her tentative tests of its maneuverability and she soon felt it
obey her mental commands without delay. “Tower, come in,” she said.
“Lieutenant Whiteside aboard rebel cruiser. Don’t be shooting at
me. Secure com link, please.”

“
Heard, Whiteside,” came the reply
which soon lost all formality. “Fill us in, Lieutenant, because
what we just heard from the basement makes no sense. The climber is
fine.”

“
Negative. Please just get me an
engineer. And some backup out here would be nice, too. They’ve
rewired something and the brakes are offline. I’m going to try to
knock the climber off the ribbon. As soon as someone tells me how
to do that.”