by Chris Reher
“Do the Rhuwacs have any weak spots?” Djari asked.
“Not really. They don’t even feel pain. They don’t see very well, but they can smell things going on in the next valley. Not much we can do about that.”
Once through the exit, Nova paused and breathed deeply of the sweet, hot air outside the building. The sky was overcast but their eyes were already accustomed to the dark. She stopped Djari from slipping away and put a finger to her lips. Gradually, the night sounds around them became identifiable. A shuttle in the distance, possibly at the garrison. Some herd animals left behind by the fleeing population of Shon Gat. Muted voices far to the left. And, finally, the congested snuffling of Rhuwacs.
She flattened her hand high over her head before realizing that Djari would not know that to mean Rhuwac. But he nodded and held two fingers up for her to see. She agreed with his guess that there were two of them. She pointed away from the sounds of Rhuwacs. Circling around them meant a delay but a more safe way to find the building their young scout had discovered.
They moved silently. Djari’s hunting experience served him well and she grew more confident in crossing the shadowed spaces in this warren of alleys and passageways. She counted the twists and turns until they reached the ancient wall that used to encircle the town before it had sprawled beyond its fortification. As reported, a metal shelter huddled among the whitewashed buildings, looking as out of place as any of the off-world constructions here. Light spilled from the open door and a lone Bellac sat on the stoop, busy with a pan of food.
Nova’s eyes followed a rusted tower upward to see a net of wires spread out from it, anchored to the nearby wall. A primitive array used by the Shri-Lan in remote areas, it provided excellent reception but was less effective for transmission. A lamp swung from the same mast, casting a bleak pool of light over the building.
She turned to Djari with a few gestures, cautioning him to remain here and hidden. He moved as if to object but she shook her head firmly. He scowled, obviously not convinced, but then nodded. She watched him fit one of the explosive charges into the sling and then turned her attention to the Bellac rebel.
Grateful for the long, drab vest that helped her blend into their surroundings, Nova sidled closer to the metal shed. There, she tested a plastic crate before stepping on it to peer into the dimly-lit interior. She made out some field equipment along the far wall where a woman slouched in her chair, feet on the cluttered bench. She was idly bending a piece of metal wire into shapes while she monitored incoming messages that didn’t appear to hold her interest. A rifle was placed just within reach on a cot beside her. The rest of the interior was crammed with crates and barrels, some of it arranged to form crude table and seats. Nova lowered herself back down and approached the front of the building.
The other rebel was still working on his dinner. Nova realized how hungry she was when the greasy chunk of bone and meat on his plate actually seemed appealing to her. She wrapped a long, thin string, made from a braid of sutures and some tape, around her palms to form a garrote. With another quick glance around the alley, she stepped forward and used the choke to pull the rebel into the dust where his flailing legs made little noise. She felt the garrote cut deep into his throat, cutting off his shouts of fear and pain and, soon thereafter, his life.
Nova waited another minute, breathing harshly, alert to any sounds from the shed. She did not look at the rebel’s face. As a pilot, she rarely faced her victims and she doubted that she could ever get conditioned to defeating them in close combat. It was best not to look, not to think about who these people were. Quickly, she searched him for weapons and came up with a sidearm laser, a decent knife and, oddly, a dart gun.
She raised her hand to prevent Djari from approaching. She was unable to see him in the shadows but no doubt he had been watching intently. She raised one finger and pointed toward the shack. The stoop creaked when she stepped on it.
“Hey, Jast,” the woman inside called out. “Check this out. I should be an artist.”
Nova stepped into the room and fired her new pistol at the back of the rebel’s head. The stench of burned hair filled the room and she quickly went outside again to wave to Djari. She waited while he hurried to the hut. “Hide that body behind the shed,” she said to him, indicating the first rebel she had dropped. “Then sit here. Look like a rebel.”
“What is all this?” he said, looking over the boxes behind her.
“Hopefully something useful. Oh, look!” She picked up a canvas bag that had caught her eye. “Med supplies. See if there’s anything in there for Reko. I could use him on his feet.”
Nova walked over to the console and pushed the rebel’s chair out of the way before looking over the displays to tap into the com system. Random conversation dribbled from the speakers in sporadic bursts, none of it the sound of battle. Some expletive-laden exchanges among patrols, a more cerebral conversation regarding the hill villages, a lot of static.
She smiled when she spotted a portable perimeter scanner dangling in its case from a hook. “You know,” she said to the lifeless rebel as she pulled the woman’s data sleeve from her arm and a pistol from her belt. “If you’d watched your scanners instead of your art project you would have seen us coming.” Grunting, Nova shifted the body to the floor and pushed it under the cot. It meant a small delay if someone came by here, but desertion was common among rebels and would be assumed before they’d start looking for bodies.
Nova connected her neural interface to the com system and entered a coded signal, barely a blip among the traffic. She waited. After a few seconds of peering out of the shack’s grime-smeared windows, she sent another.
Finally, an answering signal came back to her from the base. She closed her eyes, concentrating on chatting in a bored, Feydan-accented voice about the miserable conditions out here and what she thought of Air Command. She carefully embedded, through code words and timed signals, the information about a possible prison break on the ridge and the name she had gleaned from the Caspian rebel. Whoever this Pe Khoja was, he was surely important enough to stage an assault against a guarded Air Command installation.
A hissing noise from the door caught her attention.
“Thought I heard something,” Djari whispered when she came to stand behind him.
“Rhuwac, guessing by the size,” she said after adjusting the scanner she had found. “Just one. Over that way. Let’s get back to the clinic.”
“Huh? Just shoot it.”
“Ever try to lift a Rhuwac? We’ll never get him hidden away. Besides, they smell, alive or dead. Those boxes are locked. Let’s get out of here.”
“Could be supplies in there.”
She aimed her gun at a lock without using the tracer. It hit the spot, anyway, and the lock melted. “What’s all this?” she said when the container revealed stacks of tightly packed tubes, coiled like some sort of green sausage. She pried another box open and found the same.
“Mince,” he said.
“What?” She turned her head to survey the stack of similar crates along the wall. “All this is dope?”
“Looks like it.”
She sighed. At least this made some sort of sense. The demand for mince, a paste made from one of Bellac’s succulent plants, was boundless in other parts of Trans-Targon. The local, sturdy desert population enjoyed a chew of it as much as she might enjoy a glass of wine. Certain other species, notably Centauri and Feydans, achieved far more significant results with the drug, none of them healthy. Mince was extremely addictive. It was frowned upon in some places, illegal in others, and a very significant source of income for the Shri-Lan rebels.
“So that is what this is about? The reason why there are so many rebels in Shon-Gat?”
“Been going on for years. Long before the Union even started to build the elevator. The stuff gets smuggled across the hills through Shon Gat and by caravan to the coast. Once it’s on ships to Panyan they’re in the clear. It’s not illegal there. There are cach
es like this all over town. Some of the locals process it into other forms, too. Of course a lot of this gets smuggled off-planet as well. Your new garrison is complicating things.”
“I had no idea. I suppose that’s why everyone got so upset when Air Command started knocking on doors.”
“Keeping you in the dark like a proper grunt, are they?”
She shrugged. “Just one more reason to rid this place of Shri-Lan. I don’t care.” She gave him a sheepish look. “Well, I do. Are they using the elevator for this?”
“Doubtful. Not with the kind of security you have. I mean, the elevator is standing right in the middle of your base. The governors are touchy about Air Command harassing the nomads, so the caravans are pretty safe.” He lifted a length of mince from its box. “We’ll take some of this. If we run out of pain meds for the Centauri at least we have this to get them through.”
Both of them ducked for cover when the sharp rapport of a ballistic weapon cut through the night silence. Nova leaped from the doorway and pulled Djari into the shadows between two buildings, expecting rebels to return to this station. More gunfire reached them.
“Is that from the hospital?” Djari said. “Is that Air Command?”
Nova shook her head. “They wouldn’t just blast in here at night. I’m not that important or they would have done that already. Let’s get closer. Stay in the shadow.”
A terrible roar rose up behind them, like something huge and angry and possibly in pain.
“Rhuwac,” Nova said just as the creature ran at them from the alley. He was wielding a massive club in massive hands and Nova suddenly felt very very small. The brute shouted something about Humans and they saw spittle fly from between the slabs of teeth he bared. “Ugh,” she said and aimed her weapon. It took a few passes from her gun before he fell, silenced.
Shouts reached their ears, closer than the gunfire still sounding in the distance. The Rhuwac’s noise had alerted someone.
Djari stepped away from Nova and readied his sling. He let it swing a few times before it rotated around his wrist. At the correct moment he heaved back and let the projectile fly high into the sky. They heard it detonate in the distance, surely drawing attention for a while. As one, they turned and fled in the opposite direction, along the wall and into the slums.
They were breathless by the time they had put a safe distance between themselves and whatever was going on back there.
The door to one of the deserted homes did not yield to her pick but Djari forced it open with a few well-placed kicks below the lock. The single-room dwelling looked like whoever had lived here left in a hurry. Pieces of clothing and household items cluttered the floor and several storage boxes stood open and empty. The corner used for cooking was empty and cold. Djari poked around the looted shelves and found nothing edible.
Nova placed the scanner stolen from the rebel station onto a windowsill and found it in working order. There was no one nearby. “Safe here for a bit.” Although there was still much interference from the rebels’ jamming systems, she detected moving bodies throughout the quarter, many more than she had assumed to be here. Shots still rang out at intervals but the sound of voices and the ugly growl of Rhuwacs had faded away.
“What do you think happened?” Djari looked over her shoulder at the screen. “Are you sure those aren’t soldiers?”
“Those guns are not military issue. I know the sound. Those are rebels. Maybe they noticed us gone.” She winced. “Maybe they took that out on the others. Coria was right, perhaps.”
“Don’t think that way,” he said. “There’s nothing to be done about that now. That might not even have come from the hospital. We probably got turned around back here.”
“Wish I could do that,” she said dully.
“Do what?”
“Look at things the way you do. Don’t you get scared?”
“Are you scared?”
She adjusted the display screen on the sill. “Of course I am. We’re surrounded by rebels. Completely outnumbered.”
“You do very well for someone who’s scared. Not too scared to kill a man with your bare hands and a piece of string. Not too scared to shoot a Rhuwac like you’re swatting a bug.”
She lifted her shoulders slowly in a shrug. “That’s just training. It kicks in. You must think that’s all pretty awful.”
“I do and it is. I could not do this… work. But being scared doesn’t help things.”
She turned to face him, suddenly aware that he was standing very close to her. His grey eyes were fixed on her own and there was a half smile on his dark face.
“You’re scared right now?” he asked again.
She nodded.
“Wait a moment.”
She frowned, mystified, but waited quietly for a long interval where only the sound of their breathing broke the silence.
“Now,” he said at last. “Are you still scared?”
“Yes.”
“So what good did it do you to be scared the first time I asked you? We’re still in the same spot, with the same problem.” He tipped his chin toward the town. “Be scared when you need to be. When it’s actually useful.”
“And when is it useful?”
He tapped a finger against her forehead. “When it keeps you from doing stupid things that’ll get you killed. Good thing you have the training to keep up with your willingness to take risks, Lieutenant.” His hand, roughened by work but gentle, moved to cup her chin.
Nova recoiled from his touch, her mind suddenly filled with a grim reminder of the last time a man had touched her that way. She stared at Djari’s astonished face, momentarily and utterly disoriented, heart pounding.
“Nova?”
She shook her head to banish the memory, unable to recall what the head doctors at the base had told her to do with it. At the time it hadn’t seemed so important to listen to their advice. “We have to keep moving,” she said. “If we can scan them, they can see us, too.” She snatched up the scanner and slung it over her shoulder. “If we keep moving they might think we’re a rebel patrol. We need to get back there.”
“Are you all right? I’m sorry if I… startled you.”
She shook her head, wishing for nothing more than to go back a few seconds to feel his touch again. “No. You… you didn’t. I’m sorry. Being silly. Jittery and tired.”
“We should try to leave the town. Find a place to get some rest and then make our way around the foothills to your base. You can’t go on like this. I’m barely able to stand on my feet, either.”
“I have to see what’s happened at the hospital. I won’t leave Reko to them. Or the others. Coria doesn’t much like me, but she’s your friend. We have to try to help them now that we have some weapons.” She pulled her gun from her belt and headed for the door.
“Nova.”
She turned back again.
Djari took her arm to draw her close and this time she did not flinch when he bent to kiss her softly. He touched only her arms but Nova returned the kiss, letting the moment spin out deliciously to banish the hate-filled night from their minds, if only for a little while. More than that, she felt herself respond to the closeness of their bodies, of wanting him to touch her. The sudden and happy realization that this need had not been destroyed by Captain Beryl, after all, allowed her to reach up to wrap her arms around his neck.
But when she felt his arms move around her waist to draw her closer to this powerful body she pulled away at once, the fear and memory a dash of cold water in her face. They stared at each other for uncounted moments, neither sure of the other.
He finally cocked his head and gave her a gentle smile. “Should I apologize?”
“Huh? No! I mean…”
He raised a single finger to point toward her. “Not going to shoot me, are you?”
She looked down to see that she now gripped her pistol close to her chest, one hand around the barrel, the other ready to engage the trigger. She exhaled forcefully and lowered the gun.
“This is what you look like scared,” he observed. “But why?”
She looked away and then up into his face again, seeing only concern and curiosity. “I’m sorry. I… I got hurt, not so long ago. It’s made me jumpy, I guess.”
“Boyfriend trouble in the military? Is that allowed?”
She shook her head. “Not that. Not a boyfriend. I mean really hurt. On the base.”
The soft smile faded from his lips. “On the base?”
She nodded.
He took a step closer, slowly as if worried that she might run away. He brushed her cheek with the tips of his fingers. “You have nothing to fear from me,” he said. “You know that, don’t you?”
She nodded and reached up to cover his hand with her own but then pulled away to open the door behind her. Perhaps there was time for this later, when she could allow herself to find out what his touch just now had meant. When she could admit to herself how much she needed it. She ground her teeth and shoved aside an overwhelming desire to hide in his embrace and, if even for just a little while, forget that she ever set foot on this planet. No time for any of this now.
“Let’s walk slow so we don’t look like we’ve got something to hide on the scanners,” she said. “If we move fairly at random we could get close to the hospital without being noticed.” She paused to consider. “Actually, let’s not be seen by anyone. Ours or theirs. If they did send Union patrols they’ll think we’re rebels, too.”
They made their way back to the edge of the slum and the meandering route they took was as much the result of a lack of compass as it was to appear to be a rebel patrol. Things finally began to look familiar to Djari who’d spent far more time in these quarters than she had. But the Rhuwacs no longer loitered in the alley and no one else was moving nearby, according to her scanner. The hospital showed only a handful of life signs.
“No!” Djari exclaimed and she had to grasp his arm with both hands to keep him from rushing back into the building.
“Stop,” she hissed. “We don’t know who’s in there.”
He scowled at her but after a moment relaxed enough for her to let him go. She pulled him into the shelter of a courtyard wall and studied the dim glow of the scanner. This model only showed life signs but no specifics about species or state of health. At least they were alive. “Not moving. Could be our patients. Or people hiding.” She pointed at the screen. “Is that the back area where we left Reko?”
