A Peace Divided

by Tanya Huff

  “Rehab can rebuild your knee,” she snapped, “not your head.”

  Might’ve been the threat, might’ve been the pain—the odds were about even as his arm dropped to the floor with an impressive thud. Ressk kicked the weapon away.

  The Krai and the di’Taykan charging in through the door at the far end of the hall should have taken a shot from the doorway first. Should have. Didn’t. The belief in their own invulnerability—and Harr’s reference to the chief—said Navy.

  “Werst, go high.”

  “Going high, Gunny.”

  There hadn’t been a lot of ship-to-ship boarding parties during the war. The Artek had managed to latch on and get successfully through one hundred and fourteen hulls in five centuries, but the training required to fight giant bugs translated badly into fighting bipedal mammals. Other boarding parties had left no survivors, so the lessons learned were lost. On the rare occasions that ships had been deployed without Marines on board, Navy boarding parties would have been sent to defend or retake stations. As those boarding parties would be all the close combat most Navy personnel would ever see, Torin could only hope that these two had never been part of one.

  The Krai—Ferin, given the Krai fondness for r’s and the lack in Yizaun—launched toward Werst, grabbing impressive air. Yizaun, the di’Taykan, reached for Torin, ready to grapple, intent on pulling her close enough for pheromones to shift her attention. Torin kicked Ferin in the stomach. Werst climbed Yizaun like a tree, wrapped both feet around his neck, and dropped down his back, using weight and momentum to drop the di’Taykan to the floor, rolling free at the last moment.

  The gasping Krai’s wrists and ankles secured, Torin turned her—she was almost certain the gray on green mottling was a female pattern—onto her side so she wouldn’t choke on her own vomit, and then reached over her to crank the di’Taykan’s masker up from the lowest setting.

  “Thanks.” Werst slapped a zip-tie around the di’Taykan’s slender wrists. “Serley chrika fights dirty.”

  “Smartest thing any of them did.”

  Werst adjusted the crotch of his trousers, lips drawn back off his teeth. “Yeah, well, your affected bits are less protruding.”

  The di’Taykan were the most sexually nondiscriminating species in the Confederation. The pheromones that let their own species know they were available, made every other species incredibly receptive—and, so far, it had been every other species. The maskers let the rest of the Confederation make a choice about accepting or declining the perpetual invitation. Using the pheromones as a weapon was considered to be, as Werst had said, fighting dirty.

  Personally, however uncomfortable she might be for the next little while, Torin approved of fighting to win. She saw little point in doing it otherwise.

  Ferin drew in a long shuddering breath and, when Werst looked down, opened her nostril ridges, licked her lips, and purred out what sounded like an extended series of consonants in the Krai’s most common language. Torin could only assume Ferin intended seduction, given the words she recognized. Werst laughed. Ferin bared her teeth, nostril ridges slamming shut.

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m threatened,” he muttered searching the di’Taykan for weapons while Torin patted Ferin down, carefully staying away from her mouth. The Krai could bite through bone. Torin had seen one amputate the leg of a bondmate when no other option had been available.

  “Looks like you’ve got things under control, Boss.”

  Pulling a knife that was more an all-purpose tool than a weapon from a pocket on Ferin’s jumpsuit, Torin twisted far enough to see Alamber standing by the stairs, the muzzle of his KC pointed at the floor, his finger nowhere near the trigger. She hadn’t wanted him taught—a large part of her wanted no one taught to use a weapon ever again, but the practical part, the part that acknowledged the amount of old damage needing to be dealt with before that could happen, the part that wouldn’t kick the young and damaged di’Taykan from her team as long as he wanted to stay, well, that part wanted to give Alamber his best chance of staying alive. And sometimes, regardless of her personal preference, he couldn’t stay in the ship.

  Sometimes Craig couldn’t either, but that was an entirely different problem.

  “Help Ressk with the wounded.” She straightened and stepped back as Ferin lunged for her ankle. “I can’t handle another three days writing reports.”

  Alamber stared down at the bloody cloth wrapped around Shiraz’s shoulder, his pale blue hair flicking back and forth in disdain. “They don’t have sealant?”

  “Didn’t expect to get shot,” Ressk grunted emptying another tube around Mack’s knee, immobilizing it.

  “But they fired first!”

  “So they aren’t too bright.” Ressk’s upper lip pulled back off his teeth as he secured Mack’s massive wrists with a double zip-tie. “And it sounds like they were Navy.”

  “Good call about the window, Torin. The di’Taykan was out on the knocker. I convinced him he’d be healthier if he stayed inside.”

  With two gunrunners still unaccounted for, Torin headed for the single door in the wall opposite the windows. “You think he’ll stay?”

  “I dropped a shuttle on the roof—he’s dummied out that I’ll drop it on him if he tries.”

  “That’ll work.” Torin beckoned Werst over and, when he was ready, opened the door.

  The anchors were designed to be similar, not identical, and she had no idea what this internal room had been intended to hold. Currently, it held twelve crates of weapons as well as an unconscious Human and a wounded Krai sitting, back braced against the closest case, holding a KC pointed at the door.

  Torin preferred to believe that an ex-Marine in the same circumstances would have pulled the trigger the moment the door opened. She locked eyes with the Krai, who was young and terrified and in pain, and she raised a single brow. The Krai swallowed, audibly, then carefully set the weapon down and raised both hands, fingers and nostril ridges trembling.

  “Werst, see to . . .”

  “His,” Werst interjected.

  “. . . his wound.” The fabric over his left hip had been cut away, and a sloppy bandage seeped blood. “I’ll see to the chief.”

  Process of elimination—of the others, only Harr had an implant and they’d heard Harr say the chief had been taken out.

  Even in profile, the chief looked like a lifer, forced to retire after thirty with another hundred years in front of him and no idea of what to do next. Lifers shared a common expression built out of three decades of shared experiences, an expression Torin had intended to wear had the plastic aliens not cut her career short. Although she’d have found a fukking hobby before running guns.

  The chief’s pale hair had been buzzed close, a glimmer over his scalp, and an impressive amount of blood had pooled under slack features. A quick check pulled his cheek from the floor with a sucking sound, and determined the blood had come from his nose. Past tense. Nothing to worry about, then. His pulse was thready, but his position had kept his breathing clear.

  “We’ll corral them all in the common room.” Gripping the chief’s wrists, she lifted his upper body far enough off the floor that his head was in no danger of further damage, and dragged him toward the door. Growing up on Paradise, the first of the Human colony worlds, had given her a minor strength advantage over the original Human design. Unfortunately, gravity at the Three Points Colony was almost exactly the same as it was at home, canceling her advantage. “I want them where we can keep an easy eye on them.”

  “And away from the guns,” Werst added, lifting the injured Krai until he could balance on his good leg. The numbing agent in the sealant now covering his wounded hip had gone a long way toward bringing some green back into his face.

  “Are you going to kill us?”

  Torin dropped his age down a few years. “Kid, if we wanted you dead, you’d already be dead.”
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br />   “You know, the chief said we couldn’t trust the Berin gang. He said, given a chance, you’d most likely turn on us.”

  “The chief’s probably right. But we’re not the Berin gang.” She met Werst’s gaze and grinned. “We’re the Wardens.”

  “The Wardens don’t . . .”

  “They do now,” Werst grunted.

  Out in the common room, they propped five of the seven gunrunners against the end wall. Harr, eyes unfocused, nostril ridges bleeding, snarled inarticulate profanity under his breath, only pausing long enough to add another mouthful of blood and saliva to the pattern on the floor. Yizaun slumped, defeated, ends of his fuchsia hair twitching. Shiraz, loosely secured because of her shoulder, had nearly cut Ferin’s wrists free before anyone noticed their position had nothing to do with comfort.

  “Alamber!”

  “I searched her, Boss, I swear.” Pale blue hair hugging his head, he dragged Ferin out of reach, then dug his thumb into the muscle of her calf to get her to release his ankle. While not as articulated as their hands, Krai feet could grip with more force. “I don’t know where she was hiding it.”

  Ferin yelled out something in Krai. Werst laughed.

  “Doesn’t translate,” he said, when everyone turned to look.

  “And it’s anatomically impossible,” Ressk added.

  “Yeah, like that’s ever . . .”

  Raising a hand, Torin cut Alamber off. “We don’t need to know.”

  Shiraz smirked.

  Torin rolled her eyes, cut the old ties—the Mictok webbing that had replaced the old plastic ties needed a specialized blade—and secured Shiraz’s wrists to the sides of her belt, then her belt to her clothes. Minimum strain on the injured shoulder, but she’d have to strip to get free.

  The kid watched it all with wide eyes, curled into the angle between the floor and the wall, trying to make himself look smaller.

  The chief and Mack had been laid out on the floor, the chief’s head turned to one side in case his nose started to bleed again. Eyes closed, Mack hummed a song popular when Torin was in school and looked happily stoned.

  “Heavy-duty pain blockers,” Ressk explained. “The good drugs. Should last three hours, maybe two given his size. Seemed safer.”

  Torin took another look at the two Humans. Lying side by side, the chief, who wasn’t a small man, barely came up to Mack’s shoulder. “Good call.”

  “You want us to get the two upstairs?”

  “No, they’re not going anywhere.” She took off her helmet, leaving the PCU in her ear, and picked up the tiny weapon Mack had been using. It looked larger in her hand than it had in his, but not by much.

  “You ever see one of those before, Gunny?”

  “No.” Anyone familiar with weaponry would recognize it as a gun. Barrel, trigger, firing chamber, magazine . . . Torin thumbed the magazine release and popped the first round, frowning at it cupped in the palm of her hand. Although smaller than the rounds used in the KC-7, it was, once again, easily recognizable. A distance weapon, small enough to be concealed, broke any number of Confederation laws. Torin thought one law would have been enough—don’t make distance weapons small enough to be concealed—but she wasn’t a politician. “Mashona, hostiles are contained. Come in.”

  “Coming in, Gunny.”

  “If you don’t kill us, we’ll come after you. We’ll get our merchandise back!”

  Ferin elbowed Shiraz in her bad arm. “Shut up!”

  “Why should I?” Her eyebrows, dyed an iridescent purple, folded into a deep vee as Shiraz glared at Torin. “They can’t just waltz in here and take what’s ours and expect us to like it!”

  “Seriously, shut the fuk up!”

  “No. This was our big score, and they can’t . . .”

  “Do you want them to kill us, you dumb shit!”

  That shut her up.

  Alamber cocked his head, pale blue eyes darkening, lid to lid, as more light receptors opened. “Why would you think we’re going to kill you?”

  “Why wouldn’t you?” Ferin muttered. “No one believes that honor among thieves shit.”

  “Boss?”

  “They think they’ve been betrayed by the people, and I use the term loosely, that were supposed to buy the guns. We’re not the Berin gang.” Torin swept a gaze over the conscious. It was a gaze she’d used on Marines who’d thought they could buck the Corps and the shit had risen over their heads. Navy or not, all five of them recognized it. Harr tried to square his shoulders. Now she had their attention, she tapped the insignia on her chest. “We’re Wardens.”

  Ferin snapped her teeth. “Gren sa talamec! Peacekeepers aren’t armed.”

  “Surprise. Craig, let the C&C know we’re ready for them.”

  “Will do. Any dead?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Aces. Good for you.” He kept his tone light, but she knew he meant it.

  Torin turned the small weapon over in her hands and checked the chamber was clear. The rounds were shorter, blunter, and given the length of the muzzle, accuracy would be unlikely over thirty meters. This wasn’t a weapon for war. At least not the kind of war she knew. Tucked in her waistband, under a jacket, no one would ever know she was carrying it until she used it. Memory replayed countless lessons from children’s programming right up to basic training, lessons about fair play and respect and acknowledgment of intent. Her grip tightened, metal digging into her palms. “I want a look in those cases. Ressk, with me. Werst, Alamber, if you have to shoot them, don’t destroy body parts that can’t be fixed.”

  Werst grinned. “Wasn’t Major Svensson pretty much a brain in a jar before the Corps tanked him?”

  “Good point. Don’t destroy body parts the Justice Department can’t afford to fix.”

  The cases were unlocked, ready, she assumed, for the Berin gang to inspect the merchandise. Eight held KC-7s, the ninth KC-12s, the larger weapons used by the heavy gunners, exoskeletons augmenting their strength. There were no exoskeletons, and she assumed another group dealt with that half of the equation. The tenth, eleventh, and twelfth cases held ammunition. Standard rounds for the sevens, and for the twelves . . .

  “Impact boomers. Grenades.” Ressk straightened. “There’s burners in there, too, Gunny.”

  Rules of combat disallowed flamethrowers against living targets. Both Torin and Ressk had seen the rule broken. As neither the gunrunners nor the Berin gang were operating within any rules at all, Torin carefully didn’t consider what the burner rounds could be used for. It would do nothing to improve her mood, and Justice also had paperwork for when prisoners arrived unnecessarily broken.

  There were no more of the small weapons.

  She set a KC carefully back into the crate and rubbed her fingers together. “Factory sealant.”

  “Brand-new,” Ressk agreed. “Not stolen from a Corps depot, then.” The Corps had the KCs out of the box, cleaned and sighted before the supply sergeant finished filing the delivery documents. “On the way to a Corps depot, maybe?”

  “No. The crates are too clean.” It had been a long time since Torin had seen a weapon that wasn’t ready to fire, but she remembered a stack of crates in supply, delivery information stenciled on all six surfaces, a low- tech solution to prevent potential high-tech interference from the enemy.

  They’d been sent out after gunrunners. Armed and violent and ready to shoot first, the gunrunners were exactly the sort of dangerous criminal the Strike Teams had been formed to deal with.

  Their brief had said only, stolen weapons—where they’d been stolen from, unimportant.

  Wiping her fingers on her thigh, Torin had a feeling it was about to become important. “Remember when Big Bill getting his grubby hands on a Marine armory was the worst possibility we’d ever encountered? Good times.”

  “At least they only had the one morta
r. They don’t seem to be selling the big stuff.” When Torin turned toward him, Ressk shrugged, a human motion the Krai had adopted but had never really mastered. “No harm in looking on the bright side. These assholes get their hands on a sammy and there goes our arrest record. Well, not these assholes,” he amended after a moment. “But there’s plenty of assholes out there.”

  “Not arguing.” There seemed to be more assholes, and more ambitious assholes appearing every day. “We have any information on the Berin gang?”

  “Not a word, Gunny. Could be new.”

  “And expecting to be very well armed.”

  “Unless these guys are wholesale and the Berin are the distributors.”

  Nine cases of weapons. Three cases of ammo. Enough to fight a small war. Torin drummed her fingers against a case. “They’re organizing.”

  “If they are . . .” He shrugged again when she turned to look at him. “Not enough data. You can’t gut feeling a broad social analysis. What am I saying,” he added before she could speak, “you can, but that’s only a single data point, Gunny. I can tell you there’s probably a Human at the root of this.”

  “Can you?”

  “Twelve cases. You lot have a hindbrain attachment to your duh-zen. No other species defaults to it.”

  She stared at him for a long moment. “Don’t even . . .”

  “Humans First was pretty pissed when Richard Varga died in rehabilitation.”

  “We took that organization down.”

  “And the remnants reorganized pretty damned quickly when Varga died,” Ressk reminded her. “Put out a new mission statement, removed the apostrophe, started recruiting.”

  “Son of a fukking . . .”

  “Torin, C&C’s on the way in. Three hours twenty-seven to orbit.”