by Tanya Huff
“And the bad guys didn’t get to shoot at us.” Zhou spread his hands as his team turned toward him. “I appreciate not being shot at.”
Nicholin’s eyes lightened from deep umber to a pale cream. “I’ll shoot at you.”
Zhou rolled his eyes. “Worst pickup line ever.”
“And that’s enough of that. Gunny. Cap.” Yahsamus nodded at both Torin and Ranjit, then spread her arms and herded her team, minus Elisk, down the dockway. “Come on, kids, move ass to the armory and let the grownups talk.”
“Do we get a cookie?”
“You’ll get my boot in your butt. Move.”
Torin fell in on the right, Ranjit on the left, as Elisk shifted the strap of his KC and headed into the station.
“About half the cache had been shifted,” he said after a moment. “And in a fuk of a hurry, too. It was a mess. Weapons were gone, although there were a couple of empty MI cases they’d been using for trash.”
“Marteau Industries.”
“Well, yeah. They’re the merchants of death in this sector, right? Remember that shipyard that got hit, about a year ago? About half the stolen supplies were still there and one of the platform tanks. Assuming they weren’t hot racking, there were thirty bodies in house before someone set the tree on fire.”
“You think they knew you were coming in?” Torin asked.
Ranjit shook her head, braid bouncing against her back. “Doesn’t have to be a conspiracy. If they were building a base, they would’ve been monitoring the buoys.”
“However they found out, they were gone before we were in-system. Weirdest thing, the personnel area, that was right out of the Corps playbook, but the rest? It was like they had a vague idea of what a shipyard needed and had been collecting all the parts, but no one involved had any idea of how to put it together.”
“Not a lot of disgruntled Human shipyard designers, then.”
“Too bad because at least a shipyard’s big enough to find. Bigger than a base anyway.” Ranjit amended. “The more coming and going, the more patterns are created patterns and new patterns get noticed.”
Torin thought about the compatibility channels.
“And we know they won’t drop a shipyard down a gravity well,” Ranjit continued, “so we could scratch dirtside searches.”
They walked in silence for a few strides, listening to Lorkin try to explain Krai family dynamics to three di’Taykan and two Humans.
“How did the team work out?”
“Like a well-knotted net. A little bitching about the lack of warm bodies to bring in, but . . .” Elisk shrugged. He was no better at the Human gesture than most Krai. “It was good to be doing something useful with our training, and not something for the fukking plastic, but it wasn’t very exciting.”
Seemed the commander had a valid point about the Strike Teams being made up of adrenaline junkies, Torin acknowledged silently, but it was those similarities that helped them mesh. And considering that neither Corps nor Navy encouraged individualism, it was hypocritical of her to chew at how the Confederation wanted its citizens to have information and beliefs in common. On the other hand, the military needed cohesion to keep its people alive; given that the Confederation consisted of predominantly post-violent civilizations, why work so hard to wipe out differences?
“So, Gunny.” Elisk grinned up at her. “Seems you were busy while we were gone. I hear you took a knife to that plastic data sheet and sent a strongly worded message to the rest of the plastic to stay away.”
“You heard?”
“People talk, Gunny. People talk.”
She glanced over his head at Ranjit who nodded. “The story of you and Ryder taking down the plastic beat you back to the station.”
People talking—the weak link in the process of disseminating information.
* * *
• • •
Berbar’s sysop had directed her to a hatch in R&D that opened into a large rectangular compartment with a double line of cluttered workbenches filling the long axis. Five Rakva crowded around a hard-light display at the far end, all talking at once. Unfortunately, they weren’t talking in Federate, so even if Torin could parse the spill of words and whistles into sentences, she wouldn’t understand them. Given the speed, odds were she wouldn’t have understood them even if they’d been talking in Federate. She paused just inside the hatch as feathers literally flew from the force a yellow-and-green Rakva used gesturing at the schematic. It was unlikely the station would have sent her to a sterile room without warning, but she appreciated having that assumption confirmed.
Then a Rakva, almost entirely white with pale pink and gray tinting only the ends of their plumage caught sight of her. They stared down the length of the room. Torin stared back at them. She’d never seen a Rakva that color—varying shades of yellow, green, blue, and occasionally patches of red, but not white. On the Rakva she was familiar with, the size and shape of the crest would indicate a female, but, all things considered, Torin decided not to make assumptions.
One by one, the other Rakva fell silent and turned to stare.
Torin smiled, keeping her teeth covered. “Dr. Deyell. I hope I’m not interrupting. The station said your hatch was open.”
“Warden Kerr.” Dr. Deyell stepped away from the group, teal-and-gray feathers ruffled, paused, turned, said/whistled a phrase that sounded impatient, turned again, and began walking toward her. “This one wonders,” he said when he was close enough, “why you have brought a weapon into this one’s workspace?”
Torin laid the bennie she’d been carrying on a cleared bit of workbench. “I had an idea. You’re still working on tranquilizers?”
His rudimentary beak pursed and he sighed. “This one is.”
“This should have occurred to me a while ago, but bennies aren’t my preferred . . .”
“Boss?”
Torin turned as Alamber stepped into the room. She had no idea where he’d found scarlet combat boots.
“I thought that was your voice. What are you doing in squint land?” He grinned at Dr. Deyell. “Hey, Doc.”
“This one wonders why you continue to believe you’re funny.”
“This one’s hurt you think I’m not.” One pale long-fingered hand tapped his chest. “Truly hurt.”
“Were you looking for me?” Torin asked as Dr. Deyell fluffed his feathers in amusement.
Alamber’s eyes darkened. “Always.”
“Specifically?”
“No, I’m heading to forensics. They’ve got the images U’yun sent back, and I wanted to go over them on the big imager to try and figure out what was taken away by the patterns left behind.” Alamber nodded toward the weapon. “Sergeant Urrest know you have that?”
Torin raised a brow. “Do I look like I’m asking for a fight?”
“Not currently.” He winked, pressed against her side for a moment, then turned to go. “I’m on the range at 1540, Boss, if you want to drop by and check my form. Don’t let her shoot you, Doc. Those things hurt. Later.”
“He’s a very intelligent young male,” Dr. Deyell said quietly as Alamber’s footsteps faded in the distance. “He’s been spending much of his free time in forensics.”
“I know.”
Dr. Deyell stared at her for a long moment, his crest lifting. “Your idea?”
“His idea.”
“But you’re not stopping him?”
“Why would I? You’re right. He’s wasted on a Strike Team.”
His crest flattened. “This one didn’t say . . .”
Torin waited while his voice trailed off and, when it became clear he wasn’t going to continue, she tapped the bennie. “Have you handled one of these before.”
“This one does not handle weapons.”
“Which is why using it as a base for the nonlethal armaments Justice keeps de
manding didn’t occur to you either.”
“This is nonlethal?”
“It can be. Depends on the species you’re firing at and the amount of juice you use. It disrupts cellular structure, so tight beam, full charge, and you can drill through organic matter. You can put it on low at full spread and decontaminate most surfaces, but that’s not relevant right now.” She frowned and went for full disclosure. “It also has a cutting laser. Also not relevant right now. The Corps uses them on ships or stations where random holes would be a bad idea.”
Head cocked, he studied the weapon. “An EMP burst would disable this.”
“An EMP burst on a ship or station would disable the environmental controls. As well as the airlocks,” she added after a moment.
“What if the enemy were wearing HE suits? Then it wouldn’t matter if they also disabled the ship or station.”
“HE suits hold a lot of tech. They’ll keep you alive without it, but it won’t be fun. Also, no one fights in an HE suit if they don’t have to.”
His crest rose again. “See, this one didn’t know that.” He leaned forward eagerly, his distaste at being so close to a weapon overcome by new information.
“I was thinking that brains work on electrical signals, so if you adapted the bennie to fire an energy burst that disrupts signals to the brain instead of developing a tranquilizer . . .”
“Which has to be individually calibrated for each species, and this one finds biology annoyingly variable.”
“. . . you wouldn’t have to build the delivery system from scratch.”
“This one agrees that would definitely cut development time.”
Sergeant Urrest had drained the primary charge to the lowest operative level and locked down the laser, but Torin kept a close eye on Deyell as he bent and lifted the bennie, turning it over and around to check all angles. He couldn’t do anything to it, and they’d made it almost impossible for him to do irreparable damage with it, but almost impossible had both won and lost wars.
“Keep your finger outside the trigger guard unless you’re ready to shoot.”
“This?”
She tapped the lower edge of the curve. “That.”
The Rakva voices from the other end of the room rose in volume, one of the whistles growing increasingly shrill. Torin didn’t have to check to know they were watching Deyell. One of the Mid Races holding a weapon. Things really had gone to hell since her people were drafted.
“This one doubts the EMP problem could be solved without prohibitive shielding.” He set the bennie back on the workbench. “But this one will know better once it’s in pieces. That’s okay, right?”
He sounded like Alamber, reminding Torin of how young he was. “That’s okay.”
Straightening, he patted his pockets, didn’t find what he searched for, and said, “It sounds like you’re thinking of something similar to the item Qurn used on you.” He grinned at her raised brow. “This one reads the reports, Strike Team Leader Kerr. This one can’t create new equipment if this one has no idea of what you do. We weren’t allowed to meet the Primacy team while they were here, but we’ve petitioned to be included should there be another joint mission.”
“We?”
“Yes, fine.” He dismissed the question with a wave. “Mostly this one. Although we were all very disappointed not to be given a chance to reverse engineer Qurn’s tech. Your medical records, even combined with Commander Yurrisk’s and Robert Martin’s, gave us nothing definitive we could use.”
Qurn, a Druin, who’d turned out to be a Primacy agent within the Confederation, had used the—Torin hesitated to call it a weapon since it was small enough to conceal, but, realistically, that’s what it was—the weapon on two Humans and a Krai. Two very different species, three different body weights. It hadn’t been a chemical suppressant, but other than that, the only thing Torin knew was that she’d shaken it off faster than the commander, and it had made her tongue vibrate randomly over the next twenty-seven hours.
“Too bad she took it with her when she was disappeared.”
“You mean when she disappeared?”
“No.” Qurn hadn’t left Berbar Station without high-level government involvement. Torin blamed the H’san. Because she could.
When it became clear Torin wasn’t going to expand on her answer, Deyell turned his attention back to the benny. “The range?”
“It’s a close-quarters weapon.”
“This one doubts we can achieve more range.”
The best they’d managed with the prototype tranquilizer guns was accuracy at eighty-five meters. And Binti had taken the shot, skewing the data. “All right.” Torin frowned at a bit of teal fluff by the muzzle. “If we need more range, rig one of the KC-9s to fire a contained version of the charge slipped into a modified boomer round. The round would shatter on impact and zap, brain function disrupted, bruised but alive.”
“Zap?”
“It’s a technical term.” It also may have been one of the few words he recognized as it was doubtful he’d be able to identify either a KC-9 or a boomer round. “Large round . . . bullet.” Thumb and forefinger curled into the circumference. “In a gun designed to fire variations as long as they’re that size.” She’d fired a perimeter pin from a nine, more than once, and had fortunately not become an object lesson on why that wasn’t a good idea. If the Strike Teams were going to successfully do their jobs, they had to keep lines of communication open with their support staff. Support staff and Strike Teams had to learn to speak each other’s language. Coordinate their efforts. Remember this wasn’t a military operation, restricted to the Younger Races. Communication remained a work in progress, but at least there was progress.
He considered it for a moment. “No offense, Strike Team Leader, but why didn’t the military put the idea into production?”
“My best guess . . . too complicated. War is simple. Peace isn’t.”
Absently preening the side of his throat, Deyell nodded. “This one will need to research before beginning to make modifications.”
“I’ll leave you to it, then. Sergeant Urrest is willing to leave the benny in your care on my say-so. Don’t shoot anyone unintentionally. If you decide you need to examine a KC, let me know.” When she turned toward the hatch, the volume increased in the discussion at the other end of the room. She paused, angled so she could see the white Rakva disdainfully swipe an image out of the air. “Are all of R&D Rakva?”
He glanced over his shoulder. The green-and-yellow Rakva whistled a rude observation. Torin had a specific ear when it came to profanity in other languages.
“No, of course not, but we prefer creating communally and most other species don’t. Mictok,” he added thoughtfully, “but we won’t get Mictok until Justice will unclench enough to hire three. Oh, and this one will need to see precise data on what the weapon in its current configuration actually does to organics.”
“The last time you needed precise data . . .”
Deyell smiled. “This time, Strike Team Leader, we’ll load you up with a sensor array before you’re shot.”
Torin remembered drooling. And Craig’s reaction. “Joy.”
* * *
• • •
“You think he’ll come running?” Craig handed her the mug of coffee and leaned against the inert edge of the desk.
“I think he’ll make inquiries.” She’d sent the message outlining the job opportunity to the Rearl family. They’d pass it on to Stedrin. “Working here has got to be more interesting than a civilian job.”
“This is a civilian job. And you’re biased.”
“Why would I be biased?”
He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Because you built all this, made a place for your people, and now you’re working on stabilizing it.”
Torin was tempted to say she didn’t know what he was talking ab
out, but she didn’t do coy. “The commander needs an aide.”
“I need for us to grab a few minutes alone.” When she looked up at him, he grinned. “Need. Want. Same same.”
A single touch closed the desk. “I’m due at the range in forty-three minutes.”
Dimples flashed. “I can work with that.”
Alamber pulled the lines of code with him as he squatted and peered into the triangular space under the 3D rendering of a pile of fallen metal sheets. Credit where due, U’yun’s C&C had done a brilliant job recording on a macro level. The drag marks from the removal of whatever had been supporting the pile were crisp and clean and short enough the dim lights of Humans First had obviously shifted it just enough to wrestle it onto a sled. He scanned it on a micro level, flicked the measurements into his code, adjusted a line, stood, turned, and . . .
“Ablin gon savit! Where did you come from?”
“Katryl, where I are attending Win Sar Institute, then Onlin Station, then here. That are being some very clever work.” The Katrien leaned in toward the scrolling code, golden-brown muzzle wrinkled as she worked through the progression. “I are never having seen mapping being done this way. You are clearly being smarter than you are looking.”
“Yeah, well . . .” Alamber cocked a hip and drew up his smarmiest smile. “More than just another pretty face.”
“Back off a bit, Myril.” Dr. di’Nakamot Bishami shot Alamber a look about fifty/fifty apology and amusement as she approached. “Myril’s a new hire. New team, new C&C, new brains behind the scenes.”
“And this new brain are telling you, this mapping are looking like it shouldn’t work, but it clearly are working.”
“Maybe if you’re lucky, he’ll show you how he did it. Someday. Not now.”
“I are not being able to be doing that.” Myril waved both arms, the fine polymer spray the fur-bearing wore in the labs holding her pelt immobile. “It are being wrong.”
Alamber held his smarmy smile in place as Bishami took Myril gently by both shoulders and turned her away. “And yet it works.”
