The Heart of Valour

by Tanya Huff

  A moment of silence while that sank in.

  “Then maybe we should negotiate with it,” the doctor suggested.

  “How?” Jiir demanded. “By letting it take over the major completely? Using his mouth, his ears?”

  “Then we’ve lost the major,” Annatahwee added.

  Doctor Sloan looked to Torin. “It should be the major’s choice.”

  “Except that we already know it can control the major. We wouldn’t know who was making the choice, and if I was that alien, I’d vote to stay right where I am.”

  “Bonus points for thinking yourself into a polyhydroxide alcoholyde, hive mind alien, Gunnery Sergeant. But you don’t know that.”

  “I won’t risk that.”

  “You said this was a test, like the tests you faced on Big Yellow. You don’t know the alien entity is hostile!”

  “It’s killed eighteen Marines. That’s hostile enough for me.”

  “And me,” Jiir grunted.

  Annatahwee nodded.

  “Dr. Sloan, if I understand you correctly, you believe the alien needs a certain critical mass to operate?”

  For a moment, Torin thought the doctor wasn’t going to reply, but she finally sighed and said, “To operate the major, yes. Human beings are very complex. Which is not to say the Krai aren’t complex,” she added, glancing at Sergeant Jiir, “just that the aliens are in a Human currently, and…”

  Torin cut her off. “What happens if we take off his arm?”

  The doctor blinked. “His arm?”

  In answer, Torin raised her left hand.

  “You want me to amputate his arm?”

  “It’s the fastest way to separate a large part of the alien from the major. Would it take the alien below the number it needs for control of the major’s consciousness?”

  “How the hell should I know?”

  It was the first time Torin had heard the doctor swear.

  “Educated guess.”

  “I don’t…”

  “Yes, Doctor, you do.”

  She rubbed both hands over her face and sagged back against the cabinets. “Removing the major’s arm will probably take the alien below functionality as the twenty-seven percent that has migrated is still connected to the seventy-three percent that remained behind. This seems to indicate that they’re working together and not as two separate units. Happy? But you’re out of luck,” she continued before Torin could respond. “I don’t have anything with me that will go through bone. I had hoped we were a little past battlefield amputations!”

  Torin bent and pulled her heavy eight-inch knife from the sheath in her boot.

  “You have got to be kidding me!”

  “Actually, yes.” The sergeants snickered as she resheathed the knife.

  “Too bad the bennies are empty,” Jiir muttered thoughtfully. “Cut and cauterize.”

  It was too bad. But they had a doctor with them, and Major Svensson had survived worse than an amputation. “Kichar has an ax in her pack.”

  “Of course she does,” Annatahwee snorted.

  “An ax?” Brows nearly touching over her nose, Doctor Sloan sounded like she’d prefer to take an ax to Torin.

  “It has to be fast,” Torin said flatly, “or more of the alien will move out of the arm and we’ll lose the major. Sergeant Annatahwee.”

  “Gunnery Sergeant Kerr.” Her wet boot soles squealed against the floor as she straightened.

  “Get Private Kichar’s ax.” A raised hand held the sergeant in place while Torin worked through what had to be done. “And bring Private Hisht back with you.”

  “Back country boy.” Jiir nodded in understanding asAnnatahwee pounded up the stairs. “Barely down out of the trees.”

  Doctor Sloan’s gaze shifted from Torin to Jiir and back to Torin. “What do you need Private Hisht for?”

  “We need someone who can handle an ax.”

  * * *

  Hisht examined the edge of the ax head and nodded. “It’s sharp and heavy for its size.” When he looked up, his eyes were shadowed. “But the bone will splinter.”

  “The doc will take care of that. Can you do it?”

  “You do not order me?”

  “No. I’m asking. Sergeant Jiir will do it if you can’t, but you’ve got a lot more recent experience with an ax than he does.”

  “I thought…” He turned the handle between his fingers, nose ridges clamped shut. “A thing like this, I think you do it yourself.”

  She wanted to. It would make her life, not to mention Hisht’s, a whole lot easier if she could. “A large part of my job is knowing whose skills give us the best odds of survival in any given situation. I haven’t used an ax in almost fifteen years, so you’re the major’s best chance for a fast, clean cut.”

  “But you don’t order.”

  “Not something like this, no.” Although, to be honest, she would if she’d thought even for a moment that Hisht would refuse. Another large part of her job was knowing what the Marines in her charge were capable of—physically and emotionally.

  “Gunnery Sergeant Kerr! McGuinty on the roof! Incoming flier!”

  Torin touched her PCU. “Take it down, Private.”

  “Will do, Gunny!”

  “Sergeant Annatahwee, keep the drones pinned, too busy to mount an attack. This would be a bad time for them to try anything.”

  “On it, Gunny.” Annatahwee headed for the stairs, squeezing Hisht’s shoulder briefly as she passed.

  Hisht turned the ax around in his hands one more time, then he laid it gently on the counter and bent to unlace his boots. “I’ll do it.”

  “Thank you. Sergeant…”

  Jiir nodded. “I heard. I’ll help keep the drones busy.” He paused by Hisht until the younger Krai looked up. “Ka sablin ser chrick. Deran heven Major Svensson.”

  Hisht’s eyes widened, then he laughed.

  “What did the sergeant say?” Doctor Sloan murmured by Torin’s ear.

  “He said that no matter how good it smelled, Hisht wasn’t to eat Major Svensson’s arm.”

  When Torin entered the anchor’s admin office, Hisht and the ax tucked in behind her, the doctor had Major Svensson perched on the edge of the desk chair, bare to the waist. In the harsh glare of the lamps from Doctor Sloan’s medical kit, his skin still had the pallor of the recently detanked. Pebbled from the cold—the admin office was one of the warmer rooms in the anchor, but that wasn’t saying much—he looked appallingly like a chicken recently killed and plucked. And not a sizable chicken either; in the last few days, he’d lost a lot of the weight he’d put on prior to leaving for Crucible. He definitely looked thinner than he had that morning in the NirWentry’s gym.

  Where the rowing machine had been reprogrammed.

  A test of how much control the alien had over the major’s body?

  “…it’s interesting to note that not one of the diplomatic attempts to negotiate an end to this war have ever included a member of the three races actually fighting this war. Since it all started before we got involved—and my we equals your us—all we have is the Elder Races’ word for it that they don’t know why the Others are fighting.”

  And how much control did it have over the major’s mind?

  If the Elder Races hadn’t removed the knowledge of the escape pod, if the escape pod had done that itself as it shifted shape and spread through the military, what other memories had it changed?

  She wasn’t too worried about why—Doctor Sloan’s smart-ass comment about thinking like a polyhydroxide alcoholyde hive mind aside, that wasn’t her job. The Corps had battalions of xenopsychologists trained to translate motivations and reactions across species lines.

  “Gunny?”

  “Sir?”

  He grinned, bending forward and shivering slightly as the doctor ran the head of her scanner up his spine. “You look like you’re thinking deep thoughts. Cut it out.”

  “Yes, sir.” Right now, her only concern should be getting thirty-five brand new
Marines, three DIs, one doctor, and seven eighths of a major off Crucible alive. “You look like shit, sir.”

  There were deep shadows under bloodshot eyes, a pulse thrummed visibly in his throat, and when he wasn’t speaking, his lower lip hung slack, trembling slightly. “Interestingly enough, that’s what the doctor woke me up to tell me. You sure you didn’t go to medical school, Gunny?”

  “I think I’d have noticed, sir.” She was close enough now she thought she could feel the heat rising off his body. She couldn’t—not through vest and combats and bodyliner—and this was a bad time to develop an imagination.

  He was about to ask what she wanted, why Hisht was with her. She could see the question fighting its way through the exhaustion in his eyes. He wouldn’t ask about the ax, though. He’d assume she had that covered.

  Then Dr. Sloan took a step back to stand beside the desktop where the major had sketched out all the known positions of the drones as well as the crash sites of the flier and the shell of the destroyed tank. She held up the empty ampoule, and nodded. Reluctantly.

  Major Svensson had been born on Earth. Torin was third-generation Paradise at 1.14 Earth gravity. Not enough difference to change the basic Human shape. Enough to kick the major’s slate across the room and him down. Hisht balanced on his left foot, wrapped his right foot around the major’s left wrist, braced his left hand against the major’s left shoulder, and swung the ax. One blow, perfectly placed two centimeters above the point where alien pretended to be bone.

  The sedative took effect almost before the ax impacted with the floor giving the major no time to protest, to struggle, to scream, before his eyes rolled back in his head and he went limp. Doctor Sloan bent over the stump and sprayed sealant and kept spraying as Torin flicked out a body bag and Hisht used his left foot to toss the major’s lower arm inside.

  Individual molecular entities or not, the alien couldn’t pass through solid objects easily or it would never have used Major Svensson’s fingernails as a quick and dirty interface with the CPNs. The body bag, needing to withstand that one massive charge, was the most molecularly dense container they had and therefore the hardest to get through.

  “You can be killed,” Torin said grimly, her mouth by the lump in the bag. The di’Taykan scientists had accidentally destroyed a section of the wall during their initial investigation of Big Yellow by setting off an explosion. She was willing to bet that the charge in the body bag would have the same effect. “A single molecule of you leaves the bag, and I activate the charge. Stay where you are, and sooner or later we’ll get to a trained negotiator.”

  “The polyhydroxide alcoholyde remaining in the major is no longer active,” Doctor Sloan announced, still working on the stump. Her slate lay on the major’s bare torso, reader pointed at his head. “Dormant. You’ve removed more than two thirds of the whole and taken it below critical mass.”

  “And the two thirds we removed?”

  “What about it?”

  “Is it dormant, or is there still a working consciousness?”

  “How the hell should I know,” she snapped. “Even if I’d had time while keeping Major Svensson from bleeding to death, I can’t take a reading through the body bag.” Both her hands were red. “Get his clothing back on him; his core temperature’s dropping.”

  Torin slid behind the major and gently lifted his torso onto her lap, his head lolling against her shoulder. His skin was damp. Sedatives, or that split second when he realized what was about to happen? No way to know, but given the sharp, bitter smell, she’d guess the latter. She reached for his bodyliner and found Hisht’s hands already there. “Are you all right?” she asked as together they skimmed the bodyliner back up over the major’s good arm.

  The young Krai sighed, nose ridges clamped shut. “What needed to be done was done.”

  “And it couldn’t have been done without you. Not as cleanly,” she amended. “Not as well.”

  Meeting her gaze, he attempted a shrug. “I am glad I didn’t screw up.”

  “We all are.” Both hands inside the left sleeve, Torin stretched the bodyliner out to three times its usual diameter, guided it carefully over the major’s sealed stump, and folded it up over the remains of his arm. When she slid her hands free, the fabric conformed to its new dimensions.

  An explosion off the east wall rocked the anchor. Torin curled forward to shield the major’s upper body.

  A moment of silence, then the group channel came alive.

  “Nice flying, McGuinty.”

  “Sorry, Sergeant, it almost got away from me.”

  “But it didn’t, which is why I said nice flying. Teams on the east wall, check in.”

  With the windows already empty, there were no injuries, although a piece of burning debris had slammed through three/two, leaving a thin line of char on Masayo’s helmet. She declared the gods had saved her. No one argued.

  “What will you tell the rest of the platoon?” Hisht moved away from the major and pulled his bootliners out from where he’d stuffed them in behind his vest and slipped them on, some of the tension leaving his face as his feet began to warm.

  “The problem’s been taken care of.” According to the major’s med-alert on her slate, the major had taken massive trauma but was now stable and sedated. “I’ll tell them the truth.”

  “Taken care of?” That brought Doctor Sloan’s attention up off her kit. “You have an alien life-form inside an amputated arm—and I use the word amputated in its broadest sense—inside a body bag. In what universe is that a problem taken care of?”

  “Major Svensson is no longer under the control of said alien life-form.” Torin grabbed his toque off a protruding bit of disassembled desk, laid it on the floor and gently set the major’s head down on it.

  “You had his arm chopped off!”

  “And that solved the only problem I’m really concerned about.” She stood, crossed the room, and picked up his slate lying half propped on the wall where she’d kicked it. The ready lights were on, so she clipped it to her vest—Marine Corps slates were built to stand a lot more than an applied boot.

  “Gunnery Sergeant Kerr?”

  “Private Hisht.”

  “When you tell them, can you not tell them I did the chop?”

  “Your team will figure it out. It’s Kichar’s ax.”

  “Figuring it out cannot be the same as telling. I’m not sorry, I just…” His shrugs were getting more Human. He wasn’t sorry, but he didn’t want them to think he was bragging about it either. Chopping off a major’s arm was, well, pretty major. Torin clamped down on a totally inappropriate grin. “I won’t tell them.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Rejoin your team. Leave the ax. I’ll clean it and return it.” She held his gaze until he nodded and watched him leave the room, picking his way carefully around puddles of melted snow. Then she turned to the doctor who’d just finished cleaning her hands. “When you’ve laid out his bedroll in your infirmary, I’ll carry Major Svensson in.”

  “You can do that? Of course you can. What about…” She gestured at the body bag.

  “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 honesty 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.