by C. Gockel
“I’ll never say anything mean about Dakad ever again,” Boker said.
“You just hope those Shrills are glued together properly.” Rolyn sounded worried. “Those are captured enemy planes. Junk, in other words.”
“Have some faith in our techs,” Boker said. “And hope they remembered to take the fire out of those guns, ‘cause I’m going to climb all over your six, brother!”
Nova pinched him to shut him up as Dakad gave instructions. “The Red team leaves after breakfast for the Old Man. The shuttle will be on Deck Two. Green team is taking the Kites directly. You’ll get parking instructions upon arrival. Video coverage will be shown in the lounges. General Ausan will join us on the moon as well.” He seemed to pick Boker out of the crowd. “So behave yourselves.”
Nova was keyed up and ready to fly when she stepped through the door separating the pilots’ quarters from the lower of the two combat flight decks long before any of them really needed to be there. As always, she felt the strange sense of displacement when she moved from the sound-baffled, muted corridors into the noisy, echoing clamor of the hangars. She walked down the long by-way, passing the closed chutes used by the Kites to the air locks designed for larger ships. Some of the other pilots were also already out here, impatient to head to the moon.
“Nova!”
She stopped to look around for the familiar voice. “Djari?” She waited while he hurried toward her. Oddly, it felt like she was seeing someone she had known for a long time. Had he really been on her mind that much? She smiled tentatively. “What are you doing up here?”
He held up a package, still out of breath. “New seeds just came in.”
She groped for words, unsure of the moment and unprepared for this meeting. Ahead of her, Lieutenant Sool had turned to wait for her. She waved him onward.
Djari hesitated and the moment grew more awkward. “I hadn’t expected to see you here, either,” he said finally.
“What, on the flight deck? I work here.”
He blinked. “I meant now. Don’t you do the later shift?”
“Special exercise.” She gestured to the transparent wall between the airlocks where the shuttle as well as General Ausan’s cruiser stood ready for departure. “We’re going to the moon.”
“Can I talk to you?”
She looked to the ships again and then back at him, undecided.
“Please,” he said. “I… I’ve been wanting to… apologize, I guess. Just give me a few minutes.”
Nova peered into his face and something there seemed so miserable and urgent that she relented. The ships were not yet ready to leave, anyway. She followed Djari into one of the ready rooms overlooking the busy air lock area. “I’m not angry with you,” she said to him. “You have reason for the way you feel.”
He shook his head. “No. I was wrong to treat you like that. You’re not like the others. I saw that on Shon Gat. I have no right to talk to you that way. Been losing sleep over it.” He smiled crookedly. “So I talked to… to some people. I was wrong and I’m sorry. I wanted you to know that.”
She smiled back at him. He did seem to be more his old self again, the way she had met him. She resisted the impulse to reach up to brush aside that rebellious shock of hair that seemed to constantly fall over his eyes. “You’re not trained for… this. I’d be bitter, too, after what happened.”
“I was afraid to call on you. Didn’t think you’d ever talk to me again.”
“I don’t hold a grudge,” she said. “Been kind of worried about you.” She frowned when she looked past him through the open door and over the deck. Outside, the general’s shuttle had moved away from the lock where it halted to await departure clearance. But it seemed strangely off-kilter, as if it were slowly rolling over; an unlikely maneuver while still within the station’s gravity well. Someone ran toward the lock. Something flew past the window.
Nova lunged forward and threw herself at Djari to shove him backward and over a short podium step to the floor. A massive explosion roared through the open hangar space, muted only by the internal shielding. Its pressure wave was enough to shatter the window and collapse the doorframe of the ready room, showering them with shards and twisted pieces of metal. Nova pressed her face to Djari’s chest until the noise had subsided. Alarms brayed into the brief silence that followed.
She came to her feet to look out into the devastated hangar. The locks that had just moments ago supported the two ships were gone. Massive, warped metal shapes littering the interior reminded of some familiar parts. Casualties, mostly hangar jockeys and a few troops, were scattered among the wreckage. Overhead lights had turned orange as soon as the shield generators had detected the change of pressure. Already, security personnel arrived to assess the situation. “Gods, the shuttle!” she gasped, frantically trying to remember which of her wing mates had already boarded. Sool, maybe also Drayson and Xiachiu. She hoped Boker was running late as usual.
“Djari?” she turned back to him. He was still on the floor and still clutching his package of seeds. There was blood on it. “Djari!”
He groaned. A piece of the window transparency had cut deep into his shoulder. “I think I hit my head.”
“Lie still. I’ll get help.”
“I’ll be all right. You?”
“Not even a scratch.” She hurried outside to flag down a medic before returning to his side.
“You know, maybe we shouldn’t keep meeting like this,” he said through clenched teeth as he sat up. Blood poured from his wound and he twisted to get a look at it. “Do you ever have a quiet day or something?”
“All pilots to scramble,” they heard the Air Boss snap over the com unit at her wrist. “Roof deck is a go.”
“They didn’t get all of the decks,” she translated as she tapped her com unit. “Whiteside able.”
“They? You think that was an attack?”
“We always think that.” She stood aside when someone arrived with a med kit. “Shuttles don’t just blow up. We’ll talk later.”
She raced to a companionway at the end of the platform, dodging damaged equipment and harried personnel along the way. Two other pilots followed her to the upper deck, also not bothering to wait for the lift which might not even be operational. She stopped near the supply shed to pick up a helmet. It did not fit as well as her own, already waiting for her in the Shrill she was to have used today, but the interface matched and that was all that mattered.
“Rally at Launch Three,” Dakad’s voice came from her com sleeve.
She changed direction and ran along a row of Kites to where he waited for his squad. Ground crew paced up and down, scanning for explosives. “Rolie!” she cried out with relief when she saw the young Lieutenant. His constant companion, Heiko Boker, was not in sight. She did not dare to ask.
Dakad also wasted no time with roll call to find out what was left of his squadron. The next explosion could well happen on this level. “Let’s get these planes in the air,” he snapped. “Section One: Whiteside lead for tether.” His eyes found Rolyn and moved on to another pilot to assign her wingman and then the rest of the unit. “I’ll lead the array defense. Rolie, you’re with me.”
They scrambled to their assigned Kites and, one by one, entered the chutes to launch into space.
From here protocol took over. Nova led her flight around the station and down to the tether where they took up defensive positions around the bottom of the ranch, its most vulnerable part. The cargo pods had stopped and each level had been sealed off from the next. She sent two Kites down to the halfway point.
“Nothing on sensors,” Sulean muttered needlessly. They all saw that. While an enemy fighter could conceivably slip past their eyes and make it to the station, nothing with the power they had witnessed would easily approach the skyranch without notice.
“Tower concurs,” Dakad said from his position above the solar arrays. “We’ll stay out until all decks are cleared.”
“What do you think—”
“I want no chatter, no speculation, no talk at all. Continue patrol pattern until all clear.”
They fell silent, sweeping the area with sensors and eyes, swinging wide when a swarm of service shuttles issued from the lower decks. The blast had been powerful enough for some pieces to escape the orbiter’s gravity and a scatter of debris slowly spread out from the site of the detonation. Suited-up ground crew searched the exterior for bodies and evidence. The pilots felt useless out here, doing little more than minding their expensive planes without an enemy in their sights.
How many had they lost? Nova thought about Sool, a quiet and polite Caspian who seemed to forever stumble over his outsized feet. He had three mates, as far as she knew, but no children yet. Where was Boker? Floating around out here in small pieces? Still on the station, now perhaps in the medical center? Or maybe in the small morgue where bodies were kept until someone claimed them. She thought about Rolie, now under Dakad’s watchful eye, no doubt beside himself with worry about his friend.
And what about Djari? He had fought whatever demons had followed him from Shon Gat to reach out to her only to be quite literally knocked back down by the Union’s never-ending conflicts. She watched a med-evac ship speed away from the station; casualties too badly wounded to be treated up here. Djari’s injuries had not been severe but she worried, anyway.
Hours passed before two cruisers arrived from the planet, no doubt investigators from the base at Siolet. They hovered briefly and then slipped into the upper landing bays.
Dakad’s voice rasped into her earpiece. “All clear. Section One, return to base. Proceed to ready room and wait for Section Two.”
They obeyed silently, relinquished their Kites and then took their seats in the pilots’ lounge. Nova had peeled out her flight suit down to her tights and body shirt and huddled in her chair with her legs drawn tight to her body. There was nothing to say. Nothing to do but wait.
Dakad arrived with his section and another officer. He was still checking communications on his data sleeve. Everyone’s eyes were on the door to see which of their comrades were going to join them. Nova shifted over to sit with Lieutenant Rolyn.
“Men,” Dakad said with an apologetic nod to Nova. “We have some info but they’ll be sifting the hangar for a while. Initial reports point to the general’s cruiser as the target. I regret to inform you that General Ausan and most of her crew were lost. No explosives found so far but they have not ruled out sabotage. The shuttle got in the way of the blast. We’ve got eleven ground crew injured, two dead. Among the pilots, in the vicinity were Tashti, Khateka and Whiteside. Tashti is down in the med station.” He tugged on his nose before continuing. “All hands aboard the shuttle were lost to explosive decompression due to a rupture of the starboard side of the ship. Shuttle pilot Anina, three Caga squad pilots.” He glanced at Rolyn. “The other four were ours: Drayson, Ash Ngava, Sool, and Boker. Their bodies have been recovered.”
Dakad droned on about damage to the station, which was confined to the hangar and central platform, expectations of replacements for the lost pilots, adjusted schedules. Nova had grasped Rolyn’s hand in both of hers but whether that was for her comfort or his was a moot point.
She had lost fellow pilots in battle and some of them had been friends. She remembered Chidi Lux, her roommate on her first assignment and a decidedly free spirit, taken down by an enemy fighter over Tannaday. There had been a training accident on Magra that had cost two cadets. She had been in a few major engagements with heavy casualties on both sides. But never this many of what Dakad had called ‘ours’, all at once. Never people with whom she had just finished breakfast. Never this pointlessly. And why Boker? she thought and then looked over the somber, disheartened faces of her squad mates. And why Reko?
Apparently Dakad had finished. Nova looked up when Sulean bent over her seat. “You guys all right?” he said.
Rolyn frowned as if his words were in another language. At length he shrugged. Then nodded. Someone came to take him away, possibly to get very drunk.
“You coming, too, Nova?” Sulean asked.
She blinked. “Huh? Oh. I’m going down to the hospital.” She hurried from the flight deck and down to the support level of the station. The clinic there was very new; today’s victims were the first casualties of anything more worrisome than construction crew injuries and stomach upsets. She stopped a service staff member to ask about Djari.
“He’s been released,” she was told rather curtly.
“Can you tell me where I can find him?”
The clerk consulted his data pad with an air of great impatience. Nova looked around. The hospital level was designed to service a full complement of five hundred souls once the station was fully operational. Surely today’s half dozen casualties did not tax their systems. She bit back a reprimand, unsure of how one even dealt with civilians here.
“He is quartered on Level Two, cabin Six.”
“How is Lieutenant Tashti?”
The clerk’s eyes swept over Nova to find the insignia band around her bare upper arm, perhaps wondering how much authority that carried with it. Finally, he called up the pilot’s profile. “She is sleeping. Come back later.”
Nova left the hospital and made her way back up to the second residential level. She found Djari’s room and knocked urgently, not even sure why she needed to see him so badly.
“Nova!” he exclaimed when he saw her. He wore only a short kilt favored by Bellac natives and a thin plaster over his injured shoulder.
She rushed into his room and when she reached for him he could do little more in his surprise than hold her close. She felt his strong arms wrap around her and buried her face in the curve of his neck, just wanting to stay there for a long time. It felt like it had in Shon Gat and she let his presence soothe her as it had before.
“Are you all right?” he said softly. His hands stroked her back.
She shook her head still pressed against his skin. “No, I’m not. Seven of them gone. My friends. And half the damn ground crew. General Ausan! All dead.”
“I’m so sorry,” he said.
She finally lifted her face. “I’d be gone, too, if it weren’t for you. I was supposed to be on that ship.”
He brushed a few loose strands of hair from her cheek. “And you probably saved my neck with that tackle.”
“We keep thinking this can’t happen to us, but it does. I feel so bad. I wish there were something I could do.”
He wrapped his arms around her again. “So do I. I wish I could make this all go away for you.”
She looked up into his eyes. “You can.”
“Nova,” he began, trying to look away and failing. His eyes shifted to her lips. She felt his chest expand with a hitching breath. “This isn’t right,” he whispered.
“It is.”
Djari shook his head, the gesture slow and unfinished. He gripped her arms as if to pull them away but then he did not. “You’re upset,” he said thickly. “Just cry.”
She pressed more tightly against his bare chest. “I don’t need to cry. I need you. Make it better.”
Some unclear, wordless sound escaped him before he bent to kiss her. It was not a gentle kiss nor was she looking for that. His hands and lips were demanding and perhaps he needed her just as much as she craved his touch. They staggered on their feet and he pushed her against the wall. When he gripped her thighs to lift her up she felt his growing excitement not just by his hungry kiss but through the thin fabric that separated their bodies.
She froze when a cold stab of fear intruded upon the moment.
He eased back as if sensing the shift and turned to carry her to his cot. She looked up at him as he placed her there, moving more gently as he joined her in carefully removing her clothes. Their hands and lips continued their exploration and it did not take long before she reached for him, assured once more that nothing he did could ever hurt her. She received him joyfully, moving with him in a rising fervor of passion that
, once peaked in a blinding burst of ecstasy, left them gasping for air and utterly spent.
He shifted her to sprawl across his chest, making the most of his narrow bed. “You know,” he said when he was able to speak again. “I think now I know why they call you Nova.”
She looked up. “Hey, my daddy named me that!”
“It was a good choice.” His thumb stroked across her cheek for a thoughtful moment. “Your smile is back, Sunshine.”
She lowered her head again and sighed deeply. “Because of you.”
“I’ve thought about you since… since Shon Gat. You’ve been on my mind. I’ve never known someone like you. But you’re so far away.”
“I’m right here,” she said, quite aware of what he meant. “And not going anywhere soon. Well, unless your roommate decides to come home.”
“Don’t have one. The crew is so small right now. We’re still experimenting and balancing the systems. The workers won’t arrive for a while yet.”
“Is that why you have room for all this stuff here?” She pointed at stacks of flat, unlabeled boxes piled on the other bed in the room. A collection of analysis tools cluttered a narrow shelf along with small bottles of colored substances. “Bringing your work home with you?”
“I guess,” he said. “Some pilfering going on in the rings. I kept losing trays of our nutrient experiments, so I just packed them up. The stuff is expensive.”
“Hey, maybe by the time the rest of the crew gets here you’ll have your own suite. Something tells me you’re not just a worker.”
“Why do you say that?”
“You don’t strike me as someone who’s happy counting seedlings.”
“True. I’d like to continue work on hybridizing some of Bellac’s produce. Longer daylight hours can make all the difference. Lots of good ideas coming from the other ranches.”
She brushed her lips over his smooth chest. “Well, as long as you get your own room. It’s hard to sneak into the pilot quarters if you don’t belong there.”
