The Heart of Valor

by Tanya Huff

  “Either it stays where it is and becomes someone else’s problem, or it doesn’t and it becomes no one’s.”

  “It’s an intelligent life-form, Gunnery Sergeant!”

  Torin pitched her voice to carry to the outline of the major’s arm. “That depends on whether or not it stays in the bag.”

  * * *

  There were molecular disturbances in General Morris’ brain.

  Watching the old guy toss chunks when he realized that, while he’d been working on his desk, alien bits had been slipping into his cranium from the plaque on the wall kept Craig from taking advantage of the straight line so neatly provided by the situation. Although honestly forced him to admit it had less to do with sympathy and more to do with there being no one around who’d appreciate the joke.

  Apparently, there’d already been some discussion among the Corps’ geek squad that Big Yellow had been a living organism and that, combined with the way the general’s plaque reacted to both him and Presit, had got Ventris Station hotter than a H’san on chilies.

  Presit had dug in her claws and demanded the Katrien Parliamentary representative be present before she’d submit to even the most minimal noninvasive procedure but had been quite happy to volunteer Craig for anything up to and including vivisection just as long as she could keep her cameras running.

  “Cameras off! This is a matter of Confederation Security!” The Intelligence officer snatched his hand away from the controls as Presit bared her teeth. “You can’t broadcast this!”

  “I are broadcasting this,” she growled. “I are broadcasting from the moment we are leaving Craig Ryder’s ship. You are recalling laws of full media disclosure, or you are turning me off in front of entire galaxy. You are choosing. Smile,” she added as he hesitated, “it are likely your maternal is watching.”

  As he’d been given a choice between having a hysterical hissy fit in front of half of known space or cooperating fully, Craig had agreed to cooperate with both Intell and the geek squad—sequentially and simultaneously—as long as Presit and the cameras were never more than a meter away. Presit may have been kidding about the vivisection, but he knew his own species well enough not to discount it.

  The one thing that had made the whole experience bearable was the certain knowledge that whatever he was going through was nothing compared to what General Morris, Captain Stedrin, and anyone who’d served on the Berganitan was facing.

  On the other hand, there were limits.

  He caught the wrist of the Krai medical officer, stopping her hand and the instrument she held out away from his body. “Sweetheart, you’re buying me drinks before you probe me again.”

  “But this . . .”

  “No. You’ve already found the protein marker Big Yellow left behind.” He crossed bare feet at the ankle and winked at the camera. “Everything else is original equipment.”

  “But . . .”

  “I said no.” He waited until she nodded before he released her.

  “I told you we should have strapped him down,” she muttered to her assistant as she turned away.

  The assistant’s eyes lightened. “I’ll buy him the drinks.”

  There was something vaguely comforting about how predictable di’Taykans could be in any given situation. Vaguely, Craig reiterated silently as a whole new group of officers entered the lab. The Corps weren’t big on fruit salad, so it was hard to tell rank from a distance, but something must have cued Presit that this lot was more important than the last since she abandoned the Intelligence officer she’d been grilling in the corner and reached his side with the other camera at about the same time as the half dozen Marines.

  “High Tekamal Louden, we are thinking you are taking this seriously now.”

  The Commandant of the Corps inclined her head. “Presit a Tur durValintrisy, the Corps is taking this very seriously indeed. Mr. Ryder . . .” Her eyes within a fine network of lines were the same pale gray as the walls of the station. “. . . do you know who Lieutenant di’Fegarin Shylin is?”

  Craig frowned. “Lieutenant Shylin?” When he closed his eyes, he could see the Jade move into the path of the bug fighter, see one escape pod ejected, see the explosion that saved the lives of the Marines in his cargo pod and probably his own as well. When he opened his eyes, Louden’s expression had softened slightly, and he wondered what his face had told her. “She’d be Commander Sibley’s gunner.”

  “That’s correct. She’s been wrapped in what the doctors call a separation psychosis since Commander Sibley’s sacrifice.”

  “Out of her mind with grieving, then.”

  “Yes. Essentially. There are ways to . . .” Words were examined in the pause, and Craig gave the commandant credit for sticking with the basics. “. . . force coherency. It isn’t something we care to do, but she was on the Berganitan, and, as we have checked on every other crewmember not separated by Susumi space, I spoke to Admiral Kirter, and he agreed that this kind of a potential foothold situation called for extreme measures.”

  “Potential foothold? We are thinking it are much, much more than potential.”

  The commandant silenced Presit with a look. “I just received a message from the physician in charge of Lieutenant Shylin’s case on Dirinate Station. She remembers the escape pod.”

  “If you were looking for one of your own to remember . . .”

  “Gunnery Sergeant Kerr is not here, Mr. Ryder, and given the circumstances you shared, it is likely she also will have the protein marker left behind by the alien scan. Lieutenant Shylin however, does not. Nor does she have the differing protein marker everyone else on that mission carries from the . . .” A glance around the lab and a moment of irony in her voice. “. . . probing. We are now certain that your memories were not the ones adjusted.”

  “I’d think the plaque playing patty-cake might have given you a clue on that, but . . .” he raised a hand. “. . . I get that you’re paranoid. And you know, given that you’ve got maybe point zero, zero, zero one of that escape pod’s mass accounted for . . .” He flashed the commandant his best smile. “. . . I can understand why you would be.”

  One of the officers behind her, a colonel wearing Intell tabs, opened his mouth, but she raised a hand and cut off his protest before he could give it voice. It was the sort of trick Torin would pull, and Craig bet that the commandant had been promoted out of the ranks. “Our initial scans have determined that the plaque is not, in point of fact, alien technology, but a polynumerous molecular species.”

  “Now that are something my viewers are being interested in.” Presit moved forward. “High Tekemal, are . . .”

  “The H’san shut your broadcast down some time ago,” the commandant said bluntly. “And I have neither the time nor the inclination to pretend any longer. Be silent, and you may continue recording. Do you know what I mean when I say polynumerous molecular species?” she asked Craig, ignoring Presit’s sputtering but essentially silent protests.

  “Lots of little aliens making up one life-form.”

  The colonel, who had been quieted, looked startled.

  “Not just a pretty face here, mate. The scientists on Big Yellow said it was like an organic plastic. What stands out like dog’s balls to me now is that it’s more organic than plastic and that the whole shape-shifting thing was just the bits reconfiguring. If you can reconfigure into what you want, you can slip a molecular-sized probe into people’s heads off a plaque or a collar tab . . .”

  Every hand but the commandant’s rose to their collars.

  Craig grinned. “. . . or a beer stein. Which means that even when there’s not enough of them to be conscious, each piece can carry out orders.”

  “You’ve given this some thought.”

  He laced his fingers over his stomach. “I’ve been sitting here for a while.”

  “We’re going to have to scan every piece of plastic on the station.” The colonel didn’t seem happy he finally got a word in.

  “On the station?” Craig sn
orted. “Dream on. You’re going to have to scan every piece of plastic in known space.”

  FOURTEEN

  “YOUR BEST BET TO GET IN will be with the codes you’ve been working up to crack the CPNs.”

  McGuinty looked down at the major’s slate, one thin finger, the nail bitten down almost to the quick, rubbing along the casing. “So the alien that was in Major Svensson’s arm, it was like, organic plastic?”

  “Similar.” There were weirder things in known space. Torin had never met any of them personally, and, frankly, didn’t want to, but in the grand scheme of things, sentient organic plastic made up of molecular-sized pieces at least made a certain logical amount of sense—which was more than could be said for at least two members of the Methane Alliance.

  “It’s just that when I checked the CPN that blew, you know, the night Staff Sergeant Beyhn went running around naked in the snow and . . .”

  “I know what CPN you’re talking about, McGuinty.”

  “Right. Sorry, Gunny, it’s just . . .” He reached into one of the front pockets on his vest and pulled out a dark shard. “. . . I picked this up out of the debris. It didn’t look melted like the rest.”

  Torin held out her hand, and he dropped it into her palm. Holding it between thumb and forefinger, she frowned down at her reflection in the familiar glossy, charcoal-gray surface and remembered.

  “. . . the material at the back of the hole is different. The explosion changed the organic part—in layman’s terms, we cooked it. I’m extrapolating a bit from available data, but if we smack this stuff hard enough, it’s going to shatter.”

  This particular piece looked very much like it had shattered.

  “Okay, McGuinty, two things. First, tell me the Corps’ position on picking up battlefield souvenirs?”

  His cheeks flushed. “Don’t do it.”

  “Succinct and to the point. Don’t do it.” Not that there was a hope in hell of stopping it, but the Corps’ position was clear. “Second, you’re one lucky son of a bitch.” Holding the shard between thumb and forefinger, she snapped it easily into two long narrow pieces, the sound strangely loud in spite of background noises that included the drones wasting ammunition firing through the broken windows. “These particular bits of alien are dead, which is why they haven’t slipped through that scrape on your knuckles one molecular strand at a time and taken up residence in your brain.”

  The flush vanished as he blanched. “I don’t think molecular strand is actually . . .”

  “You’re missing my point, Private.” She handed him back his bits of dead alien. “If you don’t know what something is, don’t touch it. If it tries to touch you, don’t let it. If you can’t stop it any other way, shoot the fukker. Because if it comes to it, in order to save the rest of your platoon, someone is going to have to cut your arm off. Am I making myself clear?”

  “Yes, Gunnery Sergeant!” McGuinty was so obviously not staring at the dark stains on the floor of the admin office that they became the dominant feature in the room.

  Torin didn’t look at them either. “Take the major’s slate up to the second floor where you’ve got some decent light and try to work out how the hell he managed to upload the changes in the command codes through his implant. If we can get that, we can use my implant to shut the damned drones down.”

  “Yes, Gunnery Sergeant.” His bootheels shrieked against the wet floor as he pivoted. “Uh, Gunny . . . ?” He paused in the doorway and turned, titling his helmet back off his face. “What happens when Major Svensson wakes up?”

  “I imagine he’ll be a bit pissed off.”

  “Because I’m trying to crack his slate?”

  She couldn’t stop the corners of her mouth from twisting into something very like a smile. “Trust me, Private, you’re going to be way down on his shit list.”

  * * *

  “I’m getting no brain wave patterns off the remaining alien . . .”

  “Brain wave?” Torin interrupted, reproducing the emphasis.

  Dr. Sloan sighed. “I could explain the specifics to you, Gunnery Sergeant, or you could accept what I’m telling you and save us both the aggravation. It’s not thinking in any way I can register it, but it is moving.”

  She couldn’t stop her hands from tightening on her weapon. “It’s what?”

  “Moving. Returning to his arm. At this rate, it’ll all be at the edge of the stump in about six hours.”

  “Moving without thinking.” Not a question. She’d seen Marines do it often enough—their brains shut down, reacting to external stimuli. “They’re following orders. They’ve been discovered, so they’re retreating. They’re trapped inside the major, so they’re looking for a way out and heading for the place where his physical integrity has been breached in a big way.”

  “Uh-huh.” Eyes narrowed, arms crossed, Dr. Sloan stared up at her. “You got all that from moving?”

  “It makes sense.”

  The doctor snorted. “Maybe in your world.”

  They’d brought the body bag into the infirmary and laid it out near the major. A bit macabre, perhaps, but efficient. The doctor was the only one who could set up the kind of molecular monitoring system Torin needed to ensure the alien stayed in the bag, and, at that, she had to monitor the bag, not the alien.

  Although Staff Sergeant Beyhn remained oblivious, everyone else in the common room—everyone else who came up with an excuse to be in the common room—alternated between staring at the major’s stump and staring at the major’s arm. Even the di’Taykan sitting with the staff sergeant was paying at least as much attention to the other drama playing out.

  The Berganitan brought back an escape pod from Big Yellow.

  All of known space had seen the vids of the alien ship.

  Turns out Big Yellow wasn’t an alien ship but a shape-shifting alien, and the escape pod was a piece of it. Once inside the Berganitan it shifted into one hell of a lot of different pieces and one of them eventually ended up inside Major Svensson’s arm. Using a type of alien mind control . . .

  Accurate as far as it went.

  . . . it hijacked the major’s knowledge of Crucible and turned the drones against us. We solved the problem by removing the arm and the remaining seven eighths of the major is fine. There will be no new reprogramming of the drones, so let’s concentrate on dealing with the old shit. And yes, flinging all our gear a few kilometers away would draw the drone’s fire. If you can figure out a way to build a catapult with what we currently have in the anchor, let me know.

  After 120 days of training, there was still a lot these new Marines didn’t know, but one thing they were certain about, the one thing that had been downloaded over and over into the heads of all three species from the first day they stepped onto Ventris Station, was that every word out of their DI’s mouth was the Corps’ own truth. This was one of the many reasons Torin had no interest in ever ending up in RTC. If successfully completing the mission and getting her people out alive required a lie, she’d lie.

  Fortunately, Platoon 71 didn’t know that and had accepted her Sitrep at face value.

  Alien. Amputation. All clear.

  Torin dropped to one knee beside Major Svensson’s bedroll and frowned at the stump of his arm. The sealant was semipermeable—if the alien wanted out, she had a strong feeling that the sealant wouldn’t be able to keep it in.

  “Gunny . . .”

  “Major.” She turned her attention from the stump to his face. He still looked like shit and didn’t smell much better. Because the room couldn’t have fallen more silent if someone had flipped a switch, she could hear the rough rasp of breath moving slow and shallow through his mouth.

  Peering up at her through a sedative haze, he managed to pull his brows into the approximation of a frown. “You had my arm cut off.”

  “The artificial bone turned out to be an alien life-form, sir. Just dealing with a foothold situation.”

  “Just?” It might have been a snicker, it might have been a c
ough. She lifted his canteen to his mouth, and he drank gratefully. When he finished, and she tried to move the canteen away, the fingers of his right hand closed loosely around her wrist. “The headaches and the memory lapses? The alien?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did I . . . ?”

  She thought about deliberately misunderstanding but only for a moment. “No, sir. The alien did.”

  “In my body.”

  Torin snorted. “At the risk of sounding overtly di’Taykan, Major, you’re not responsible for the actions or reactions of another species while it’s in your body.”

  That time, definitely a snicker. “I’ve never had any complaints.”

  She glanced at the body bag and decided not to mention the exodus happening under his skin. “You may this time, sir.”

  * * *

  “You cut off the major’s arm. With my ax.”

  Only Kichar’s emotional emphasis on the second statement kept Hisht from flinching. He peered through his scope, swept his sector for drones and said, “It is a good ax. Sharp. I was impressed by the edge.”

  She leaned out just enough to see him around Bonninski. “Thank you. I take care of my tools.”

  “It shows.”

  “Well, there’s no point in carrying something if it’s not in the best condition possible. And you,” she added to Sakur, “you said I’d never use it.”

  “You didn’t use it,” Sakur snorted, eyes pale in the glare off the snow. “Hisht did. Obviously, the best man for the job.”

  “Still, if Gunnery Sergeant Kerr had counted on the contents of your pack, she’d have had to gnaw the major’s arm off.”

  “No,” Hisht sighed, his mouth flooding with saliva at the thought, “I’d have done that, too.”

  The snowball slammed into his torso, nearly knocking him over. The drones took a couple of shots at the movement, one/one sent a few rounds back at the drones, and when silence fell again, Bonninski muttered, “Let’s not talk about eating people. That’s just gross.”

  “Eating officers,” Kichar corrected.