The Heart of Valor

by Tanya Huff

  Shuffling awkwardly back, she turned, snagged the body bag with her free hand and dragged it closer. “Sir, you may want to . . .”

  He snorted. “Not the first time I’ve lost an arm, Gunny.”

  It was surprising tricky unsealing the bag; she’d never done it before. It wasn’t exactly a surprise to see a large lump of alien waiting at the sticky end of the major’s arm. It rose up and touched her hand. The smaller piece flowed into the larger, then the larger settled back inside the bag.

  She’d seen how fast it could move. If it wanted to be gone, she wouldn’t have seen it leave. It might have been afraid she could fry it before it could get clear, not knowing the charge wouldn’t go off if the bag was unsealed, but Torin didn’t think so. Although it was always dangerous to layer known behaviors onto an unknown species, it seemed to be cooperating.

  Thumb on the seal, she paused, leaned a little closer. “If you can hear me, we’ll see what we can do about getting you a voice as soon as we’ve finished passing your little test. Until then . . .”

  It almost looked as if it waved as she resealed the body bag. But the shadows were tricky, and it could have just been an effect of the light.

  FIFTEEN

  “My blood?” McGuinty asked, fingers just above the screen of his broken slate. The stains were a dark and ugly red in the light from his cuff.

  “Probably not,” Torin told him. “Probably Dr. Sloan’s.”

  “She, uh . . .” He blinked rapidly, ignoring the tears that ran down his cheeks. “The doc, she thought she was saving me, you know?”

  “She did save you. But you’ve saved us all a few times; you were due.”

  “She died for me.”

  “Technically, she died to give the platoon a fighting chance, so you can spread the guilt around.”

  “I don’t . . .”

  Torin waited. They needed McGuinty up and functional. Without him, they had nothing to fight that tank unless they scampered out to the other crashed flier in their bodyliners and carried back the unfired missiles.

  When he looked up at her, only his eyes moving because of the sealed hole in his neck, his face was bleak. “How do you stand it, Gunny?”

  “By remembering it’s not about you.” Turning so her bad leg could stretch out along the length of his bedroll, she squatted beside him and touched the back of his hand, skin to skin as though he were di’Taykan. “It’s about Dr. Sloan—her choice, her sacrifice, her death. Then you try living up to her example.”

  “How?”

  “Well, to start with . . .” She settled back, weight on her heel, knuckles of her left hand against the floor for balance. “. . . can you fix the amplifier?”

  Disbelief replaced bleakness. He flicked a tiny piece of circuit board off his stomach and onto the floor. “It’s not broken, it’s been destroyed. With time and parts, I might be able to fix my slate—but not the amp.”

  “And you’d need the amplifier to actually send the jamming signal?”

  “Yes, Gunnery Sergeant.”

  “Then forget your slate for now. Keep working on getting a signal through my implant up to the ObSats.”

  “The major’s slate took some damage.” Setting his own slate aside, he took up the major’s and scraped a bit of dried blood off the casing.

  “Is it functional?”

  “Well, yeah, but I can’t guarantee that none of the data’s been corrupted.”

  “Only two guarantees in the Corps, McGuinty. First in, last out, and no one gets left behind. There is a third, lesser-known guarantee,” she added as McGuinty’s brows began to draw down, “but it involves the Navy and a lot of lubricant, and it’s need to know, so I can’t tell it to you until you get that first hook.”

  He stared at her for a long moment, his disbelief shifting parameters, then he snorted. Then he smiled. His lips were gray and it wasn’t much of a smile, but he had a hole in his neck big enough to shove her thumb into and a certain amount of soft tissue damage, so she’d take it.

  “You comfortable?”

  His upper body had been propped up at about thirty-five degrees on packs padded with bedrolls. “I can’t move my head.”

  “Can you see the screen on the slate?”

  “Well, yeah, but . . .”

  “Then you don’t need to move your head.” This time, she wrapped her hand around his forearm—reassurance with a bit of distance. “Just get us an uplink before that tank starts firing again.”

  “Maybe it’s out of ammo.”

  “These things have next to no weight restrictions, Private, so I very much doubt that. It’s all up to you.”

  “But no pressure.”

  “You’re a Marine, can’t see why there would be.” She gripped his arm a little tighter, then reached for his canteen, dropping an analgesic and multivitamin from her vest into the water where they dissolved almost instantly. The Corps’ first CMO had hated taking pills. “You need to replace the fluids you lost,” she told him, handing it back. “Drink this.”

  “Hurts to swallow.”

  “Tough.”

  McGuinty took a small mouthful and made a face, even though both additions were tasteless.

  “Get it all down you,” she said as she stood.

  “Gunny?” He stopped her before she could walk away. “Is this what it’s like all the time?”

  Being covered in someone else’s blood trying to juryrig a solution before artillery blows us to hell? The silent corollary was almost louder than the actual question.

  Torin raised an eyebrow and snorted. “Of course not. Sometimes it gets exciting.”

  * * *

  “All right, if McGuinty was your recruit most likely to hack the system, who was most likely to crack the casing and hot-wire a tunepod into the shower system?”

  Jiir snorted. “I remember hearing about that. That was one of your platoon?”

  “Ingrid de Buda, she’s teaching now at MidCore Station.”

  “Well, with this lot, I’d say your best bet is probably Iful if you want something creative.”

  “I want the remains of that desk cannibalized to give that alien a voice. Pull the transducers—audio out and in—and the speakers and come up with a way for it to interface. It doesn’t have to sound good; it just has to be audible.”

  “Yeah, that’s creative.” Nose ridges slowly opened and closed. “You want to talk to it?”

  “I want some answers from it.”

  “You think it’ll talk to you?”

  She shrugged. It seemed to like her, but she wasn’t about to mention that.

  Jiir stared up at her for a long moment, then he nodded. Torin had no idea what he was nodding about, nor did she particularly want to know. “You think it speaks Federate?”

  “It seems to program in Federate, so I assume it’s got the verbal part worked out.”

  “Gunnery Sergeant Kerr!” Bynum, calling her from his position by the major. He’d taken over observing the alien duties while, a couple of meters away, Stevens held the light so Flint could remove the shrapnel from Vega’s ass.

  Torin gave him a “one minute” sign and turned back to Jiir. “The alien’s already proved it’s more familiar with our tech than the major was; just give it something it can work with. Zero broadcast capabilities.”

  “I’ll get Iful on it.” The sergeant sounded doubtful, but Torin didn’t care. She’d seen what Big Yellow could do—if bits of it had something to say, they’d talk. As Jiir called Iful and told him to get his butt to the office, she crossed to where Bynum was shifting his weight from foot to foot, eyes never leaving the major’s face.

  The last lot of painkillers had knocked Major Svensson cold although according to his med-alert his vitals were steady. Stress levels were reading high, but Torin felt that could probably be explained by having just had his arm hacked off. “What’s the problem?”

  Bynum pointed.

  There were two gray tear tracks running in narrow lines from the inside corner of
the major’s eyes down toward the corners of his mouth, the path ignoring the effects of gravity on a liquid. “Well, that’s . . . interesting.” Grabbing Bynum’s good arm, Torin grunted, “Stand still,” as she lowered herself down. Reaching out, she lightly touched the major’s cheek at the end of the nearer line. The line closed the small distance between them, thickened as the last of it pulled free of the tear duct, and then wrapped a spiral around her finger. A moment later, the second line joined it—merged into it. There was no discernible weight, but it felt warm against her skin.

  While she was down there, thighs straining, bad leg stretched out to the side to get her in close enough, she checked the stump. What she saw didn’t exactly surprise her. It looked like the alien—aliens—had been waiting for her. Or waiting for the bit of itself attached to her finger. As she stretched out her hand, the semipermeable seal blushed momentarily gray, a ghost of movement slid across her fingers, and suddenly, there was alien puddled in her palm. Enough alien that she could feel the press of its weight at the end of her arm. The weight had a finality about it that suggested there’d be no more.

  Major Svensson had been abandoned.

  Torin trusted her instincts but had no intention of announcing that without a full body scan in support.

  “Up,” she said.

  “Uh, Gunny, when you reached for the stump, how did you know what you had with you wasn’t going to jump back in?” Bynum asked as he hauled her back to the vertical.

  “Why would it go out the eyes and back in the arm?”

  “Why do the Krai eat their grannies?”

  Making assumptions about alien motivations would, in some parts of known space, end with dessert, and the odds were about even where the cherry would be placed. Torin knew that, but she also felt she knew Big Yellow, at least as much as anyone did, and this particular bit of it seemed to like her, for lack of a better word. She bent at the waist to open the body bag—they were just going to have to cope with her ass in the air, there were only so many one-legged squats she felt like performing.

  This new bit flowed into the main bulk as eagerly as the last bit had.

  “Still working on getting you a voice,” she told it as she closed it in. It seemed resigned, but that might have been lack of sleep talking. Another night with less than three hours, and she was going to have to take one of the stims she carried. She was definitely starting to miss the days when she could stay up a tenday on coffee and adrenaline.

  “Gunnery Sergeant Kerr!”

  Ayumi. And quite possibly the di’Taykan reaction to her ass in the air. She sighed and straightened and, by the time she turned, realized Ayumi’s call had nothing to do with her. Staff Sergeant Beyhn had arced up off his bedroll until only his shoulders and heels were touching.

  “Shit.”

  She didn’t have his stats in her slate.

  And the only person on Crucible who had the slightest idea of what was happening to him had caught a missile with her sternum.

  Up close, his eyes were so pale all the light receptors had to be closed, tendons were standing out on his throat, and a fine sheen of sweat made his skin glimmer. His breathing was ragged and desperate sounding, not so much like he was trying to force air past a constriction but like he was breathing too quickly and too shallowly for his system to deal with it.

  “It looks like a seizure.”

  Suddenly he collapsed, his whole body going limp.

  Almost his whole body.

  Impressive. And more than she really wanted to know about her former DI.

  “Flint!” She held out her hand, and he put Doctor Sloan’s slate into it. Fortunately, the doctor had left it in the infirmary when she’d taken that last airing on the roof. Or not so fortunately—symbols and numbers filled the first screen. The second was mostly fluctuating bar graphs. “Can you read this?”

  “No.” He pointed at a section of bars consistently spiking into the orange. “But that can’t be good.”

  Keening, Beyhn drummed his heels against the floor. He reached out wildly. Ayumi grabbed his flailing hand and hung on.

  “Gunny, you have to do something!”

  She could see that. “Sedatives?”

  Flint shook his head. “I’m afraid I’ll kill him if I give him any more, but I think this means he’s dying anyway. Dr. Sloan would have known.”

  Torin had a sudden vivid memory of boots and blood and snow. “Not really relevant, Marine.”

  “Yes, Gunnery Sergeant!” Then his shoulders sagged. “It’s just the staff sergeant seems so desperate.”

  He did at that. Painfully desperate. “Ayumi.” The di’Taykan looked up, green hair whipping around her head so quickly Torin could have sworn she heard it cut through the air. “Let go of his hand for a second.”

  “Gunny . . .”

  “Give me a one Ventris Station and then you can hold him again.”

  “But . . .”

  “Do it!”

  The bars spiked past the danger zone and the value of at least half the numbers jumped. She could see when Ayumi let go, she could see when, almost sobbing, she took hold of the staff sergeant’s hand again, and she had a feeling, given the condition of Beyhn’s body that she knew what had to be done. “Flint, take his other hand.”

  The effect of her last command still lingering, Flint dropped instantly and wrapped both of his hands around the fingers Beyhn had twisted in his bedroll.

  “Ayumi, give me another one Ventris station.”

  The same spikes as before.

  “Let him go, Flint.” As the new medic stood, Torin handed back the doctor’s slate and touched her PCU. “Jonin.”

  “Yes, Gunnery Sergeant!”

  “Meet me in the kitchen.”

  * * *

  “What hasn’t Staff Sergeant Beyhn had since this started?”

  “Sex.” The longer he was on the first floor of the anchor, the faster Jonin’s hair moved.

  “Sex,” Torin repeated. No surprise it was the first thing Jonin had thought of. It was the first thing a di’Taykan usually thought of. “You told me that when a change comes on you, your closest thytrin help you through the process. I think I know what kind of help it is. I think someone needs to have sex with him.”

  Jonin’s eyes darkened, paled, and darkened again. “Gunnery Sergeant, Staff Sergeant Beyhn is qui.”

  “I know. That’s why we’re in the kitchen, so we can talk about this in private.” It wasn’t like she could order one of the platoon’s fourteen surviving di’Taykan to have sex with the staff sergeant for medicinal reasons—this went above and beyond knowing what her Marines were capable of. The kitchen also had the added benefit of being as far from the staff sergeant as it was possible to get and still be on the first floor. “Physical intimacy . . .” She paused, aware she sounded like a bad STD vid, and started again. “Sex is important to your species. The staff sergeant has an erection we could use to punch through that tank, and Ayumi’s touch is the only thing keeping his numbers on the chart. He’s not reacting to anyone but another Taykan. We have to try something, or he’s going to stroke out.”

  “And die?”

  “Without an immediate med-evac, probably.”

  “What you say makes sense,” Jonin admitted reluctantly. “It is very likely true he must have sex or die.”

  Torin frowned, studying the private’s face. “Which you knew,” she said slowly. “Long before I brought it up.”

  “We suspected it, Gunnery Sergeant. We didn’t know.”

  “Did you tell your sergeant what you suspected? Did you tell Dr. Sloan? Do we have to have the this is a Marine Corps problem discussion again, because if we do, I’m going to have it with my boot up your ass.”

  “There was no point saying anything. Staff Sergeant Beyhn is qui. We cannot have sex with him.”

  Torin sighed and only barely resisted the urge to slam her forehead into the counter a couple of times just so the growing pain behind her eyes made sense. “I know di�
��Taykan who didn’t care if their partners were mammals, so you’re going to have to explain the problem to me. Why can’t you have sex with him? Don’t the parts fit?” The look he shot her wavered just one side of insubordination. In the interests of getting through an uncomfortable conversation as quickly as possible, she decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. “Okay, the parts fit. What’s the problem?”

  “He is qui, we are not. Therefore, we cannot have sex with him. We must protect him and nurture him but cannot treat him as if he is other than qui. We do not want him to die, but . . .”

  “But?”

  Jonin’s eyes went dark, light, dark again. “But he is qui.”

  “Are there laws against it? Will it damage either the staff sergeant or whoever is with him?”

  “No.”

  “No to what question, Private?”

  “No to all three questions, Gunnery Sergeant. But he is qui.”

  The content of the Corps xenocultural courses definitely needed to be expanded. Torin decided to stick with what she knew. “He’s a Marine. You’re all Marines. Marines can have consensual sex with other Marines.”

  “If that’s true, Gunnery Sergeant Kerr, if we are all, first, Marines, then why are you speaking to me as though I lead the di’Taykan of the platoon? If you do not truly believe it, why should we?”

  She really wanted to smack that smug, superior, upper class look off his face. Mostly because he was right. Staff Sergeant Beyhn’s condition had pushed her right into the same species-specific way of looking at things that she’d warned Jonin about. The staff sergeant was either a Marine or qui’Taykan. He couldn’t be both and survive. “Thank you, Private.” And she meant it. “That will be all.”

  “Yes, Gunnery Sergeant.” He paused at the door. “Gunnery Sergeant?”

  “Yes, Jonin.”

  “Staff Sergeant Beyhn is qui.”

  “I think we’ve covered that.”

  “The qui are breeders.”

  She’d called on Hisht to hack off Major Svensson’s arm rather than asking for volunteers because his skills made him the best Marine for the job. In this particular instance, there were a number of Marines who could help the staff sergeant although it was weird to think of sex based solely on gender.