by Tanya Huff
“Oh, hey. I might have found us a way back up.”
Grateful for the distraction, he shrugged into the pack. “How?”
And blinked at the sudden spill of light as a rectangle opened in the curved wall.
Alamber grinned. “I thought we’d take the stairs.”
“It’s moving.” Werst straightened and took a step back, aiming between the H’san’s eyes.
Ressk grabbed the H’san’s shoulder with a foot and continued to work the saw. “No, it isn’t.”
“Yes, it is.”
It twitched violently enough to dislodge Ressk’s grip and he fell back, nostril ridges slamming shut. “Yes, it is.”
The saw blade wobbled, abandoned between the two pieces of bone. The H’san wobbled with it.
Werst watched Ressk reach slowly out, grip the saw, steady it, and push the blade forward again.
The H’san twitched.
“The metal of the saw is closing a contact in the tech that’s controlling the brain.”
Werst stared at him in disbelief. “You can’t know that.”
“Yeah, I can. This is nothing more than creepy engineering.”
“You’re not an engineer.”
“I am.”
They turned together to glare at Wen. The H’san twitched. All three Krai twitched with it.
“You’re an engineer?” Werst asked, adjusting his aim.
“Sure.” Wen shrugged. He was better at it than most Krai. “I was air crew.”
Ressk sat back on his heels, lips rising off his teeth. “Then why weren’t you taking this apart yesterday? We’d know what we were facing.”
“We’re facing zombie H’san,” Wen sneered. “And they don’t fly. Or does infantry not know what air crew means?”
“Seems to mean useless,” Ressk spat. “Help us turn the body.”
Wen backed away, both hands raised. “Not likely. It’s your stupid idea and I’m not your bonded.”
Teeth showing, Werst crouched again, grabbing on where told and flopping the body over on its other side, nostril ridges closing at the smell rising out of the cut. If he had to shoot Wen himself to keep the desecration of an Elder Race from starting another war, well, right at the moment, he was good with that.
Binti had gone back into the weapons cache to “keep an eye on Nadayki.” He was messing with H’san weapons, so she supposed Gunny’s order made sense in spite of the repressed feelings she could hear seeping through the words. She just hoped he didn’t snip the wrong wire and turn the whole place into a smoking hole with her a meter from ground zero.
He gave her a dismissive toss of his hair when she arrived, the kind that said why should I care about you; you’re not good for anything but violence. Although after the Trun, she might have been reading more into it than was there, given he’d been a pirate and all. Still, it pissed her off so she watched him from the top of a pile of pink-and-cream crates, flipping one of her knives from hand to hand. Werst and Gunny could roll a blade sharp enough to cut air in and out of their fingers, but she preferred her fingers attached.
After a few minutes, she realized Nadayki had moved as close to her as he could get and continue to work on his chosen weapon.
She frowned and leaned back. She was a sniper, she saw better from a distance.
His arrogance was less defensive, more an actual belief in his superiority, but, that aside, he reminded her of Alamber when he’d first joined them on the Promise, needing touch and not sure how to ask a non-Taykan for anything that wasn’t sexual. Although he’d had no trouble asking for sex.
Nadayki wasn’t asking, but he certainly seemed to be craving touch.
Which was weird because there was another di’Taykan around. And sure, she was a major, but rank didn’t erase a di’Taykan’s need for contact.
Binti sprawled a little more, stretching out her legs, and Nadayki shifted a little closer.
Yeah. Weird.
The top of the H’san’s skull dropped to the floor, ringing in a way that didn’t sound like any bone Torin had ever heard.
“Gunny, what’s that thing Humans say when they want to show off something triumphantly?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Tah dah?” offered Dion. He’d been delirious a few minutes ago, but it seemed he was back with them.
“That’s it.” Ressk bent over the skull cavity, punched the air, said, “Tah dah. Hair-thin metal strands woven through the tissue, looks like gold and platinum, and I bet they’re following neural pathways all through the body—the signals from a living brain replaced by control codes.”
“They don’t die unless we also destroy their superior heart,” the major pointed out, leaning against the long counter beside Torin.
“Power source.” He sat back on his heels and knocked his knuckles against the broad expanse of bone.
Torin turned toward the weapons cache. “Mashona! Bring up that ax we found!”
“On it, Gunny!” She sounded as though she was down a well.
“Ax?”
“Yes, Major, ax. Careful maneuvering around brain tissue might have been necessary . . .” Given it was dead tissue, Torin wasn’t entirely convinced of that. “. . . but I’m not waiting for him to saw through ribs that have been cemented back into place. We need to get out of here.”
“To warn the rest of your people about the patrols, of course. How long until they come after you?”
“They’ll stay where I told them to stay, Major.”
“And the patrols will go where the patrols go. If I gave you an order, Gunnery Sergeant Kerr, would you obey it?”
The non sequitur pulled Torin around to face her.
Her gaze remained on the dissection going on across the room. “You still use your rank. I still use mine. They say there’s no such thing as an ex-Marine, and I admit I used that belief to maintain discipline during our expedition. So, if I gave you an order, would you obey it?”
“I don’t obey bad orders, Major.” Although it would be more accurate to say that ensuring bad orders weren’t given had been a large part of her job.
“Who’s to say it would be a bad order, Gunnery Sergeant.”
“Have you given any thought to what will happen if you get these weapons out of here?”
Again, emotions flickered across the major’s face too quickly for Torin to read, but all she said was, “Yes.”
Torin found herself wondering exactly what question the major had been answering.
“Hey, Gunny?” Binti emerged from the cache with the ax—or reasonable facsimile—and headed over to where the Krai were gathered around the body. “I don’t think that biscuit warmer they showed us is a biscuit warmer, not unless they went to war over cold baked goods. There’s a couple dozen more of them in a case by Nadayki’s science project.”
“If you’re referring to one of the items the Katrien removed,” the major said, while Torin was still figuring out how to respond, “I assure you it was taken from a sarcophagus.”
“I know what I saw, Major. Nadayki saw it, too. They were either tucking weapons in with the dead or biscuit warmers in with the weapons.”
“I very much dislike not knowing what’s going on,” Major Sujuno said softly.
“The H’san like cheese.” When that finally turned the major around to face her, Torin shrugged, “It’s one thing we know for sure.”
Her hair flipped up, just once, as she laughed. Reluctantly. “It might be the only thing we know for sure.”
Torin understood the reluctance. She didn’t find bad intell particularly funny.
Lieutenant Verr turned out to have the most ax experience of the four Krai, clipping the ribs neatly off the body, then taking a final swing to detach the narrow curve of sternum.
Bone cracked.
> Ressk’s nostril ridges flared, then slammed shut as he threw himself backward.
“Everyone down!” Torin dropped, pulling Major Sujuno to the floor with her.
The H’san exploded.
“Power source,” Ressk shouted, as he lifted his head.
As explosions in an enclosed space went, it could’ve been worse. Torin’s ears were ringing, but she could still hear. She got to her feet and habit held out her hand to help the major up. “Everyone all right?”
“Gunny!” It was Ressk’s cry, but Werst’s arm with a piece of bone protruding through a bloodstained sleeve. Hand around his bonded’s wrist, Ressk stared wide-eyed across the room at Dion.
The major sighed. “He’s Human. They’re . . .”
Torin raised a brow.
“. . . weirdly delicate. You’ll be fine.”
She didn’t know that. She couldn’t know that. But Sujuno’s offhand, superior dismissal of the possibility that infection would eat Werst away from the inside was oddly comforting. That Krai bone and teeth were among the toughest substances in known space made little difference to bacteria. Although bacteria that affected Human systems might not affect them. Werst didn’t look convinced, but Ressk looked less like he wanted to tear Verr limb from limb.
“If he dies, I will devour you!”
Not a lot less, but less. “Let’s stop any chance of him dying before it starts.” Historically, the Krai had a simple solution to potential infection: they bit the wounded area out. Torin had acquired firsthand experience of how effective it was just after she made corporal, when her Recon unit had been sent to scout a Primacy base on an OutSector planet and had gotten pinned down. She’d kept the divot in her thigh until she was tanked after Crucible to regrow her jaw. Torin closed her fingers over Werst’s shoulder. “Ressk, if you could do the honors.”
“Happy to, Gunny.”
“No.” Werst pulled free of her touch as he pulled the shard from his arm. He tossed it aside and clamped his palm down on the wound as blood darkened his sleeve. “It’s bone-deep, churick.”
Ressk shook his head. Torin wasn’t sure what he was denying.
“If you manage to get it all,” Werst continued, red seeping between his fingers. “I won’t be able to use the arm. If the major’s right about the number of guardians, I’m going to need to use the arm.”
He wasn’t wrong.
Ressk grabbed his wrist. “We need to take the whole arm off, then.” He jerked his head back and forth, back and forth, looking, Torin assumed, for the ax.
“Hey.” Werst’s voice pulled Ressk’s attention. “Did you miss where I said I needed to use the arm? We don’t know it’s infected. The major’s right; just because it can take down a Human doesn’t mean anything now that it’s trying for a Krai.”
“If you die . . .”
“We’re all going to die sooner or later.”
“Later.”
“All right.” He tugged and Ressk closed the distance between them.
Torin gave them a moment, forehead to forehead, but only a moment. “Ressk, will examining a power source help us get the hell out of here?”
“If I can figure out how to shut the guardians off . . .”
“Let his arm bleed for a while,” Torin told Binti, who’d snapped the aid kit off her belt. Werst’s cuff acknowledged a foreign substance in his blood, but wasn’t able to identify it. So far, no symptoms. “Clean it out with water, don’t seal it.”
“I know the drill,” Werst growled.
Recon occasionally had to improvise out on their own.
“Fine, doctor yourself. The rest of you, let’s go get another H’san.”
“Good thing we have spares,” the major said, falling into step beside her.
Torin closed her teeth on the automatic yes, sir. It was the first one she’d had to stop.
“It’s a hatch. It has two functions: it opens, it closes. Opened. Closed. All you have to do is work with that.”
“It’s a locked hatch.”
“And locks have a single function.”
“It’s a very old lock designed a very long time ago by a species we apparently know jackshit about.”
“Single function,” Craig repeated. “How hard can it be?”
“Fuk you.”
“Maybe if you get the hatch unlocked.” He laughed when Alamber flipped him off. He had no idea what they were going to do if they got into the ship, but the stairs from the blast bay had ended at the ten-meter–square landing outside the hatch. Given the size of the landing, they were both confident there was another entrance, but neither of them could find it. Rather than go back down to the bay and stand around with their thumbs up their asses discussing how they couldn’t get out of the bay, they’d decided to try and break into the ship. Turned out that Alamber’s criminal career, pre–Big Bill, had included a certain number of hacked hatches.
“It’s harder on a station; you have to get through the station security as well. Not all stations, of course,” he continued twisting the upper half of his body 45 degrees and peering in behind the dangling faceplate. “Smaller stations, rougher sectors, security’s shit. The contents are usually shit, too. These things tend to balance out. You’re lucky you’re with me; Ressk’s useless at hardware.”
“And yet, the hatch is still closed.”
“At least we know the dead H’san can’t get in here.”
“The dead H’san probably know where the door is.”
“They don’t know anything they haven’t been programmed with.”
“If it was me, I’d program in schematics. Full blueprints.”
“Good point. Shit.” Alamber’s elbows jerked, but his hands remained buried in the guts of the hatch controls. “Grab that long skinny tool with the copper head and the insulated grip and poke this.”
Craig picked the tool in question off the kit spread out on top of Alamber’s pack. He leaned over Alamber’s shoulder and peered into the mess. “Poke what?”
In turn, Alamber leaned some of his weight against Craig’s hip. “You see that shiny blue oval? Just back of my thumb?”
There were a lot of shiny blue ovals. He moved the tool. “This?”
“No!” Craig felt Alamber flinch. “My other thumb!”
“This?”
“The oval next to it. While I wish I was saying this under other circumstances, give it a good hard poke.”
The power discharge blew Craig’s fingers off the grip. The tool clanged against the floor as he staggered back, eyes watering and the world reduced to a flickering pattern of bright blue dots. Hands cupped over his eyes, he blinked until his vision cleared. He’d done his own repairs on the Promise for years; that was not his first discharge. And he’d rephrase if he mentioned it to Alamber.
“You okay?”
He lowered his hands. Alamber’s question had been muffled because he had his fingers in his mouth. “Burns?”
“Yeah, but my head hurts so much, I can’t really feel it.”
“Did I poke the wrong oval?”
Alamber grinned. “No, you did it exactly right.” Fingers trailing a gossamer line of spit behind them, he reached out and popped the hatch. “It’s easier when you don’t have to worry about relocking it. Ever again.”
The interior of the ship was . . .
“Pink.” He wondered how the H’san saw it.
“It’s more cheerful than gray.”
“It’s pinker than gray,” Craig muttered climbing the ladder to the upper level. The climb took a little concentration, given that the access had been designed for the H’san, who bent in non-bipedal ways. There was a wide port across the front of the control room—because the H’san for all their other strangeness were a biocular species who responded to visual stimulus. There were obvious, if not familiar, control panels�
��because the H’san were among the founders of the Confederation and their designs remained popular. They also lasted for-fukking-ever, which might be why it looked like they hadn’t changed much in millennia.
In front of the panel were angles and curves and protuberances that, given their positions, had to be chairs no bipedal species could possibly be comfortable sitting on.
One finger back in his mouth, Alamber studied them appraisingly.
“Don’t even.”
He shrugged and turned his attention to the main panel. “You think we could get this thing going?”
“We can’t close the hatch.”
“We can’t lock the hatch,” Alamber corrected. “We’ve already closed it. And I’m sure we could seal it if we needed to.”
“Why would we need to?”
“Boss is in trouble; bringing an operational shuttle into the game will change the rules.”
“We don’t know the game.”
“Or the rules. But that’s why you wanted to break in here, isn’t it?”
He ran both hands back through his hair. “Alien ship. Alien systems.”
“You said you had a friend with a H’san control panel, I’m brilliant, and physics remains a constant.”
The control panel in question had been scrubbed of all software and the hardware retrofitted into a salvage ship. This was a H’san control panel running a H’san system. A millennium-old H’san system. But Torin was in trouble, and it was why he’d wanted to break in.
He leaned carefully against the front of one of the chairs. “Did I ever tell you about how a Primacy bug flew a completely alien shuttle up to the Promise, ferrying Presit and me down to the prison where we blew the lid off the whole polynumerous plastic gray alien plan?”
“Yeah.” Alamber sat a little less carefully. “Every time we watch those recordings.”
“Well, it’s a good story.” There were dials, actual dials, on the control board. “Of course, it turned out the ship was made of the little gray aliens, so maybe the bug didn’t fly it so much as it had an agenda and flew itself.”
