The Truth of Valor

by Huff, Tanya

  Yeah, like that was going to happen now. “Are we in danger?”

  Torin huffed a laugh. “Most of the time.” One hand rose up through the light to wave at the fuzz of Susumi through the front port. “Screw up a basic trigonometric function, and that shit eats you for breakfast.”

  Old news. “Specific danger?” he prodded, covering a yawn with his fist.

  He couldn’t quite see her shrug, but her tone told him she had. “The data stores have nothing on The Heart of Stone.”

  “No reason they should. It’s a cargo ship I’ve never run into before.”

  “I don’t trust this . . . Nat. I don’t trust that she sold you the coordinates for so much less than they could be worth.”

  “Could be worth,” Craig repeated, adding emphasis. “And she sold them for as much as she could get. Nat did okay, more than, given that she can’t bring in military salvage without tags. She got a sure thing. We’re taking the chance. And I checked the math before I paid her—the odds of it being a debris drift from the destruction of the Norrington , the M’rcgunn, and the Salvanos are high. Very high, even. But you know that because I showed you the numbers.” Eyes narrowed, he strained unsuccessfully to see her expression. “What’s really wrong?”

  For a moment, he thought she wasn’t going to answer. Finally, she sighed.

  “I knew Marines on the M’rcgunn. Most of them are still MIA.”

  “. . . three hundred and seventy-one thousand, two hundred and twenty brought home. And counting.”

  “You’re wondering if we’ll find them.”

  “It had crossed my mind.”

  Craig knew that one of Torin’s hands rested on the place the tiny cylinders holding the ashes of the dead would fit into a combat vest. He suspected she still carried every Marine she hadn’t been able to bring home alive. He wanted to tell her she could put them down. Knew it wasn’t his place. But he’d do what he could. “Come back to bed. Celebrate life.”

  He could feel her stare. Heard her snort. “That may be the corniest pickup line anyone has ever used on me.”

  “What can I say?” He grinned. “You’re a sure thing; I’ve stopped trying.”

  Torin had always thought that, given the chance, she’d prefer to be at the controls during a Susumi fold rather than have her survival depend on another’s ability to get the equation right. Far as the Navy’s Susumi engineers were concerned, Marines were meat in a can. Not that Torin had ever actively worried about them getting it wrong. No point. Nothing she could do, strapped down in one of the Marine packets, would affect the outcome. She preferred to save her concern for things she could affect.

  Turned out, being at the controls gave her exactly as much satisfaction as she’d thought it would. It felt good to have external responsibilities again.

  The last time, she’d merely been at the controls when they emerged. This time, it was her fold, start to finish.

  As the Susumi wave faded, she brought the front thrusters on to slow their emergent speed, and then checked her boards. “We’ve arrived at the coordinates we were aiming . . . Shit!”

  “What?”

  A piece of duct tape tore as Craig’s grip on the top of the chair actually tightened. Given the white-knuckled grip he’d been using as they came back into normal space, Torin hadn’t thought tighter was possible. “Scanners are reading dispersed Susumi radiation.”

  “Our wave ...” he began, but she cut him off.

  “No.” Enlarging the display, she frowned at the scrolling numbers. “That’s the edge of our wave there. See the overlap?”

  He was close enough that his sigh of relief moved her hair, breath lapping warm against her scalp. “Oh, thank fuk. Levels that low, we ignore.”

  “Ignore?” With the Promise now essentially motionless, she twisted around to face him, putting them nose-to-nose. “Are you serious?” Susumi radiation wasn’t just nasty, it was variable at the molecular level, and results were never the same twice. The scientific community had agreed only that run away, run away was the wisest response.

  Shifting to the right, Craig reached past her and enlarged a different display. “During the battle, three Confederation ships blew within five thousand kilometers of these coordinates—this is just residue. And, Nat, the cargo jockey who pointed us this way told me they’d had a hinky fold. Might be nothing more than that. We can pull salvage at twice this level.”

  “And you have?”

  He snorted. “Sure.”

  Torin took another look and still didn’t like the numbers. “Tell me you’ve banked sperm.”

  “I’ve banked sperm.”

  “Good.” Both branches of the military required the banking of reproductive material upon enlisting, given the hundred percent probability of being exposed to hard radiation while serving. Torin had an ovary in storage back on Paradise. Civilians who went into space made their own choices. Most of the mutations weren’t viable.

  An incoming communication pinged the board.

  “Fukking figures.” Craig scaled the radiation readings down so he could bring up the code. “Looks like there’s already a tag registered.”

  Torin surrendered the pilot’s chair. “If this is a one-on-one with another CSO, you’d better take it.”

  He grinned and sat. “You have to learn to talk to them sometime.”

  “The moment they learn communication protocols.”

  “You know some people would consider the term hot mama a compliment.”

  “Some people think the H’san are cuddly, I’m not responsible for their delusions either.” She took the position he’d been holding behind the chair, just as glad she had no farther to walk as her first Susumi fold had left her legs feeling embarrassingly wobbly. Ex-gunnery sergeants did not wobble.

  “It’s just the code for the tag coming through—no one I know. Seems they don’t want to talk.”

  “Is that standard operating procedure?”

  “We’re a little skint with those.” Craig pulled up a keyboard. “If they’re working alone, maybe suited up outside—they won’t want the distraction of talk. I’m registering second tag,” he added, before she could ask. “Whoever they are, their registration says they’re on the other side of that lopsided planetoid with the ring, so I’ll do a long-range scan and see if there’s anything worth investigating about 500 kliks from their ...”

  The scanner pinged.

  “We found debris?” Torin frowned. “That was fast.” It was a hell of a lot faster than their first trip out. Vacuum being short of friction, objects in motion, like pieces blown from battle cruisers, tended to keep moving. Made them harder to find.

  Usually.

  “Damn!” Craig reached back, yanked her head down by his, and kissed her enthusiastically.

  Torin grinned as she pulled away. “While I enjoyed the sitrep, I’m going to need more details.”

  “There’s tech potential in this clump. Nat was right.”

  “I’m sorry I distrusted her.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  Her grin broadened. “No, I’m not.” Maintaining a little healthy distrust would go a long way to keeping them alive. “So, do we head to the clump?”

  Craig shook his head. “Not yet. We give first tag a chance to object to us working those coordinates.”

  The CSA with the first tag could reject second tag’s first three choices. Should a third CSO arrive, the approval of both previous tags had to be acquired. Torin couldn’t decide if she appreciated the fact they had a system in place—given their whole my business is none of your business attitude—or if she was appalled by the inefficiency.

  She made coffee while they waited. As she filled the first mug, Craig brought Promise’s engines back on-line. She hadn’t thought they’d been pinged. “No news is good news?”

  His teeth flashed white as he smiled broadly. “Every damned time.”

  First tag’s registered coordinates were behind the lopsided planetoid. Out of sight. Scanners bl
ocked. Torin stood by the control panel, stared down at the scrolling numbers still registering the Susumi radiation, and tapped a fingernail lightly against her mug until Craig reached up, wrapped a hand around her wrist, and stopped her.

  “What?” he demanded.

  “They might not be answering because they’re in trouble.”

  “Then we’d be picking up a distress call from the ship or the suit.” He sat back and swept his free hand over the board. “No distress call.”

  True as far as it went, but she’d learned to trust her instincts. “Would pirates give them time to send a distress call?”

  “A distress call’d have bugger all to do with the pirates; the ship’d send it automatically. Once he got close enough, Brian was up and aces finding the Firebreather,” Craig added. “What took the time was Jan and Sirin. Here . . .” Still holding her wrist, he used his free hand to tap the edge of the small screen showing the steady blip of the other CSO’s tag. “A registered tag but no distress call means the alleged pirates destroyed the ship completely but left behind some of the tagged cargo. Not likely, love.”

  “I know.” They’d discuss the endearment another time. “But it wouldn’t hurt to go check on them.”

  “It’d use resources . . .”

  “Then take it out of my share,” she snapped.

  “Torin ...” He sighed, tightened his grip slightly, and shook her arm—not quite hard enough to spill her coffee. Smart man. “. . . I know this is hard for you to get your head around, but you’re not responsible for every fukking thing that happens in known space. Most people, they don’t need you to ride to the rescue. They can live their lives all sunshine and puppies without you giving them . . .”

  The corners of his mouth twitched up, and Torin almost heard him say, Why not . . . in the pause.

  “. . . context.”

  The little plastic aliens, the polynumerous polyhydroxide alcoholyde shape-shifting molecular hive mind, had deep scanned both their brains—hers and Craig’s—during the Recon investigation of the unidentified alien ship known as Big Yellow. The organic plastic bastards had then hitched a ride inside their skulls in order to give context to observations about the centuries-long war between the Confederation and the Primacy. A war the little plastic aliens had admitted to both starting and maintaining. A lot of Marines had died while they’d been along for the ride, and sometimes Torin would sit in the control chair, listen to Craig sleeping in the bunk behind her, watch the stars, and find herself second-guessing every choice she’d made since that day on Big Yellow. Wondering if it had actually been her making them.

  CSOs were able to doubt the lives they’d lived, but gunnery sergeants accepted responsibility for their decisions and moved on. They didn’t dwell. And, yeah, she’d left the Corps, but the Corps would never really leave her.

  Twisting her hand above Craig’s grip, Torin poured the coffee into his lap. They’d gotten dressed before emerging from Susumi space, so it didn’t make as much of an impression as it could have.

  “Fukking hell, Torin!”

  Still, it was a fresh pot. Hadn’t cooled much.

  Torin knew a lot of different ways to kill people. She could come up with three ways, off the top of her head, using the mug as a weapon. All things considered, a crotch of coffee rated minus five on a scale of one to ten.

  When she stepped back, Craig hung on. She could have broken his hold. She didn’t. Minus five or not, she figured she owed him that much.

  He met her gaze, ignoring the liquid pooling in his lap. “Okay, it’s too soon to joke about context. I’m sorry. If it means that much to you, we’ll go check on the other ship.”

  My business is none of your business.

  HE suits screamed for help if their wearers got into trouble they couldn’t get out of. Beacons in the suits were slaved to the ships and when they went off, the ship would go off as well, extending the suit’s range. If the ship was damaged, its own distress call would sound.

  The Promise wasn’t picking up a distress call.

  But she was picking up registered CSO tags.

  Pirates would take the tagged debris, or what the hell was the point of being a pirate.

  “No, you’re right ...”

  “If I’m right,” he interrupted, “why am I absorbing caffeine through my ass?”

  Four ways with the coffee mug. “You’re right,” she repeated, “that I need to start thinking more like a salvage operator.”

  Craig nodded, relaxing slightly. “Without a distress call, they wouldn’t thank us for dropping by.”

  That surprised a laugh out of her. “I was a Marine. I didn’t expect to get thanked.”

  The battle debris had drifted into an interlinked mass, the smaller, more salvageable pieces fused to huge sheets of twisted metal and slabs of ceramic. Given the parts she could see, given the protection offered by the large, outer pieces of hull, Torin was willing to bet her pension that the odds of finding DNA remnants would be high. Maybe not the specific Marines she counted as her friends, but Marines.

  “This first trip out, we eyeball the puzzle pieces,” Craig reminded her, waiting by the air lock as Torin checked his helmet seals. “We tag what’ll give us the best resale price, maybe set a few small charges to break things up so that we can get a better look inside. DNA scans come later.” He checked her seals in turn, then moved his hands to her shoulders and left them there. “We’re not wearing propulsion, so we stay tethered to the ship or the end of the grapple at all times. Eyeballs on where I’m attached before you unhook. It’s safer if we’re not both off the ship at the same time.”

  The urge to respond to this latest repetition of common sense masquerading as instruction with a noncommittal “Yes, sir.” was intense, but that wasn’t a dynamic she wanted to set up with Craig—he’d earned her respect a long time ago. And, in all fairness, in spite of her previous performance out by the pens, she understood why he erred on the side of caution. She’d been equally unwilling to trust his skills, all evidence to the contrary, when he’d been on her turf. Since the CSOs didn’t have any kind of basic training to meld individuals into a unit, and would likely be appalled by the thought, all she could do toward being thought one of them, was give it time.

  So she said, “You think eight charges will be enough?” They were each carrying four.

  “We’re not out here to fight a war.”

  “Please,” she snorted. “I could win a war with seven.”

  They were close to the edge, as likely to run into a Primacy ship making a foray into Confederation space as a Confederation ship on patrol.

  “Eight should be aces, but there’s only one way to find out for sure.” He opened the air lock’s inner door. Promise’s interior lights shifted red—they were now a lot closer to vacuum than the ship’s sensors were happy about. “After you.”

  They used the heavier grapple to first tether the ship to the largest piece of wreckage and then to winch them closer, the wreckage winning the mass sweepstakes.

  Standing beside Craig on the edge of the deployed pen, Torin couldn’t see his expression through the helmet’s polarization, only her own blank silver reflection, but she could hear the smile in his voice when he gestured at the massive triangular piece of metal above them and said, “Race you,” as he released his magnetic soles and pushed off.

  She considered jerking back on his safety line. Didn’t. But it was close.

  In the end, she won only because her suit was newer and, when she flipped, she remagged her boots at full charge, allowing them to drag her down past him. She was moving fast enough at impact that she was glad she had her tongue tucked safely away from her teeth.

  Landing beside her two seconds later, Craig grunted, “Cheater.”

  “Don’t start with me, Ryder. Usually, there’s a three count before a race.”

  “Just assumed, you being an ex-gunnery sergeant and all, you should be handicapped to make it fair.”

  She grinned and fl
ipped him off. “Handicap this.”

  They were standing on a piece blown out of the outer hull, roughly eight meters by four meters at the longest points, and half a meter thick—the two visible Susumi contact points on the metal no longer radiating.

  “You don’t find that odd?” Torin leaned over to check that the information on Craig’s sleeve matched hers. She didn’t completely trust his aging tech. “Given the initial radiation readings?”

  “Dispersal,” he said absently, his attention having been pulled deeper into the tangle. “Damn! Take a look there.”

  “You want to be a little more specific?” There covered a lot of ground.

  “That piece, the blue-green one just past the cable end.” His voice was as animated as Torin had ever heard it. “That’s Other . . . Fuk it, Primacy tech. Premium scoop, babe! We get that out and we’re building a deck.”

  “Babe?” Love she could cope with. Lines had to be drawn.

  “Heat of the moment.” She heard the grin in his voice.

  One hand gripping the edge of the hull, Torin turned until she could pull herself headfirst a short distance into the debris. “Piece we want looks fused to that link section, but I can’t get a good enough angle on it to see for certain.” With the magnification on her faceplate at maximum, she could see pitting caused by tiny pieces of debris but still couldn’t see the point where the Primacy tech butted up against the link.

  They were going to have to blast it clear.

  “Do we tag it for later?” she asked reaching for the tagging gun strapped to her thigh.

  “We tag it for now.” Craig pulled one of his charges from the pouch. “This, we don’t wait for.”

  Maybe she was a little more excited about that than she needed to be, but so far, the crazy, dangerous life of the civilian salvage operator had been a bit dull.

  “They’re both suited up and climbing around the debris, Captain. We can go on your order.”

  “We need Ryder.” Cho gripped the edge of his board. “He’s the registered CSO. Doc says the woman was Corps long enough for it to mark her, so cut her free when we take him.” Only a fool brought that kind of trouble on board and Mackenzie Cho’s mama had raised no fool.