by Tanya Huff
Torin smiled.
Binti’s brows rose. “Gunny?”
“I haven’t tagged him, but I know who has.” And Craig called her paranoid. She’d remind him of that when they got him back. “We’re heading out.”
“Got a target for us, Gunny?” Zhou asked.
“Got a targeting system. Werst, meet us in the armory.”
* * *
• • •
They could trust Sergeant Urrest not to be Humans First. That didn’t solve the rest of the problem.
Nostril ridges opening and closing slowly, she swept a flat stare out over the crowd of Wardens. “You’re all going to the range?”
Elisk, declared most charming of the Krai by the others, opened his nostril ridges the rest of the way in a sign of trust. “We are. We agreed to test the tranquilizer guns for R&D.”
“All of you.”
“All of us.”
“H’san shit.”
“Hopefully, or their heads would explode.”
The sergeant and the gathered Strike Teams turned to stare at Nicholin.
Umber hair fluttered. “What? If you don’t shit, your head explodes. Everyone knows that.”
“Sometimes it terrifies me you’re the team medic,” Marie murmured.
“Enough of this.” Torin had agreed to give the soft approach a chance. Chance taken, moving on. She moved to stand beside Elisk, bodies suddenly out of her way, and placed both hands on the counter that separated Urrest’s territory from the rest of the station. “Humans First has infiltrated the station, they’ve got Craig, we’re going to get him back, but we don’t know who to trust. You’re not Human, so we trust you.”
“Has infiltrated?”
“For a while now.”
Urrest stared at Torin for a long moment. Finally, she nodded. “Why didn’t you just say so? Why not use the bennies if it’s going to be an insertion firefight?”
Torin felt some of the tension leave her back. She’d have gone over the counter if she’d had to. “Because they’re all Human, the tranq guns are the best choice. One drug, so we can reload at speed.”
“Figure you’ll take less trouble for an unauthorized operation if no one’s actually injured?”
“That’s the theory.”
“You’ll need to be up close and personal to hit anyone. Their range is shit.”
“With luck, we’ll be as close as we need to be.”
“You ever have that kind of luck, Gunny?” Urrest snorted. “Because I said that for thirty years, and it never worked for me.”
* * *
• • •
Almost a meter shorter than Torin, Elisk had to lean around the copilot’s chair to watch Ressk and Alamber work the board. “Craig’s linked to his ship?”
“Always.”
“That’s . . . convenient,” Elisk allowed. “I assumed you were going to use the DNA scanners.”
CSOs were responsible for finding sixty-seven percent of MIAs while searching debris fields for salvage. Their ships might be held together with duct tape—Torin rubbed her thumb along a familiar crease in the tape holding the top of the pilot’s chair together—but they didn’t scrimp when it came to scanners. When Justice refitted Promise, Craig had traded the repurposed military scanners for a new set of what he’d had.
“The scanners would only tell us where he’d been, not where he is,” Torin began.
“Because Craig’s DNA is all over the station,” Binti finished.
The four di’Taykan snickered. It had the familiar sound of massed military, and Torin found it comforting. She’d worked with Craig as a CSO for almost a year after leaving the Corps, but he’d shown her his tagging system when that was over, after the pirates, after she’d realized the war had left a lot more broken pieces around than she’d thought.
Two Strike Teams, less a pilot, packed the control room full, but compared to sharing the compartment with three Polint, the Primacy’s largest quadrupeds, it didn’t seem crowded. It helped that there were no overexcited giant bugs overwhelming the air filtration with the scent of cherry candy.
Werst pulled a protein bar out of his pocket and tossed half to Ressk. “Last time Craig got his ass captured, it only took four of us to get him back.”
“We blew up a station. I’d rather not blow up this station.”
He swallowed and nodded. “Good point. I finally got our sleeping net the way I want it.”
A civilian might have noted how calmly Torin waited for information about her abducted partner, but the only civilian around was Alamber, and he’d never make such a stupid observation.
“Am I the best? Yes, I am. Direct line to his implant, isolated and secured!” Alamber’s hair rose in triumph.
“Yeah, but you can’t get into his implant,” Tylen called out from over by the hatch to the head.
“He doesn’t need to,” Ressk explained as Alamber’s hands seemed to be in four places on the board at once. “He needs to follow the signal to where it cuts out, then identify the shielded location.”
“Doesn’t that kind of search violate at least a couple of privacy laws?” Torin heard Yahsamus ask quietly.
“They abducted a Warden,” Marie answered in the same low tone. “We have just cause.”
“So you’re saying it is against a couple of laws.”
“You have a problem with that, Tech?” Torin didn’t bother turning, eyes on Alamber’s fingers pulling miracles from the board. “Because if you do, you can sit this one out.”
“No problem, Gunny. I just like to know what the rules are before I break them.”
The Confederation needed to make up its mind about maintaining eyes on, Torin acknowledged silently. Surveillance helped keep the peace. Surveillance was an invasion of privacy. Having been under one kind of surveillance or another since she walked into the recruiting office on Paradise, Torin had long since learned privacy was an illusion. She was beginning to fear that peace was as well.
“And, got it.” Alamber pulled a station schematic up off the board and rotated it, deleting some sections, enlarging others. “Shipping and receiving. Hangar bay seven. Typical.”
Ressk threw the hangar bay specs into the air beside the schematic. “They’re going to want to move him off station.”
“Yeah, like I said, typical.”
“No, they’d have done that already if that’s what they wanted.” Torin spun the hard light display to have a look at the external access. “They want me to come after him.”
“They want you to . . .” Binti’s protest trailed off and she frowned. Then she laughed. “Idiots.”
* * *
• • •
“Of course you came alone.” Standing in the center of the empty hangar, one hand on the back of the metal chair Craig had been secured to, Mimi Paddison traced an exaggerated flourish in the air with the other. “The great Gunnery Sergeant Kerr—destroyed a pirate fleet on her own, got a training platoon off Crucible on her own, got her people out of Big Yellow on her own, brought in the Silsviss on her own.”
“Oh, for fuksake.” Torin threw her head back in supposed frustration, spotted four Humans theoretically hidden in the patterns of shadows near the ten-meter ceiling, and returned to glaring at Paddison all in an elapsed time of under two seconds. “The Silsviss happened ten years ago. Move on.”
“You first. You can’t stop yourself from charging to the rescue, can you?” Paddison continued. “No trouble breaking the law for what you believe in, but unwilling to allow others the same courtesy. You’re a contradiction, Gunnery Sergeant Kerr, and you have no idea how sick I am of hearing about you.”
Torin ignored her and focused on Craig. His eyes were bloodshot, and he had a bruise purpling one cheek, darker where a knuckle had dug in deep, but he looked essentially unharmed. He also looked calm and anno
yed. “You okay?” Gunnery sergeant voice. Team Leader voice. Professional voice.
He shrugged as much as the bindings allowed. “Little embarrassed.”
“A little?”
He grinned as Torin raised a single brow, and she saw blood on his teeth. “You’re never going to let me forget this, are you?”
“Not for the rest of our lives.”
He heard what she meant and the grin softened into a smile. “Yeah. Me, too.”
“How sweet.” Free hand whipping around, Paddison slapped a piece of tape across his mouth.
Craig’s eyes narrowed. He bucked up off the chair, muscles straining, and got nowhere. The muffled sounds emerging from behind the tape were indistinguishable as words, but Torin had a good idea of what he was shouting.
Paddison tucked a purple curl back behind her ear. “Told him if he kept quiet, you two could talk. Didn’t say for how long. For the record, if it had been me taking you out on Seven Sta or Threxie, I’d have avoided this pancreatic overload of a reunion.” She rolled her eyes. “Thanks so much, command. And, if you’re expecting backup after the posturing is over, you’re shit out of luck. Slates and implants don’t work in here for safety reasons—so-called Elder Races can’t have the children make mistakes, can they?—and we’ve locked all physical access.”
“You missed the big hole in the station behind you.”
Ninety percent of the time, the hangars separated air and vacuum with an energy shield, a system more efficient than hauling the big double doors open and closed 28/10. Proximity alerts protected the station from solid objects not under the docking systems’ control that came close enough to pass through the shield. Hangar Seven had been taken out of service for scheduled maintenance, so Torin had had a fifty/fifty chance the shield would be in place. The outer bulkhead showed twenty meters of shimmer over stars, and Plan A was a go. Plan B involved enough collateral damage Commander Ng would have to be Humans First for them to get away with it.
Credit where due, Paddison didn’t turn to look at the big hole in the station behind her. “Like you’d ever put the station in danger by disabling the proximity alert—even if your degenerate tech could crack it. Not that it matters. Down here in the hangars, we know the moment any ship disconnects from the docking arm. You’d love to sneak up behind us, but you can’t.”
Torin smiled. “You’ve thought this through.”
“Don’t fukking patronize me, Kerr.”
“You keep saying we. And us.” Craig’s chair hadn’t been secured to the deck. Careless.
“Did you learn procedure from StarCops? Never mind.” She waved off Torin’s response. “You want me to be the one to say Humans First. Fine. I’ll say it. Humans First. Loud and proud.”
“Proud of what? You’re a terrorist.”
“I’m a patriot.” She stretched out her hands, kept the fingers loosely curled. Fists limited potential responses. “I was training close combat fighters before you were born. Age and experience, Kerr. You’re done.”
Craig screamed three rude if incomprehensible syllables into the tape.
Torin shifted her weight forward onto the balls of her feet, elbows bent, arms out from her side. “Humans First doesn’t want me anymore?”
“Could be why we keep trying to kill you,” Paddison pointed out genially. “Your ability to be a pain in the ass outweighed your potential propaganda value.”
“Good to hear. I’m obligated, as an officer of the Justice Department, to offer you an opportunity to surrender. This is it.”
“Fuk you.”
Belaying lines hissed, and a dozen people appeared. The four from above landed two meters behind Torin, one of them breathing loudly. Four emerged from the shadows to the right. Four to the left. All of the eight she could see were ex-military. Obvious to her in the way they moved. In the set of their shoulders. An imprint eroded by time, but impossible to entirely erase. Those she could see were armed with bennies. Not scuffed and well-used, military blackmarket bennies, but the latest models with the newest upgraded tech.
That cracked Torin’s calm just a little. “How the fuk did you get illegal weapons onto the station? I have trouble getting requisitioned weapons onto the station!”
Paddison shrugged. “We’re the people who do the actual work. They notice you, all flash and no substance, but they don’t notice us—the drones who maintain bureaucracy’s glacial forward movement. We made that work for us. You’ll notice . . .” Hand cupping the top of Craig’s head, she shook it back and forth. “. . . I didn’t underestimate you. It may take all thirteen of us, but this time, the job gets done.”
Torin’s internal clock told her to stall just a little longer. “You’re willing to die to kill me?” She rolled her eyes. “And you wonder why I have an ego.”
“We’re willing to die to give Humans back their rightful place in the galaxy,” Paddison amended. “It’s not always about you, Kerr.”
“Our rightful place?” Torin let her disdain show. “Trapped on a small planet, alone in an otherwise uninhabitable system, out near the far end of the spiral arm, killing each other. That was where we were before the Confederation arrived.”
“And if they hadn’t arrived?” Paddison demanded, face flushed. “We were already in space. Without the interference of the Elder Races, we’d have risen to be the dominant species in the galaxy. We’re generalists, surrounded by specialists. The most adaptive always . . .”
Torin readied herself to dive for Paddison’s throat.
“I saw that. What part of thirty years in close combat don’t you get?” The knife she held, small weighted, and intended for throwing dimpled Craig’s throat. “Stand down, or he bleeds out watching you die. Slow, painful, and emotionally traumatized.”
“If I let you kill me, he lives? Traumatized, but alive?”
“Don’t be stupid. He’ll die quickly.” She looked annoyed. “Precedent suggests you won’t.”
Internal countdown at zero, Torin dove back, not forward, hit the deck between two of the big docking clamps, and rolled as the Strike Teams came through the energy shield and into the hangar, Promise blotting out the stars. Alamber had disabled both the docking and the proximity alerts with the kind of quick and dirty illegal assault they didn’t teach during formal schooling. The teams came in low, rolling as the artificial gravity slapped them down.
By the time they were on their feet, both alerts were back on.
There’d been a chance, albeit a small one, Humans First would surrender when they realized the fight would be less survivable than anticipated.
They opened fire. Five of the twelve had their bennies stroked up to deep fry, ready to blow away layers of organic tissue.
Craig tipped the chair sideways and crashed to the deck, feet and chair legs pointed toward Paddison.
The bright orange HE suits made it easy to tell friend from foe and protected against most of what the bennies could do; not that they were doing much. It seemed Humans First had assumed rhetoric would keep old skills sharp. Their clothing might have looked like combats, but the tranquilizer darts went right though.
Paddison roared as Craig kicked her elbow, her knife rattling against the deck by Torin’s knee. Torin tackled her before she could turn on Craig, and they both went down. Knees, elbows, fists, fingers, teeth . . .
“Torin. She’s out. Stop!” Craig’s grip on her arms tightened. “Torin!”
She spat out a mouthful of blood, and leaned forward, using the back of her forearm to tip Paddison’s head until she could meet the other woman’s unfocused gaze. “You should’ve shot me the moment I came into the hangar. You’d still be heading to rehab, but I’d be dead.”
“Stop telling people how to kill you.” Hands under her arms, Craig heaved her up onto her feet. “Fuk, you’re covered in blood.”
“Skin’s still tender from the tank, th
at’s all.” The skin across both sets of knuckles had split multiple times. Considering the amount of blood she was blinking out of her eyes, her forehead must’ve split as well and she didn’t want to think about the condition of the fine skin covering her joints or her shoulder blades.
“You’re supposed to be in quarantine for two days after decanting.”
“And yet here I am.”
“You ignored Ng’s orders to stand down and let the others handle it, didn’t you?” He pulled the tube of sealant from her vest, and began spraying her forehead, his hand gentle where it protected her eyes.
“Not exactly.” She could feel the adrenaline beginning to fade. She’d been riding it since Alamber had contacted her and in a few minutes, she was going to crash hard. “Elisk, injuries?”
“A few minor burns, and one of those assholes hit Tylen with a cutting laser. Suit protected her long enough for us to prevent any major damage,” Elisk assured her as he walked across the hangar. “She’s down, but her vitals are high.”
“Good. Prisoners?”
“Alive and secure. Nine out and twitching. Three surrendered.” Elisk planted his feet by Paddison’s head, nostril ridges opening as he looked down. “She looks like shit.” He looked up at Torin. “So do you. I thought Binti was to get close enough to hit her with a tranq while you distracted her.”
“Change of plans.”
He looked at Craig, frowned at the dribble of red on the side of his neck. “Paddison do that?”
Craig swiped at it, smearing the blood around. “She did.”
Elisk smiled, but the sudden blare of alarms drowned out his response.
“Called in the op from the ship,” Torin explained. “We couldn’t bring C&C with us.”
“Called it in from the Promise? Torin, who’s flying my ship?” Craig sprayed a thick layer of sealant over the back of her right hand, his knuckles white.
“Bilodeau.”
“You could’ve . . .”
Torin cut him off. “Bilodeau is good. Better than Poritirr, better than Azur, almost as good as you.”
