by Tanya Huff
“If Marteau’s making more pistols, we’re fukked,” Binti declared. “We can’t defend ourselves, let alone anyone else, against a weapon we can’t see.”
“Pistols could be the least of our problems.” Alamber sounded as though he’d given it some thought. “Marteau grew up on the floor at MI, teethed on a KC-7. He’s got carbon steel bones and propellant in his blood. I started doing what I do young, and that’s made me great . . .”
“And modest,” Werst muttered.
Alamber ignored him. “Marteau started younger. Think what kind of weapons he could develop without Parliament peering over his shoulder.”
Torin heard the distinct snap of Krai teeth coming together, and Ressk said, “Parliament can shove their constraints up their gren.”
“Yeah,” Binti agreed. “Why send us out with the best when they can send us out with gear approved by committee.”
“You didn’t think your body count was high enough, then?” Sometimes Craig poked for the sake of poking. This time, he sounded serious.
Binti thought so, too, and answered using the same low growl. “Our body count was too damned high. End the war sooner, though, lower body count.”
“The war went on as long as the plastic wanted it to go on,” Torin pointed out, keeping her hands at her sides.
“It takes time to collect sufficient data on a new species.” The vaguely humanoid plastic alien cocked its head. “Creating extreme situations erases all but essential behaviors and shortens the duration of the study. We began the conflict to shorten the duration of the study, we continued the conflict until we had sufficient data.”
“The war was a social science experiment.” Torin spat out the words. “It wouldn’t have mattered if we’d been using rocks and pointed sticks.”
“Might have caught on to them sooner if they’d held us to that,” Binti muttered as they entered the armory, then raised her voice, “Hey, Sarge, can you have a look at my bennie? I’m feeling trigger resistance, and I can’t find the cause.”
Sergeant Urrest was the oldest Krai Torin had ever met. Fine bristles completely covered her head, paler than the lightest of her gray-on-gray mottling, almost white in the bright light behind the armory counter, and her nostril ridges had begun to smooth out. She’d been a lifer, retired only when the Corps had forced her, and had moved immediately from the armory serving 2nd Recar’ta, 1st Battalion to the armory serving the Justice Department’s Strike Teams.
“Did you want us keeping our weapons in our quarters?” Torin had asked when the question of hiring Urrest had come up.
Commander Ng’s face had blanched.
Sergeant Urrest had helped hire a staff of eight, all of whom seemed happy to concentrate on the Strike Teams’ basic weaponry—the KC-7s and the sniper’s KC-9, with a significantly smaller variety of ammo than the Corps enjoyed. But then, they had a significantly smaller variety of enemy. There were none of the big KC-12s the heavies carried because there were no heavies. The Humans who became part of the Corps’ heavy armor had no trouble finding work. The rare ability to jack into a machine had civilian applications—more civilian than military if truth be told. Torin hoped that the extensive psych evaluations required to become a heavy had weeded out sympathies toward the speciesist rantings of Humans First, but she wasn’t counting on it. Every interaction the Strike Teams had with Humans First assumed heavy gunners until proven differently. Better to prep to deal with a problem they’d never face than to have it blow up in their collective faces. Literally, blow up.
Under Urrest, the Strike Teams had personal storage in the armory, but were no longer allowed to walk in and out at will. Weapons were signed for, both arriving and departing. By everyone. When it turned out the definition of weapons included personal knives, Urrest had closed her nostril ridges, folded her arms, and stood her ground. They didn’t need knives on the station.
Torin knew that. Craig didn’t carry a knife. Nor did Alamber. Commander Ng didn’t. Their ex-Naval personnel were happy to sign their knives in. The Marines who’d seen combat were not. They followed orders, but they weren’t happy about it. Torin’s therapist called her blade a crutch. Torin called her therapist a few names in return and skipped the next session for perfectly valid reasons.
Anyone who thought the Marines had completely disarmed were delusional.
“Give it here.” Urrest wrapped a hand with prominent knuckles around Binti’s weapon and glared down at the energy read. “You recharged on the ship.”
“I was trying to isolate the problem.”
“Well, stop. It’s a bennie, not a KC. What do you know about it, eh?” Urrest swept a narrow-eyed gaze over the rest of them while callused fingertips ran lightly over the stock and barrel. “Anyone else decide to mess with equipment they don’t understand? No? Hand them over, then.” She nodded down at the live screen on the front of the rack. “And don’t skip the thumbprints. I’ve got more things to do than hunt you lot down.”
Torin felt Werst shudder. After Strike Team Alpha’s first mission with Urrest in charge of the armory, Urrest had cornered Werst in Musselman’s. No she didn’t want a beer, damn it, she wanted what she thought were intelligent adults to take responsibility for the safe stowage of dangerous and expensive equipment. Members of the other off-duty Strike Teams in the bar had thought Werst’s dressing down and his wide-eyed reaction hysterically funny—mostly because the stream of edged words hadn’t been aimed at them. Closed communities ran on gossip and the tale had grown in the telling, resulting in one hundred percent compliance with Urrest’s requirements, a better result than any number of less overt reminders. A result the sergeant had been fully aware would occur, given the slight nostril flare she’d flashed at Torin on her way out of the bar.
Snapping her bennie onto the rack, Torin checked that both ID numbers—hers and the weapon’s—had registered correctly and carefully pressed her thumbprint onto the screen.
“Nalvon, front and center!” Urrest had a sergeant’s ability to fill all available space with her voice. A young di’Taykan emerged from the depths of the armory in answer to her call. “Soon as they’re all racked, run these weapons through diagnostics.”
His hair flipped back. “Rack says they’re fine, Sarge.”
Urrest’s lip curled. “Rack’s not responsible for lives lost if a weapon misfires in the field. We are.”
“He’s new,” Torin said as Nalvon waited for Ressk to finish racking his bennie. Nalvon’s hair and eyes were an unforgettable bright orange, his eyes nearly fluorescent with most of his light receptors closed in the shadowless illumination Urrest preferred.
“Served with me at battalion. Wasn’t entirely useless,” she added, “so when I heard he’d run out his contract, I scooped him up. So far, he’s proven to be almost teachable.”
While Nalvon’s right hand continued moving over the pressure pad, he lifted the left and genially flipped her off.
“I can still kick your ass, boy.” Eyes narrowed, she studied Torin’s face, glanced over at Nalvon, and focused her attention back on Torin. “Going to be a time when you don’t know everyone on the sticks-and-stones part of the station, Gunny, and it’s going to happen sooner than you think.”
“You know something I don’t?” Torin watched Alamber slide in beside the rack, close enough to Nalvon his pale blue hair mixed with the orange.
“I know the oil you prefer on your whetstone’s come in. I sent it to your quarters.”
Both di’Taykan snickered.
Urrest sighed. “That gets tiresome, boys.”
* * *
• • •
Leaving the armory, Torin made one more attempt to avoid medical. “The autodoc . . .”
Craig cut her off. “I don’t give a rat’s ass about the autodoc. I want training not programming to have a look. Trained professionals,” he amended before she could point out he
was the team’s medic. “Not talented amateurs. You went through a ship’s exhaust.”
“I went through quickly.”
“Torin.”
* * *
• • •
“You went through a ship’s exhaust?” Dr. Tyrub’s tongue flicked out, and he glanced up from the diagnostic strip pressed to Torin’s chest. “Do ships have exhaust? Doesn’t that imply burning fuel?”
“It’s an energy trail,” Craig explained.
The doctor sighed. “I’m aware. I’m making conversation.”
“Torin went through the energy trail.”
“So I understand. Intentionally?”
“Explosive decompression,” Torin explained in turn. “I was ejected from the station.”
“Good thing you were in your suit, then. Or you’d be dead.”
“You think?” Craig muttered.
“I think it’s a good thing she was in her suit, yes. I also think the autodoc’s response is a basic albeit effective treatment. Given the level of exposure, fecal elimination . . .” He paused, inner eyelids flicking over round, protruding eyes. “Of course fecal matter is always eliminated, so I suppose it would be more precise to say radioactive matter excreted in feces.” He paused again, small domed head swaying back and forth on a half meter of neck. The Slaink brain was centrally located in the oval bulk of the body, and, if they avoided bleeding out, they could survive decapitation, but other than that, they were essentially bipedal lizards, larger than the Niln, less dangerous than the Silsviss. The Slaink, like the Mictok, were among the elder of the Elder Races, and no one knew why Dr. Tyrub had agreed to become the Justice Department’s radiation specialist, bringing his entire extended, multigenerational family to Berbar Station. Torin trusted Alamber to find out if it became relevant. “Never mind.” Hooking a claw under the diagnostic strip, he pulled it free. “The point is, your current medication is doing its job, neutralizing and eliminating, but I’d feel better if we sped things up, using the treatment I believe Dr. Je’lip used after you returned Captain Ryder’s ship to Hinare Station. It’ll straighten out the DNA damage.”
“Potential DNA damage?” Torin asked.
Dr. Tyrub’s smile exposed the bony ridges that lined the inside of his mouth. “Actual.”
Torin could hear I told you so in every breath Craig took.
“Would I be correct in assuming you have ova banked? An excellent idea,” he continued before Torin could respond. “As I understand it, the genetic material in Human ova can be interestingly fragile and if you ever want to have offspring, this would have . . . Actually, the incident on Hinare Station would previously have . . .” He glanced down at her chart, flipped through a few screens, and frowned. “Never mind.”
* * *
• • •
“So, children.”
“I’m not against the idea,” Torin acknowledged.
“There’s a lot of kids on a salvage station. I’d always thought I’d have a few of my own someday.”
“Define a few.”
“Torin.”
She licked Craig’s bare shoulder, the skin warm and salty, then said, “I could eventually be convinced.”
“When you’re through saving the universe?”
“When we’re through. Although, I was thinking, more specifically, of when the mammals of the Confederation point out that the Primacy has been using artificial wombs for centuries and the children produced in them are still capable of forming deep interpersonal bonds with their parents.” She frowned. “Or the equivalent.”
Craig made a soft, speculative sound. “We were at war with the Primacy for centuries.”
“And now we’re not.”
“Parliament may not consider them the best example.”
“Then Parliament can push a missile out the barrel of a KC-7,” Torin muttered. “Besides, there’s enough new people around the station now. Younger Races. Elder Races. Those who mistakenly think the Strike Teams are just as dangerous as the people we bring in.”
“Instead of more dangerous?”
“My point is that we don’t need to add another small, screaming, pooping body to the mix.”
“You’re enchantingly maternal.”
“Bite me.” She threw an arm across his chest, tucked her right leg under his, and went to sleep.
* * *
• • •
Five of the seven people in Interview Room Three held coffees, two held cups of sah, a Krai stimulant illegal for Humans to consume. Two Krai, three di’Taykan, two Humans, their brand-new Justice Department Strike Team uniforms still showing shipping creases. From where Torin stood outside the hatch, her slate slaved to the security cameras, she could see three knives and two Taykan ven blades. They’d have to be better than that. She made a mental note to have Werst speak with them. For all he was a meter high, never in his boots, and essentially hairless, Werst hid an impressive number of weapons on his person.
Torin’s slate held copies of every recorded detail about the members of the newest Strike Team—from their first childhood civil evaluations before they began school to the final report that accompanied their discharge papers. She’d read about their specialties, their recorded strengths and weaknesses, and their psych profiles individually and interlinked. Death and the Corps threw Marines into fireteams with little concern about how well they’d work together. The Corps expected that their identities as Marines would overrule their differences; if that didn’t work, there was always fighting or fucking those differences out. In Torin’s experience, Death cared even less than the Corps. The Justice Department, still uncomfortable employing violence, formed teams around minimal personal conflicts. Torin, and the other Strike Team leaders, had analyzed hundreds of applications, sent their preferred choices up to the brass, revisited what remained after legal paranoia, Elder guilt, and psych had finished with them, created teams with as many combinations as possible, and reshuffled again after psych finished face-to-face interviews. All applicants under consideration had served in the military, but not all who’d served could do the job. The extended process took forever, but Justice insisted on being obsessively comprehensive about their choices when those choices would receive a personal locker in the armory and then be sent out to police the civilian population.
“Very specific members of the civilian population,” Torin had pointed out. “Armed members of the civilian population,” she’d added in case there’d been any misunderstandings.
It hadn’t expedited the process.
Torin had presented her team to Justice fully formed, but those carefree days of Gunny-knows-best were long gone. They were building something here and the base had to be strong if it was going to last.
The seven people in IR3 were the last full Strike Team Justice would fund for Berbar Station. From now on, they’d fill Strike Team losses from the distilled list of approved applicants—those who hadn’t moved on to other teams in other sectors. Seven teams should be enough. For all violent crime caught the headlines, it remained the exception and not the rule on an interstellar scale. Some ex-military shrugged their service off. Some struggled not to collapse under the burden of memory. Most figured out a way to apply their training to civilian life, went to their therapy sessions, maintained contact with people who’d served with them, and were glad to have gotten out alive. Only a very few took the violence they’d learned and applied it.
Fewer still applied the violence they’d learned to keeping the peace.
Slate back on her belt, Torin twitched her uniform tunic into place. In her opinion, a copy of every recorded detail wasn’t worth as much as observing candidates for ten minutes under fire, but Commander Ng had refused her request to shoot at them.
She opened the hatch and stepped into the room.
Three Navy, four Marines. Still easy to tell them apart, but then Torin would pr
obably always find it easy. Lorkin, one of the Krai, was visibly young, the rest that indeterminate age where experience and ability still marched in step. Elisk, the elder of the two Krai was a Naval lieutenant, Marie Bilodeau, the young Human, a Marine lieutenant who left the Corps before her second promotion by way of her knee to a major’s balls. The major had been given a dishonorable, Lieutenant Bilodeau had taken an escape clause. Captain Ranjit Kaur, the Strike Team Ch’ore Lead, had served with the major and argued for the lieutenant’s inclusion on the teams. Two officers, one noncom, four enlisted; the seven had been training together for a tenday now and stood like a team—talking, listening, aware. No one sat in the half circle of uncomfortable chairs. When Torin stepped into the room, a di’Taykan female—SN di’Numanja Tylen—and a human male—Master Corporal Harris Zhou—shifted to opposite edges of the group. Not overtly, but far enough to provide cover if required. Torin hid a smile. Technical Sergeant di’Ahaski Yahsamus didn’t bother to hide hers.
Pilot, sniper, tech, leader, and three highly trained and motivated utility players.
Strike Team Alpha had two, not three utility players, but one of them was Werst, so Torin considered the odds remained in their favor.
She’d seen Zhou before, back when he’d arrived at Ventris Station for basic training, hiding how much his step into a new life mattered behind a frown and a slouch. He’d reminded her of herself—she’d discovered from his application he’d also been from Paradise, although that hadn’t been a factor at the time—and she’d bet Major Svensson he’d be a lifer. He’d had two accelerated promotions, completed sniper training, and had planned on staying in for his full thirty. After the plastic’s manipulations had been exposed, he hadn’t been able to reconcile providing data for a social experiment run by polynumerous molecular polyhydroxide alcoholydes with what he’d believed he’d been fighting for. He’d tried, but when his contract ran out, he’d walked away. When Zhou met her eyes, Torin could see the betrayal still lurking behind the calm assessment and he still reminded her of herself.
