by Tanya Huff
“You don’t understand.” He took hold of her arms, gently, barely indenting the fabric, and met her gaze, nostrils open. “The Krai from the other pit, Ressk, he’s an advance scout . . .”
“For Strike Team Alpha. So you said.”
He shook his head. “Strike Team Alpha is a designation, nothing more. Ressk is one of her people. We have to get back to the safety of the anchor if we want to survive this. We’re dead if we stay here, and I can’t leave the plastic behind.”
Qurn stared at him for a long moment. “Who is she?”
Yurrisk frowned as Arniz silently applauded the Druin. Exactly the question she’d have asked.
“You said Ressk is one of her people,” Qurn prodded. “Who is she?”
“Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr.”
Pale lids flicked across both eyes. “The gunnery sergeant who exposed the plastic aliens?”
“The same. The same gunnery sergeant who saved a training platoon on Crucible, who got her people off Big Yellow even with the handicap of Commander Carveg. The same gunnery sergeant who brought the Silsviss into the Confederation. Who got a Marine armory out of the hands of pirates and who added a strong arm to the bureaucracy of justice. Do you know what they say about her?”
“That she’s trying too hard?”
“That she was only doing her job. And now, we’re her job.”
“So we leave. Take the VTA back to the ship and go.”
Arniz was fully in favor of that plan.
“We can’t. Without that weapon to sell, there’s nowhere we can go. We’ve barely enough fuel to get us to the meet with the buyer and, without the buyer, no way to get more. The buyer will pay us enough for a converter, and that will free us. We can’t leave, but if we stay—if we get to the anchor—we’re safe.” Yurrisk stared through the trees as though he could see the anchor in the distance. “Kerr is smart enough to understand the principle behind hostages. As long as we have them, she can’t attack. As long as we have them, she has to negotiate, and that’s not one of her strengths.”
“The strengths she does have seem to be working for her,” Qurn pointed out. “And there’s six or seven on a Strike Team. One of the others can do the negotiating.”
“The Strike Teams are weapons aimed by the Justice Department. Ex-military who can’t leave institutionalized violence behind.”
Hello, irony. Arniz moved a stick bug to safety on a bit of undisturbed greenery.
“They have no subtlety. They can’t charge in, guns blazing, and put civilians in danger. The civilians are a shield. So when we leave with the weapon, we take one with us.” He glanced over Qurn’s shoulder at Arniz. “Not you.”
She waved it off. “I’m crushed. Truly.”
“Ganes would be best. He’s Navy. He knows how this works.”
“He doesn’t seem to,” Qurn muttered. “Martin’s people barely stopped him from getting to the communications equipment.”
Again, exactly what Arniz would have said.
“That’s how it works,” Yurrisk insisted. “Ganes has been captured, it’s his job to make it difficult for the enemy. He doesn’t surrender. He keeps fighting. And fighting.” His nostril ridges slammed closed. “Stop fighting and everyone dies. Stop fighting and it’s over and lives were spent for nothing. Stop fighting . . .”
“Come back.” She pressed her hand to his cheek. After a moment, his nostril ridges slowly opened.
“Commander!” Beyvek’s voice pulled him around toward the pit. “The plastic wasn’t connected to the wall; it was hanging. There’s six holes and six hooks, hard to see because they’re the same material. The plastic itself is like a semirigid plastic curtain. I have no idea what’s powering it, but it shifted another symbol when we were taking it down.”
Arniz could see Yurrisk’s chest rising and falling, too quickly to be normal, but he had control of his voice when he asked, “Is it still functioning?”
“Can’t tell, sir. The moment the bottom edge hit the floor, it rolled into a tight tube.”
“Well, you couldn’t transport a semirigid curtain, now could you?” Salitwisi’s voice drifted up out of the pit. “Those who hung it here had to first bring it in. It clearly wasn’t built on site. If you insist on moving it, the odds of damaging such a priceless artiFACK! Uncalled for,” he muttered a moment later, barely loud enough to be heard outside the pit. “Totally uncalled for.”
“He’s annoying, but he’s not wrong, sir. Rolled, this thing is going to be significantly easier to transport. We’re securing the lines.”
“Well done. Camaderiz!” Both hands curled around nothing, Yurrisk mimed pulling motions. “Ready on the ropes.”
Camaderiz pointed at his eyes and then at Arniz.
“Not now!” Yurrisk made the motion again. “Now, you pull the ropes!”
Highlights rippling through ebony fur, Camaderiz shrugged.
“It’s not a weapon,” Arniz said, before the pissing contest could escalate. While she was all in favor of them fighting among themselves, even an elderly harveer with no experience in violence could see who’d win. With Yurrisk gone, Martin would have no restrictions, so best distract him before Camaderiz took him apart.
Yurrisk turned back to the pit, lips still off his teeth. “It will lead us to the weapon.”
Arniz shrugged and stayed silent. If there was a weapon, it might.
“Camaderiz.”
Other than the Polint’s name, Arniz understood nothing Qurn said. Camaderiz, however, clearly knew exactly what she was saying if his wide eyes, flattened mane, and sudden interest in the ropes were any indication. Qurn was Primacy. Arniz had forgotten that.
*Boss, Werst’s signal just dropped out.*
“He’s unconscious,” Ressk snarled before Torin could respond.
*I didn’t say he stopped chatting me up.* The words were flippant, but Alamber’s tone was kind. *I’m not reading the signal from his implant. I could hear muffled and unoriginal speculation about Strike Team Alpha from the people around the stretchers as they reached the anchor, then blip. No signal.*
Military grade implants kept functioning eighty-one hours after death. If Martin had stuffed his fingers into a Krai mouth to destroy the implant, well, he’d be a lot easier to beat with bloody stumps where his hands should be. And Werst’s implant would still be sending. They needed “Ressk,” so Martin wouldn’t have blown Werst’s jaw off. Only one option left. “The anchor has an implant blocker.”
“Why?” Vertic sounded confused.
“Best guess . . .” Without slowing, Torin ducked a branch too thick for the Polint’s machetes. “. . . one or more of the other scientists didn’t like the thought of Lieutenant Commander Ganes having sole access to certain tech.”
“He’s the only one with an implant. Who do they think he’ll be talking to?”
“They’re not thinking. They’re afraid he’ll use it to record them.”
“Your implants record?” The durlin hadn’t been an officer long enough for her attempt at mild curiosity to sound like anything but the suspicion it was.
“No, it’s against the Confederation’s privacy laws. But that doesn’t stop civilians from making assumptions and spreading rumors.”
Binti snickered. “I heard there’s a subliminal that’ll turn anyone with an implant into a mindless drone.”
“That’s not true here?” Freenim, on the other hand, had been an NCO long enough to make his mild curiosity entirely believable.
The only sounds were the whistle/chunk of Dutavar’s machete, birds, and insects. Even the surrounding foliage had stopped rustling.
Bertecnic broke first, his sputter turning to a deep belly laugh. A moment later, the other members of the Primacy team joined in.
“Your face,” Merinim giggled. She must have been referring to Binti’s face because Torin h
adn’t turned, had locked her gaze on Bertecnic’s haunches, and started working on a way to deal with the worst case scenario.
*They couldn’t make a subliminal we couldn’t hear,* Firiv’vrak pointed out, still chuckling.
*Oh, that are being very funny. I are including it in the final edit for sure.*
Neither Presit nor Dalan had an implant; they couldn’t know how it felt the first time a tech cracked a jaw. Before going under, even the most badass sergeant fixated on the rumors. Torin had no intention of adding a new rumor and would have a word with Presit later. Or, she’d ask Craig to have a word. Although, now she thought of it, Presit had used illegal tech in the past and implants could definitely be built to record if someone ethically flexible got into the right position, so it was possible the Katrien would know if . . .
No. Not her problem. Not her job. Not even very likely.
She shortened her stride to avoid a low black mat of fungus, then tilted her head up toward the canopy when she caught sight of pale fronds between hanging vines and underbrush. “Ressk! We go around the bracken! Left or right, I don’t care, but we don’t go through.”
“Sorry, Gunny. I was . . .”
Taking the fastest route to Werst, Torin finished silently when his voice trailed off.
“So it looks like Strike Team Alpha’s here to rescue you.”
“What?”
Werst didn’t recognize either voice although he did recognize the familiar feel of antigravity shutting down. The Corps never used the AG stretchers in a war zone, too susceptible to EMP, but he’d caught a ride between the VTA and Medop a couple of times.
“Don’t get your hopes up,” the first voice sneered. “We’re not going to make it easy for them. Keep the Krai alive. There’s an artifact coming in we need him to take a look at.”
Blink.
Human. Male. Look way up. Short pale hair. Red cheeks. Robert Martin.
“What’s wrong with him?”
The second voice sounded overwhelmed. Angry.
“He fell down.”
Sounded like Martin hadn’t changed. Still a serley chrika. Mashing his tongue against the inside of his jaw, Werst pressed three times against the implant controls. One short, two long. Conscious, but injured. They had no code for captured; the Primacy didn’t take prisoners.
Which made Martin a bigger ass than an enemy they’d been at war with for centuries.
“Once again, I’m an engineer, not a medic!”
“Don’t care. You’ve already proven you can operate the autodoc; operate it again.”
“Trembley is Human. The autodoc was preloaded with Human parameters. It isn’t set up for Krai. Do you see a Krai on the science team?”
Blink.
When the light returned, Werst gritted his teeth and flopped his head to the right. Voice two belonged to a Human male. Dark skin. Narrow gaze. Warm hand.
“Yeah, and you were Navy.” Martin. Still sneering. “Fuk of a lot of Krai took the easy way and went Navy. Use your superior Human brain and figure it out.”
Blink.
Navy. The second voice and the warm hand belonged to Lieutenant Commander Harris Ganes. Good. He’d made contact with a potential asset. Go him.
“Warden’s name is Ressk, if you want to sweet talk him. Your choice if you keep the di’Taykan alive. I don’t care either way and Yurrisk will blame you. That could be fun.”
Fukking Martin.
Blink.
*Boss, targets and hostages are back in range of the DLs by the ruins. They’re carrying . . . a large roll of . . . It looks like plastic. Hang on. Yep. Pinged it. It’s plastic.*
“Briefing packet said this was a pre-plastic planet,” Binti argued. “Wiped out before they figured out how to stabilize hydrocarbons. You need to ping it again.”
*It’s plastic, Bin. Also bright orange. Danger orange. Do not advance orange.*
“Why would they warn the di’Taykan off?”
*Everybody loves us.*
“You wish.”
“DLs recorded a lot of rope moving past the ruins.” Torin cut off the banter. “Past the ruins, away from the pit Werst opened up. What would keep this lot, looking for a weapon to use against the plastic, away from a sudden pit? Another pit. A second pit that held a sizable piece of plastic.”
*The natives didn’t have plastic,* Craig continued, *so the plastic had to have come out of that second pit.*
“Then the plastic in the latrine that started this mess could be discarded scrap,” Vertic said thoughtfully. “Or, the plastic dug the pits as blinds in order to observe another social experiment.”
The plastic’s social experiments tended to happen on the scale of intergalactic war—but they had to have started somewhere. Torin definitely understood why the possibility of a weapon had everyone’s hands in their pants. Confederation. Primacy. They all wanted to get some of their own back.
Running blind in ankle-deep water so brown it was entirely opaque, she led the way along the top of a ruined wall, trusting her boots as much as her scanner. They were making good time.
“So the dumbass story about a weapon that can destroy the plastic is maybe not so dumbass,” Binti observed.
“And the destruction of this civilization?” Vertic wondered. “Populations failing worldwide at approximately the same time?”
“You were there when plastic spoke. Seemed to me it was . . .”
“A molecular, hive mind of shapeshifting manipulative, murdering, shitheads?” Binti offered.
“. . . pragmatic. Although Mashona’s not wrong. If the plastic became aware of a weapon here . . .” Torin let her voice trail off into the obvious implication. The edges of the stone underfoot crumbled. She shifted her stride back toward the center of the block.
Torin had taken point back at the water’s edge; followed by the three Polint, Binti on their six. The two Druin had sped across to the other side, ready to provide covering fire if needed. Their floaters had looked like a wad of thick paper when pulled from their packs, but had expanded out to two slick surfaces with honeycombed folds between them. For all their apparent fragility, they held the weight of a Druin and accompanying gear. Propulsion came from a single-use charge about a centimeter square. Torin wanted one. A larger one. Wanted one reverse engineered and made part of standard equipment. She also wanted aftercare for veterans without the cracks too many fell through, and for the violently antisocial to get some fukking therapy and take up flower arranging, putting the Strike Teams out of work. It didn’t look like she was going to get those anytime soon either.
“And if there is a weapon?” The undertones in Vertic’s voice, sharp through both translation and implant, reminded Torin how short a time the war had been over.
“If a weapon exists, and they’ve found it, we’ll confiscate it.”
*And have Anthony Marteau make a million of them,* Craig drawled. *That ought to polish his nuts.*
“Why does it go to your people?” Vertic asked coldly. “The plastic are responsible for as many of my people dead as yours.”
*Makes no difference; that fukker Marteau will sell to both sides.*
“I understood we were on the same side, Warden Ryder.”
*Yeah? Then forget I said anything.*
Fortunately for Torin’s decision to stay clear of Craig’s problem with Vertic, whatever it turned out to be, Alamber stepped in.
*Unclench before you turn your shit to diamonds,* he muttered, presumably to Craig, then added, *The roll’s about two and a half meters long and if it’s consistently the same thickness as it is at the edge, it’s around three meters unrolled. And I suspect it’s unrolled by now inside the anchor and being stared at by all the hostages and all the bad guys. Who are also all in the anchor.*
“They’ve secured their position.” Secured after a quick walk down a clea
red road and a sunny stroll across an empty plateau. Torin squinted across the murky water, at the floating debris, at the slender trees growing up through water and debris both, at the visually impenetrable mat of vegetation waiting behind the Druin on the other side. She really hated jungles.
*I could drop the VTA on the plateau.*
“They’ll tell you to leave or they’ll kill a hostage.”
“They can’t kill all of them,” Binti pointed out, “or they have no bargaining position.”
This job, unlike her last job, came with no justifiable body count. “Doesn’t matter. We’re the good guys, we’re doing it the hard way.”
“We’re attacking the anchor?”
“They know we’re here; we’ll give them the option to surrender first.”
Bertecnic snorted. “Does that ever work, Gunny?”
“Hasn’t yet. Might someday.” Her scanner pinged. They were out of wall. She looked up as Ressk climbed to the top of a slender tree and rode it down across the four treeless meters that ran down the center of the bog—the path of the original river. As the tree reached the widest point of the arc, he jumped, catching the closest tree on the other side. The first tree snapped back, sending leaves and small branches showering down into the water and a small flock of birds shrieking up into the sky. The birds had been a good ten trees away; Torin hoped that wasn’t an indication of a predator large enough to use Ressk’s maneuver on the hunt.
Did the scaly mammals climb?
She dropped off the end of the wall, the water now over her knees and increasingly murky from the debris her boots stirred off the bottom.
Scanners showed the water either empty of living creatures or so filled with life-forms that individual readings were impossible. Torin didn’t like either option.
Bertecnic dropped into the water with a splash that sent ripples a good five centimeters up her legs. “Feels good!”
*Yes, you do.*
“Alamber.”
