A truth of Valor c-5 Read online

  Torin exchanged a speaking glance with Craig about the amount of visible plastic, then stepped out of the way as half a dozen shouting kids-Human and Krai-charged past. The dominant scent seemed to be fried egg, and she wondered where the chickens were. Chickens had adapted remarkably well to space, and eggs provided a protein source that not even those Elder Races who professed to be appalled by the taking of life for food could get all more-evolved-than-thou about.

  Small kiosks, selling what looked like everything from body parts to engine parts, dotted the actual docking area although very few people seemed interested in the merchandise on display. The twenty or so people Torin could see stood around in small groups. The di'Taykan's hair lay flat, and everyone's body language shouted waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  Waiting to see if one of theirs had been attacked by pirates.

  No. Waiting to see if one of hers had been attacked by pirates.

  Because these were her people now.

  Given that, Torin took another look around. Used to be, she could pick her people out of a mixed group because they were part of a whole. Marines, for all the physical differences inherent in three separate species, had a similarity of movement written on bone and muscle by training and experience. Even in a crowd of civilians, they were aware of each other and could be pulled into a unit with a word.

  Their decision to take up the responsibility of defending the vast bulk of Confederation space and the nonaggressive species that lived there kept them a people apart.

  These new people had decided to live apart, their only connection that decision.

  As she followed Pedro across the docking area, she noted that Craig had been identified as one of them. A few greeted him by name, but as they were moving purposefully toward a destination, no one tried to pull him out of formation. In contrast, she had been identified as "other." All of the children and most of the adults in the market stared openly at her. Most of the stares were speculative, those who recognized her passing the news on to those who didn't. Some of the adults seemed openly hostile. Until they were in a position to open fire, Torin didn't give a H'san's ass about hostile. No one ever bled out as the result of a pissy expression.

  Conversations ebbed and flowed as they passed and, in their wake, she could hear movement from group to group picking up.

  Civilian salvage operators self-identified as individuals, accepted only the minimal government authority necessary for them to operate. Their obsessive need to be unique was what gave them their group identity, and the single word that would pull her Marines together would scatter this lot like a fragmentation round.

  These new people she could identity because of their desire not to be part of a whole.

  It was… different.

  She heard her name, Silsviss, Big Yellow, Crucible, the di'Taykan phrase that meant progenitor, and the familiar sound of speculation.

  Same old, same old.

  As "individuals," they were clearly not averse to gossip. Pedro and his family lived in an old cargo ship built into the structure of the station. Torin followed Craig into the cargo bay and stared around at the piles of… salvage, she assumed, although junk would be as accurate. Seconds after they'd stepped through the hatch, half a dozen kids-ranging in age from early teens to just past toddler-threw themselves at Craig. As he didn't seem to be in any danger, Torin turned her attention to the three adults descending the metal stairs from the living quarters on the upper levels.

  "Torin, these are my wives Alia and Jenn and my husband Kevin. The horde is ours collectively. There's an air lock there," Pedro continued, nodding at the control panel Torin had already noticed on the far side of the bay, "and another one off the kitchen. We've got a ship a little bigger than the Promise locked in up there and another about twice as large down here. If the klaxon goes, don't worry about which one you end up in. Closest adult grabs the kids, singly or collectively, then sings out so everyone knows where they are. We'll shuffle around once we're clear."

  It was the first time Torin had ever been given emergency evacuation protocols mixed in with introductions, but what the hell.

  "So you're the one sucking back half of Craig's precious oxygen," Alia extended a hand. "Never thought I'd see the day."

  She was missing the top joint of her second finger. It looked like an old injury, long since healed. Torin had never known anyone-and she'd seen a lot of injuries-who'd refused the medical advances the Confederation offered.

  Alia noticed Torin staring. "No regen tanks here," she explained, "and I just couldn't be arsed to get to a government station. By the time I had time, didn't see any point in regrowing something I didn't miss."

  "I see." It was the tone Torin'd used on officers when they were being enthusiastic about something particularly stupid. Polite interest; no noticeable approval.

  Jenn and Kevin were huggers. They were both packing serviceable muscle.

  "I was going to be a Marine." The child tugging at her jacket was somewhere between five and ten, gender indeterminate, with Pedro's rich, dark skin and Jenn's green eyes. "But Da says the war is over. Are you going to have to stop killing people now?"

  Torin thought about it long enough Craig turned from his conversation with Kevin and asked the question again, silently.

  "As things stand right now," she said at last. On the way up the stairs, she dragged two fingers along the gray plastic handrail.

  Later, after an amazing meal, where everyone present provided her with enough potential blackmail material to even out the stories her family had told to Craig, Pedro sat down beside her on the sofa and said, "He really loves you."

  "Is this the if you hurt him, I'll do you speech?" Torin wondered, watching Craig racing with Helena, the fourteen year old, on the room's bigger vid screen. He was working his slate one-handed and using the other to poke Helena and make her fall off her hoverboard into the snow. Helena knew some words Torin hadn't learned until she got to the Corps.

  Pedro snorted. "Yeah. Pretty much."

  "Noted." "He's still not talking, Cap."

  Cho's fingers curled into fists, and he carefully uncurled them. "Have you tried convincing him?"

  "I have. I even sent the di'Taykan in without their maskers." Nat snickered. "Thought maybe all that sexual frustration might loosen his lips."

  The di'Taykan exuded pheromones that crossed species boundaries-and if there was a species outside the Methane Alliance that was immune, Cho'd never heard of them. Without the maskers they wore, arousal levels were at best irritating and at worst painful. "And?"

  "Well, he started talking all right. Old bugger was downright inventive. Almon got pretty pissed when I hauled their multicolored asses out of there before they could follow through." She dug her fingernails in through the short bristles of her hair and brought them away bloody after a vigorous scratch. "Oh, fuk it. I knew that damned cream of Doc's wouldn't work."

  Cho stared down at the image of the armory on his slate. Rogelio Page had been working the same scattered debris field for years. A crazy old loner, even by CSO standards, he'd never salvaged anything Cho would consider worth taking from him, but he was easy to find and easy to grapple right off the side of his pen. Almon had deftly set the hooks in the old man's HE suit and reeled him in, kicking and swearing the whole way. Checking the meager contents of Page's pen while Nat took care of getting his codes, Cho had no idea how the old man managed to find enough salable salvage to stay alive, but he supposed if staying alive was all a man cared about, it didn't take much.

  Cho wanted more. A lot more. To begin with, he wanted that fukking armory open.

  "Let Doc talk to him."

  Nat paused in mid scratch. "You serious, Cap? Page is a stubborn old bastard, and Doc's not exactly subtle."

  He took a deep breath and let it out slowly through his nose. "I want those codes."

  Nat recognized the tone. "Aye, Cap."

  "Tell Doc, I'm going in with him."

  The old man grinned as Cho led Doc into the room. His teeth were bloody, bruises were rising on pale, loose skin, and he was still half erect in spite of the air scrubbers. "So you're the fly in charge of this shit pile." He spat, the mouthful of bloody saliva spattering over the toe of Cho's left boot. "Looks like we can finally get this show on the road."

  Cho raised a hand, holding Doc in place. "Give me your codes and I'll put you back on your ship."

  To his surprise, Page laughed. The laughter turned into coughing. "Liar," Page gasped, and spat again. "Only one reason scum like you wants government codes. You got something big-something big enough to compensate for the size of your dick and that's one fuk of a lot of compensating, so I'm thinking weapons. One really big one or lots of little ones, don't matter. You're not getting my fukking codes."

  "Give me your codes," Cho told him, barely managing to keep his voice level, "and I'll kill you quickly."

  "The fuk you will," Page snorted. "You'll have your trained ape kill me quick." He narrowed the eye that still worked, looked past Cho, and locked his gaze on Doc's face. "I've seen your type before, boy. You wanted Recon or Ranger, but you were too crazy even for those crazy fukkers."

  Doc showed no reaction to Page's accusation. Less than no reaction.

  "No one tried to convince you too hard to stay, after your first contract ran out, did they, boy? No, it was, 'so long, Private, have a nice life. Hell, have a shitty life, just have it away from us.' " Taking a deep breath, Page straightened as much as age and the earlier beatings allowed. "Sergeant Rogelio Page, 3rd Division, 1st Re'carta, 4th Battalion, Serra Company, Confederation Marine Corps. Do your worst."

  Dropping his hand, Cho stepped to one side. "You heard the man."

  He was, he admitted nearly an hour later, impressed with how l
ong Doc had kept Page alive and more or less coherent. Sure there'd been screaming and moaning, but there'd been actual words as well. The ending, however, came as no surprise.

  During the questioning, Doc's hair had come loose and the strands hanging around his face were stiff with blood, drawing lines of red against his bare shoulders as he turned, blue eyes looking even bluer within the crimson splatters. "Sorry, Captain. He's gone. Heart gave out. If you want my opinion, he wasn't going to talk anyway."

  "I don't want your opinion," Cho growled. So close, so fukking close! With the weapons in that locker, things would be different. He'd get… no, he'd take what he deserved. No more just accepting the shit the universe threw at him. He needed that locker open!

  "Goddamned fukking stubborn old fool!" Pivoting on one foot, he spun around and slammed his fist into the bulkhead.

  Even over the sound of the impact, he heard his knuckle crack.

  The pain hit a moment later.

  "Let me look at it, Captain." Doc's fingers were sticky, but his touch was sure. "Yeah, you broke it. Come on, let's get to sick bay and I'll shoot you full of blockers. You won't feel a thing when I bond it."

  Hand cradled against his chest, Cho shook his head. It was never smart to access the two halves of Doc's personality too close together. "I'll meet you up there after I get us moving. No point in lingering out here any longer."

  Doc nodded, his hair dripping red as he tied it back. "If you take too long, I'll come looking for you."

  Cho waited until the other man left the room, then crossed to Page's body. "Just to set the record straight," he growled, "Doc was a medical officer, CMO on the Seraphim. You remember the Seraphim. Two hundred and thirteen survivors from a crew of five thousand. Doc, he's a walking, talking fukking casualty of war. Huirre!"

  "Aye, Captain?"

  "Best time to Vrijheid."

  He could feel how badly Huirre wanted to ask if Doc had been successful but, after a long moment the Krai erred on the side of self-preservation and said only, "Aye, aye, Captain!" Torin woke the next morning to an incoming message from the station OS. Brian Larson had found the missing Firebreather, her hull breached and her pen abandoned. He'd salvaged the debris and had begun scanning the immediate area for bodies.

  "Bodies." Craig scratched the matted hair on his chest and padded across the cabin to start the coffee, shaking his head. "Why the hell would they put up a fight?"

  "You don't usually?"

  He blinked, visibly replayed both lines of dialogue in his head, then backtracked so far he'd have been outside the ship had he been actually moving. "With what? Confederation law specifically states, all weapons are to remain in the hands of the military. What?" he demanded when Torin raised a brow.

  "While we circled the station looking for a lock, I saw at least seven ships armed with salvaged weapons. They weren't obvious, but they were unmistakable if you know what to look for. These ships wouldn't be able to sell back to the military or any reputable recycling yard without being brought up on charges, but I'm betting someone on this station, on any salvage station, is willing to act as a middleman, providing legal tags for a price and buying the tagged salvage back."

  "Torin…"

  "You wondered why the Firebreather put up a fight, so you knew they were armed."

  He stared at her for a long moment then he smiled. "I keep forgetting you're no drongo. Smarter than you look."

  "You keep forgetting," she told him levelly, not responding to the smile, "that we're in this together now."

  "I'm sorry." Craig drew in a deep breath and exhaled quickly. "We're big on minding our own bizzo, us."

  She thought back to crossing the station's market, the clear division between us and them. Between us and her. "I'm part of that we now."

  "I know. Old habits."

  "Get over them."

  This was an entirely different smile. "Yes, Gunnery Sergeant."

  What the hell. She could stay mad, or she could recognize she'd be sharing a small space with this person-that she wanted to share a small space with this person-for the foreseeable future. "What did I tell you about calling me that out of bed?"

  He laughed then, a little relieved, a little turned on, and got the mugs out of storage. "So I guess the question is, what the fuk did they find that was worth dying for?"

  Torin stretched out on the bunk and ran possible scenarios in her head.

  "Torin?"

  She glanced up at him. "What the fuk did they find that was worth keeping away from pirates?"

  Craig poured both mugs of coffee before asking, "Isn't that the same question?"

  "Not quite."

  TWO

  TORIN HAD ASSUMED THEY'D STAY to honor the dead. She'd seen enough death over the years to know the importance of celebrating lives lived. She'd seen enough death recently-her entire company, most of her GCT, and a prison planet of Marines she'd all but promised to free-that the Corps psychologists had come to the conclusion she had to be repressing at extreme levels in order to even function. In turn, she'd come to a few conclusions about the Corps psychologists, and they'd parted on terms of mutual dislike.

  Holding onto the living rather than the dead was not repressing. Binti Mashona and Ressk were all that had survived of Sh'quo Company, Miransha Kichar and Werst all that had survived of their recon unit. Kichar had stayed in, the other three had left the Corps around the same time Torin had. Kyster, di'Hern Darlys and di'Ameliten Wataru-the other Krai and the two di'Taykan who'd escaped the prison planet with them-had taken medical discharges and disappeared into the population of their respective home planets. Torin kept an eye out for Kyster, but, as Darlys had been the instigator of Torin as a progenitor, she'd let the di'Taykan go.

  Torin'd served with Staff Sergeant Daniel Johnston, Kichar's senior NCO, and he'd already sent one detailed message about the young Marine's progress. And how crazy she was driving him. And how far she'd likely go if she could just dial it back a little. Torin found it comforting to know Kichar hadn't been changed by knowledge of the plastic aliens. Torin hadn't spent any civilian time with Mashona, Ressk, and Werst, but she knew where they were and they knew where she was and that fell somewhere between comforting and necessary.

  Torin hadn't known Jan and Sirin, hadn't even met them; they were additions to Craig's dead, not hers.

  Craig had Pedro help him set up training exercises, teaching Torin to deploy the Promise's pen, load various types of "salvage," and then check that the correct variable had been entered into the computer's Susumi equation. When that paled, she spent time running pilot simulation programs-maneuvering around debris fields, finding the best position for most efficient grappling of salvageable pieces. It was necessary training, and Torin gave it the same attention she'd given the training that had allowed her to stay alive while doing her old job but, at the same time, it was clear that they were actually waiting.

  Jan and Sirin hadn't been wearing HE suits when attacked, so it took Brian four days to find them, sweeping the area around the remains of the Firebreather with his scanners tuned to pick up DNA. It was a function the CSOs used to scan battle debris for residual tissue and many a military family owed them for whatever closure they'd been able to achieve.

  When he had both bodies finally on board, Brian's message to the station was short and to the point. "Got them. Coming home."

  With people free to mourn, the mood around the station changed. Now, they knew what they were waiting for.

  "What do you mean, the attack hasn't been reported to the Wardens?"

  Craig pushed a hand back through his hair and sighed. "What's the point, Torin? The Wardens can't bring Jan and Sirin back to life."

  "No, but they can catch the bastards who killed them."

  "How?"

  "How?" Torin repeated. She paced the length of the cabin, seven strides and back again. "Isn't it what they do?"

  "Do they?" Craig dropped his feet off the edge of the control panel. The chair protested as he spun it to face her. "They haven't hauled ass to send in the Navy, have they?"

  No, they hadn't. And Presit hadn't gotten back to her. Torin spread her arms. "It isn't right that the people who killed Jan and Sirin will get away with it."