by Tanya Huff
“Because a progenitor caught you at it or because it was wrong?”
She spread her hands, hair spreading out again. “Were it not wrong, it would not matter that you had caught us at it.”
“You shouldn’t have needed me to tell you it was wrong. You were complicit in the death of fellow Marines. You were complicit in the abuse of fellow Marines. You were complicit in the slow starvation of fellow Marines.”
“We didn’t know about the supplements, Gunnery Sergeant,” Akemi protested.
Torin realized she was still holding Kyster’s arm, released him, and scrubbed a hand over her face. What a fukking mess. Maybe she should have disobeyed Kenoton’s order and headed straight for the rock wall because the only thing that was going to fix the mess was getting her people out.
All her people.Every fukking Marine down here.
And that put her right back at the barricade.
“Gunny?”
“Just trying to keep from beating my head against the wall. You’d got to the point where Edwards had come out of the cave,” she prodded Jiyuu. “Go on.”
Jiyuu looked down at the last of his mush and pushed it across to Kyster—who pushed it back. Offering food to a Krai had—could have—ceremonial significance. Torin didn’t know Jiyuu was aware of it, but from the way his hair flattened, she suspected he was. She appreciated the attempt but had no sympathy for the rejection.
“Edwards came out with a first aid kit. Just a combat kit, but we hadn’t had one of those in a while, and he knew Harnett would be pleased, so he decided it was time to head back. We hadn’t gone more than thirty meters when four . . .”
“Marines.” Torin dropped the word into the extended pause.
“Yes, Gunnery Sergeant. Four Marines came up on us from behind. We never even heard them coming.”
Torin raised a brow, and his hair flattened again.
“We were making a bit of noise, joking around.”
About a fellow Marine they’d just left for dead.
“They didn’t have weapons—I don’t think they had weapons—but there were four of them and only three of us.”
Kyster snorted
“Edwards yelled they were just incomers who’d banded together. They had an officer with them, a lieutenant. He told us to surrender, but Edwards told him to fuk off. And he kept telling them to fuk off until they started beating the shit out of us. When we ran, they didn’t follow us. We got back and told Colonel . . . Staff Sergeant Harnett, and he ordered the barricade.” The flip of his hair reminded her she knew the rest.
Anything else she needed to know, she’d have to find out from the other Marines.
Darlys turned her bowl around and around, the movement oddly similar to the way the major had rubbed at his hand. “What are you going to say if you find them, Gunnery Sergeant?”
“That depends on who I find.”
When the lights went out, the di’Taykan made themselves comfortable on one side of the tunnel while she and Kyster bedded down on the other. Later, when soft noises made it obvious what they were doing in the dark—although Torin gave them points for keeping the noise down—Kyster said quietly, “You could forbid it.”
She could, but they weren’t on watch, and the tunnel was so dark it couldn’t be said they were showing interspecies insensitivity. But mostly she didn’t forbid it because it would be petty behavior on her part, and that was a line she wasn’t ready to cross.
Deadly behavior, not a problem.
Petty was an entirely different thing.
“You could join them, Gunny.”
“So could you.” The di’Taykan were firm believers in the more the merrier.
Kyster snapped his teeth together. “I’d rather eat my own dirr on a bun.”
“Well, I wouldn’t go that far, not having a dirr, but I’m not joining them either.”
Waking with the return of the light, Torin found Kyster holding her wrist with his good foot and pulled gently free without rousing him.
The breakfast mush tasted sharper. She wondered if the flavor changed as it aged.
“Straight back to the node,” she told the three di’Taykan before they left. “Debrief immediately with Staff Sergeant Pole.”
“Yes, Gunnery Sergeant.”
Darlys paused, half turned. “Be careful, Gunnery Sergeant.”
“I always am.”
Not one of them, including Kyster, looked as though they believed that. Torin didn’t know why.
She didn’t bother watching the di’Taykan until they reached the first curve but stared out over the barricade. “Private Kyster, you’re to wait here with Private Watura. That’s an order.”
His teeth were showing, just a little, and he frowned as he searched for the right words. “If you’re not back before we’re relieved, Gunny?”
“Then you can send one of the new Marines to the node in your place.”
His nose ridges opened and closed. After a moment he said, “I wait?”
“You wait.”
“But if you need me . . .”
“I need you to wait here.”
“But if . . .”
“Private Kyster, you are to wait here until I return. That’s an order.”
Reluctantly, he nodded.
It wouldn’t hold him for long. Hopefully, it wouldn’t have to. Carrying two canteens and twelve biscuits, she jumped the barricade and started walking.
Torin could feel their eyes on her until she reached the first turn, knew they were still watching even though at that distance it was unlikely they could see her—gray against the gray. The absence of their attention made her feel suddenly light.
She hadn’t been thinking clearly since getting rid of Harnett. The aftermath had been clouded in ways the Corps never was for her. Never had been for her. One hand slid inside her vest and touched the salvage tag. She was tempted to blame Craig and whatever it was between them, but this wasn’t his fault.
Achieve the mission objectives and get her people out alive.
Everything else was baggage.
She didn’t look in the first cave as she passed it.
After a while, after her stomach insisted on a biscuit, Torin realized that the tunnel exactly matched the tunnel they’d taken from the node to the barricade. Like all Recon—or ex-Recon—she mapped constantly. Comparing the area she’d just left to these new tunnels and cross tunnels, the similarities were unmistakable. If she hurried, it should be possible for her to reach a second pipe—if there was a second pipe, before dark.
Turning a corner, she walked right into a group of four Marines. Almost literally right into them, rocking to a stop no more than a meter away from the older Human male at the head of the group. She just had time to see his collar tabs when the lieutenant’s gaze dropped to the stone knife in her boot, and he took a swing at her.
It would have been easier had she wanted to kill them. Unfortunately, trying to cause nothing more than minor injuries meant fighting handicapped. Fortunately, they weren’t armed.
More fortunately still, it seemed they didn’t want to kill her.
Torin didn’t think she’d lost consciousness for more than a minute or two, but she definitely regained it when she was dumped onto the floor and rolled over with a boot to the shoulder. If she’d been carried to the second pipe, this one was a lot noisier than the one she’d come from. There seemed to be a lot of yelling going on.
“Begging your pardon, Lieutenant, but are you fukking insane? That’s Gunnery Sergeant Kerr!”
And that sounded like Binti Mashona.
SIX
TORIN ACCEPTED THE BOWL OF water with a grateful nod and frowned at the technical sergeant who’d handed it to her. Brown hair, brown eyes; his depilatory hadn’t yet begun to wear off, so he hadn’t been here long.
He grinned. “Mike Gucciard, Gunnery Sergeant. We’ve never actually met. I have, of course, heard all about you.”
“Of course,” she snorted. She drank a little water
, mostly because it was there, not because she thought it would do much for the lump on her head or the ache in her left knee or the various bruises she could feel rising. The four Marines who’d brought her into the node hadn’t been particularly gentle, but neither had they been as vicious as they could have been, all things considered. She spared another glance for Gucciard, still on one knee beside her, and finally connected the dots. “I saw you in the shuttle bay while the GCT was loading for Estee; you broke up that fight.”
“Yeah, that was me.” He had an attractive smile and remarkably expressive eyebrows. At the moment, they managed to convey pleasure, relief, and anticipation pretty much simultaneously. Torin figured the pleasure for being remembered, the relief that they didn’t have to go through the litany of “I served with so and so at the battle of such and such” that defined the parameters between members of the Corps, but the anticipation she couldn’t figure. He was staring at her as though he’d been eating that damned kibble for months and she were a steak dinner. Real steak. Not a sculpted slab of soy protein.
“So the slate, does it work?”
Ah. Not staring at her, then. Given the look in his eyes, that was a bit of a relief. Like almost every other species in the Confederation, she’d carried a slate for most of her life—the weight of it on her vest had been so familiar, she’d forgotten it was there. “No, it’s as dead as the rest of the tech.” Unsnapping it, she passed it over, hiding a smile at the obvious control Technical Sergeant Gucciard was managing to maintain. Eyes locked on the slate, he clearly wanted to snatch it from her, but he allowed her to place it on the palm of one large hand before he closed his fingers around it and let out a breath Torin doubted he even knew he’d been holding.
“Yours?”
She didn’t bother hiding her smile any longer. His attention on the slate, blunt fingers moving with surprising delicacy over the screen, Gucciard had partitioned as little of his attention as possible off to deal with things like conversation. “No. It was one of the things Harnett had collected.”
Harnett’s name—or probably the way she spat it out—actually drew his attention back to her face. She could see him wondering if he should ask, saw him decide it was less important than what he held in his hands, and saw him turn his attention back to the dead piece of tech.
“No visible damage, just like the combats. If it’s only the power source, if whatever brought us here drained it, then there’s a chance I can charge it.”
“The lights in the tunnels?”
He grinned at her again, clearly pleased she’d already gotten there. His thumbs gently rubbed the casing while he spoke. “I can use the inert tech in a pair of combats to create an interface that’ll let me charge not only our combats but the slate as well. Once it’s running again, I can reboot the operating system out of the partitioned memory and then start pulling programs up.”
“Provided the memory hasn’t been completely wiped.”
He shrugged broad shoulders. “If I’ve got working tech, I can program in what I need.”
Torin blinked. “From scratch?”
Gucciard actually removed one hand from the slate long enough to tap his head. “Wetware predates software, Gunny.” Halfway to his feet, he paused, frowned. “That is if I can use your slate . . . ?”
“You were clearly the reason I picked it up, Technical Sergeant. Knock yourself out.”
“Probably won’t come to that. I have no idea what’s actually powering those lights, but that’s why I’ll be using the combats as an inter . . . You didn’t mean that literally, did you?” Before she could answer, he frowned at a group of three officers heading her way and held out a hand. “You’re going to want to face these guys on your feet, Gunny. Officious,” he explained in answer to her silent question as she stood, keeping as much weight as possible off her left leg. “Lieutenants,” he added as though that should explain things, and it pretty much did. “They’re a little wrapped up in running a tight ship.”
Interesting emphasis. “Directly?”
“Too many officers, not enough NCOs.”
“Oh, joy.”
“Second Lieutenant Teirl, Lieutenant Cafter, Lieutenant O’Neill. The other two aren’t bad on their own, but they take their cue from O’Neill, and he’s a pain in the ass,” Gucciard continued, his voice a rough burr by her ear. “Seems to think he should have made captain by now.”
“I’m not seeing a lot of chance for promotion down here.”
“He is.”
Officious seemed like a good description as the three approached.
“Technical Sergeant Gucciard.” Lieutenant O’Neill’s acknowledgment suggested to Torin that while officious might do, inert carbon rod stuffed up their collective asses might have been more accurate. “You are not required. Have you no work of your own to do?”
“Yes, sir. Gunnery Sergeant Kerr has provided me with a slate.”
“Is it functioning?” Lieutenant Cafter demanded, dark orange hair fanning out around her head.
“No, sir, but there’s a chance I can power it back up.”
“How?”
“Power conduits in the tunnels, sir.”
Her lip curled. “If there’s anything left in there, you’ll fry it.”
“Not if I run the power through a set of combats first, sir.”
“And you think Lietenant McCoy will issue you a set of combats.”
So, not only too many officers but too many lieutenants; it seemed every pipe had its problems. Fortunately, Torin had been dealing with lieutenants for about as long as Second Lieutenant Teirl had been away from his sheshan.
She’d known Gucciard for about ten minutes, but the tension across the technical sergeant’s shoulders was easy to read. He was about one more snide comment away from showing the lieutenant where the actual power in the Corps rested. Given his trade, he probably hadn’t so much dealt with lieutenants as worked around them. “I haven’t spoken to Lieutenant McCoy yet, sir.”
“Then get to it, Sergeant.”
“Yes, sir.” A quick nod to Torin—wry amusement and commiseration combined—and Gucciard pivoted on one heel and set off across the node.
“Gunnery Sergeant Kerr.” O’Neill’s tone suggested he was taking control of the situation back from Lieutenant Cafter.
“Lieutenant O’Neill.” Torin’s tone, in turn, reminded him that he was a lieutenant. And that she wasn’t.
He shifted in place, frowning slightly, clearly sensing he’d been slapped down but just as clearly uncertain of how. “Colonel Mariner will see you now.”
The name sounded vaguely familiar, but then space was big, and each species seemed to have a limited number of names in rotation.
Torin dipped her head once, in acknowledgment. “Thank you, sir.” And then she waited.
After a moment, Lieutenant Cafter’s hair began to flip back and forth. “If you’ll follow us, Gunnery Sergeant.”
“Yes, sir.” But her voice said, Aren’t you a good officer, then. All three of them reacted to it—shoulders went back, heads went up.
The area around this pipe was physically identical to the one she’d come from. The hunting party, or whatever they called it here, had dropped her by one of the outside walls without the latrine trench. Colonel Mariner had his command center in a familiar place by the central pipe—although the fabric had been used for the di’Taykan enclosure instead of as a tent to hide his command decisions.
The biggest difference was that the Marines here weren’t just lying around on their pallets watching her go by. Pallets were stacked by what Torin assumed were platoons, given the numbers and their positioning. She frowned at the lines of small rocks laid out on the floor delineating different areas. In one area, some of the Marines were doing calisthentics, watched by an officer. In another, some of them were obviously in a class of some sort, led by an officer. A few were still lined up for the showers; an officer stood at the end of the short line. The rest were standing around watching her
go by.
Except for the gray sameness that came from being locked underground for an extended period of time, they looked reasonably healthy. Beards had been made as tidy as possible and hair, once it had grown long enough, was tied back.
She heard a familiar whisper ripple out from her passage. Silsviss. The moment she got back to civilization, she’d have to send a message to Cri Sawyes thanking his people for adding what had become a useful layer to her reputation. He’d appreciate that she appreciated being considered slightly psychotic.
Most of the fabric had gone to the di’Taykan’s enclosure, Torin amended as she drew closer to the command center. Colonel Mariner had used at least one sheet of it as a desk, folding it in thirds and then folding the ends of that thickened fabric rectangle at ninety degree angles before setting the tech.
He sat behind his desk on a folded pallet, hands flat on the fabric in front of him, her knife in front of his hands. Two majors and a captain stood to his left—the captain was one of the rare Krai infantry officers—two captains and an artillery major to his right—this major’s beard had barely begun to curl out from his chin. He hadn’t been here long. Binti Mashona stood to one side at parade rest, the fingers of her right hand tapping against the palm of her left, the motion safely out of sight behind her back.
He’d used a sheet of smart fabric to make a desk? That was . . . different.
And then she remembered where she’d heard Colonel Mariner’s name. Almost a year and a half ago, the Others had attacked a colony on the Edge during a diplomatic visit from Parliamentary representatives.Torin had no idea what idiot thought a diplomatic visit to the Edge was a good idea—there might have been an election in the offing; not her Sector, so she didn’t really care—but the Parliamentary representatives had a military escort. Colonel Mariner had commanded it. His body had never been found.
Torin really hoped there weren’t politicians tucked away in here somewhere.
Colonel Mariner was a staff officer, not a line officer. Which made very little difference, given their current location, but she’d have to remember to use a more delicate touch when dealing with him. The time spent on Ventris debriefing what felt like half the staff officers in the Corps now seemed to have become, in retrospect, a useful learning experience.
