Forsaken Skies by D. Nolan Clark Page A

at the butter. She took it as if she expected it to be snatched from her grasp.
    â€œThis is why you have a Sector Warden,” Maggs said, keeping his voice low. “To catch exactly these sort of oversights.” He sat up. Clasped his hands together in front of him. “I can help.”
    The old woman kept her face carefully composed. Clearly she didn’t entirely believe him. Not yet. She hadn’t been born on Niraya, she’d said. Maybe she understood a little of how these things actually worked.
    â€œThere is the question of money,” he said.

    Valk opened a tiny hole in the front of his helmet—not so large anyone could see inside, even accidentally—and fed the straw through it. The ice in his glass rattled as he slurped away.
    As dive bars went, the place stank. There was nothing inside but some scratched-up furniture and a big display that showed nothing but ads for Centrocor products. Just then it showed a woman with gleaming teeth rubbing cream on her forearm. The view zoomed in to the microlevel to show tiny machines with serrated pincers tearing into dead skin cells. The music swelled and the view shifted back to the woman’s arm, which was now as smooth as plastic.
    Lanoe didn’t seem to mind the blaring commercial. Nor did he seem to take much notice that half the bar was staring at his back. This was a Navy place—just about all the customers were dressed in space suits. There weren’t many officers, though. Valk did a quick ping of all the cryptabs in the room and found nobody over Junior Lieutenant grade. If Lanoe shouted out the word
push-up
right now, the entire bar would have to fall to the floor.
    The old pilot just sank back into his own chair, making it creak with the weight of his heavy suit, and sipped at his own glass. Staring straight forward at nothing. “We heard your story,” he said, finally. “On our side of the lines. Talked about you for weeks, though I always figured it was mostly an urban legend. About how you had a full-blown flameout, your whole cockpit lit up by an antivehicle round. And yet you somehow managed to finish your mission before heading back to base.”
    â€œThat’s about accurate,” Valk said. “Except there was a lot more screaming.” He took another sip. The whiskey was cold enough to numb his mouth, just as he liked it. “As for finishing the mission, well, I’d already worked out firing solutions for two more of your ships and the fighter pretty much took them out without any help. I was too busy, what with being on fire, to tell it to stop and get me the hell out of there.”
    â€œGot our wind up, on the other side,” the Commander said. “Got us thinking maybe you lot were serious about Self-Establishment. That maybe we were fighting for the wrong side.” He smiled, but it was the kind of smile that could indicate anything except happiness. “Especially after we heard they fixed you up and sent you right back to the lines.”
    â€œAs bad off as I was, they offered to send me home,” Valk said. “Third-degree burns over ninety percent of my body. I shouldn’t have lived through that. But the only thing I knew how to do was fly. So I went back. Two weeks later the Crisis was over and we’d lost.”
    â€œThat how you ended up here, doing traffic control?”
    â€œThe terms of the surrender said there would be no punitive measures taken against our officers. We were going to be rolled up into your Navy, since we were friends again. But then they stripped all of our service records. I took what work I could get.”
    â€œOur loss,” the Commander said. “The Navy could use a pilot like you. Regardless of your politics.”
    Valk acknowledged the kindness with a brief nod. He’d learned over the years to exaggerate his gestures so people could read his meaning without having to see his eyes. “What about you, then?