The Truth of Valor

by Huff, Tanya

  Craig.

  He was sitting on the floor, wearing a pair of ugly navy blue overalls, his eyes bloodshot and darkly shadowed, his lips chapped, his face bruised, his hair looking like it hadn’t been brushed in days.

  Alive.

  His lips were pressed together, and he was breathing fast and shallow.

  Torin had seen enough pain over the years to recognize it now.

  He was in pain.

  But alive.

  He didn’t seem surprised to see her.

  There wasn’t enough air in the pod.

  Torin locked her leg muscles and braced one hand against the armory to keep from throwing herself into Craig’s arms. Both Big Bill and the di’Taykan were behind her by the hatch. There were footsteps approaching.

  There were a thousand things she wanted to say in the seconds she had. Craig would know that whatever it looked like, she was there to get him out. He’d know she couldn’t just leave the armory. He had to be told the implants were tapped before he tried to contact her. He’d know they were live, he must’ve heard the ping.

  So out of all the thousand things she wanted to say, she mouthed, Implant tapped.

  He swallowed, she watched his Adam’s apple rise and fall. He nodded; a small, careful movement.

  And that was all the time they had.

  “Captain Cho, excellent timing.” Big Bill was smiling his Krai smile, Torin could hear it in his voice. “I hope there’s been some progress made.”

  Captain Cho.

  Captain of the Heart of Stone.

  The captain who’d given the order to take Craig.

  Torin began to turn. Paused. Craig wore a standard soft-soled boot on his right foot, but his left was bare of everything but a bandage folded over . . .

  ... the empty place where the smallest toe should be.

  Craig felt as though his heart had stopped when Torin came into the pod. It stopped again as she looked up from the bandage and turned toward the hatch.

  He knew that expression.

  Last time he’d seen it, Doc had been wearing it.

  NINE

  “WHO’S SHE?” CAPTAIN CHO frowned up at Torin, obviously trying to remember where he recognized her from.

  Hands locked together behind her back, her body between Craig and the pirate captain, Torin tried to work out what would happen if she locked them around Cho’s throat instead. Craig was in pain. The injury could have been accidental, but allowing the pain, that was something else entirely. That was purposeful. That was torture. That was the reason she should kill son of a bitch right now.

  Except . . .

  If she killed him . . .

  “She is the H’san’s mother,” Big Bill said. “This is Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr.”

  The roaring in her ears made it sound as though Big Bill had answered the captain from the bottom of a vertical.

  “The one who discovered the gray plastic aliens?” Cho’s eyes narrowed. “I thought she left the Corps.”

  “She did.”

  “Doesn’t that make her an ex-gunnery sergeant?”

  “Not possible.”

  “What’s she doing here?”

  Torin could snap Cho’s neck before Big Bill realized she’d moved.

  Then . . .

  She tried to shift the flood of pros and cons into some kind of order, into some kind of strategy, but the anger kept getting in the way. She couldn’t kill Cho, no matter how much she wanted to, until she knew she could get Craig off the station. And she couldn’t plan a way to get Craig off the station when the need to make Cho pay pushed everything else aside. It was almost funny how, temporarily, the anger was the only thing keeping Cho alive.

  “She is going to teach the free merchants how to use the weapons in the locker as I have no intention of allowing untrained persons to carry weapons inside my station. Projectile weapons,” Big Bill added, “in case you’ve forgotten what the Corps carries.”

  Even while speaking to Big Bill, Torin noted Cho kept part of his attention on her; although he very deliberately didn’t look her in the eye. “She works for you?”

  “She will. When your people finally get this thing open.” Arms folded, Big Bill half turned toward the locker. “About that, Captain; do we have a time frame or am I giving you access to my station indefinitely for no apparent reason?”

  “Nadayki!”

  The young di’Taykan was unarmed, Torin noted as he stepped forward, adding a fourth point, shifting their triangle. He favored his left leg and moved as though he were uncomfortable in his body—unusually graceless for a di’Taykan. If it came to a fight, he couldn’t protect his captain.

  Depending on how he got the wound, he might not want to protect his captain. Nothing said Craig had been the only one taken and tortured.

  “We’re down to the last section, Captain, but ...” Nadayki’s hair lay flat against his head. “. . . it’s a date.”

  Cho blinked. His attention split three ways between Torin, Big Bill, and Nadayki and unable to watch all three of them at once, he couldn’t seem to get a handle on the information he’d just been given. “A date?”

  “Yeah, a date. Eight numbers, two sets of two and a set of four. And I can’t run a number from a slate without slagging the seal, and slagging the seal will set off the Marine seal and that’ll blow the armory.”

  “We know all that.” Cho made the statement a threat. Torin barely stopped herself from a fatal reaction. She shifted her weight forward, back muscles knotting when she didn’t throw the blow. Craig moved behind her, she could hear him breathing heavily through his nose, but she didn’t dare turn. It helped that the movement sounded deliberate not involuntary. Not controlled by the pain. Hopefully, he’d remained sitting on the deck to conserve his strength because if it turned out he was unable to stand, she’d have to . . .

  Have to . . .

  She bit through the inside of her lip. Focused on the taste of iron and Nadayki’s voice as he said, “Without the slate hooked in, coming up with a specific combination of eight numbers, that’s impossible. Well, technically, not impossible, but the time I’ll need to . . .”

  Big Bill cut him off with a raised hand. “Dates are relevant to the people who set them, are they not?”

  Nadayki glanced over at Cho and when the captain didn’t respond said, “Yeah, almost always, but we know shit about the people who set this.”

  “You know the name of their ship,” Big Bill sighed. “A little research into public databases and you’d learn several possible dates I’m sure. However, in the interest of saving some time, which you seem to believe I have an indefinite amount of ...” He nodded past Nadayki at Craig. Torin turned to follow the gesture. Enough to see Craig’s face but not enough to remove her primary focus from Cho. “He’s a salvage operator. Perhaps he knows them?”

  Craig rolled his eyes; all familiar attitude, like he hadn’t just been tortured. Torin began silently listing the parts of a KC-7 to keep herself from doing something stupid. “Oh, sure, all salvage operators know each other,” he muttered. “It’s not like space is big or anything.”

  He was right, Torin realized. The sons of bitches who took him had no reason to believe he knew the CSOs who’d lost the original cargo. Space was big. Trite but true. And Craig could bluff a table off a substantial pot while holding nothing more than trip eights.

  Cho muttered something in a Human dialect Torin didn’t know, then took a short, jerky step toward Craig and snarled, “I should have left your toe where it was and cut off your useless fukking nuts.”

  Craig saw a muscle jump in Torin’s jaw and decided to save Cho’s life.

  More importantly, he was saving Torin’s.

  “It’s a long shot, kid, but try 23, 14, 1552. Date of the first big civilian salvage find,” he explained as they all turned to stare at him. Where all did not include Torin; she continued to stare at Cho like she was deciding how to cark him. Odds were high she was doing exactly that. “The first find tha
t wasn’t just scrap. We . . .” He snorted, remembering what side he was supposed to be on. “They use it for luck.”

  In point of fact, he had no clue when the first salvage find had happened. The date he’d given Nadayki was the day Jan and Sirin had finally saved enough dolly to buy their license. He’d just happened to have been on station for the party and knew the date only because it had also been the day Jeremy’d been born. If that wasn’t the code, well, he knew a couple of other dates it might be and, more importantly, he’d distracted Torin long enough for her to get a grip.

  “Aren’t you helpful,” Big Bill said.

  “Aren’t I?” he muttered, watching Torin’s fingers flex. He knew her rep. He knew her life before joining him had been spent dealing with the kind of shit that would have most people bringing engines on-line to get away. Hell, he’d seen her get her people off a sentient space-ship and then attempt to save her surviving enemies as well. He’d seen her angry, but he’d never seen her so close to losing control.

  He supposed he should be flattered that she gone this close to the line for him. All things being equal, not so much.

  “What if he’s decided to blow us up?” Nadayki asked, taking a step toward the armory then a step back toward the group at the hatch.

  “He’ll be blowing himself up as well,” Big Bill pointed out. He stared at Craig for a long moment while Craig attempted to look like his foot hurt so fukking much he didn’t give a H’san’s ass about what Big Bill thought.

  Not exactly acting.

  Big Bill didn’t look convinced.

  “He doesn’t want to blow himself up.” Torin made it a definitive statement. No others need apply. If Craig hadn’t known he didn’t want to blow himself up, she’d have convinced him.

  When Big Bill turned to look at her, so did Craig. The station manager . . . head pirate . . . everyone’s chum . . . whatever the fuk his actual title was, Big Bill stared at her for a long moment and she looked away from Cho long enough to meet his gaze. Craig had no idea what game Torin had to play to get onto the station, but in spite of maintaining a mere fingertip hold on her temper, she seemed to be playing it well.

  Of course she was playing it well. Ex-Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr was still the walking definition of overachiever.

  And as possessive as all hell.

  He wanted to tell her he was good, now she was here. That he’d known she’d come for him. He hoped she already knew all that.

  Big Bill finally nodded and spread his hands. “There you go, then,” he told Cho genially as Torin locked her narrow-eyed gaze back on the captain.

  Cho looked like he smelled something foul. “She can’t know . . .”

  “I say she can.”

  “But . . .”

  “I can’t provide free air to this part of the station indefinitely,” Big Bill sighed.

  “Nadayki!”

  “Captain?”

  “Do it!” Cho snapped, unable to stop his eyes from flicking toward Torin.

  Yeah, Craig acknowledged, the captain had pressing personal problems that put merely blowing up into perspective. Under the circumstances—and he could only see part of Torin’s expression—Craig gave him credit for not pissing himself.

  Nadayki entered the eight numbers—he didn’t need to have them repeated and Craig made a mental note about the kid’s memory to go with previous notes about his unfortunate powers of observation—then jerked back, propelled by an ominously final sounding click.

  The CSO seal split and dropped to the deck.

  The Marine seal, still securing the armory, beeped once.

  After a long moment that did not end in being blown to his component atoms, Craig started breathing again.

  Big Bill cocked his head. “Can you get into it, Gunnery Sergeant?”

  “No.” Not a refusal. “My codes have been retired.”

  Craig wondered if he was the only one who heard, You’re a dead man when Torin opened her mouth, regardless of what she actually said. Cho twitched randomly, so probably not.

  “Retired codes,” Torin continued, “will initiate the armory’s self-destruct.”

  “The government doesn’t trust anyone,” Big Bill said with exaggerated distress. “And that’s just part of the problem. How long to get in?” Playacting done, he whipped the question at Nadayki.

  Nadayki flinched, his eyes lightening. “Twenty-eight hours.”

  Big Bill glanced at his slate. “It’s 0230 now. You have until 1630.”

  “Station time?”

  “Unless you were planning to leave.” When Nadayki made no response, Big Bill turned to Cho. “Of course, as you owe me fifteen percent of what’s in that armory, I wouldn’t advise it. You have fourteen hours. Gunnery Sergeant ...”

  Torin didn’t want to walk away and leave Craig in enemy hands, but she couldn’t just grab him and go. With no exit strategy, even if they got off the ore docks, they’d be dead before they got back to the ship. She could tell Big Bill that she wanted Craig as part of her payment for the job she wasn’t going to do, but that would give Big Bill a weapon he could use against her.

  Putting Craig in an entirely different kind of danger.

  She paused at the pod’s hatch and, before he could look away, locked her gaze with Cho’s. Jerking her head toward Craig, still sitting on the deck by the armory, she snarled, “What happened to his foot?”

  “It was an accident,” Craig said before Cho could answer.

  Why was he defending the son of a bitch? Torin actually felt her lips pull back off her teeth as though she had no control over her expression.

  Cho’s pupils dilated. “An accident,” he agreed. “Couldn’t happen again.”

  Big Bill’s footsteps placed him almost halfway to the exit. Torin ignored him and listened to Craig breathe. She wanted to say that she’d get him out just to hear him say he knew it. She wanted to hear him say a lot of other things. She needed to touch him.

  Wouldn’t be able to let go if she did.

  “It couldn’t happen again?” She watched beads of sweat form along Cho’s hairline. “Good.”

  Cho waited just inside the storage pod until they heard the hatch leading into the station close, then he took a deep breath. Craig half suspected it was the first breath he’d taken since Torin’s final comment.

  “He’s going to try for more than his fukking fifteen percent.”

  Not what Craig had expected the captain would say. While he hadn’t thought Cho would suddenly spill his last will and testament, some acknowledgment of the danger Torin posed to him might’ve been a more aware response.

  “He’s up to something,” Cho continued, fingers tapping against his thigh. “Big Bill thinks we’re all going to end up working for him.”

  From Craig’s understanding of how the station worked, Cho seemed to have come to that realization a little late. Big Bill might be blatant about taking his fifteen percent off the top, but the station master grabbed fifteen percent off the back and sides as well. The pirates paid fifteen percent to Big Bill, but so did every service on the station, and they got their money from the pirates with prices adjusted up to cover Big Bill’s share.

  Nice gig.

  “You.” Cho’s attention jerked suddenly back to the here and now. He pointed at Nadayki. “What the fuk are you looking at? Get to work. Big Bill thinks he’s getting into this armory in fourteen hours. I want it open in twelve.”

  “But . . .”

  “I thought you were good at this?” Cho sneered. “The best, they told me. That’s why I agreed to take you and your thytrins on. Fukking di’Taykan, lie soon as fuk you.”

  Nadayki’s hair flipped out. “I am the best!”

  “Prove it!”

  The young di’Taykan glanced down at his slate and then up again, squaring his shoulders. “You’ll have it in eleven,” he said, turned, and bent over the seal.

  Funny how young and stupid were so much alike.

  “And you . . .”

&nbs
p; Craig could tell Cho wasn’t really seeing him. Suspected he hadn’t seen Nadayki either in spite of the crude manipulation. That he was still worrying at what Big Bill might be up to. Or Torin had rattled him, and the Big Bill reaction was a cover. Wouldn’t do to look rattled in front of the two junior members of his crew, would it? Might give them ideas.

  “You get over here.” Cho pointed to the deck at his feet. “Anyone comes through that hatch . . .” He pointed down the docks. “... you let me know immediately. No matter what happens, the kid keeps working.” Pivoting on one heel, he stepped out of the pod without waiting for a response.

  Interesting, Craig thought, listening to the captain walking quickly back toward the Heart. He’d seen Torin make that exact same move and that made him think Cho was military. Navy, though, not Corps. Craig had been up close and personal with ex-Corps long enough to be able to eyeball their ticks. Navy might explain Cho’s reaction to Torin. Junior officers defaulted to terrified by senior NCOs and, unless the Navy was a lot more fukked than was safe, Cho had never held anything close to command rank. Maybe he found the kind of terror Torin evoked familiar. And so ignorable.

  Holding his left leg up, sucking air through his nose, teeth clenched on the whimpers that threatened to escape, Craig scooted across the deck on his ass—dignity be damned—until he could see out the hatch. It just happened that Cho’s orders dovetailed with what he’d planned to do anyway. Watch the hatch Torin had left through. And would return through.

  For him.

  And for the armory.

  She’d no more leave weapons with these people than she’d leave him.

  When he finally stopped feeling like he wanted to cut his whole fukking leg off—it was just a toe for fuksake, moving two meters shouldn’t make him feel like shooting himself—he glanced at the stripped slate he’d been given. Twenty-six fifteen ship time. No wonder he felt stuffed. It had been one fuk of a day.

  He looked up to see Nadayki watching him, eyes so dark barely any green remained. With the light receptors that open, he wondered what details the di’Taykan could see.