by Huff, Tanya
“What exactly did Big Bill hire you to do?”
As she swung him up to the section of control board farthest from the door, still blocking his view with her body, she leaned forward until she could have touched the curve of his ear with her tongue and whispered, “Not you.”
“Too bad.” His gaze dropped to his hands on the board. “You could do me during your free time.”
This close she could see the fine tremble underlying his cocky delivery and she felt a little dirty watching him react as she growled, “You can do as you’re told.” But not as dirty as she would have had she let him talk her into applying the power he granted her to sex.
Sitting on the deck, propped against the edge of the hatch, fighting endorphins and the hour to stay awake, Craig straightened as the exit to the station opened. He sagged in place again as Almon came through carrying a shallow box. As Almon crossed the docks toward the pod, Craig wondered if he should be worried. If the big di’Taykan decided to bail him up, he was in no condition to fight back.
On the ups, he had one less body part to have beaten than the last time.
The box turned out to be the bottom cut from a supply container. Inside, smaller containers.
Hair flicking back and forth, Almon stopped just before he’d have had to step over Craig’s legs and peered into the pod. His hair sped up as he looked down and snarled, “Where’s Nadayki?”
“Went to take a piss.”
“I don’t like you being alone with him.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t like being alone with you, so it seems neither of us can have what we want.” He was still reacting to Almon’s pheromones, but the effect had gone from painful to endurable.
“Smart mouth on you, Ryder.” Almon set the container bottom down on the deck. “Maybe I should smack you in it a couple more times. Teach you to keep it closed.”
Maybe I should have my girlfriend kick the crap out of you. Craig snickered. And now he’s going to ask . . .
“What’s so fukking funny?”
“You’re just very predictable, mate.”
“And you think you’re ...”
“Leave him alone.” They turned together as Nadayki closed the hatch behind him and hurried across the dock. “I’m serious, Almon. Back off.”
“He tried to kill you.”
“Yeah, but he didn’t.”
“You’re still limping.” Almon sounded confused.
“Doc cut his toe off and fed it to Huirre. I win. Now move.” He shoved the larger di’Taykan out of the way, and stepped into the pod. “I don’t have time for anything if that’s what you’re here for. This fukking seal has fail-safes on the fail-safes.”
Almon’s hair flattened slightly. “I got you some takeaway from that kiosk you like.”
“Give it to Ryder. He can divide it up.” Hands in the small of his back, Nadayki stretched, moving his hips in a sinuous curve that—if he was translating the noise Almon just made correctly—put Craig on the same page as Almon for the first time ever.
“I didn’t fukking bring it for him.”
“Whatever.”
“Nadi, dir sal veranin ka bor savitor.”
“No.” Dropping to his knees, Nadayki pulled out his slate.
“Nadi . . .”
Eyes locked on the Marine seal, Nadayki ignored him.
Almon growled something Craig didn’t catch.
“He told the captain he’d have the seal open in eleven hours,” Craig said quietly. Not because he gave a shit about Almon feeling rejected, but defusing the big guy’s temper seemed like the smart thing to do. “He’s good, but ...”
“You saying he can’t do it?”
“I’m saying you’re a distraction he doesn’t need.”
“And you?”
“I don’t smell like baby, baby, fuk me, do I? Besides,” he added, as Almon’s hand rose to his masker. “Captain’s orders. I stay until he tells me to go.” He leaned around the di’Taykan’s legs as the air lock door opened. “And speaking of the captain . . .”
“What the fuk are you doing back?” Cho yelled, his voice echoing in the empty docks.
Craig thought about tripping Almon as he turned and headed for the air lock, but his sense of self-preservation kicked in at the last minute.
“No one’s saying anything specific about Big Bill, but I heard that little freak Alamber is chasing after the gunnery sergeant with his kayt in his hand.”
“Ex-gunnery sergeant,” Cho snarled.
You keep telling yourself that like it matters. Craig kept his eyes on the drama across the docks while his hands worked over the nonreactive plastic containers. The captain all but dragged Almon into the air lock and although Craig could hear his voice, he couldn’t make out the words. He sounded pissed, though. Good. Craig had a long list of body parts he’d like to see Almon lose.
“So he responds to slutty authority?” Ressk asked, falling into step beside her as Torin crossed the Hub on her way back to the Heart. “I’m not judging,” he added when she growled wordlessly. “It certainly seemed to work.”
When Alamber had finally scented a Krai in the room, a growled command and Torin’s grip on his chin had been sufficient to turn his attention back to teaching her the boards.
“Did you clear the codes?”
“I did. According to the station sysop, all our slates and yours and Ryder’s implants don’t exist.”
Torin seemed to be having a little trouble breathing. She could talk to Craig. Now if she wanted to.
“Gunny?”
“I’m okay.” When he glanced at her injured hand, she used it to smack him lightly on the back of the head. “Good job.”
Given the placement of the surveillance cameras, she waited until they were through the decompression doors and into the docking arm before she tongued her implant. If Big Bill was watching, the angle in the arm wouldn’t allow him to see her fukking jaw muscles move.
“Our codes are blocked. If you can talk, it’s safe.”
She’d been trained to use her implant and not be overheard while surrounded by the enemy. Most civilians weren’t able to subvocalize to that extent, but translating the mumble was part of the training. If Craig couldn’t talk out loud . . .
*Who the fuk is Alamber?* He sounded amused. He sounded alive.
Ressk grunted, and Torin realized she had a death grip on his shoulder.
TEN
*ALAMBER?* “Hear he’s following you with his kayt in his hand.”
*He’s di’Taykan. And young. Are you jealous?*
“No.”
*Then why the hell . . . *
“Torin.” With all the other things fighting to be said, asking her about Alamber had seemed the least weighted. In retrospect, Craig realized that might not have been the best idea he’d ever had. He’d never heard Torin sound so thrown. “I just . . . there’s just . . .” Fuk it, start over. He glanced over his shoulder into the pod, but Nadayki was still bent over the seal, muttering Taykan profanity, hair in constant movement, concentrating so hard on cracking the code he’d be unlikely to notice H’san opera let alone a little mumbling. “I knew you’d come.”
Craig actually heard her draw in a breath through the open link. Could see her straightening her shoulders and pulling her shit together because Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr didn’t do mushy.
*Are you okay?*
Loaded question. “Am now.”
*What . . . * Another breath and a clear decision to move away from the personal in the pause. *Do you think Nadayki will make the deadline?*
No surprise she remembered the kid’s name. “Yeah.”
*Damn. Okay, it’s 0653 station time. That gives us nine hours and forty-three minutes to get you to safety and blow the armory.*
“Six hours and forty-three minutes.”
*What?*
“Cho wants it open earlier.” Not the time to go into the kid’s ego cutting yet another hour off their time. When he heard Torin repeating the ne
w information, he realized she hadn’t come alone. If she’d brought Pedro into this mess . . . the man had kids for fuksake. “Torin, who’s with you?”
*Ressk, Werst, and Binti Mashona.*
She’d called in the Marines. Big surprise. All three of them had climbed out of that hellhole of a prison with her, and all three of them would follow her right back in if she asked them to. If he had reason to be jealous of anything . . . of anyone . . .
“You have a plan?”
*We have a goal. Get you to safety and blow the armory with as little loss of life as possible.*
That was a little less detail than he’d hoped for.
*Maybe . . . * Something had clearly just occurred to her. *Vrijheid was built to survive explosions—I’ve never seen so many decompression doors on a station. Plus there’s emergency fracture lines built into the docking bay. If we blow the armory in the storage pod, between the pod and the design, the station might just blow into its component parts. I’m sure that’s the only reason Big Bill allowed it on board. Wait . . . *
Where was he going to go? Nadayki had stopped swearing and started whining. Even without knowing the language, Craig would bet that every other sentence started with: It’s not my fault. A better man might have felt sorry for the kid; as good as he was, it was obvious Nadayki was in over his head and afraid he wasn’t going to finish in the eleven hours his ego had locked him into.
*Ressk ran the numbers.* And Torin didn’t sound too happy about them. *Even at minimum potential, if we blow inside, the odds are uncomfortably high that we lose the station. We have to get the armory outside and . . . what?* The question had clearly not been to him. *And far enough away that the debris will disperse beyond the point where multiple impacts will chop the station into pieces. Do you know how they moved it from the Heart into the pod?*
“No.”
*All right. If you find out, get back to me. We’ll try and work it from this end.*
He thought for a moment, that was it.
*Craig . . . *
She said his name like it held a hundred questions but finished up an answer short. “I know. You know . . . ?”
*Yes.* Even through the implant, he could hear how close that tiny bit of personal connection came to cracking her composure. Knew she’d let him hear it. It wasn’t necessary; he’d seen how much she wanted him safe, but under the circumstances he’d take the little extra to hold on to. *We can’t stay connected. When Ressk pulled our codes out, he noticed the log shows random signal sweeps. Big Bill doesn’t seem to like the idea of anyone trying to beat the system. Long odds there’ll be one in the next six hours, but let’s not make it easy for him.* “Deal.” Connection wasn’t necessary. It was enough to know she was there, on the station. That she’d come for him.
*Ping me when you’ve got something. I’ll do the same.*
“Yeah, okay.”
He smiled as the extended pause reminded him of sitting at the table in Pedro’s kitchen, hearing Helena and her current crush muttering, You pop off. No, you pop off first. And wouldn’t Torin appreciate being compared to a fourteen year old.
The smile faded when the implant pinged the connection closed.
“All right.” Torin took a deep breath and turned to face her team. Ressk and Mashona had their eyes locked on their slates. Werst had stretched out on the bunk, eyes closed. All three of them pretending they hadn’t been trying to hear as much of her side of the conversation with Craig as possible. Torin appreciated the effort, but she’d needed Ressk during the conversation and could have gone into the Star’s additional threeby or into the head if she’d required privacy. “Listen up, people; we figure out how to get the armory off the station. We work everything else from that.”
Ressk waved his slate, although in the close confines of the Star’s cabin the extra effort to get her attention wasn’t necessary. “We can pull up the schematics and work them from here, Gunny, if you want to head down to the docks and check things out.”
“Why would I do that? Where I refers to the person Big Bill just hired to teach his free merchants how not to blow holes in the bulkheads.”
“This job you’re not doing,” Mashona began. Frowned. Began again. “This job we’re not doing, right? He’s hired all of us?”
“Technically,” Torin told them, “he’s hired me. I’ve hired you lot.”
“How much are you not paying us?” Werst wondered, sitting up.
“Exactly what you’re worth.”
“I need next week off.”
Torin sighed, sagging back until her shoulder blades hit the bulkhead. “Mashona, you were explaining why the person who’s paying Werst more than he’s worth would head down to the docks.”
“You can’t start doing the job you’re not doing until the armory’s open. Therefore, you’d like it to be open.” Mashona shrugged. “Hatches are locked, you can’t send one of us down, so it makes sense that you’d personally check on their progress. While that you is being impatient about the wait, the you that’s here to take care of business can spend some time with Ryder.”
“I don’t ...” Except she did. They were on the same damned station and that wasn’t enough. She’d just spoken to him and that wasn’t enough. If she’d been able to touch him, that would’ve helped convince her that he was . . . not all right, it was obvious he wasn’t all right, but that he didn’t blame her for what happened to him.
Most of her adult life had been spent at war, and now she was out, it seemed like that violence had followed her. Rationally, she knew what had happened to Craig had nothing to do with her, and guilt over it was self-indulgent bullshit she had no time for, particularly not given their new shortened schedule. Rationally, she knew that if Craig hadn’t been with her when he was taken, there’d be no one coming to pull his ass out of the fire now.
Rational had nothing to do with the way she’d felt when she saw him.
Or heard his voice.
But rational was what would destroy the armory and get them all off of Vrijheid in one piece.
“While Ressk pulls the schematics up, tell me about Cho and his crew.”
Werst and Mashona shared a look Torin didn’t care to examine too closely, then Mashona said, “Captain because it’s his ship. Mackenzie Cho is ex-Navy. Made lieutenant before they court-martialed him for abuse of power.”
“There’s about fifteen different versions of what he actually did,” Werst put in. “Doubt that any of them are accurate, but they all agree that Marines died. He’s got two Krai on crew. Most of the Krai here—on station and on the ships—are here for the same thing, eating sentient species, but that said, Huirre’s apparently just a guy with no military training, used to fly cargo ships smuggling body parts, and Krisk never willingly leaves the engine room.”
“Three di’Taykan.” Mashona flipped fingers up. “Dysun, Almon, and Nadayki di’Berinango.”
“Nine letters in their family name?” Torin frowned. Taykan society was hierarchical. The more letters in the family name, the lower the class. Alamber was a di’Cikeys; six letters, solidly working class, and making up a high percentage of the di’Taykan in the Corps. Prodded by Parliament, the Taykan were working toward equalizing their society based on merit and more or less succeeding on the colony planets.
“Unfortunately, the poor bastards come from home world,” Mashona continued as though she’d been following Torin’s line of thought. “With nine letters stacked against them, I’m amazed they even got off the ground. By all accounts, Nadayki, the youngest, is some smart. Ressk-level smart. And, like you said, Gunny, he does what Ressk does.”
Ressk snorted.
“Cho has Nadayki breaking the seal on the armory, so he could be Ressk-level smart,” Torin pointed out. “But he’d have had to fight for any opportunity to prove that at home.”
“Could’ve joined up,” Ressk muttered, pulling the big screen up from the Star’s board.
“Crime’s easier. Are they siblings?”
Mashona shook her head. “No. Thytrins. Almon, the oldest, he’s a big guy and apparently pretty damned protective of the kid. Competent street fighter; no training but if he fights, he doesn’t tend to lose. Only thing I heard about Dysun was that she took to pirating like the H’san took to cheese. She’s on the bridge of the Heart doing pretty much everything Huirre doesn’t.”
“I got told she’s likely to have her own ship someday.” Arms folded, Werst met Torin’s gaze. “If she survives. They’re none of them too serley old, Gunny.”
Torin thought of Alamber and ran both hands back through her hair. “And Nat?”
“Okay, she’s old. Well, not young anyway, not by Human standards,” Mashona amended. “When Cho showed up looking for a crew, she was the first to sign with him. There’s a lot of rumors about what she used to do but I’m guessing ninety-nine percent of them are bullshit. Me and Werst compared stories and think she was probably quartermaster corps back in the day and cashiered out for black marketeering.”
“And the other one?” Torin asked. “The Human male I saw with her?”
With the schematics hanging in the air over the board, Ressk spun the chair and joined the conversation. “That’s Doc.”
“Definitely ex something,” Mashona continued, “but no one agrees on ex what. Everyone figures the military broke him, but no one’s willing to risk getting caught talking about him because he’s completely bugfuk. Disturb his calm, and he’ll hurt you. Someone with more balls than brains challenged him to a fight once. At the end, Doc gouged his eyes out and dropped them on the body.”
“Showy,” Werst snorted. “But effective.”
“Good thing I’m not actually taking Big Bill’s job,” Torin muttered.
The three ex-Marines murmured varying agreements.
He’d watched Dysun stagger back to the Heart just after Torin had pinged off, and now, watching Huirre cross from the air lock to the storage pod, Craig wondered if the two things were connected. Had Dysun brought news in from the station? News about Torin? Had someone finally realized he was the bearded man in the vids from the prison planet?
