Valor's Trial

by Tanya Huff

  “I can . . . I . . .” He ran a hand back over the bristles on his scalp and finally settled on the one answer he knew she wanted. “Yes, Gunnery Sergeant.”

  Pole wasn’t happy about waiting for the second helping, but he understood. “Evening meal’s never enough,” he told her, struggling to stand.

  Torin indicated he should stay seated and squatted beside him. “How often do they feed you? Us.”

  Pole ignored the slip. “We line up for a bowl of this shit night and morning—bowl’s are filled to the point seven five, but I’m guessing that’s because that bastard Harnett was skimming—and two biscuits in the middle of the . . .” He frowned. “. . . the day I guess you’d call it. While the light’s on. Bowl of water every time.”

  That was a liter and a half of water plus the water in the kibble. Not a lot, but enough when the day’s activity consisted of lining up to be fed and then sitting on a pallet waiting for the next meal. Two fair-sized bowls of food, though, plus biscuits—Torin hadn’t eaten in almost forty hours and the mush she’d just eaten left her feeling, if not full, satisfied. Of course, it had been a nearly full bowl and it hadn’t been all she’d been eating for months, but still, if Harnett had only skimmed off two full meals’ worth plus extra for a dozen goons . . . it didn’t quite add up to starvation.

  “What about Harnett’s guards, Gunny?”

  “I expect they’ve been eating regularly; they can wait until the next scheduled meal.”

  “Not exactly what I meant. Point is, they’re Harnett’s.” He noddedtoward the six survivors. “Right now, this lot’s shitting themselves every time they look at you, but that won’t last forever.” When Torin raised a brow, he grinned. “All right, maybe it will, but eventually they’ll realize they have the advantage of numbers, and they’ll try to take you down. Try to get back what you took from them.”

  “Won’t happen.”

  “There’s three more out guarding his barricade—I have no idea from what,” he answered before she could ask. “But something kicked the shit out of one of his hunting parties, and he built the barricade right after that. You’ve got a couple of days before you have to deal with them, though. There’s six still out in the tunnels, and they’re due back any minute.”

  “Three.”

  “Three?” He glanced down at the knife in her boot. “Ah. Three out there and five here. You had an impressive day. But you can’t kill them all.”

  “I can.” That could never be brought into question. “But I don’t intend to.”

  “You’re thinking of using one of the small caves as a prison, then? Won’t work.” The fingers of one hand scratched hard under the edge of his beard. “There’s no way of knowing where new Marines are going to end up. One ends up in with them, and they’ve got leverage.”

  “True. But Harnett wanted followers, people who would obey his orders without question. That’s an appalling description of a Marine, and he scraped the bottom of the barrel to find them, but we can use it. Now they’ll obey Major Kenoton without question.”

  “They’ll obey you,” Pole snorted.

  “It amounts to the same thing.”

  “Because you’ll obey Major Kenoton.”

  “Of course.”

  He laughed then. It sounded rusty, jagged, a little as though he’d forgotten how. Several heads turned, expressions suggesting they, in turn, had forgotten the sound. “Well, I’m convinced, Gunny. You might actually manage to pull this whole shitty thing as far out of the crapper as it’ll come. You want platoons formed?”

  “I do.” She trusted the sergeants to group their people wisely.

  “No one’s got enough strength to march around.”

  “Pull the pallets into ranks, then.” She didn’t help him stand, but it was close. “We can use the fabric to create a communal area for the di’Taykan.”

  Pole shook his head. “Only Harnett’s people know how the tech works.”

  “Then they’ll teach the rest of us what they know.”

  “And lose the leverage, Gunny? Not likely.”

  Torin smiled. “I said I didn’t intend to kill them, Staff. I didn’t say I was against cracking a few heads together.”

  “Well, the di’Taykan will appreciate it once they’re fed up enough to regain interest. Which brings us to your other problem; what happens when everyone’s fed up enough to regain interest and what they’re interested in is taking all the shit they went through out on Harnett’s goons?”

  “By then, they’ll remember they’re Marines.”

  Pole’s smile was a little sad as he closed a thin hand around her arm. “Marines are just people, Gunny, and there’s nothing more petty and vicious than people. When you give them a uniform and a weapon, you don’t change that.”

  “We don’t just give them a uniform and a weapon, Staff Sergeant. We give them a uniform, a weapon, and something to believe in.” She swept a gaze over the faces turned toward them and nodded as weakened bodies sat a little straighter. “They’ll believe in it again.”

  “Believe in what, Gunny?”

  She looked at him then. Staff Sergeant Pole was taller, but his captivity had curled him in on himself until they were eye to eye. “Believe in us, Staff Sergeant. You and me and everyone else who accepted the responsibility of leading them. We do our job, we take care of our people, the rest falls into place.”

  “And it’s just that simple?”

  Her turn to snort. “Fuk, no. It’s the hardest Goddamned job in known space, and we were fools to take it on. But now we’re stuck with it. Get those pallets divided by platoons; I’m going to have Harnett’s lot clear out the bodies.”

  The bodies were still lying where they’d fallen. Torin stared down at them for a moment, rolled the meat that had been Edwards onto his back away from the blood with the side of her boot, and then beckoned Harnett’s survivors over. “All right, let’s move this lot out of here.”

  Arms folded, a Human female curled her lip and snarled, “Move them where, Gunnery Sergeant?”

  Torin smiled gently at her, a smile usually directed to those with head injuries and impaired brain function. “To where the bodies go, Private.” There were no bodies piled up in the corners; there were no Krai in Harnett’s organization and no way in hell Harnett would feed any of the Krai he was oppressing; there had obviously been deaths. Therefore, there had to be a place where the bodies went. Jailors who provided self-cleaning dishes wouldn’t leave something like that to chance. “Two to a corpse.”

  One corpse left over.

  “Gunnery Sergeant Kerr? Staff Sergeant Pole said we should help.”

  The two Marines were thin but not quite over the line to emaciated. Torin assumed they were the last to arrive before her and Werst.

  “And you two are?”

  “Lance Corporal Divint and Private Sergei, Gunnery Sergeant. Seven, two, two, Delta Company.”

  Torin frowned, trying to remember where she’d last heard that designation. Someone she’d run into in the SRM on Ventris. Someone on course . . . “Staff Sergeant Arklan was with seven, two, two, Delta.”

  The lance corporal nodded. “Don’t know if he survived the battle, Gunny, but he’s not down here with us.”

  Divint had a scar on his cheek, still red on the pale skin just above the line of his dark whiskers. Sergei had a single honey-blonde braid hanging down her back and a triangular tear in the right shoulder of her combats. As she still had a right shoulder, Torin made a mental note to find out what had happened. They didn’t look like they could even lift a di’Taykan body, let alone carry it to the disposal site, but if Pole thought they could do it, and they thought they could do it, she’d let them try.

  Rest stops wouldn’t matter to the dead.

  “All right, then.” She nodded toward the smallest corpse—relatively speaking—and was pleased to see they had sense enough not to be insulted by the choice.

  The Human female, on the other hand, wasn’t happy to find herself standi
ng over Edwards. “He’s too heavy.”

  Akemi, waiting at Edwards’ feet, flicked her eyes through dark to light and back again, the di’Tayken equivalent of an eye roll.

  “Suck it up, Private . . . ?”

  “Terantowicz, Gunnery Sergeant.” Only three words, but dripping with attitude.

  Of the six surviving goons—ignoring for the moment the three still in the tunnels—Terantowicz would be the one to instigate a coup. The first to say, There’s just one of her and there’s still plenty of us and we can be on top again. Torin could see it in the way she kept glancing around as if she didn’t quite believe what had happened. She burned with the kind of ambition that needed an outlet. The odds were good that somewhere barely acknowledged in the back of her mind, she’d had plans to replace Harnett. She hadn’t been chosen because she’d blindly follow orders—Torin was willing to bet she’d volunteered.

  “Gunnery Sergeant Kerr!”

  “Corporal Werst.” Torin turned, brow raised.

  “Major Kenoton told me to join you.” Not my fault I’m here, said the subtext.

  Torin wanted to ask if Major Kenoton expected Werst to help “guard the prisoners.” Since she couldn’t, she took her own advice and sucked it up.

  It turned out there was a latrine trench at the base of every other wall. Covered with a substance that allowed as little surface adhesion as the bowls, the trench angled off steeply under the cut rock.

  “How far does the slope go?” Torin wondered as they passed.

  “About two meters, Gunnery Sergeant,” Private Jiyuu told her quickly, tone and delivery saying see how useful I can be, “then it falls at ninety degrees. Doesn’t get any wider, though.”

  “How did you know we measured it?” Terantowicz demanded, hands shoved under Edwards’ armpits, breathing heavily as she carried most of the weight.

  “Harnett was exploiting a hundred Marines with sixteen goons.” Torin indicated that Akemi should put just a little more effort into it. “Therefore, Harnett had all options covered.”

  “You talk like you knew him,” the younger woman sneered.

  “No one’s entirely unique, Private Terantowicz. And some people are less unique than most.”

  She chose to take that personally but switched her protest to what could be more easily understood. “Yeah, well, we weren’t goons!”

  “Really? Because you sure as fuk weren’t Marines.”

  “But now you’re here?”

  “That’s up to you, isn’t it?”

  Terantowicz’s expression suggested that if it were up to her, Torin’s head would be doing a full three sixty sometime soon.

  The position of the latrines explained why the scent of waste was higher in Harnett’s tents. He and his, too good to walk across half the diameter of the node to take a leak, had likely used pots that someone else emptied for a little bit more food. The three Marines he’d been keeping as playthings had certainly not been allowed out to use the latrines.

  Given a chance to do it over, she’d have killed him more slowly. And enjoyed it.

  At the base of the wall designated Wall One—Jiyuu helpfully numbered each of the walls and their corresponding tunnels—was a circular pit a little better than a meter and a half in diameter. The trapdoor seemed to be made of the same metal as the central pipe, Torin realized as she bent and opened it, leaning it against the wall.

  When you get a moment, she reminded herself, you need to examine that pipe.

  It could wait. The pipe was a constant. She needed to deal with the variables first. She couldn’t work on leaving until they’d been brought into line, until she knew Kenoton and Pole together had things under control.

  About six centimeters thick, the trapdoor was lighter than it looked like it should be. The pit itself had the same slick lining as the latrines. Without a direct light source—and habit had her slap the light in her cuff, which continued not to work—Torin couldn’t see the bottom.

  “No idea how deep it is, Gunnery Sergeant,” Jiyuu said apologetically, and she barely stopped herself from reacting with violence. This he chose to be sorry for? “We could never get a read on it. Easiesr to show you why.”

  Torin stopped him before he and Maekan could slide Harnett’s body into the pit. “Strip him first. Strip all of them.”

  “To the victor goes the spoils,” Terantowicz muttered as Edwards’ body hit the floor.

  Torin turned just far enough to catch her gaze. And hold it.

  Terantowicz grinned. Her gaze flickered up and over Torin’s left shoulder.

  Torin’s expression never changed. When Bakune charged her from behind, clearly intending to sweep her into the pit, she leaned away from his rush, grabbed the front of his uniform and directed his momentum.

  They’d never measured the pit because matter entering it set off a charge.

  Bakune managed a sound that might have grown into a scream had a flash of light and the sharp tang of ozone not cut it off as his head passed below the lip of the pit. One hand closed around the edge with a desperate grip, then the fingers spasmed and slid free.

  There was surprisingly little smell.

  “Too bright to see what actually happened, Gunny,” Werst reported from the edge. “But I’m betting the body was destroyed.”

  “Odds are good,” Torin acknowledged, finally allowing a visibly shaken Terantowicz to look away. “I’m not happy about losing the tech the Corps built into Bakune’s combats. Just because it’s not working now doesn’t mean it can’t be repaired.”

  The other bodies were stripped with impressive speed.

  “Waste of meat,” Werst murmured beside her as Harnett’s corpse was slid feetfirst over the edge.

  “Take it up with the major, Corporal.”

  He snorted. “Pass, Gunny. You notice there were no Krai among Harnett’s gertiv.”

  She wasn’t familiar with the word, but the context sufficed. “Not a lot of Krai in the infantry, Werst, so don’t get smug. He was choosing for size.”

  “If I was di’Taykan, I’d have a response for that.”

  “If you were di’Taykan,” Torin admitted, “I wouldn’t have said it.”

  “So, Gunny, about that guard post Harnett had out in the tunnels.” When she looked down, his nose ridges were opening and closing in a slow, rhythmic wave from top to bottom. “What are they keeping out?”

  “Something that beat the crap out of one of his hunting parties. That seems to be all anyone knows. Kyster saw them go by; doesn’t know what did it, though.”

  “It’d be like the Others to drop a few surprises in here with us.”

  “Can’t see why,” Torin muttered. “It’s not like the Others to take prisoners.”

  Werst snorted. “They’d better take prisoners, Gunny. Because if this is the afterlife, I’m feeling a little fukked over.”

  “Yeah, you and me both.” Later, she’d have to find the point where the tunnels intersected the lava flow, where Harnett had been mining his blades and . . . A sudden realization cut the thought off. “Where did the wood come from for the handles of the clubs?”

  “It’s not wood,” Jiyuu told her, shuffling closer. “It’s the mush.”

  Only years of experience kept Torin from reacting. “The mush?”

  “If you form it when it’s cooled but still wet and let it dry, it’s almost unbreakable. You’d think that after eating it, you’d be shitting literal bricks, but you don’t.”

  That was good to hear.

  “The leather ties came out of the pipe, though,” he continued before Torin could ask, “Sometimes it drops weird crap, Gunnery Sergeant. Like the fabric and the ties and once, once it dropped four black rubber balls. Harnett grabbed it all. The stuff he didn’t use, it’s all in where the food was.”

  “There was stuff,” Werst acknowledged at Torin’s look and added, “You’re quite the ass kisser there, Private Jiyuu.”

  The di’Taykan shrugged. “I like to be helpful. I can be very helpful.�
��

  No mistaking the emphasis on the last word, particularly not when his hand rose toward his masker. Torin really hoped he wasn’t stupid enough to think a shot of pheromones would make everything all better.

  “Touch that masker, I’ll have Corporal Werst take your hand off at the wrist,” she said calmly. Jiyuu might be a suck-up and no older than Kyster, but he’d been one of Harnett’s goons, and she wasn’t underestimating any of them, not when it came to blatant self-interest at least.

  “How . . .”

  Werst snapped his teeth together.

  Jiyuu’s eyes darkened and his hand dropped. “The hunting parties will be returning soon,” he offered, ignoring the black look Terantowicz shot him.

  “Party,” Torin corrected. “What tunnel?”

  His smile was about fifty-fifty ingratiating and unnerved as he realized what that had to mean. “I’m guessing one of the tunnels you didn’t come out of.”

  Terantowicz growled something under her breath.

  Torin raised a hand to cut Jiyuu off and snapped, “What tunnel, Private Terantowicz!”

  “Tunnel two, Gunnery Sergeant!” Eyes wide, she all but slapped a hand over her mouth when she realized what she’d done. Training had kicked in, and she’d responded instinctively.

  “And tunnel two is where?”

  Reluctantly, she pointed.

  “Thank you, Private. All right,” Torin raised her voice slightly. “Terantowicz, Jiyuu, Maekan, Akemi, and . . .”

  “Phillips, Gunnery Sergeant.”

  “. . . and Phillips, go to Staff Sergeant Pole, have him assign you to platoons.”

  “Platoons, Gunnery Sergeant?”

  “Got extra food stored in your ears, Phillips?”

  “No, Gunnery Sergeant. But aren’t we . . .” He looked around at other four survivors. “. . . your prisoners?”

  “No, like everyone else in this node, you’re my responsibility. Most days, there’s a difference. Now move. Lance Corporal Divint and Private Sergei, if you could see that they get there safely . . .”

  “Yes, Gunnery Sergeant.”

  “What in this shithole is any danger to us?” Terantowicz muttered as they began to walk away.