by Mel Odom
“Thinking about what?” Tanest asked.
Jahup considered pulling rank on her and ending the questioning. He’d been made a corporal only a week before, after his action during the festival and because of his scouting ability and knowledge of the jungle. Tanest remained a private.
Using authority on Tanest wouldn’t work, though. She’d find some way to circumvent it. She was crafty like that.
“I’m thinking about last night.” Jahup had taken part in the attack on the Zukimther mercenaries. Images of the wounded and dying soldiers, some of them people he’d grown up with, haunted his thoughts.
He felt dead on his feet now, propped up only by the low-level stims his suit insisted on providing. As a result, he felt like he was vibrating inside. If he could have remained in his barracks, or returned to his grandmother’s house, he would have done that instead of going on patrol, but manpower was thin.
Colonel Halladay had wanted boots on the ground in case anyone wanted to strike back after what had happened with the Zukimther. That action had shut down a lot of avenues for gunrunners on Makaum for a while, but someone would rise to take their place.
The Makaum people had understood the law of supply and demand long before the offworlders came with their drugs and tech.
His grandmother’s home would have been Jahup’s choice for resting. He’d grown up there after his parents had died and he still had a room there. He’d always felt safest under that roof.
“Last night is over.” Tanest’s tone was firm. “That’s one of the first rules of being a hunter and you know that. You don’t worry over missed shots. You don’t worry over close calls. You learn from them, figure out what you did wrong, and study that so you don’t make the same mistakes.”
Jahup magnified his view and pulled in the image of the technology shop to his left across the street. He wasn’t much of a game player. Even before becoming part of the Terran military, he hadn’t had much time to play. But he’d heard good things about some of the VR software, and he’d watched soldiers playing in the common areas. “Master Sergeant Sage didn’t make a mistake.”
“Did I say the sergeant made a mistake?”
It took Jahup a moment to realize that she hadn’t said that. The question had restlessly circulated through his own mind. Three soldiers who had died last night had worn the ypheynte image on their armor. None of them had been much older than he was. They were friends that he wouldn’t be getting back, and there were more yet to lose. Sometimes an occasional hunter was lost, but never in groups.
He didn’t know why the deaths bothered him so much. He’d lost people out in the jungles, hunters he’d been training, and older hunters who should have stayed out of the wilderness because their time had passed. Nothing on Makaum had been easy. Nearly everything killed to eat, and all of them were proficient at stalking prey.
But making meat, feeding the populace, that was a clear-cut goal that was attainable. Fighting against the encroaching black marketers, especially when people wanted what they had to sell, seemed . . . unwinnable.
“Well, did I?” Tanest asked. She sounded irritated.
“No,” he conceded. “You didn’t say that. I’m just tired.”
“Oh? I figured maybe you were thinking about Noojin.”
That was a sore point and Jahup was certain Tanest knew it and had mentioned Noojin just to needle him. Even before the assassinations during the Festival of the Beginning, Noojin had decided to give up her position in the Terran military. He still didn’t understand that. Moreover, she’d seemed disappointed he hadn’t quit the military with her. It was the first time they hadn’t been on the same side of a problem facing them.
“Why would I be thinking of her?” Jahup asked.
“Because usually she watches your back when you’re in a dangerous situation. And now it’s dangerous and she’s not here.”
“We have our own paths to follow.”
“Not until lately. You two have been like two iani in a husk. Always together.”
“Not true.” Jahup said that, but he knew that Tanest was speaking nothing but the truth. Noojin had been his constant companion. Both of them had lost their parents and had been mentored by Quass Leghef. He and Noojin had been close. He hadn’t known how truly close until she was gone from him.
Since the festival night, he had only seen her twice and talked to her not at all. He told himself that her absence didn’t matter, that he was as fully capable of being without her as she was being without him. He preferred to walk his own path, and actually had. She had chosen to join him.
“So you two aren’t together anymore?” Tanest asked.
Suddenly, Jahup knew what the young woman was truly hinting at. Under the faceshield, his face burned, and he was glad Tanest couldn’t see him. “We were never together. Not like that.”
She adjusted her armor, making him even more aware of those curves the AKTIVsuit partially hid. “Good. Maybe I can talk you into a drink after we get off patrol.”
Feeling irritated and confused, and maybe a little attracted to the idea of spending time with Tanest, Jahup tried to figure out what to say. Before the offworlders arrived, there had been few places to socialize other than homes. Everything young people did together was more or less chaperoned because children needed structure in their community. Resources remained scarce. And there hadn’t been a lot of free time.
Things had changed.
He and Noojin had gone to a couple of the clubs. That was where he’d first seen Master Sergeant Sage in action. Sage had brought in the corpse of a dead bashhound and laid it at the feet of one of the corp execs, and accused DawnStar of setting up drug labs in the jungle.
Jahup’s anger and confusion about Noojin swirled inside him, and he thought maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to have that drink with Tanest. She was attractive. A lot of the other males his age—and older, judging from the stares of the offworlders—would have loved to have a drink with her. Many of the soldiers at Fort York had tried to spend time with her.
He turned to her, thinking maybe he’d be a little coy, not too quick to agree to drinks. Then his faceshield pinged red.
Alert! Hostile weapon detected!
Vector lines led Jahup’s line of sight to the bearded man raising a Rudra Tech plasma burster from behind his leg 17.4 meters away. Judging by the spidersilk clothing and the slightly green tint to his coloring, the man was a local, not an offworlder, and for a split second the feeling of betrayal hit Jahup more than fear.
The small, blocky pistol filled the man’s hand as he pointed the blunt muzzle at Jahup. The sidearm was an illegal civilian weapon on Makaum because it was so powerful. The plasma burster was capable of burning through the AKTIVsuit with a direct hit.
Already moving away from the threat, Jahup twisted, threw an arm around Tanest, and headed both of them into a narrow alley filled with shallow pools from the morning’s rain.
“Get down!” Jahup yelled. “Get—”
In the 360-degree view, the plasma fireball from the weapon’s barrel spread into a meter-wide conflagration and grew larger as it streaked for him. The immense heat soaked through the armor and nearby bushes and fingerling saplings that had reached through the broken plascrete caught on fire. The leaves and branches turned to gray ash immediately.
Then the fireball struck Jahup between the shoulder blades and lifted him from his feet as a wave of intense heat seared his senses.
SIX
Fort York
Makaum Sprawl
1042 Hours Zulu Time
“May I offer you a warm-up, Staff Sergeant?”
Caught off guard, Kjersti Kiwanuka glanced up at the private standing a short distance away.
The young man held a coffeepot in one hand. He looked tired and Kiwanuka had at first believed the hollow look in his eyes was from fatigue. Then she noticed the synthskin that covered much of the private’s left hand. Memory kicked in and she recalled that he was on the disabled list from pr
ior action against a biopiracy group.
Kiwanuka scooted her cup toward the table’s edge. “Sure. Thank you, Private.”
He poured. “My pleasure. Can I get you anything else?”
“No, I’m fine. Thank you.”
He hesitated for a moment and she knew it was because they hadn’t met. She knew she was striking-looking and had no false modesty about it because soldiers of both sexes had hit on her a lot in the clubs. Her platinum blond hair and smooth dark brown skin guaranteed attention.
Her father was a diplomatic attaché in Uganda, and some whispered he might be the next president once the man currently in office stepped down. Or was assassinated. Things in that country had always been restless.
The hair color came from her mother, who was Norwegian and had been a medical doctor. She and Kiwanuka’s father had met while she was on a relief mission. Both of them were intellectuals and liked having power. Neither of them understood their daughter.
When she’d enlisted in the Terran military, Kiwanuka had drawn the ire of both parents. She hadn’t cared. She’d had to get away, and offplanet with the military had seemed to be the best way to go because she was able to leave on her own terms.
“Was there anything else you need, Private?” she asked. She picked up the cup with her bionic hand.
After getting wounded during an ambush her team had been led into by an incompetent lieutenant, she’d lost her right arm and some friends. The lieutenant had lost the face he’d been born with when she’d attacked him for his carelessness. Lieutenant Swarton was out there serving somewhere in the war while she’d cooled her heels on Makaum as a disciplinary action. She was lucky she hadn’t received a quick exit from the military with a section eight classification.
“No, Staff Sergeant.” Looking a little self-conscious, he wandered away to take care of other soldiers at breakfast.
Seated at the table she’d commandeered for herself, Kiwanuka struggled to stay awake and find the right words for the reports she was working on. Colonel Halladay had stressed the importance of getting them exactly right.
“Colonel Halladay,” someone barked. “Good morning, sir.”
Surprised, Kiwanuka slid out of the chair, stood by the table, and saluted the colonel. She hadn’t ever seen him in the enlisted mess. Officers never came here because they had their own cafeteria. Slipping her cover from a thigh pocket, she pulled the hat into place even though she wasn’t required to wear it inside a post building. Her hair hung in disarray from the shower she’d had earlier. Maybe the private had been looking at that.
Colonel Nathan Halladay wore an AKTIVsuit. All soldiers did now because the fort stayed on Orange Alert, ready for hostile aggression. His helmet hung at his hip, but he wore a military cover over his neatly clipped brown hair where strands of gray were starting to show. Clean-shaven and meticulous, Halladay looked more like a schoolteacher or a salesman than a battle-hardened soldier.
Mentally, Kiwanuka backed off on the harsh view. Halladay hadn’t seen much action because he’d served General Howard Whitcomb as a lieutenant and had risen through the ranks under the older officer. Scuttlebutt had it that Halladay was somebody’s golden boy and had been given the cushy assignment as the general’s aide. Kiwanuka didn’t think there was any truth to that, but she didn’t know what the true score was.
“At ease, people,” Halladay said without breaking stride as he made for Kiwanuka. He stopped in front of her and returned her salute. “At ease, Staff Sergeant.”
“Yes sir.” Kiwanuka automatically fell into parade rest and didn’t know what to do next. Sage seemed to be at ease with officers, but that wasn’t in her wheelhouse. She’d grown up in her mother and father’s world of privilege, and those in power were always acknowledged.
Halladay motioned to the table. “Sit.”
She did, and to her surprise and consternation, he joined her there.
She stared at him.
“Is something wrong, Staff Sergeant?”
“No, sir. You’re . . . sitting there.”
“I am.”
She’d prepared for a full-on Phrenorian assault, a terrorist attack, and even for soldiers with inane questions about field orders for today. But she wasn’t ready for an officer to sit at breakfast with her. She knew the other enlisted were staring. “Well, I wasn’t prepared for you to be sitting there, sir.”
Halladay’s green eyes twinkled a little. “I understand, Staff Sergeant. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”
“I’m not uncomfortable, sir.”
“I can see that by how relaxed you are.”
Kiwanuka suspected he was being a little facetious, and maybe having a little fun at her expense. “Perhaps I’m a little caught off guard, sir. And I’m wondering what you’re doing here.”
Halladay gestured to her PAD. “I came for that report.”
“I’m sorry, sir. I thought I had another”—Kiwanuka checked the time by accessing her suit’s hologram HUD that supplemented the helmet—“forty-three minutes.”
And she did have those forty-three minutes according to her last communication with him. If something had changed, she’d received no notification.
“You don’t. I need the report now. Please.”
Kiwanuka wanted to protest. She was used to being perfect, to being on time and completely correct in all her assigned tasks. Writing after-action reports wasn’t one of her best abilities. “The draft’s still rough, sir.”
“Bring it up for me.”
Picking up her PAD, Kiwanuka opened the report and handed it over to Halladay. He scanned it quickly.
Halladay handed the PAD back to her and lifted his own PAD. “Staff Sergeant, this is a little rough, but it’s fine. Send a copy to my device manually. I don’t want this on the Net.”
That surprised Kiwanuka because news of last night’s takedown had spread all over the fort.
“Sir, I’m sure with a little more work I can improve on what’s here.”
“I appreciate your diligence, but I need it now, Staff Sergeant.”
Kiwanuka’s anger flared up then, and she suddenly felt like she was in front of her father. He’d always been demanding and unrelenting. In his eyes, she’d always been found wanting.
Trying not to sound irate, Kiwanuka pushed her PAD against the colonel’s, and tapped the screen to send the file to the colonel’s device. “Of course, sir.”
“Thank you, Staff Sergeant.” Halladay sat there and didn’t leave.
“Was there something else, sir?”
“I’m taking a moment.”
“Of course, sir.”
“I’m going to need you to help me.”
“I’ll be happy to, sir.” Kiwanuka hated making that blanket statement because it could be false, and after pressuring her as he had, he didn’t deserve a favor. Taking on the Zukimther mercs had been fine. She’d known what to expect. Dealing with Halladay on a personal issue was an unknown.
“I’m about to go ambush the general,” Halladay confided, “and I don’t know how that’s going to go.”
Questions bubbled up inside Kiwanuka, but she knew she couldn’t ask them because it wasn’t her place.
“I’m going to recommend—vigorously—that we send for reinforcements. I don’t see how that’s going to be a successful argument, but I have to do it.”
Kiwanuka didn’t know how it would be fruitful either. General Whitcomb had pretty much maintained a hands-off policy toward the planet since he’d been assigned there. He was just clocking out his final months shepherding Fort York, looking for an easy end to a career.
“So if I come back here in a less-than-optimum mood,” Halladay said, “I want you to understand.”
“Me, sir?” The question was out of Kiwanuka’s mouth before she could stop it.
“Yes. Either way this ambush goes, I’m going to need you to help me with damage control among the troops.”
“Yes sir,” Kiwanuka answered, but she was won
dering what was going on. Halladay and Sage had gotten tight over the last few weeks. She had operated on the periphery of things.
“Because you’re going to be in the middle of whatever situation results.”
Kiwanuka had no intention of stepping into a conflagration like a war between a general and his XO. Executive officers could weather a storm like that. A staff sergeant couldn’t. She was already on thin ice from bashing her lieutenant when she’d lost her arm in combat. She didn’t want to lose the military and had no idea of what she would do if she did. “Me, sir? I don’t want to rock the boat, sir.”
Halladay frowned. “I’m going to rock the boat. I’m just afraid some of the fallout is going to land on you.”
“Sir—” Kiwanuka took a breath. “With my record, the general’s displeasure could be detrimental to—”
“I’ve got your back, Staff Sergeant. Nothing’s going to touch you that will leave a mark. It’s just that General Whitcomb might not be happy with you and that could be somewhat . . .”
“Less than optimum, sir?”
“Yes. Definitely less than optimum.”
Kiwanuka figured she could live with that. Unless the general decided to pop into the enlisted mess some morning and make a scene. That didn’t seem likely to happen because General Whitcomb hadn’t left the DawnStar Space Station since he’d made his one appearance at Fort York the day he’d taken command.
“All right, sir. I can deal with that.”
“Good. Of course, I’m going to expect you to have my back too.”
“Against General Whitcomb, sir?” Kiwanuka shook her head. “I’m not in a position to—”
“With Master Sergeant Sage.”
Deciding she liked where this was going even less than the previous conversation because her relationship with Sage was day-to-day and they liked each other—maybe a lot more than they should—Kiwanuka leaned back in her seat and crossed her arms in front of her.
“Begging your pardon, sir, but my working relationship with Master Sergeant Sage is not up for debate.”