Valor's Trial

by Tanya Huff

  There was one small hitch.

  “Are you out of your fukking mind?” Werst demanded. “I’m not climbing your unsupported bony asses to get anywhere.”

  “It will please the gunny,” Darlys told him, eyes dark.

  “No offense, Gunny . . .” Werst looked past the di’Taykan. “. . . but I don’t give a flying fuk.”

  “I’ll do it. Besides,” Ressk added as attention turned to him, “if there’s tech up there, and there will be, I’ve got the best chance to get the door open.”

  Werst shook his head. “No.”

  “Not your call,” Ressk reminded him.

  “It’s a fukking stupid idea.”

  “Got a better one? That doesn’t involve wandering around these fukking tunnels until we starve to death?”

  “Hey, there’s a lot of meat on . . .”

  “Werst. And you,” Torin added nodding toward Darlys as Werst fell silent, “do not speak for me. Ever. I don’t like this idea, but Ressk’s right. No one’s come up with a better one, no one’s found anything else in the walls of these tunnels, and no one wants to sit here with our thumbs up our collective butts until we starve to death. It’s Ressk’s choice. He chooses to make the climb, we have a go.”

  “I choose to make the climb.”

  “I’ll let the durlin know.”

  Durlin Vertic stared at her for a long moment, and Torin, unable to read her expression, would have given half her pension to know what she was thinking. “It is a crazy plan,” she said at last.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Do you understand it will work?” Again with the claws against the rock. The sound was moving from annoying to infuriating. Eventually it would become background, and that couldn’t happen soon enough as far as Torin was concerned.

  “Do I believe it will work? The Marines involved believe it’ll work. I believe in them.”

  The durlin’s ears rotated slightly forward. “There is no better plan.”

  “No, sir, there isn’t.”

  Widening her stance, she leaned her upper body out over the shaft, twisted, and indicated that Torin should shine her cuff light up toward the door. Twisted again, pointed Torin’s arm down toward the bottom. When she straightened, she didn’t look happy.

  “My people . . .” A gesture toward the golden fur on her flank made it specific rather than general. “. . . do not climb well.”

  “My people . . .” A matching gesture toward the Krai. “. . . make a kickass net.”

  “And my people should trust your people in such a position?”

  Such a position—suspended in a net over a lethal drop. Torin wouldn’t put Kichar alone on the rope that was for damned sure, but the rest had been in long enough that the personal had worn off the war. “Yes, sir.”

  Vertic took another long look at Torin, another look out over the shaft, and finally said, “It is a crazy, dangerous plan. Perhaps the Artek secretions can help. Do it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We didn’t need her permission,” Torin heard Darlys mutter as she climbed carefully up onto Watura’s shoulders. “Not once Gunnery Sergeant Kerr said yes.”

  Watura’s response was too quiet for Torin to hear. She sucked air through her teeth as the di’Taykan shifted his bare foot on her shoulder.

  “Remember what I said about inappropriate touching,” she growled as Darlys began her climb up Jiyuu. As a general rule there was no such thing as inappropriate touching where it concerned di’Taykan on di’Taykan, but climbing the side of a vertical shaft, held to the wall with the smeared secretions from a sentient insect’s footpads was not the time to indulge.

  Because they were of a height, she made up the base of the tower with Mashona. Mike, given a male’s heavier build, would have made more sense, but he and Sanati were still working on finding tech. Durlin Vertic was all in favor of getting the antigravity turned on before she ended up in a net, hauled up eight meters like a load of laundry. Torin couldn’t say she blamed her—and made a mental note that the Primacy collectively knew what an antigravity lift was and clearly used them at times other than when they were attempting to take over a Confederation station. It might be information Military Intelligence could use even given that Military Intelligence was historically held to be an oxymoron.

  “I’m in place, Gunnery Sergeant!”

  “How can you gain weight on kibble and biscuits and water?” Jiyuu grunted from the middle position.

  “Like you’ve got reason to complain,” Watura sniped.

  “Enough, people!” The di’Taykan may have been light as a species, but three of them, even with the weight divided between her and Mashona and the wall had her locking her knees and praying to any gods that might be listening in. Mashona’s expression suggested she was doing the same. “Ressk! Move!”

  He had his hand on her elbow when Mike yelled, “Got it!”

  “Got it working?”

  “Found the panel and got it open.”

  Torin snorted. “Go, Ressk! Long odds on them ever getting it working.” Breathing shallowly through her nose, she hoped the secretions would be enough to keep the di’Taykan in contact with the wall as Ressk used them like a living ladder. Her right knee felt ready to buckle.

  “I’m up. There’s a ledge. It’s no wider than Werst’s dick, but it’ll hold me. Door mech seems . . .”

  The last word got lost. Darlys shrieked a warning. Torin grabbed Watura’s legs. Jiyuu dropped past, arms and legs windmilling, mouth open, screaming. Torin felt something loop around her waist and haul her back as Watura’s weight threatened to take them both over the edge.

  Jiyuu’s screaming stopped abruptly, cut off by a wet crack. Followed a moment later by a muffled thud. He’d clearly hit the side before he hit bottom.

  Watura twisted as he fell, got his hands out, and managed to prevent his spine from impacting with the lip of the shaft. Mashona grabbed a handful of his combats and all three of them—four of them, Torin corrected as she identified the dark brown arm folded around her waist as belonging to one of the Artek, who were obviously a hell of a lot stronger than they looked—collapsed in a heap.

  “Gunny!”

  Surrounded by the scent of cherries, Torin crawled forward. “Darlys?” She was hanging from the lip Ressk balanced on. Torin fought the urge to tell Ressk to hurry, well aware he was moving as fast as he could. Twisting, she looked into Cherry Bug’s face. “If I have to . . .” The motion for Darlys falling and Torin throwing herself forward wasn’t very complicated. “. . . can you . . .” Keep me from going over was a little more complex but she managed it.

  Cherry Bug clacked her mandibles together, and a second Artek rushed forward to grab Torin’s other ankle.

  “All right, then.”

  Mashona yelled, “Hang on, Darlys!”

  Darlys yelled, “Fuk you!” Pale feet scrabbled for something more than mere contact with the wall.

  And Ressk yelled, “Got the door!”

  “In a vid, we’d have turned the lift on at the last minute.” Mike pounded the side of his fist against the wall. “Jiyuu wouldn’t have died.”

  “If life was a vid,” Torin muttered, “it’d make more fukking sense.” The only bit of bright news she’d had lately was that Watura and Darlys both agreed that Jiyuu was dead, that the only scents coming up from the bottom of the shaft were shit and blood. No pheromones. And only death stopped that.

  The odds were stacked high against anyone surviving that kind of a fall. Torin moved back to the edge of the shaft and shone her cuff light down into the depths. No surprise when it still wasn’t up to the job.

  “You want to go down there and make sure.” Durlin Vertic moved to stand beside her.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Even though your own people tell you they are certain he is dead.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I order you not to.”

  Torin turned then and looked at the durlin, who returned Torin’s regard with a level st
are of her own.

  “I order you not to—I take the responsibility for this decision.”

  Torin drew in a long breath and let it out slowly. “Yes, sir.” Then she turned again and leaned out into the shaft. “What the hell’s taking that net so long, Corporal?”

  “Almost done, Gunny!”

  Werst and then Kyster had gone effortlessly hand over hand over foot up the dangling rope as soon as Ressk and Darlys had found a way to tie it off, and Werst had bit off a piece of his arm and spat it down toward Jiyuu’s body. The three Artek just needed a little of their weight held and had scrabbled up the wall, all four arms working the rope.

  The Humans, Druin, and remaining di’Taykan could have gone up essentially the same way, but the Polina needed the net and assistance getting into it. As long as there was going to be a net, better safe than dead.

  Like Jiyuu.

  One of Harnett’s goons and an annoying suck-up.

  He was young. Not that youth excused what he’d done.

  Watura sat braced against the tunnel wall about four meters from the entrance to the shaft, his knees drawn up and his hair a lime-green curtain over his face.

  “It’s weird,” Kichar murmured, arms wrapped around her torso. “You always think of the di’Taykan and sex, not actual feelings. I mean, not that I don’t think they have feelings, it’s just they have so much sex that something like a crush is just kind of a surprise.”

  “Guys his age don’t have crushes,” Mashona told her shortly.

  “Yeah, but Jiyuu didn’t . . .”

  “Quit while you’re ahead,” Torin advised as she passed. “And don’t apologize to me,” she added when Kichar started to stammer.

  Watura’s hair gave a single flip as Torin dropped to one knee beside him. “She’s right,” he said. “Jiyuu didn’t like me more than he liked any other of us. I was just there for him. He liked that.”

  “Doesn’t change what you’re feeling.” She laid two fingers against the back of his hand. Touch meant more to the di’Taykan than words.

  His hair parted. His eyes were so light that, although he was staring at her fingers, she doubted he could see them. “You didn’t like him.”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “You don’t like me.”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “We were Harnett’s.”

  “Now you’re mine.” She maintained the contact until Werst called out and the net dropped.

  With one of the two lower ranking Druin up, the heavier of the two male Polina, Samtan Tern Helic’tin volunteered to go up first. “If it can hold me, it can hold the durlin.”

  “If it can hold you, it can hold me,” Bertecnic, the other male, muttered. Since Freenim ignored him, so did Torin. It was an understandable observation.

  Helic’tin worked all four legs through the bottom of the net, smoothed down the fur that had been ruffled up in the wrong direction then, holding the net up like a skirt, he walked to the edge, took a deep breath, snarled wordlessly, and nodded.

  “He’s ready!”

  The rope tightened as they hauled in the slack.

  “On three,” Werst yelled. “One, two . . .”

  Stepping off the edge knowing four enemies, one skinny biped, and three giant bugs were all that kept gravity from winning, knowing that there was already a body broken and bleeding at the bottom of the shaft, knowing all that and stepping off anyway was one of the bravest things Torin had seen for a while.

  He dropped almost his body length down, then began inching up toward the open door.

  “You need to lose a little weight!” Ressk yelled.

  “Less talk and more pulling!” Helic’tin snarled.

  “Samtan Tern Helic’tin.” Torin murmured to Freenim. “Samtan? Lowest rank?” The translation program ignored it, so it could be a rank or a species designation. When the other NCO nodded, she opened her mouth to fill him in on their rank structure and closed it again.

  Freenim smiled. “How much to tell the enemy. When we get out of here, the war will not be over.”

  “Our private equals your samtan.” She snorted. “If you can win the war with that information, you deserve to.”

  There was cursing and claws scrabbling against stone with enough force to fling chips down the shaft when Helic’tin reached the end of his journey but no screaming, so they counted it a win. Bertecnic went up a little easier. Durlin Vertic easier still.

  “We’ve worked the bugs out of the system!” Ressk yelled.

  The slate translated bugs as Artek.

  The Druin who’d flung the rock earlier swung first, but Kichar didn’t hesitate to try to pound the hairless ivory head into the floor. Torin grabbed at a dark gray uniform and hauled the Druin up as Freenim grabbed Kichar and dragged her to her feet.

  “Trade?” she suggested.

  He grinned and tossed the young Marine toward her, catching his own with the other hand.

  Kichar sagged in Torin’s grip, blood dripping from her nose, eyes still wild. “He started it, Gunnery Sergeant!”

  “And you know why, Private! You heard both halves of that translation. Defensive moves would have been enough.”

  “You always said that the best defense was a strong offense!”

  “So you were doing what I would have?”

  “Yes, Gunnery Sergeant!”

  And the truly frightening thing was that Kichar was probably right. “Then next time, use your head instead of mine.”

  “Yes, Gunnery Sergeant.” She wiped her sleeve across her lower face and frowned at the red blaze on the fabric. “I’m sorry, Gunny.”

  “If you’ve got that much energy to spare, get up there and take your turn on the rope.”

  “I don’t . . .” She was going to say she didn’t need the net. Torin could read it in the stubborn set of her shoulders, but she reconsidered at the last minute. “Yes, Gunnery Sergeant.”

  As Mike and Mashona helped her into the net, Torin moved over to Freenim.

  “Samtan Everim was not injured, Gunnery Sergeant.”

  “I’m glad to hear that, Durlave Kan.”

  “But he knows he will be if he tries something so stupid again.” Freenim gave the handful of uniform he still held a little shake. “Doesn’t he?”

  “Yes, Durlave Kan.” Given their different physiognomies, Everim looked no more repentant than Kichar.

  Mike went up next with the slate, then Everim, then Freenim . . .

  “Your officer is already up there,” Torin pointed out when he suggested he should be the last up.

  . . . then Mashona.

  One hand holding the net, Watura touched the pale blue quills in his vest pocket with the other. “I don’t want to leave him, Gunny.”

  He wasn’t talking about the nameless di’Taykan.

  Torin reached out and touched the inside of his wrist this time, a more personal touch than the back of the hand. It drew Watura’s gaze off the bottom of the shaft and he turned his head to stare into her face, his eyes so dark barely any of the lime green showed. “I give you my word,” she said quietly, “that we will come back for him. For him and for everyone down here. We will not leave anyone behind.”

  “Your word, Gunny.” It wasn’t a question, so she let it stand. His hair flicked forward. “Have you started to believe what Darlys says about you, then?”

  She grinned, more a Krai expression than anything, but left her fingers pressed against his skin. “I believe what the Marine Corps says about me.”

  “Exiting Susumi space in three, two, one . . .” The sound of the engines changed as the Susumi drive went off-line and Craig’s hands flew across the board.

  “If we are being right behind the Others’ fleet, I are wanting some good high resolution shots.”

  “Not now,” he grunted, shrugging Presit’s tiny hand off his arm. He’d expected more buffeting given the dumbass stunt they were pulling, but although Promise both rocked and rolled, she’d come through a lot rougher rides.
Not to say that he was actually in control at the moment, but they were still in one piece so he was counting it as a win.

  Then the proximity sensor went off.

  “Is it being the Others’ battleship!”

  “Worse. It’s a fukking asteroid field!”

  “Why are that being worse?”

  “There were only three ships, and there’s one fuk of a lot more . . . son of a bitch!” He still wasn’t exactly steering, but the upper jets pushed them down out of the way of a tumbling rock that would have shattered them had it connected. Then the starboard jets. Then the aft port jets. Then he was finally in an area clear enough to control the tumbling.

  “Out of Susumi space into an asteroid belt,” Presit snorted, adjusting her glasses as the star fields stopped spinning. “That are being too cliché for vids.” She was trying to look blasé about the experience, but the drift of shed fur heading for the scrubbers gave her away. “So, where are the Others being?”

  “I’m not reading them.”

  “Are your sensors being broken?”

  “No, they’re working fine.” Ignoring the lines of sweat dribbling down his sides, he waved at the screen. “There’s nothing out there.”

  “They are hiding in the asteroids.”

  “No, they aren’t.”

  “But we are following them. We are having gone where they are having gone!”

  “Apparently not.”

  “Then you are doing it wrong!”

  “Fuk you, too.”

  Her lips pulled back off her teeth, and her hair puffed. “I are havingseen you! You are playing with the screens, with your fingers, when you are making equations.”

  “So you’re saying I sent us careening into the back of Bourke on purpose.”

  “The back of Bourke?” She frowned. “I are not knowing where that is!”

  He looked out at the totally unfamiliar stars and sighed. “That makes two of us, mate. That makes two of us.”

  ELEVEN

  “FIRIV’VRAK IS SURE THIS IS THE UPPERMOST level, Durlin.”

  “Firiv’vrak is sure,” the durlin repeated glancing down at the Artek by Sanati’s side. “And the other two?”

  “Not convinced, Durlin.”

  The Artek clicked something that sounded distinctly rude, the odds rising when Sanati didn’t bother translating. It seemed Firiv’vrak was the actual name of Cherry Bug. Or as close as species with soft mouth parts could manage.