Sky Hunter (4 page)

“
He’s in charge of personnel. Who else
would I complain to?”

“
Someone who doesn’t think Beryl is the
star of the show around here.”

Nova put her clothes on a nearby chair to
submit to the exam. Bruises were inspected, samples were taken,
wounds cleaned. Neither of them spoke during the procedure, giving
Nova time to think about her request.

At last, Soren covered her patient with a
thin sheet and sat on a stool beside the table on which she lay.
She entered some information into the slim data tablet in her
hands. “You’re off duty for a few days. That shoulder is going to
feel like a massacre tomorrow. I’ll give you some tranks for it.
You’re also seeing the post-trauma folks first thing.”

“
Is that necessary?”

“
It’s policy. Especially if you want to
report this.”

“
Why wouldn’t I?” Nova said
angrily.

“
Beryl runs the place, Lieutenant. He
keeps the grunts in line and functioning under some pretty extreme
conditions. They don’t want women in their ranks and they do
whatever it takes to keep them out. You’re a pilot and that’s even
more offensive to them. Frankly, I’m tired of patching up his
victims and don’t think they leave the new boys alone, either. If
you’re smaller or smarter, you’re fair game. That’s what it is
here, Nova. You’ll only make it worse for yourself by reporting
it.”

“
I am not putting up with
this!”

“
Then get a transfer out of this pit.
What are you doing out here, anyway?”

Nova dropped her forearm over her eyes.
“Bellac wasn’t exactly on my dream sheet. I want to get to Targon.
I need the creds for that. And places like these are the fastest
way to get them. I knew it’s a pit. Just didn’t think I’d have to
watch out for our own people, too.” She moved her arm again to peer
at the doctor. “Did they get to you?”

“
They tried. I made some noise about a
few cases when I first got here. Some comments were made. I got the
message.” She sighed. “I’m not a soldier, I’m not an officer, and
I’m not a pilot. I’m probably a coward. Once I have a few more
points I’m out of here, too. Back to Siolet where they know how to
run a military hospital. I stitch them up when they lacerate
themselves and I don’t get in their way. You’re a target and
they’ll keep at you until you know your place.” She fussed with her
recorder and did not look at Nova. “I’ve seen it again and again.
Sometimes I think this place is more like a prison than a military
base. You get along or you get out, one way or another. Not
everyone gets hurt, but it’s the main routine. They don’t have the
smarts to find other ways to make your life intolerable.” She
tipped her head toward the door. “I had a chat with Lieutenant
Tonda earlier. Somehow I don’t think you’re the sort that’s easily
intimidated. Admirable, but not likely to make your tour here all
that much fun.”

Nova grimaced. “Not exactly a vacation, so
far, anyway.”

* * *

“
Whiteside! Step in here.”

Nova nearly jumped off her metal bench when
the base commander stepped into the hall to bark at her. He ignored
her salute and returned to his cramped work room. When she followed
she saw that she was alone in here with him. No other officer was
there to take her deposition, no Doctor Soren, no peer witness to
the proceedings. Just Major Trakkas, looking like he wished she’d
never come onto his base.

“
Sir,” she said, standing stiffly
beside the data console where he had taken a seat. The rest of the
room was lost in murk and clutter.

The Centauri officer scrolled through a few
screens of information before turning to look at her. She ground
her teeth when his violet eyes travelled slowly all the way down to
her boots before moving up again. “I read the reports, Whiteside,”
he said.

“
They were filed three weeks ago, sir,”
she pointed out. Three weeks of lewd remarks, speculating glances
in her direction, whispered conversations, hostile looks and
outright ostracism by some of her fellow soldiers. The only time
she had felt at ease at all was among her wing, in the air, doing
her job. The major finally summoned her only after, reluctantly,
she had asked Captain Dakad to move the case forward. At least
Beryl was on a mission to one of the Rim towns and she had not seen
him since the night of the attack.

“
I know what day it is, Lieutenant,” he
snapped. “This is a war zone. I have more burning issues than
figuring out why you can’t keep your door closed at
night.”

She gasped. “Sir?”

He waved his hand in a dismissing gesture.
“What do you want, Whiteside?”

“
What do you mean? Captain Beryl
assaulted me. Raped me.”

“
He says you asked him into your room.
That you like it rough.”

Nova felt her anger rise and reminded herself
to stay calm. The last thing that would help her now was to give in
to her temper. “You know that isn’t what happened,” she said
evenly. “No matter what he told the rest of the base.”

He observed her for an uncomfortably long
time. “You think it’s your job to stir things up here, Lieutenant?
Wave protocol and policy under my nose when I have hundreds of
Shri-Lan crawling like lice through civilian zones? We can’t tell
the damn difference between rebel and local because Targon won’t
let us expel off-worlders. My ground troops are being chewed up by
weapons even you haven’t seen, Specialist,” he added with a wave at
her records, “and you want me to spend my time making sure everyone
is playing nice here at the base?”

It’s your damn job, she thought to herself
and bit her tongue.

He let her wait while he continued to study
her files. “Your psych assess looks all right,” he said.

What did that mean? Because the base shrinks
declared her fit this couldn’t have been all that traumatic? She
hadn’t told them about the nightmares or about the gun she kept
beside her bed now. They seemed happy with their tests and she got
her plane back. After all, soldiers like Nova were trained for
this, weren’t they? Weeks of relentless, soul-numbing,
body-breaking conditioning. Survival when captured, resistance
under any condition, let nothing touch you, never give up. And,
ladies, be prepared to be targeted for special treatment. Nothing
said about being targeted by your own people.

Trakkas winced when something on the screen
caught his attention. “Whiteside. I thought that sounded familiar
when I first saw your name on the roster. Tegan Whiteside is your
old man?
Colonel
Tegan Whiteside running the Pelion
base?”

“
Yessir.”

He tapped his fingers thoughtfully on the
console, his lips pursed. Finally, his eyes travelled back to her.
“A colonel’s daughter is what we have here. Now doesn’t that make
my day complete. No doubt a bit of noise from you is going to bring
a whole lot of hurt down on our heads.”

“
Major, I—”

He held up a hand. “But you’re not that sort,
Whiteside. You’re tough and you think you need to prove something.
You’d rather put up with Beryl’s entire squad than run crying to
Daddy, isn’t that so?” He leaned to the screen. “You did some
ground combat against the Shri-Lan rebels on Phi, got your wings on
Magra and then flew over Tannaday. Bucking for Hunter Class, I’m
guessing. Weapons Specialist, just to show you have a big brain.
There’s no way your father would have dumped you onto this rock if
he had any hand in your duty transfers. Because you won’t let him,
isn’t that right? No special favors for Whiteside Junior. And you
won’t whine to him to get your ass out of here.”

She said nothing. He was right.

He folded his hands behind his
closely-cropped head and sat back in his chair, swiveling slowly
side to side as he contemplated. “But unless he’s a heartless
bastard he probably has a pretty good idea what’s going onto your
record. Including your little misunderstanding with Captain
Beryl.”

She frowned. Up until this moment she hadn’t
even thought about her complaint against a superior officer showing
up on her records. And although her father was hardly the warmest
of Humans, he did not fall into the ‘heartless bastard’ category.
He never interfered with her career choices but seeing this
incident in her files would not go uninvestigated. ‘Ironballs’
Whiteside’s reputation as a tough, uncompromising commander was
widespread and no one would ever accuse him of ignoring policy. Her
transfer into what he’d consider a safer tour of duty was
guaranteed.

And she would agree. His wife, her mother,
had been killed in a rebel attack on Magra only a few years ago and
all that remained of his family in Trans-Targon was Nova. It was
that reason, not any hope of favoritism, that kept her silent about
some of her more hazardous assignments.

“
Tell you what,” Trakkas said. He
looked like someone about to bestow a great favor upon lesser
beings. “We’ll downgrade this to a simple assault, I’ll keep Beryl
out of your way until your tour here is done, give him a slap to
remind him of his manners, and we’ll let this settle down
naturally.”

She glared at him. How did things get so
turned around all of a sudden? “What sort of slap?”

He shrugged. “Twenty days in lockup.”

“
This is disgraceful! He damn near
pulled my arm off!”

Trakkas came to his feet and towered over
her, close enough to force her to take a step backward. “I am about
done with you, Lieutenant. I’ll give him thirty days. You know what
that means? Thirty days without the toughest commander I have for
these men. I’m going to have to pull Captain Tovah off the front
line to take his place. Leaving me short in the field. So you,
Lieutenant, are going to hump your ass out to Shon Gat and fill in
the ranks.”

She winced. The remote town he had named was
the supply base for the nearby elevator construction. It was
rapidly expanding in anticipation of the traffic and prosperity the
tether would bring once the orbital skyranch was complete. It was
also infiltrated by rebel factions deeply embedded among the local
population and more arrived with each transport and caravan. Air
Command presence had turned the entire place into a state of siege.
Random attacks on military patrols, haphazard attempts at sabotage
and days-long skirmishes were the order of the day. “I am a fighter
pilot,” she reminded him.

He laughed without any real semblance to
humor. “You’re also an expert marksman and I can definitely use
more snipers. The Kites are done out here. There are no more rebel
bases that you can lob your little missiles at from a safe
distance. And I have no intention of letting the pilots laze around
until Targon decides what to do with you.” His violet eyes gleamed
with a mix of menace and mirth as he leaned over his workspace to
enter his instructions. “You’ll get a little education in how
things really work on the ground, Lieutenant. Won’t that be
nice?”

“
I’ve done ground combat,” she said but
there was little protest left in her voice. She had lost this
battle.

“
Good. You’ll be useful. I think we
both know it’s probably best if you’re not hanging around the base.
Things won’t get any friendlier for you once I lock Beryl up.
Report to Captain Rudjo at the Shon Gat garrison tomorrow. Maybe
he’ll let you fly evac.”

From up here, it was easy to see how this
town might have been pretty once. Before the planet and her two
moons had ever seen someone without white hair or red skin or
carrying a laser weapon. Before interstellar travelers had
discovered that rare fracture in space that let them form a
jumpsite uncomfortably close to the planet. Before the rebels
followed through the breach, smelling easy pickings and a shortcut
from here to the hotly contested Magra-Aikhor sector.

Almost two hundred years, local time, after
off-worlders had been accepted by the Bellac Tau natives, the
population had grown into an uneasy mix of locals, Centauri,
Feydans, and even some Humans. Cluttered composites of traditional
brick architecture and imported construction made up the towns that
sprawled along coasts and the fertile foothills, including this
one, Shon Gat.

Nova sat on the running board of her hover,
the screen of her scanner held loosely in her hands while she
surveyed the town below. The original stone architecture still
delineated the perimeter, as did parts of an ancient wall. Orderly
pathways separated it into sectors organized according to who lived
there or what took place there. Neat residences, livestock areas,
market places, meeting circles, open spaces were all still visible.
Over time, the newcomers had blurred the boundaries. Modern trading
places, machine shops, hover pads, military installations and not a
few ragged slums had turned Shon Gat into the sort of sprawling,
unmanaged frontier town she had seen in other places.

Of course, from up here, without moving in
for a closer look, one did not see the areas destroyed by
explosives or scorched by laser fire.

Since opening Bellac to off-world traffic so
long ago, Air Command had found more important properties to
protect elsewhere. The Union’s advances toward bringing the remote
planet into the Commonwealth had stalled again and again even as
the rebel factions grew and multiplied. Now, both the Arawaj and
Shri-Lan groups held firmly established territories here, well
supplied by anti-Union sympathizers in other part of the vast
Trans-Targon sector.

Desperate to avoid becoming the official
headquarters of Shri-Lan activities, the governors of Bellac Tau
had appealed to the Union, offering control of the jumpsite in
exchange. No one seemed to find it especially ironic that, if not
for the Union itself, the planet would still be minding its herds
and fisheries without even an inkling of worlds beyond its
moons.