A truth of Valor c-5 Read online

  A truth of Valor

  ( Confederation - 5 )

  Tanya Huff

  Tanya Huff

  A truth of Valor

  ONE

  Emerging back into sunlight after 5K of trails through old growth forest, Torin eyed the forty-five degree incline up to the top of the bluff and knew she'd been spending too much time in space and too little time paying attention to her training. In spite of having been dirtside for the last tenday, she could feel the effect of the run in both legs and lungs.

  There was a time, back before she joined the Corps, when she'd end her 20K run with a six-meter dive into the lake and swim a good fifteen, twenty meters underwater before having to surface to breathe. Diving straight into the lake today would be stupid bordering on suicidal. The gravity here on Paradise, Torin's birth world, was 1.14 oldEarth norm while ships and stations both maintained artificial systems at.98-a small difference but telling after a few years.

  Although, Torin admitted, throwing everything she had left into the last 100 meters, it could be the mileage. The distance between nineteen and thirty-six was one hell of a lot farther than the distance between Paradise and the OutSector station where Sh'quo Company had been based.

  The top of the bluff hadn't changed; a silver-gray cap of limestone curved out over Lake Serella, worn smooth by wind and rain. Her older brother Mohan and his friends used to hunt for fossils in these rocks; spiral-shelled creatures from an ancient sea trapped in time. She wondered if he ever brought his kids out here and tried to teach them the names the Human colonists had given some of the oldest of Paradise's original inhabitants.

  The narrow fissure that ran across the rock at the two-thirds point marked the exact end of the 20K. Torin crossed it and stumbled less than gracefully to a stop, the stiffer soles on her trail shoes sliding a little on the rock's smooth surface. Regaining her balance, she walked over to the edge and stared out at the view while she caught her breath.

  The lake gleamed more green than blue in the sunlight, a little chop whipped up by the morning breeze. It looked cold and, being spring fed, probably was. Only the hottest of summers made any noticeable difference in the lake's temperature, and if this past summer had been unusually warm, no one had mentioned it to her. A small flock of Barnard's ducks paddled about in one of the quiet coves and a pair of blue-footed hawks swooped around each other overhead. Strictly speaking, they were neither ducks nor hawks, but the colonists had reused the names they'd brought from home. That familiarity hadn't been quite so necessary on planets settled later, Torin knew, but Paradise had been the first, gifted to oldEarth after they'd not only agreed to join but to protect the Confederation.

  "Come on out," the Elder Races had said. "We'll give you advanced technology and brand-new planets to live on. We just need you to do one small thing for us. It seems we're in the middle of this war we can't solve diplomatically and, well, funny thing, we don't actually fight, so we need you to do it for us."

  "Seems like a fair trade," Humans had replied. Later, the Taykan and the Krai had said the same.

  Essentially.

  Maybe it had been a fair trade. With no idea of what life had been like on oldEarth so many years ago, Torin couldn't judge. She'd been a career Marine and a damned good one until she'd discovered that the entire war had been a social experiment by sentient, polynumerous molecular polyhydroxide alcoholydes, so it was definitely 20/20 hindsight that made her think her ancestors should have locked the doors and told the Confederation to go fuk themselves.

  Better than being screwed over by hyper-intelligent shape-shifting plastic.

  From the top of the bluff, Torin could see past the edge of the forest to where the land flattened out and green changed to the gold of harvested grain. The family's flock of hah-hahs had been turned loose into the field for gleaning although they were too small for her to spot them from here. If she'd had a helmet with her, she'd have been able to pick out individual feathers and, with one of the KC-7 sniper scopes, make an easy kill. Not that she would. No matter how obnoxious the damned birds could be.

  Leaning out a little, she could just make out the hill that covered her parents' farmhouse. They'd be finished with morning chores by now, sitting down to breakfast. Her mother would have her slate propped up on her coffee mug, and her father would be slipping bits of bacon to the cats as soon as the early news feed caught enough of her mother's attention.

  When she finally heard footsteps approaching on the trail, she sat down, legs dangling above the water. Years of experience at putting Marines through their paces kept her from looking as though she'd ever been concerned. He was walking, not running, but he wasn't breathing as hard as he had when they'd first landed. Craig Ryder might have been born on Canaberra, but he'd lived most of his life in space. Civilian salvage operators had little reason to go dirtside when the bulk of their salvage came from Naval battles between the Confederation and the Others-no, the Primacy now; Torin, of all people should remember that-and their markets were all on stations. Paradise hadn't been easy on him.

  Her family, on the other hand, had adored him.

  But then, he could be a charming son of a bitch when he wanted to. It was one of the first things she'd noticed about him, back when the last thing on her mind had been taking him home to meet her family.

  "Ace view." He dropped to sit beside her, nudging her with a sweaty shoulder.

  "Strategically important," Torin pointed out. "Controlling the high ground gives us the edge."

  "While we sit here jawing, those ducks are probably planning a doomed assault."

  She grinned. "If they get into the air, that'll give them the advantage."

  "Should I be worried?"

  "I can take them."

  "Good." Bracing his right arm behind him, Craig twisted around to rub his left thumb along the top of her cheeks. "Your father's right; you're picking up some pink."

  She wrapped her fingers around his wrist and tugged his hand down between them. "My father worries too much. Don't you start." Torin had inherited her mother's brown hair and eyes, but her less than generous portion of melanin came directly from her father. Both her brothers had a significantly higher natural tolerance for UV radiation and were obnoxiously smug about it.

  A barred loon called from the far end of the lake.

  "Easy to see why you love it here," Craig murmured, leaning in and kissing her softly. "And," he added, pulling away, "easy to see why you left. This place is so fukking bucolic, I keep wanting to punch something."

  Torin leaned forward and caught his mouth with hers, fingers of her free hand threading through the long, sweaty spikes of his hair. This kiss was messy and carnal and stole away most of the ability to breathe he'd regained after his run. "Oh, thank the fukking gods," she said after a minute, resting her forehead against his. "I was afraid all the damned pie had convinced you to stay longer."

  Blue eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled. "Not a chance. If we shoot out before dawn and break a few speed limits, odds are on we can trade in our tickets and catch tomorrow's shuttle up to the station. Sleep on the Promise tomorrow night." The smile slipped. "You really are pinking up, Torin."

  "Then I guess I need to cool down."

  Craig's shoulders and arms were heavily muscled enough to pull his torso out of proportion to his legs, even at 1.9 meters tall, but he didn't have much leverage and Torin had maintained her grip on his wrist.

  Also, she believed in doing what was necessary in order to win, up to and including fighting dirty. She didn't so much throw him off the bluff as take him off with her.

  The water was as cold as it looked. "Net's away, Captain!"

  Leaning back in his command chair, Mackenzie Cho, scrapped a thumbnail ov
er his stubble, the soft shup shup shup adding to the background noise, and listened to Huirre counting down the distance until contact.

  "Twenty kilometers. Fifteen kilometers."

  "Firebreather's Susumi engines have come on-line, Captain!" di'Berinango Dysun half turned from her station, eyes darkened to a burnt orange, hair flipping around her head in a tangerine aurora.

  The three di'Taykan on the crew had been running from trouble on their home world before signing on, but given the differences in Human and Taykan aging, they were still little more than kids out looking for thrills. Dysun was a natural in the control room, though-followed orders like she'd been trained to it-and both her thytrins had skills he could use.

  When Cho jerked a thumb toward Dysun's board, she whirled back around, adding, "They must've seen the net."

  "Not your job to speculate," he growled.

  "Five kilometers," Huirre announced.

  It was possible, Cho allowed, that the civilian salvage operator at the controls of the Firebreather had been feeding data into their Susumi equations since leaving the debris field, cargo pen bulging with salvage. It was possible the Susumi engines coming on-line had nothing to do with the approaching net. And if the Susumi drive didn't kick in before the net covered the final three kilometers, it wouldn't matter.

  "Two, one… we have contact! Anchor lines have caught the pen, net is spreading."

  "Power up the buoys."

  Huirre slapped his board. "Aye, aye, Captain!"

  "Susumi engines are powering down." This time, Dysun kept her eyes on the data.

  Of course the engines were powering down. Only a suicidal fool would fold into Susumi space when their equations had just been fukked beyond correction. Galaxy-class battle cruisers with a full complement of Susumi engineers had slammed out of Susumi space into unforgiving solid objects because of a missed decimal, so a seat-of-the-pants pilot and a cheap computer had no chance with the random pulsing from the buoys making an accurate equation the next thing to impossible.

  Some might say actually impossible.

  Cho didn't believe in the impossible. There was always a way. Case in point: in spite of a dishonorable discharge from the Confederation Navy designed to force him into jobs well below his skill level and ambition, he'd still gotten his captain's ticket. Even if he'd had to take it by force.

  The days when some idiot with a bit of braid, a fool who'd got his rank from luck rather than skill could order him around were over. Long over.

  "Captain, the Firebreather is coming around."

  "Interesting." Straightening, he stared up at the large screen he'd had installed to give the illusion of an external view in spite of the bridge having been buried deep in the bowels of the ship for safety. Most CSOs cut their losses at this point, dumped their pens, engaged their default equations, and left the victor the spoils. Against all odds, the Firebreather was coming around. "I wonder if they've forgotten what happens to ships that challenge us?" he said thoughtfully.

  Huirre snorted. "No one's challenged for a while, have they?"

  An excellent point, Cho admitted silently. Memory being what it was, it was past time to remind the salvage operators that resistance was useless. Get them talking again about the Heart of Stone and her merciless captain.

  "Captain." Dysun's hair had flattened against her head. "I'm picking up a strange energy signal."

  "Define strange?"

  "Like a…"

  The bridge shuddered as the Heart of Stone took a hit.

  "Like a weapon?" Cho asked quietly.

  Her shoulders rose a little at the threat in his voice. "Yes, sir."

  Confederation law put all weapons in the hands of the military. CSOs were supposed to run crying for help while the Navy-buzzing around with their collective heads up their collective asses because the war had turned out to be a big fukking joke-did sweet fuk all about the big, bad pirates. Seemed like this fool hadn't got the memo.

  "Huirre."

  "Captain?"

  "Don't damage the pen."

  The Krai grinned. On a species able to not only eat, but digest pretty much any organic matter in known space, the baring of teeth gained an added significance Cho appreciated. Huirre danced the fingers of both hands and the long, prehensile toes of one foot across his board.

  An instant later, the bow of the Firebreather exploded, creating a miniature starburst of debris.

  "Two bodies, Captain."

  One of the things Cho liked best about Dysun, about all three di'Taykan, was their lack of concern when people died. People always ended up dying in his business.

  "No life signs," she added.

  "Damage?"

  "Uh…" Confused, Dysun waved at the screen. "The shot probably killed them, but they might have decompressed…"

  "He means damage to the Heart, you serley idiot," Huirre muttered. "We took some outer hull damage by the cargo bay, got one of our sensor arrays completely fukking fried, and I'm betting…" He nodded toward the flashing lights on the comm panel. "… Krisk wants to know what the fuk is going on."

  "Take us in alongside the pen," Cho ordered, then opened the channel to engineering, cutting Krisk off in mid rave with a terse, "Shut up. If there's no breach and no chance of a breach, that salvage remains our first concern. Make sure the hatch to the cargo bay hasn't been compromised. I'm on my way down."

  The Heart of Stone had been designed as a scout ship for the Navy. When Cho'd taken it over, he'd doubled her firepower and added a cargo bay. Fortunately, vacuum didn't care about aerodynamics. In his line of work, he couldn't waste time reworking Susumi equations for every piece of crap they picked up-space was big, sure, but there was always a chance the Navy could accidentally stumble over them while they were sitting around dividing by the cube root of who the fuk cares. Cargo had to fit inside the ship's set parameters.

  When he arrived in the extension, delayed a few minutes by a sparking panel near the air lock that joined the old and new, the outer hatch was open and Dysun's thytrins were working the grapples, plucking the salvage out of the Firebreather's pen.

  "Pen's too big to fit inside," Almon explained before Cho could ask what the hell they were doing. Eyes locked on the screen, he had so many light receptors open very little of the pale yellow remained. "Don't know what this guy found, Captain, but he found one fuk of a lot of it."

  The deck plates quivered as something big came under the influence of the artificial gravity on the other side of the inner hatch.

  "Sorry, Captain." Nadayki, the youngest of the three di'Taykan, flashed him a nervous smile, lime-green hair jerking back and forth in a nervous arc.

  Cho smiled back. Nadayki's trouble with the law had been the reason the three had initially gone on the run. The Taykan were stupid when it came to family loyalties. "You dent my ship and I'll space you."

  "He will, too. Space you soon as look at you. Mackenzie Cho's the meanest son of a bitch in this end of the galaxy."

  "How many times do I have to tell you to stop calling my mother names?" Cho said quietly as Nat Forester moved up to stand just behind his left shoulder, slate in hand.

  "At least once more, Cap. Krisk says he needs condenser parts and Doc says if you pitch another field kitchen, he's going to throw six kinds of fit."

  "That kitchen had been slagged."

  Nat shrugged. "He says he could have fixed it. And he likes the food."

  "The food is crap."

  "Not arguing, but Doc likes it and there's always a market for kitchens. You're letting your prejudices cut into profits."

  "It's not prejudice. I know the food they turn out is crap."

  "And I know," his quartermaster grunted, "that these two'd probably work faster if you weren't peering over their shoulders."

  "Sucks to be them."

  In spite of the captain's presence, or maybe because of it, the two di'Taykan worked full out for almost two hours, creating a complex three-dimensional jigsaw of captured salvage in order to f
it it into the available space. Finally, Almon sighed and said, "Cargo's locked and loaded, Captain."

  "Noted." Cho raised his voice slightly; the comm pickups in the extension could be temperamental. "Huirre."

  "Captain."

  "Turn us toward home." They'd kick on the Susumi drive after he and Nat had the cargo sorted, separated the crap from the cream, and ditched the crap.

  "Aye, sir. Home it is." The subtext-about fukking time-came through loud and clear, but they'd been roaming for a while, looking for a prize worth the trip, so he let it go.

  "Cap and I going to fit in there?" Nat wondered, peering past Almon at his screen.

  "No. Too tight." Almon turned just far enough to wink at her, a Human gesture the di'Taykan had wholeheartedly adopted. "Tight's good."

  Nat winked back. "Not arguing, kid."

  The di'Taykan were known as the most sexually indiscriminating species in known space, but tossing innuendo at Nat Forester put them above and beyond. Cho trusted Nat with his life, but he'd fuk Huirre first. And given that Huirre had been involved with a cartel that provided Human body parts to Krai kitchens, that was saying something.

  "That's not so much tight as wall to fukking wall," Nat snorted, transferring her attention from Almon's screen to her own. "Crowded enough we'll have to use the eye for first sort." She called up the controls on her slate one-handed, then ran the hand back through short gray hair. "Eye gives me fukking vertigo. Let's just hope I don't puke."

  "Don't," Cho told her, his own slate ready.

  "Yes, sir, Cap. Because my stomach always does what you tell it."

  It was a good prize, Cho acknowledged as he guided the remote camera around and through what were clearly parts retrieved from a single destroyed battle cruiser. Looked like they'd scored some of the Marine package, too, he realized as the eye picked out the crest of the Corps on a…

  "Holy fukking shit."

  "Cap?"

  He fed her slate the coordinates without speaking.

  "Holy fukking shit," she agreed a moment later. "Now that's worth puking over."