The Heart of Valour

by Tanya Huff

  Although her PCU was obviously working, everything else was out. The distant horizon was just that, distant. “Couldn’t have been a pulse, or no one inside would have been affected.”

  “You think it’s more of the maj… of the alien’s reprogramming?”

  “Might be.” But she wasn’t sure she’d put money on it.

  Jiir rolled back up onto his feet and stood. “Carson, Jonin, get her inside.”

  As the di’Taykan hurried across the roof, Carson picked Vega’s weapon up out of the snow and slung it across her back. “Dr. Sloan’s dead,” she said. “We’re so screwed. Who’s going to fix us now?”

  “We’ll fix each other, Private Carson. Just like we would have had to do had Dr. Sloan not been with us.” The sergeant’s smile held very little humor. “That’s what training on Crucible’s all about. Flint the medic now?” he asked Torin as Carson and Jonin carefully hoisted their moaning teammate.

  “He had the best scores,” Torin answered absently. Something Jiir had said…

  Training on Crucible. Scenarios.

  The scenario they’d been scheduled to run had included surviving the final four days scanner free. It involved a captured weapon the Corps had reverse engineered that wiped out specific tech and left the recruits dependent on their unaugmented senses alone. It was a valuable lesson to learn, and Torin had been looking forward to it.

  Except…

  If the weapon had been a part of the final four days of the scenario significantly farther to the west, how had it gotten here? It hadn’t been carried by a drone. It needed too large and heavy a power source. But if it was here, and it certainly seemed to be, it needed to have been carried on something that wouldn’t mind the weight.

  “Jiir, what does Crucible mount heavy equipment on?”

  He shrugged. “Tanks usually. They’re the easiest to RC.”

  “Shit. Marines off the roof, now!” She began hobbling for the hatch. “Marines on the second floor, drop the shelter halves over the windows! Move! Move! Move!”

  “Gunny!” Major Svensson, wondering what the hell was going on.

  “Good odds there’s a tank out there, sir. With the scanners down, we’re blind and we have nothing to stop it with.”

  “So all we can do is give it no specific targets like Marines or windows.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Get in here, Gunny.”

  “Working on it, sir!”

  To give them credit, the Marines on the roof were moving. Torin’s bad leg brought her last to the access, a position she’d have taken anyway. Stone was the only other Marine on the roof.

  “What about Dr. Sloan’s remains, Gunny?”

  She glanced over at the boots. They still looked great, but she’d never find out what catalog they came from now. “We’ll bag it later,” she snapped, shoving him toward the stairs. “For now, it’s best left up here in the cold. Move!”

  His head and shoulders were exposed above the edge of the roof, and she was covered only to the knee when she heard the distinctive whistle of an approaching 125mm HE round. Grabbing the shelter cloth-wrapped cover, she dragged it free of the new snow and let herself fall, twisting onto her back and pulling it over the open hatch just as the first shell exploded.

  Stone’s body cushioned her fall.

  “You okay?” she asked, rolling off him into the slush that covered the second floor at the bottom of the stairs.

  He gasped out, “Fuk you’re heavy!” and, reassured, Torin accepted Sergeant Annatahwee’s hand up, taking all her weight on her right leg. Jiir slipped past them and adjusted the hatch.

  “The tank had to have been aiming at a Marine on the roof. There are no Marines on the roof now, so it has to acquire another target before it fires again. Dr. Sloan’s body may be enough of an anomaly—I have no idea how sensitive its targeting programs are…” Unfastening her vest, she shot a question at the sergeants—who shook their heads. “…no one does, apparently, so we’ve got to bag the body, but we can’t do it in uniform.”

  “You can’t do it, Gunny.” Annatahwee caught Torin’s hand, stopping her from removing the vest. “Not with that leg. You take your combats off, I’m betting it won’t hold you.”

  Torin was betting it would. “The tank might be able to read the bag as well as the doctor’s body. I can’t order a Marine to go to the roof to be targeted.”

  “I can. Annatahwee, it’s your go.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Gunny, you certain that whatever knocked out the scanners didn’t knock out the camouflage function in the shelter halves as well?”

  “Unfortunately, sir, with our scanners down, there’s only one way to find out.” Jiir was disappearing under his load of Annatahwee’s gear. Torin took her weapon from him, and he nodded his thanks. “Marines, pull back from the west wall! Get another wall between you and those windows!”

  “A di’Taykan could get undressed faster,” Jiir muttered.

  “Thank you, Sergeant Obvious.” Annatahwee stepped out of her boots up onto the first step, avoiding the slush on the floor. She refused Torin’s bag, having snapped her own off her vest. “What should I say?”

  Good question. “Major Svensson, did Dr. Sloan ever express any religious beliefs.”

  “None that I recall, Gunny.”

  “Rest in peace it is, then.” The sergeant nodded and raced up the stairs. A shoulder under the makeshift hatch, and she rolled out onto the roof, sliding the hatch back into place as one/one and the three remaining members of one/two came out of the west rooms.

  “Uh, Gunnery Sergeant Kerr, you’re dripping.”

  “Not a problem, Kichar,” she said without turning. “As long as I’m not dripping any precious bodily fluids.”

  “It looks like slush.”

  “Then let’s not worry about it.” Combats were entirely waterproof, but Torin could feel a cold wet spot where some slush had soaked into the collar of her bodyliner. She missed the timer on her scanner; subjective time was just too damned slow. Depending on how far out the tank had stopped, the snow might be slowing the targeting computer, but there wasn’t much wind and it wouldn’t slow it for long. She wanted to tell Annatahwee to hustle, but she knew the sergeant was moving as fast as Humanly possible.

  Maybe she should have sent a di’Taykan.

  Sergeant Annatahwee and the next round landed simultaneously.

  Torin grabbed the front of her bodyliner as the sergeant slid past, a spray of snow drifting down with her, blown in by the blast.

  “I don’t know why we even have those stairs,” Annatahwee muttered, as Kichar raced by and adjusted the cover. “No one seems to be using them.” Twisting within the fabric, she got her feet under her and stood, holding out a familiar metal cylinder as Torin released her. “Will you…?”

  “They might as well stay together.” Torin slipped the doctor into her vest next to Oshyo. “What…” She cut the question off as Annatahwee held out McGuinty’s cracked slate and the crushed amplifier. There were plenty of slates McGuinty could use, but the amplifier, that was another matter. “Well, that’s annoying.”

  Sakur made a choking noise.

  Torin turned toward him, lifting an enquiring brow. “Problem, Private?”

  He opened his mouth, but a tank round hitting the west wall drowned him out. When the noise died, and Torin was clearly still waiting, he shook his head, the ends of his hair swinging in a choppy counterpoint under the edge of his helmet. “No problem, Gunnery Sergeant.”

  “Good.” She touched her PCU. “Listen up, people. The tank’s to the west—everything’s coming in on the same trajectory and not hitting a window, so the shelter halves are working. West windows stay covered. Clear the windows on the other three walls; we need to know what the drones are doing.”

  “Drones are making a move on the door, Gunny!”

  They were efficient little bastards, she’d give them that. “All right, you lot.” Her gesture took in both displaced teams.
“Get in there and help.”

  “Gunnery Sergeant Kerr?”

  “Kichar.”

  Another round hit the west wall. And another six seconds after that.

  “It’s trying to blow through,” Torin said in response to Kichar’s expression. “Don’t worry, this thing was built to be dropped in from orbit. That tank’s carrying nothing that can hurt it. What did you want, Private?”

  “Want?” Her eyes widened. “Right.” She nodded toward the closest door, the door to the fake medical facility. “These are all made of the parts that seal the windows. Why don’t we crush more of them?”

  “Because we don’t want to leave the drones too much cover…” Torin waited out another round. “…close to the air lock. They’re not programmed to pick the pieces up and use them as shielding, but we still don’t want to provide…”

  The distinct sound of a grenade cut her off.

  “Whoever threw that better have taken out more than one drone,” she yelled at the doorless entrance to the south room.

  “Six, Gunny!”

  “Four, you dipshit!”

  “Those other two are fukking limping!”

  “Four’s good, six is better. Now, shut up and get your attention back on those drones!”

  “Yes, Gunnery Sergeant!”

  Unison. Torin smiled, handed Annatahwee her weapon, and then turned her attention back to Kichar as the sergeant trotted off to check on the drone’s attack. “Don’t you have somewhere you have to be, Private?”

  High cheekbones flushed. “Yes, Gunnery Ser…”

  The new round sounded different. Torin had half a heartbeat to identify the sound before the roar made it obvious.

  “Fuk! Incendiary!”

  “But the shelter halves are fireproof!”

  “Fire resistant, Kichar.” Torin splashed through the slush and laid her hand on the door in the inner west wall. “Damned little is fireproof given enough accelerant.” The metal didn’t feel hot but that was hardly surprising. As she’d just told Kichar, the anchor had been designed for an atmospheric entry and these doors were made from part of the outer shell. Only one way to find out if their camouflage had been breached.

  “One, soft target impact. Two, soft target impact.” Standing to one side, she opened the door.

  Three.

  Hanging inside the north window was a sheet of flame. Over the smoke and the stink of burning shelter half, Torin could smell the distinctive odor of acetate. Not good.

  Four.

  The burning fabric dropped to the floor and went out, smoking heavily.

  Five.

  It was still snowing, the flakes blown back by the heat of the flames roaring on the side of the building.

  Six.

  Torin slammed the door and dove to the left, one arm wrapped around Kichar, taking the younger Marine to the floor with her as an explosion blew the door off its hinges, slamming it across the hall, followed by a spray of shrapnel that ricocheted around the second-floor landing sounding like a swarm of angry wasps. Large, angry wasps. Very large.

  “Why are the fukking tanks loaded with nothing but live rounds?” she snarled as the last few pieces rang against the floor. Rolling clear of Kichar, she tried for her feet, bit back an oath, and found a shoulder shoved up under her arm, heaving her back to the vertical. “Thank you. Now move, we haven’t much time.”

  “Gunny?”

  “We’re fine. Six-second reload!” Torin snapped, and Sergeant Annatahwee’s head disappeared back into the south room. She gave Kichar a shove toward that same door, told her to join her team, and headed for the stairs. The round that came through the window while she was halfway to the first floor was a thunder stick.

  Okay, not only live rounds. Sometimes, it was important to be lucky.

  * * *

  “…and now it’s lobbing everything it fires through that window. As long as we pay attention to the count and stay out of the second-floor hallway when it’s likely to be buzzing with the nasty shit, we should be fine. Fortunately, it doesn’t have an angle straight through from the window to the door without moving a few degrees south.”

  Used to the rhythm now, Torin cradled her helmet against her side and braced for the next impact.

  Nothing.

  “Maybe it’s moving,” Major Svensson said dryly. “Stop giving it ideas, Gunny.”

  “Sorry, sir.”

  They could joke because she’d said it, not him. She could see that knowledge in his eyes. Along with something else.

  “Painkiller wearing off, sir?”

  “I’m…”

  She raised an eyebrow and stopped the next word cold.

  “…ready for another,” he amended.

  As he swallowed, she stretched her bad leg out and crouched on the other to examine the stump. It looked good—given that it was the brutally hacked-at remains of an arm—but there was a shadow she wasn’t happy to see. When she stretched out a fingertip toward it, it stretched out to meet her and an instant later, she had another piece of Big Yellow, twice the size of the chip rolling around her palm. It had extruded out of the major’s arm and through the sealant too fast for her to see it move. Or maybe in pieces too small for her to see it move although that wasn’t much more reassuring.

  “Is that what I think it is, Gunny?” All things considered, the major sounded remarkably unconcerned. It could be training, not allowing those under his command to see him flustered. It could be the painkillers. It was probably a bit of both.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Seems to like you.”

  “Yes, sir.” Likely because of the same brain scan that allowed her to remember the escape pod.

  “What exactly are you planning on doing with it?” Closing her fingers around it, she felt it moving within the confines of her hand, not trying to escape, just feeling for the edges of its space. She wanted to throw it aside and wipe the feeling off her hand. She hung on. “I plan on feeding it to Private Piroj, sir.”

  “That seems a bit harsh, Gunny.”

  Torin shone the light a little more fully on his face. He looked serious.

  “Why don’t you put it in the body bag with the rest?”

  “Sir, opening the body bag may result in the rest escaping.”

  “Except that precedent suggests it’ll leap right into your hand. It’s an unknown life-form, Gunny. Something brand new in known space.”

  “Yes, sir. And it’s responsible for two deaths and several injuries and the amputation of your arm.”

  “And it’s our prisoner.”

  He could have made it an order. A lot of other officers would have, even though, technically, given the amount of painkillers he was on, he wasn’t in command.

  Torin opened her hand and stared down at the alien. Collection of aliens. Life-form. For all she knew it was staring back. It hadn’t exactly surrendered, but the major was right, it was their prisoner, and Marines did not eat their prisoners. Not even the Krai, who’d previously had a long tradition of doing just that.

  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 surprisingly 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.”