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“Twenty days in lockup.”
    “ This is disgraceful! He damn near
pulled my arm off!”
    Trakkas came to his feet and towered over
her, close enough to force her to take a step backward. “I am about
done with you, Lieutenant. I’ll give him thirty days. You know what
that means? Thirty days without the toughest commander I have for
these men. I’m going to have to pull Captain Tovah off the front
line to take his place. Leaving me short in the field. So you,
Lieutenant, are going to hump your ass out to Shon Gat and fill in
the ranks.”
    She winced. The remote town he had named was
the supply base for the nearby elevator construction. It was
rapidly expanding in anticipation of the traffic and prosperity the
tether would bring once the orbital skyranch was complete. It was
also infiltrated by rebel factions deeply embedded among the local
population and more arrived with each transport and caravan. Air
Command presence had turned the entire place into a state of siege.
Random attacks on military patrols, haphazard attempts at sabotage
and days-long skirmishes were the order of the day. “I am a fighter
pilot,” she reminded him.
    He laughed without any real semblance to
humor. “You’re also an expert marksman and I can definitely use
more snipers. The Kites are done out here. There are no more rebel
bases that you can lob your little missiles at from a safe
distance. And I have no intention of letting the pilots laze around
until Targon decides what to do with you.” His violet eyes gleamed
with a mix of menace and mirth as he leaned over his workspace to
enter his instructions. “You’ll get a little education in how
things really work on the ground, Lieutenant. Won’t that be
nice?”
    “ I’ve done ground combat,” she said but
there was little protest left in her voice. She had lost this
battle.
    “ Good. You’ll be useful. I think we
both know it’s probably best if you’re not hanging around the base.
Things won’t get any friendlier for you once I lock Beryl up.
Report to Captain Rudjo at the Shon Gat garrison tomorrow. Maybe
he’ll let you fly evac.”

Chapter Three
    From up here, it was easy to see how this
town might have been pretty once. Before the planet and her two
moons had ever seen someone without white hair or red skin or
carrying a laser weapon. Before interstellar travelers had
discovered that rare fracture in space that let them form a
jumpsite uncomfortably close to the planet. Before the rebels
followed through the breach, smelling easy pickings and a shortcut
from here to the hotly contested Magra-Aikhor sector.
    Almost two hundred years, local time, after
off-worlders had been accepted by the Bellac Tau natives, the
population had grown into an uneasy mix of locals, Centauri,
Feydans, and even some Humans. Cluttered composites of traditional
brick architecture and imported construction made up the towns that
sprawled along coasts and the fertile foothills, including this
one, Shon Gat.
    Nova sat on the running board of her hover,
the screen of her scanner held loosely in her hands while she
surveyed the town below. The original stone architecture still
delineated the perimeter, as did parts of an ancient wall. Orderly
pathways separated it into sectors organized according to who lived
there or what took place there. Neat residences, livestock areas,
market places, meeting circles, open spaces were all still visible.
Over time, the newcomers had blurred the boundaries. Modern trading
places, machine shops, hover pads, military installations and not a
few ragged slums had turned Shon Gat into the sort of sprawling,
unmanaged frontier town she had seen in other places.
    Of course, from up here, without moving in
for a closer look, one did not see the areas destroyed by
explosives or scorched by laser fire.
    Since opening Bellac to off-world traffic so
long ago, Air Command had found more important properties to
protect elsewhere. The Union’s advances toward bringing the