Sky Hunter (6 page)

“
Is everyone asleep up there?” Nova
hailed the detachment again.

Reko looked up from his display. “No
reply?”

“
Nothing. From any of them.” She tried
an unencrypted com band. “Unit Five, come in. We’re en route with
your supplies. Got the ointment for your piles, Beamer, just so
you’re grateful.”

Still no reply.

“
I’m not liking this at all,” she said.
“Let’s get a visual before we land.”

They continued in silence. Nova scanned for
airborne threats in the distance, Reko’s attention was on the
ground below them. They overflew gullies, rockfalls and several
creeks meandering through the hills and onto the flats where the
water sunk through fissures near Shon Gat to fill a vast
subterranean reservoir.

“
There,” Reko said to his screens.
“Those don’t look like herdsmen. Groups of three or four, moving
near the tree line.”

“
Are you sure?”

“
Yeah. Weapons. And there’s a troop
moving two by two. Definitely not villagers.” He zoomed the real
vid for a closer look. “Rhuwac!” He cursed and reached for his
rifle.

“
Emphasis on the last syllable,
remember?” She kept the plane low to keep them camouflaged against
the backdrop of the hills. “We’ll come back for them. I want to see
what’s going on up there before we start shooting
Rhuwwies.”

“
I never get to have any fun,” he
grumbled but took his hands off the door he was about to slide
open.

Nova signaled the base. “Unit Four here,
Sarge. Rebel movement heading north toward Shon Gat. Counting
Rhuwacs. No response from Unit Five. Taking a closer look.”

“
Negative,” came the static reply after
a moment. “Synchronized rebel attacks throughout Shon Gat.
Casualties on both sides already. Everything south of the canal is
blocked off. Return to base immediately. Join Reko’s squad at the
north gate when you get here.”

“
Heard, base.”

“
Look at this,” Reko showed her his
hand-held scanner. “Picking up two drum shields down there. What do
they have that’s so important?”

“
Crap!” Nova swung the hover around
hard enough to make Reko grab for the console to steady himself.
“Coilers.”

“
Out here?”

She did not reply, busy with swooping in an
erratic pattern away from the bluffs. But this wasn’t a Kite and
they were close enough to touch, it seemed. Reko had no further
objections when they saw the tracer with its telltale spiral
pattern angle toward them. It whipped by close enough to rock the
plane in its wake. She climbed higher and pushed the hover to its
limits to escape the next volley from the ground. “We’re one great
big target up here.”

Reko said nothing, unaccustomed to trusting
his life to a vehicle never meant for engagement. No shielding,
limited armaments, an explosive fuel tank at his back – it suddenly
seemed safer on the ground, taking one’s chances with the
Rhuwacs.

She had finally come about and headed back to
Shon Gat, taking the most direct path through the valley. The
plane’s system reported incoming laser fire from the rebel groups
that Reko had spotted on the way up.

“
Feel free to pop yourself some
Rhuwacs, Reko,” she yelled.

“
Are you crazy! I’m not opening that
door with you flying like this. Just get us out of
here!”

She punched his arm. “Use the onboard guns.
It’ll at least distract them.”

Reko returned the fire as well as he could
through her twitching evasive maneuvers while she hailed their
commander. “Base, this is Unit Four. We took fire below Sarasun.
Sighted two anti-aircraft positions. Clear now and approaching from
the south.”

“
Heard,” came the static reply after a
moment. “That’s a no-fly over Shon Gat for now. Land at the
lift.”

Nova and Reko listened to a burst of static
and cross-traffic that included the sound of some very large
explosions. “
Cazun
,” he whispered. “What’s going on down
there? Did they get tired of trying to get at the
transformers?”

“
Must have been filtering people in for
weeks now,” she said. They now saw the town ahead of them, forming
a broad triangle as it spread out from the base of the hills into
the plains. Dust or smoke billowed into the air from more than one
location. “You’d think those damn caravans—”

“
Incoming!”

A shudder went through the hover and then
alarms started to complain from the console in front of them.
Whatever had hit them sent it into a wobble which she corrected
quickly but the indicators showed a steady and troublesome power
loss. “Not going to make it,” she yelled.

“
What the hell does that
mean!”

“
We have to land, what do you think it
means? Hang on to something.”

He groped for the seat restraints while she
fought with the hover’s definite preference for landing at a
problematic velocity. She worked quickly to override some of the
automated scripts which, although faithful to safety protocols,
were useless now. The hover started to shimmy dangerously as she
dropped lower. It tilted, corrected, and then landed with a
thump.

They sat still for a moment, stunned by the
realization that they were still alive.

“
Damn, you’re adequate, Whiteside,”
Reko said finally with a forceful exhalation of air.

Something whistled overhead and then an
explosion sent a shower of rocks and dust over the hover.

“
Out,” Reko said. “They’ll want the
hover and they can have it. But not with us in it.”

They grabbed their guns and gear to abandon
the vehicle. There should have been Air Command patrols all along
this end of town but they saw no one. In the distance the
decommissioned shuttle they had been using for their patrols stood
open and deserted, its com array a twisted wreck. Someone lay
sprawled halfway down its entrance ramp.

“
Which way,” she said. With a half
dozen years of combat behind him, Reko’s instincts on the ground
were something to study and emulate and she was bothered not one
bit about outranking the sergeant on this mission.

“
Into town,” he replied after studying
the terrain for a moment. “We won’t be as easily found as out here.
Might have to ditch the uniforms.”

A rattle of gunfire tore up the ground not
far to their right, leaving them little choice but to go with
Reko’s suggestion. They ran toward the first of the low buildings,
dodging fences and farm animals along the way. Once past the first
of the structures, they entered a maze of alleys that had never had
to accommodate anything wider than a push cart. The single-storied
houses huddled close to each other, made of some mortarless
arrangement of interlocking triangular bricks common to this part
of Bellac Tau.

An explosion shook the ground under their
feet.

“
Let’s get indoors and figure out where
we are.” Reko knocked loudly on the wooden door of one of the
buildings. No one answered.

Nova checked the scanner on her data sleeve.
“Three in there. Bellacs. Hiding in a back room.” She looked around
the empty alley, deserted by locals who cowered in their darkened
homes, hoping to be bypassed by both rebels and soldiers alike.
Distantly, explosions thundered at uneven intervals and the sharper
rapport of projectile weapons added to the sounds of battle.
“Everything past that is jammed. We won’t get through to the base
in here.”

He tried another door, with the same result.
“While we were expecting an aerial attack from the desert, they’re
sneaking in the back door through the hills. And what’s with those
guns? Damn coilers? Who’s selling those to Shri-Lan these
days?”

“
And who’s adapting them. They’re not
even designed to work in this gravity. Seen them take down a Kite a
while back. Just drilled through the skin.” She raised her arm to
attempt a com link to the base when they heard voices. Someone
slammed a door nearby. They ducked when something whistled
overhead. A dud, apparently – no explosion followed. The quick slap
of sandaled feet came from the alley, followed by the sound of
guns. Someone screamed.

Rifles in hand, Nova and Reko moved silently
into the next alley where they found a thickly-robed Bellac male
sprawled on the ground, moving his limbs in a feeble attempt to
crawl toward a nearby doorway. She knelt beside him while Reko
stood guard.

She hissed when the man on the ground raised
a pistol to her throat. Instinctively, she moved to disarm him when
a blinking blue light above his finger caught her attention.

“
Flash!” she gasped and recoiled. Reko,
too, stepped back when the man, little more than a youth, scrambled
to his feet.

He gripped the pistol in both hands, arms
stretched out toward them. Three other boys appeared by his side,
also wielding guns. They were dressed in the loose robes of the
desert nomads but the yellow dye in their hair was more common in
the towns. “We are Shri-Lan!” he shouted in his native Bellac
dialect. “You are hostages. Guns. Down!”

Nova spread her hands out from her body and
dropped her rifle. “Look,” she said as calmly as she could manage,
aware that her command of Bellac mainvoice was barely passable.
“That gun might not be what you think it is.”

“
Shut up!” he waved his pistol at Reko.
“Down the gun. Down the gun.”

The sergeant complied. Nova tapped the side
of her helmet to drop the sun shield over her eyes. “Shri-Lan,” she
tried again, using the term to flatter him although she found it
unlikely that the rebels would use these urchins for anything more
than messengers or servants. “See that blue light on the side of
your gun? It means that the setting on that pistol is set to wide
flash. It uses light waves—”

“
I know what it does!” he yelled. His
hands shook as he tried to look at the indicator. His companions,
carrying more conventional rifles, also glanced nervously in his
direction.

“
I just want to make sure,” she said.
“Because when that goes off, we all die. You need a special sort of
eye shield to use it.”

“
Liar. Get up against that wall! Back
off!”

Nova nodded to Reko and they stepped back
further, away from their dropped weapons. “Just switch it off, to
another setting,” Nova tried again. “There is a slider under the
tab by your thumb—”

A shot rang out, impossibly loud in this
narrow alley and then Reko was on his knees, clutching his side.
The black-haired youth who had fired pointed his gun at Nova. “You
think we are scared of Air Command?”

“
Why did you do that, Moks?” another
boy exclaimed. Reko dropped to the dusty floor, groaning in pain as
he covered the wound with his hands.

Nova raised her hands, worried by the thugs’
panicked expression, especially on the face of the one with the
flash module. “Just tell us what you want,” she said. “No need to
hurt anyone.”

“
We are Shri-Lan,” the shooter said
with little conviction, his eyes on Reko and the growing puddle of
blood in the dust.

“
Shut up!” his comrade snapped. He
stepped closer to Nova. “Your scanners, your side arms, the com
bands. Take it all off. Now.” He pointed at her thigh. “And that
knife. Quick.”

She removed her hardware and handed the tools
to the one named Moks. He chortled gleefully and disappeared
between two buildings with his treasures. The other stripped Reko
of his equipment and followed, leaving her alone with just two of
the boys.

“
You have our things,” Nova said. “Now
let me take care of my partner.”

“
You are coming with us to Arter, Union
scum,” he shouted.

Nova nodded in resignation and turned to step
around Reko, making a small stumbling move as if to avoid stepping
on him. In that instant she snapped her hand toward the flash gun
wielder to grasp his wrist and push him back up against a brick
building. She shoved her body against his, pinning the lethal
weapon between them. Dangerous only when visible, the gun’s deadly
radiation would be smothered by his robe. She used her free forearm
to press his face against the wall.

“
Shoot her!” the youth grunted at his
remaining compatriot. That one stared open-mouthed at their
strangely intimate contact, glanced at Reko writhing on the ground,
turned and fled.

Nova felt, more than heard, one of the boy’s
fingers crack as she bent it away from the gun. Yelping in pain, he
gave up his grip and she pulled away with it. She silenced him with
a few quick punches and then disabled the gun. The only sound in
the alley now was the distant rumble of guns and her hoarse gasps
for air.

“
Reko!” She knelt beside the sergeant.
“Talk to me!”

He groaned. “No big damage, I think. I hope.
Cazun
, this hurts! Where the hell did those kids get a flash
mod! That’s just crazy.”

She peered at his injury and managed to let
none of her apprehension show on her face. “Come on, we have to
keep moving. Let’s find a place to lay low for a while. This riot
can’t last forever.”

She spun when she felt the unmistakable
contact of a gun jabbing into her ribs. Someone’s boot shoved her
backwards and she tumbled over Reko into the dirt. He cried out in
pain. When she tried to scramble to her feet the tracers of two
guns honed in on her chest and face.

Six armed men and women, four of them
Centauri and two Bellac, surrounded them now. One of them held
Nova’s own rifle and the boy that had disarmed her just a few
minutes ago hovered behind them. He spotted his friend sprawled in
the dust across the alley. “She’s killed Joah!”