Sky Hunter (7 page)

“
He’s not dead,” Nova said without
taking her eyes off the newcomers. These were not locals, judging
by the mix of weapons and clothing originating on a half dozen
different planets. The two Bellacs had dyed their hair to a dull
ash, no doubt to blend into the dun desert landscape.

One of the Centauri gestured with his gun.
“We’ll take both of them. Might be worth something to Air
Command.”

“
I’d say she is, anyway,” another said
and let her tracer drift toward Nova’s insignia.
“Pilot.”

“
Out here? Probably won those wings in
a game.” The Centauri stepped over Reko and relieved Nova not only
of the flash gun but also her insignia and tags. He checked the
pistol’s setting as carefully as he made sure to keep the others’
sights trained on her. Then he shoved her forward. “That way. Keep
your hands where we can see them.”

Nova watched them lift Reko from the ground,
unmindful of his injuries and deaf to his moans of pain. Guns
remained trained on her when she was marched from the alley. The
rebels moved quickly without bothering to duck for cover even as
missiles shrieked overhead. As far as Nova was able to tell, the
shells were lobbed from inside Shon-Gat toward the garrison to the
north. But she was hustled along so quickly and through so many
twists and bends between the undistinguishable buildings that she
was soon completely lost. Their captors eventually turned into an
arched doorway leading into a flat-roofed building extending for an
entire block down the street.

Nova stopped abruptly when she saw the mayhem
ahead of them. The building seemed to consist mostly of one large
hall, little more than a bunker or perhaps a warehouse, unadorned
and with few furnishings. Narrow windows allowed a few dusty beams
of daylight in here and a string of lights brightened the far
corners. Everywhere she looked, crude pallets were lined up on the
floor and on those lay dozens of people, all of them in obvious
distress. The smell of disinfectant, gore and vomit lay heavily in
the air. From everywhere in this hall the sound of people in pain
and fear mingled into a nightmarish drone.

She was thrust aside when several people, all
of them Bellac, rushed in with a stretcher made of some sort of
carpet slung between long poles. The woman carried on it muttered
something in a thick dialect that was beyond Nova’s training but
her pain and fear was clearly written on her face. Her leg was
covered in blood-soaked bandages.

“
You there. Human.” The Centauri leader
of her captors waved to a man dressed in a stained medical smock
and bent over one of the pallets. “You’re responsible for her
now.”

“
What the hell does that mean?” Nova
said angrily. The medic was unarmed and, although solidly built,
not especially threatening.

“
Means that if you don’t do what you’re
told, he’ll have less work to do around here.” The rebel grasped
her arm and dragged her to where another casualty lay unconscious
on a rug. He bent and put his gun to the man’s head. “Let me show
you.”

“
Stop that!” Nova cried,
aghast.

“
Please!” The medic he had pointed out
rushed over to them. “This isn’t necessary.” He inserted himself
between the rebel and his victim. “She gets it. No need for a
demonstration.”

The rebel rose and jabbed the muzzle of his
pistol against her neck. “Make sure she does. Her soldier pal is
expendable, too. Clear now?”

She jerked her head away from his gun.
“Clear.”

He smirked and turned to the Human who was
standing silently nearly, watching. “She’s probably had some
training so put her to work till we need her.” The rebel left
abruptly and without further instructions.

Nova glared after him, rubbing her neck.

“
Just do as he said.” The man who had
not been introduced to her shrugged. “We can use the help, anyway.
This all happened so fast, whatever it is that’s happening out
there.” He lifted his hands to encompass the injured people in the
hall.

Nova followed his gesture, but not to study
the casualties. Instead, she counted the number of armed rebels at
the exits and the distance to the open windows. “Where is the other
officer they brought in?”

“
He’s being looked after.” He caught
the arm of a young woman passing by with an armload of rags. “Go
with Coria. Get rid of that uniform and wear whatever she gives
you. Let’s not remind everyone of who you are.”

The woman named Coria took a moment to
scrutinize Nova, her disapproval evident. Finally, she led the way
along a dark hallway into another room where she dug through a
tangle of clothing on the floor. Nova went immediately to the only
window and peered outside.

“
Don’t try it,” the Bellac said, like
her colleague fluent in the mainvoice used universally by the
Commonwealth. “They’ve got Rhuwacs out there.”

“
Are you Shri-Lan?” Nova
said.

“
I’m a weaver.”

“
But you’re working for them. Helping
them.”

The woman handed her a bundle that turned out
to be a loosely fitting pair of trousers gathered at the ankles.
“You didn’t notice the guns, Officer? I’d rather be at my looms.
Your Union has other plans for us.”

“
Our Union? We did not attack
you.”

“
No. You attack each other. And we just
happen to be in the way. Without you, there’d be no rebels here.
Without you, there’d be no rebels anywhere. Most of the people
dying out there on the floor are not rebels, either. They are my
neighbors. My friends. We grab up who we can and bring them here.
And if there are rebels among them, so be it. Air Command is quick
to collect their own. You won’t find many of your people
here.”

Nova frowned. “Surely, we don’t leave the
locals lying in the street.”

Coria stood with her hands on her hips and
peered at Nova through narrowed eyes. Like all Bellacs, her skin
was a deep, burnished red, making her white dye-free hair all the
more startling in contrast. The long braids gathered up high on the
back of her head stood stiffly to point in all directions. “Just
the rebels? How do you tell the difference?”

Nova shrugged. There was no answer to the
woman’s question. It was all too easy for rebels of any species to
work their way into Union populations. She unfastened her fatigues
and exchanged them for the pants and a flowing overvest that
reached to her knees. “What happened? What started this today?”

“
Stupidity, what else? Rebels been
creeping into town for weeks. Recruiting new members, mainly.
Sifting into the population. Getting supplies and disappearing into
the hills again. Then there was talk about one of the big Shri-Lan
bosses organizing things right here in Shon Gat.”

“
They wouldn’t dare so close to the
base,” Nova said, incredulous.

“
Of course not. But that rumor, if you
want to call it that, gave your people excuse to march in here and
start going door to do looking for rebels.” The woman took Nova’s
uniform and stuffed it into a bag before handing it back to her.
“So the Shri-Lan fought back and things got ugly fast. And the
people of this town suffer for it. Again.”

The Bellac gestured for Nova to return with
her to the main hall. She stopped briefly at the end of the dim
corridor. “Don’t forget for a moment that you are their prisoner
here. A hostage. If they didn’t want you for something you’d be
dead by now. I advise you not to play Union Solider around here. If
you escape they will kill some of us, any of us, to set an example.
I don’t suggest you try.”

Nova nodded absently as she scanned the
crowded space, searching for Reko among the injured. There had to
be a way to contact her unit. And surely some of these people would
know a relatively safe way to get through the front lines. Some of
the injuries she saw required far more extensive attention than
what seemed available in this crude clinic.

“
They would have taken your friend
around that bend,” Coria pointed.

Nova picked her way through the pallets on
the floor to a less crowded section near the back. It was out of
sight from the main entrance and darker. She finally spotted Reko,
barely conscious on a thin mattress that was too short for his
gangly Centauri frame. Someone had stripped him of his uniform
jacket and covered him with a dusty blanket.

“
Tomos,” she whispered, crouching
beside him. “You in there?”

He blinked up at her and tried a lopsided
grin. “Yeah. What is this place? Evac?”

“
No. Med station. Patrolled by rebels
to make sure their people get treated first. Looks like mostly
Bellacs working here.” She tried not to wince when she lifted the
thick pad of dressing from his side. “You’re missing a chunk of
meat there,” she said. “I’ll try to find a scanner to get a better
look.”

“
You do that, Lieut—” he frowned,
reminding himself they were among rebels. “Nova.”

She looked up when someone knelt beside her.
It was the Human who was apparently responsible for her upon pain
of death. He replaced the bandages on Reko. “We have one scanner
here, and it’s not a good one. But the doctor said this is just a
bad bleeder. We need to get that stitched up.”

“
Stitched?” Nova said. “That’ll need a
graft. You have no equipment here at all?”

“
Not a lot. Your friend here didn’t
rate highly in triage.” Nova realized that he was younger than he
first appeared. Unlike herself, whose skin was exposed to the sun
only on the occasional ground mission, he was deeply tanned and his
light hair seemed bleached by weather. His body was dense and
powerful, like that of someone used to working outdoors. He smiled
wistfully. “I suppose that’s a good sign.”

“
They gave me a shot of the good
stuff,” Reko said. “Not feeling much pain now.” He nudged her arm.
“You have to get out of here, Nova. Get back to the base and get
some help.”

“
I’m not leaving you, Sergeant. Bet on
that.”

The medic gave a snort of derision. “There is
no way in or out of here without sacrificing more civilians,
anyway. You know that and they know that. You’ll have to be our
guests for the next little while.”

“
This has got to blow over soon,” Nova
said.

“
Not until your people get some backup,
I’m guessing.” He shrugged. “Seems that your elevator is more
important that a few townsfolk.”

“
They attacked the tether
base?”

He seemed amused. “I’m probably much less
interested in warfare strategies than you are. We are a little too
busy for that sort of thing around here.” The tilt of his head
pointed out the disorder around them. “And could use a hand until
someone gets this under control.”

“
All right.” She gave Reko’s hand an
assuring squeeze and rose. “You get some sleep, if you can. We’ll
get out of here soon enough. Don’t worry.”

Reko squinted up at the medic. “They teach
them to say that crap in officer school, you know.”

“
I thought it sounded a little
rehearsed.”

She followed the man down an aisle between
the rows of cots and into a makeshift dispensary. The shelves were
nearly empty. “He called you Nova?” he said, handing her a plastic
smock and a supply of gloves. “That’s quite a name to live up
to.”

She watched him count out single-dose ampules
of some sort of medication. “I had a bit of a temper as a child.
What’s your name?”

“
Nathon Lis Djari, formerly of the
Tangmak Rift but currently stuck here in Shon Gat, as you can see.
You can call me Djari.” He smiled, something that seemed to come
easily to him, even here. “And I will call you Sunshine. Far less
explosive a name, I think.”

“
You’re a poet,” Nova mumbled as she
pulled the smock over her head. “And a doctor?”

“
I can only wish, on both counts. I’m a
farmer. Apparently I took a wrong turn when the shooting started. I
hope that Centauri was right when he said you might have some
training?”

“
Just basic medical. I don’t know much
about Bellacs at all. And you have a lot of them here.”

“
Locals. I guess we’ll learn together.
Just follow the doctors around. They’ll tell you what they
need.”

They returned to the main ward. She scanned
the hall to take a closer look at the few armed rebels loitering
near the exit. All of them were Bellac natives, indistinguishable
from the neutral population except for their guns. By their stance
and demeanor, none of them were trained for this. And none of them
seemed inclined to help with the wounded.

An excited babble of voices reached them,
speared by a high-pitched wail that sounded the same at the edge of
every battlefield. The rebel guards stood aside to allow another
stretcher to enter, carried by several harried civilians. A
distraught older woman seemed to want to help and impede their
progress all at once.

“
Come,” Djari said and rushed toward
them. He waved at the men to carry the stretcher to an open spot on
the floor where a stained mattress had only recently been vacated.
Nova helped to transfer the injured youth, wincing over the lack of
clean supplies for these people.

The boy, his hair a wild pattern of blue and
violet streaks, howled in pain and weakly fought to keep them from
checking his wounds. “Hold him down,” Nova snapped to one of the
men. She tore the blood-soaked shirt to reveal a bullet wound. The
woman behind her cried out at the sight. Nova grabbed a handful of
bandages from someone and pressed them into the wound. She looked
over to Djari kneeling beside her and saw that he understood the
hopelessness of this injury. “That’s not an Air Command weapon,”
she said quietly. They raised the boy’s shoulder and she felt
beneath him. “Shot in the back.”