The Truth of Valor

by Huff, Tanya

  The Susumi radiation they’d read on arrival had undoubtedly come from the other CSO’s ship, destroyed more thoroughly than the Promise. That explained why there’d been no answer. Nat, the cargo jockey who’d pointed them at this field, had been on station because her ship had taken a bad fold. Not a huge jump to suspect it hadn’t been a bad fold at all but that they’d been caught in the blast radius. No one deliberately put themselves in the radius of a Susumi blast. The destruction had been an accident.

  Rogelio Page’s injuries told her they wanted information from a CSO.

  The blast had destroyed any chance of them picking up a new operator.

  So they’d had to look elsewhere.

  Craig wasn’t answering his comm or his implant.

  There was always the chance he’d died when the charges blew.

  Torin didn’t think so.

  Didn’t want to think so.

  Nor did she think she’d find him when she finally got to the ship’s scanners.

  The pirates needed him. They—Nat and her crew—had scooped him up and left her for dead.

  She was more than a little pissed about that.

  Turned out, an hour and a half later, her course didn’t need much correction.

  “Let’s hear it for paying attention on the heavy ordinance range.”

  Torin took three shots to slightly change her angle of approach and spent the rest of the tags to slow herself as much as possible. She hadn’t aimed herself right at the ship but just over it, her boots barely clearing the metal. As it passed under her, she took a quick look at the hole in the cabin. The control panel looked intact and the odds were very good the main cabin had been sealed off immediately from the rest of the ship. There’d be air. If she could get to it.

  The moment her body cleared the ship on the far side, she remagged her boots. Full power. They slammed her down onto the ship working against her forward momentum.

  To a certain extent, the foam continued to protect her.

  Swearing seemed like a good idea except she had to concentrate on basic functionality. Given that she was in the cabin, she assumed she’d managed to stay conscious through docking maneuvers, but she wouldn’t have bet her pension on it. And the tank hookup seemed stupidly complicated until she realized she still had the piece of wreckage tied to her back.

  Things started to spin while she worked it loose and she only just got her mouth over the puke tube in time.

  “You haven’t had fun until you’ve had a helmet full of puke.” Staff Sergeant Beyhn frowned down at her. “You’re sucking carbon dioxide, Kerr. Get your gods-damned tanks in the fill position.”

  “Work . . . ing on . . . it, Staff.”

  “Work faster.”

  “Yes, Staff Sergeant.”

  She didn’t so much push her tanks into the fill niche as collapse back into it.

  “Lucky these things are idiot proof,” the staff sergeant muttered.

  Torin turned off the scanners, started to sit, and remembered her suit didn’t exactly bend anymore. She’d been right. The scanners had picked up no sign of Craig. If he’d been blown to pieces, they’d have picked up the DNA signature. The pirates had him.

  The way they’d had Rogelio Page.

  But Craig had something Page hadn’t.

  He had her.

  All he had to do was stay alive until she came for him.

  FIVE

  “I ARE NOT HANGING AROUND here indefinitely. I are having more important things to be doing than to be watching her breathe, so for the last time before you are suddenly being part of your own not very complimentary vid about medical personnel who are being deliberately obstructive to the media, you are needing to be telling me when she are waking up.”

  Imperious, demanding, and self-righteous with an order of scrambled syntax on the side; Torin knew that voice. Couldn’t figure out how Presit a Tur durValintrisy, ace reporter for Sector Central News, had managed to push her way into Med-op but figured the duty noncom would have her furry little ass out of there so fast it wasn’t worth worrying about.

  Torin couldn’t hear the response to Presit’s demands, but she did hear the reporter’s reply.

  “Fine. But I are not going anywhere until you are telling me where Civilian Salvage Operator Craig Ryder are being. His ship are here, and his ship are being damaged, and he are not with his ship. Or with her.”

  And it all came back to Torin in a rush of sound and light and pain.

  She’d punched up the Susumi engines, hoping that the panel she’d spot welded to the hole in the control room wouldn’t throw off the equation too badly. As the patch’s sole purpose was to bring Promise’s external variables back to the dimensions in the default equations, it was a long way from airtight. Torin would have to remain suited up during the short fold back to the station and help. She had water and could easily go a day and a half on her emergency rations.

  Not pleasantly, but easily.

  The military had done tests on the protection an HE suit offered against Susumi radiation by strapping a suit filled with sensors to the outside of a ship during a fold. After twenty-seven hours, the suit had begun to fail. After thirty hours, levels were fatal for di’Taykan. After thirty-two hours, for Humans. After thirty-seven hours for Krai. Torin’s fold would take thirty-four hours, but she figured she had two things going for her. First, the military had never performed testing on live subjects and while thirty-two hours might be fatal for a Human, that didn’t necessarily mean it was fatal for this Human. Second, the patch would block a portion of the radiation, buying her time.

  That was the last thought she could remember. The silent hope that the patch would buy her enough time had segued right into Presit’s less than dulcet tones.

  Torin had messaged the reporter back on Salvage Station 24. If Presit had time to both find her and get to her out on the edge, then how long had she been out?

  Fuk!

  Craig had been taken by the pirates. She had no time to lie around.

  Her eyelids felt like they weighed a hundred kilos each. Forcing them open, she dragged her tongue over dry lips, and asked, “How long?”

  A startled med tech spun around toward her, feathers ruffled, pale green crest rising. “You’re awake!”

  “She are obviously awake!” Presit snapped, moving closer to the bed and gripping the railing with a small hand that looked like a black latex glove emerging from the cuff of a thick fur coat. “You are being unconscious in this medical facility for seven hours. I are being here for three of them.”

  “The pirates have Craig.” Teeth clenched, Torin sat up.

  “You are having proof of that?” Presit demanded. Behind her, the tech spoke into her slate.

  Torin stared at her reflection in the reporter’s mirrored glasses. Even taking the curve of the lens into account, she looked like hell. Fuk it; she’d given sitreps in worse condition. Her brain was still too scrambled to separate out time spent sideways of reality in Susumi space and apply it to time passed, so she settled on listing the events that had brought her here in order of occurrence. “Recently, two Civilian Salvage Operators were killed attempting to keep their salvage from pirates.” Her voice sounded like she’d been swallowing glass. Her throat agreed that was a valid observation. “This is not standard operating procedure; salvage operators drop and run, but these two found something worth dying to protect. A short time later, another CSO was tortured to death. The only thing a living CSO would have that a pirate might want is information. His death suggests they didn’t get it.”

  “And you are knowing these two things are connected because . . . ?”

  “I don’t believe in coincidence.”

  “Oh, well, that are all I need to be knowing.”

  Torin ignored the sarcasm and continued. “Approximately thirteen hours ago, pirates captured another CSO—Craig—in what is most likely a second attempt to get the information they did not get from Rogelio Page. I was left for dead.”

&
nbsp; “They are leaving you for dead? They are being fools for not being sure. And all that,” Presit added, tapping one metallic-blue claw against the railing for emphasis, “are being a theory, not proof. Word around this station are being that you were attacked by the Primacy. You were being in a debris field very close to the edge, were you not?”

  “I saw the ship,” Torin said tersely, forcing the railing down and Presit back. The bright pink skin on her hand startled her and startled her again when she swung her bare legs out of bed. Right. The foam. The color would fade in time, but time was what she didn’t have. “It wasn’t a Primacy ship.”

  “And your word are being good enough because you are being Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr.”

  The floor beside the bed was freezing. “The Promise’s computer wasn’t damaged. There may be a record of the attacking ship in her data stores, but it doesn’t matter if there isn’t. I know the ship. It was docked here, at the station, repairing damage from Susumi radiation at the same time we were here selling salvage. Our sensors picked up residual Susumi radiation when we first arrived at the debris field. The debris field one of the crew of the attacking ship suggested we check out.”

  “That are perhaps being a few too many coincidences.”

  Torin grinned; she knew that tone. Presit sensed a story. “No shit.”

  The room spun when she stood and she sat back down considerably faster than she’d risen.

  “Speaking of damage from Susumi radiation,” Presit added, “they are telling me you are having been damaged yourself when you are arriving. If you are having to be in Susumi space much longer, they are not being able to fix things. As it is, you are being mostly fine. Oh, and they say you are smelling terrible when they are peeling you out of the suit,” she added with a toothy grin as the doctor fluttered into the room and came to a sudden stop.

  Katrien were omnivores, but Presit had an impressive mouthful of sharp, white teeth, and Torin didn’t blame the doctor for not moving any closer.

  “You . . .” A slender finger pointed at Torin. “. . . shouldn’t be out of bed.” He snapped the halves of his residual beak together in irritation.

  “Will it kill me?” Torin asked.

  “Being out of bed? No, but . . .”

  “Presit, that pile on the chair looks like my clothing. Pass it over.”

  “What are your last slave dying of?” She trilled something to a slightly larger Katrien, bringing him out of the far corner of the room and into Torin’s field of vision. “I are lending you Ceelin a Tar guPolinstarta . . .

  Confirmation of gender; a Tar was the male designation. Secondary sexual characteristics were hard to read on a species with fur a minimum of ten centimeters deep.

  “. . . but you are understanding he are being my assistant, not yours.”

  “I just want my clothes,” Torin pointed out, taking them from Ceelin with a nod of thanks. “I don’t need ...” The pile slid out of her hands as her thumbs refused to work properly.

  Ceelin caught the clothes before they hit the floor and set them beside her on the bed. “I are not minding helping you,” he said quietly, muzzle crinkling in a tentative smile. “If I are handing you one thing at a time, it are maybe being easier.” The darker fur on his brow folded into a deeper vee, dipping down behind the top edge of his dark glasses, as he frowned at her bra. “But I are not knowing what this is.”

  “It’s a place to start,” Torin told him, peeling off the medical shift.

  “Excuse me!” The doctor snapped his beak again, the dark green feathers of his crest now at full extension. “This one just said you shouldn’t be out of bed! If you’d been in Susumi space for any longer, you would have taken irreparable damage.”

  “I are having told her that already,” Presit murmured.

  The doctor ignored her, continuing to glare at Torin. “This one has only just been able to clear the radiation from your system and repair the effects.”

  Torin nodded once in his general direction. “Thank you.”

  He blinked, translucent inner eyelid sliding across, then back. “There may still be small amounts of damage at the cellular level.”

  “Small enough amounts for me to survive them?”

  “Yes, but . . .”

  “See any sign of molecular gray plastic aliens while you were in there?”

  “No, but . . .”

  “Then again, thank you.” Pushing head and arms through the correct holes of her sweater took longer than it should have, but eventually Torin managed it.

  “You seem to be deliberately misunderstanding me. You’re not completely recovered. You need rest.”

  “Or else?” she asked as Ceelin guided her feet into the leg holes in her underwear. Time spent in the close quarters of the Corps conquered nudity taboos; not that either Katrien or Rakva, with fur and feathers, would have cared had any lingered.

  “Or else you will recover more slowly.”

  “I can live with that.” One hand on Ceelin’s shoulder, she stood and used the other to drag her trousers up over her hips.

  “This one cannot allow you to leave until the Wardens arrive.” He turned to the med tech, who checked her slate and shrugged.

  “This one has no ETA.”

  “I don’t have time to wait.” Slate on her belt, boots fastened, Torin took a careful step, didn’t fall flat on her face, and counted it a win.

  “The Wardens will want to take your statement.”

  “Presit can record it and send it back to the station.” One bright pink hand on the bulkhead and one on Ceelin’s shoulder, she could walk at almost a normal speed.

  “Where are you going?” Presit demanded, scrambling to catch up.

  “Do you have a ship?” She touched the top curve of the plastic chair as she passed by.

  “Yes, I are having a ship, but . . .”

  “Then that’s where we’re going.”

  Crest still up, the doctor stepped between her and the hatch. “This one objects,” he began but stopped at the expression on Torin’s face.

  “Did the Wardens tell you to detain me?”

  “No, but . . .”

  “Do I owe you for my treatment?”

  If he’d had a lip, he’d have curled it. “Health care is a basic right for citizens of the Confederacy.”

  “That’s what I thought. Move.”

  He’d never been in the Corps, or he’d have moved a lot faster, but he still moved.

  “This one needs your statement that you are released from this facility without this one’s approval,” he grumbled, slate held out.

  “I understand that I am released from this facility without my attending physician’s approval,” Torin said as clearly as possible as she passed him.

  “You are best letting her go,” she heard Presit say behind her. “She are not being a very nice person even on her good days. Ceelin!”

  His shoulder tensed under Torin’s hand.

  “I are hoping you are planning to come back for the camera?”

  “Go on, kid.” Torin nudged him back toward the room, wondering just how much of her regaining consciousness he’d recorded. “I can manage.”

  The long hall leading toward an open hatch with a red exit light above it seemed to be tilted forty-five degrees. Torin took a deep breath, got the hall straightened out about twenty degrees and figured fuk it, close enough. The series of open hatches along both sides of the bulkhead nearly defeated her, but her arms were just long enough to bridge the gaps.

  Most of the facility’s other patients watched with interest as she lurched past their rooms. One shrieked. Torin ignored them all.

  “The only reason the Wardens are not asking the medical facility to be detaining you,” Presit told her matter-of-factly, “are because they are assuming any reasonable being are planning on staying right where they are until the Wardens arrive.”

  “Waste of time,” Torin grunted, swayed slightly, and found Presit’s shoulder suddenly under her flailing
hand. She looked down to find the reporter looking up at her, teeth showing.

  “You are assuming, in turn, that I are allowing you to use my ship.”

  “I’m giving you one hell of a story.”

  “Your opinion ...” Her muzzle wrinkled. “It are not buying me hurinca.”

  Torin neither knew nor cared what hurinca was. “Your biggest stories have all involved me in some way.” And the polynumerous polyhydroxide alcoholyde shape-shifting molecular hive mind. There was a chance that the pirates were another one of their social experiments but, bottom line, who the fuk cared. The pirates had Craig. “This story is about the pirates, and it’ll be huge.”

  “I are not seeing how.”

  Torin pulled her lips back off her teeth in an expression that, in no way, resembled a smile. “I’m going to destroy them.”

  Presit reached up to pat the hand on her shoulder. “Of course you are.”

  She didn’t sound condescending—or no more condescending than usual. She sounded pleased.

  Stumbling toward the docking ring, Torin learned that her patch had affected the equations and Promise had emerged from Susumi space close enough to the station to set off the proximity alarms.

  “It are being a good thing, too,” Presit said, steering them around a corner and along the outside curve of the central hub. “They are finding you fast, before you are being dead. Ex-Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr are dead are being a story, sure, but not enough of a story for me to have been dragging my ass out to the edge. Ex-Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr are removing the pirate scourge from known space, now that are being a story. A better story than merely an observational piece about pirates are being bad,” she added, turned, and waved off two people hurrying across the concourse toward them. “Yes, this are ex-Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr who are helping to discover the little gray aliens and are helping to be ending the war. Yes, she are smaller in real life. No, her hands are not usually being pink. Yes, she are being in a hurry right now, but my assistant are giving you my burst and you are watching Sector Central News for what she are up to next. Presit a Tur durValintrisy are having the whole story. Ceelin!”