by Tanya Huff
“Euphemism worth exploring?”
Verr looked up at Alamber and laughed. “No, he really has demo charges in his pants.”
Torin traced a mental line over their route back to the exit. “A few extra demo charges may come in handy.”
They came in handy at the door leading back into the chamber where Corporal McKinnon’s remains rested.
Ressk shook his head as he stepped over the mess. “I could’ve cracked that, Gunny.”
“We crashed a shuttle and broke their Mictok, there’s no point in subtlety now.”
Double-time would do Wen no favors. If it came to it, she’d send Ressk and Werst on ahead. As long as it wasn’t necessary, she wanted them all together, all moving as fast as possible past the dead.
“She wasn’t well, you know.” Nadayki stood close enough to touch as they waited for Binti and Alamber to spell Ressk and Verr on the net. “Major Sujuno, I mean. She was all twisted up inside.”
Torin brushed the back of her hand against his. Seven tendays of rejection wouldn’t allow him to make even so simple a first move. “Making excuses for her?”
“As if.”
But she thought he might be.
Torin stared at Werst’s arm, illuminated by the beam of her light. The skin felt hot and tight.
“Fuk, Gunny, your fingers are freezing. Respect to Ryder’s warm bits.”
“Ryder’s warm bits are no concern of yours. Two hours, people. Eat, nap if you can. Then we move on.”
“In the dark, Gunny?” Verr demanded.
It was a flat, straight corridor, thirteen pairs of feet hadn’t found a pit trap heading in so were unlikely to do so heading out; every one of them wore a light, and it hadn’t been one of the three civilians complaining. “Yes, Lieutenant,” Torin snarled, “in the dark.”
Nadayki and Alamber napped draped over each other, touching at every possible point. Very di’Taykan except that it went no further than touch. Torin wasn’t sure why; two hours in the dark was certainly long enough and neither had been with their own species for a while.
On the other hand, criminal activity aside, Nadayki was a combination of acerbic little shit and clingy, so odds were high it was as simple as Alamber not liking him.
In the hall of useless old junk, Torin cleaned souvenirs out of everyone’s packs. Nadayki had brought along the ceramic oval and both Wen and Verr had a number of small weapons. Wen also had a few large weapons.
“That’s mine!”
“That’s contraband. It stays.”
Nadayki’s hair flattened into a lime-green skull cap. “Who died and put you in charge?”
“Seriously?” Alamber jerked him back as Torin’s hand rose to touch the vest she wasn’t wearing. “Do you have a death wish?”
Wen hovered in the gray area between lucid and drugged and let his weapons go with nothing more than a sulky protest.
Verr watched Torin stack everything beside the pile of debris, met Torin’s gaze with an expression that said she knew how this adventure was going to end, and turned her attention back to her bonded.
“You’re setting a dangerous precedent . . .”
“Whose blood on your pants?” Torin only knew it wasn’t his.
Craig frowned. “Uh, there was a face in the blast bay. Most of a skull, part of a face.”
“Broadbent. One of Major Sujuno’s.”
“Yeah, well, I touched, I wiped.”
“Good.”
“Good?”
“I didn’t have time to get a sample. You’re carrying him out.” Most of the blood dried on her clothes was the major’s. They’d left three behind, but it could have been worse.
“Can you fly it?” Torin asked as Craig settled into the pilot’s chair of the major’s shuttle.
“I’ve flown Taykan controls before, and with a lot less sleep.”
She made a noncommittal noise and leaned over the back of the chair. “Out of a gravity well? Up that narrow protected zone? Without crashing it into the Promise when we arrive?”
“Hey, third time’s the charm. At least we aren’t leaving anything behind we’ll miss on our shuttle. We hadn’t had it long enough.” He turned his head far enough to kiss her wrist. “Now, set a good example for the children and the prisoners, and buckle up.”
ELEVEN
“DO WE BLOW THE SHIPS, GUNNY?” Binti waited by Promise’s board, pack at her feet. Her shoulders sagged with exhaustion, but Torin knew she wouldn’t miss. She didn’t miss.
Did they erase the evidence? If the H’san came by on patrol, and Torin wasn’t convinced they did, they’d assume any debris remaining in orbit had come off ships taken out by the security satellites. Would they analyze the debris? Would they land? Could they tell from orbit that the weapons cache had been disturbed?
She stared at the screen for a long moment, then shook her head. “Go get cleaned up. Craig?”
“It’s a universal shuttle lock, and let’s hear it for disappearing diversity in engineering. It should hold. If we don’t say anything, Justice may never notice we’ve switched shuttles. The people we deal with at least aren’t exactly ship-heads.” He settled deeper in his chair. “Plenty of time to rest when we’re in Susumi. Jump in ten. Don’t start anything you can’t finish.”
With the hum of Susumi space settling around her, an unbreakable shield, Torin made her way into their small infirmary to have her cheek bonded. Craig had argued an entire separate packet for the infirmary was a waste of space right up until their first job. When they got back to the station, he packed in as many upgrades as Justice would pay for and arranged for one or two on his own. Torin had only barely managed to talk him out of a full regeneration tank.
Wen lay on one of the narrow beds, a portable regen tank ready to be slipped over his stump as soon as Verr finished sterilizing the sealant. The tank would dissolve the sealant and include any reusable organics in the rebuild of Wen’s leg. Way back when she’d had a single chevron on her sleeve, a med-tech had told Torin parts of the breakdown had been based on Krai digestion. Torin suspected he’d been amusing himself at her expense, but she’d never done the research to be certain.
Werst sat on the bed, shirt off, arm extended so Ressk could run diagnostics and determine what antibiotics were needed.
The siren was a surprise.
“The hell!”
Ressk stared at his slate, then threw it down on the bed so he could work the screen with both hands.
She flattened against the wall as Alamber charged into the room, slate in hand.
“Block it from getting into the queue!” Ressk snapped without looking up.
Verr muttered under her breath about contaminants. Torin and Werst exchanged a look of joint incomprehension. Apparently Alamber knew what was expected of him as he worked at Ressk’s side.
“Torin? There’s a medical alert trying to redirect us after jump!”
“We’re on it!” Ressk snapped before Torin could respond. “Deal with the noise!”
“On it.”
Nine and a half minutes after the siren shut off, Ressk sighed, and relaxed. “That’s got it. Good thing we were in Susumi or we wouldn’t have been able to stop it.”
“Stop what?” Torin demanded.
“A warning that we had a proscribed substance on board. That infection? Any sign of it and a message goes straight to the nearest CDC base and Med-op will take control of the ship.”
“Confederation Disease Control? Why?” Binti asked, leaning against the wall beside Torin, breathing a little heavily, her hair damp.
“It’s a weaponized variant.”
“Can we kill it?” The longest line on Werst’s arm had nearly reached his shoulder.
“We can.” His gesture took in the four Krai. “According to Med-op, we can fight it off long
enough for the drugs . . .” He reached into the bio-chamber and pulled out the assembled dose. “. . . to take it out. Everyone else . . .”
“. . . not so much,” Alamber finished, staring at his slate.
“Partition the information off and save it,” Torin told him. “We might need it.”
“Biological weapons.” Werst winced as Ressk jabbed the end of the dose into swollen tissue. “We should’ve hauled a planet buster up into orbit and used it.”
“I knew you weren’t going to execute anyone.” Craig handed her a coffee and sat down between her and Ressk. “You’re going to give the story to Presit, aren’t you? Blow the secrets and the whole thing wide open.”
She’d considered it. “No.”
Her mouth twitched as the entire team except for Werst voiced personal variations of disbelief.
The expression Werst shot her was unmistakable. He knew, had probably known for a while that she’d decided not to bring Presit in at the end. Odds were high he’d worked out why.
Torin took a long drink, then stared at her reflection in the dark liquid as she tried to get the words she needed to say into formation. “We left two dead Humans, two dead di’Taykan, two shuttles, two ships, and one hell of a mess behind. Colonel Hurrs sent us in with . . .”
“A biscuit warmer? Ow.”
“Thank you, Binti. Yes, a biscuit warmer. He’d extrapolated what he knew into a terrifying situation, but, bottom line, he knew sweet fuk all. I don’t know if the position of the Younger Races in Parliament, in the Confederation, is as tenuous as Colonel Hurrs believes. I don’t pay attention to politics, but I do know there’s no point in executing the survivors of Major Sujuno’s expedition to keep the attempt secret when the person who sent them for the weapons, who was going to pay them for the weapons, is still out there. And only Dion and the major knew who he was. And I’m not one hundred percent certain about the major,” she added after a moment.
Binti leaned back, her chair protesting the angle. “So you’re going to take the three of them to the H’san?”
Torin thought about the H’san as she knew them, as the Younger Races knew them; wise and funny, sweet smelling and kind. They sang every morning at sunrise. They loved cheese.
“Well, we can’t take them to Justice, can we?” Alamber’s hair rose to cover the bald stripe where the dead hair had finally fallen out. “Not after running off on a secret mission for the military.”
“Who lied to them about us,” Craig added. “At least the H’san won’t start another war over it.”
Torin thought about a giant snail shell stuffed with potential death and destruction. “You sure about that? I’m not.” She drained her pouch, set it down, and laid her hands flat on the table. “This is what I want us to do; I want us to do our jobs. If I have to, I’ll explain the entire situation to a tribunal. I want to trust the system and I want to give these three over to the law. I’d like to do it on the down low, just in case some part of the colonel’s fear has merit. But it’s a big universe and I’m going to assume we’re not the center of it. After all, it’s been proven that it’s easy enough to hide things—like the H’san system of origin—when no one knows they’re being hidden.”
She could almost hear them thinking about it.
“You want to prove that the Younger Races can act like adults rather than sneaking around hiding things from Mom and Dad.” The chair protested again as Binti shifted her weight forward, leveling it out. “Because Mom and Dad always find out. If they want to send us back to our rooms, we need to be able to argue as adults, not children throwing a tantrum.”
Ressk snapped open another pouch of sah. “We might want to talk to the H’san as well. I’d like to give them a chance to upgrade their security system before we have to drag another set of assholes off their planet.”
“You think we’ll catch shit for not getting the name of the backer from Major Sujuno?” Alamber drummed his fingers on the tabletop until Binti covered his hand with hers and stopped him.
“She was attacked by her sergeant who’d been turned into a zombie. He grabbed her weapon, operated by pressing the flesh of a long-dead H’san, and she blew them both up.”
“That doesn’t answer my question, Boss.”
“I think we’re good.”
“I think we’re all going to be sent to therapy,” Binti muttered.
“And the war we were supposed to be preventing?” Werst asked quietly.
“I believe . . .” And if she was wrong, she’d be carrying millions more dead. “. . . that Colonel Hurrs has spent his whole life at war. War is his default response. We . . . I defaulted right along with him. But he’s never been to the Core and he’s never realized how many people barely gave a thought to the war while we were dying in it. I spent too much of my life at war and, while I’m willing to clean up the debris, I’m done with it. I refuse to believe war is the default.”
“Because the gray plastic aliens made us fight?”
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Because we’re better than that. We have to be.”
Craig wrapped an arm around her shoulders. Ressk finished his sah. Werst and Alamber built a tower out of pretzels.
Finally, Binti grinned. “Intell won’t be too pleased with us.”
Ressk matched it. “Neither will Justice.”
“Yeah . . .” Alamber pulled the lowest stick and Werst swore as the tower fell. “. . . we’re going to put the rinchas in the armee for sure.”
“The ducks in the pudding?”
“It loses a little in the . . .” Alamber paused. Frowned. “Yeah, okay, ducks in the pudding is pretty close. So, Boss, how do we deal with the fallout?”
“We become Wardens.”
She sat and listened to the hum of Susumi space.
Binti recovered first. “But we already work for the Justice Department.”
“On contract,” Torin agreed. “Brought in as they need us because we have a special skill set. I want us to be actual Wardens. With the title, and support, and the responsibilities that entails. We still work as a team, we still do the job we’ve been doing, but we do it as a part of a greater whole. A fully integrated part of the Justice Department, not merely weapons wielded by them.”
Across the table, Werst grinned. “That’s a pretty unsubtle metaphor, Gunny.”
She shrugged and rose to get another coffee. “I’m not a particularly subtle person.”
They discussed the truth of that until she sat down again, then one by one they fell silent.
“If we all agree, we put a sitrep together and shoot it to Lanh Ng the moment we leave Susumi. Colonel Hurrs’ arguments. Our arguments. Every detail we can remember and as much as the major’s people . . .” Although they hadn’t been the major’s people, not in any way that mattered. “. . . are willing to tell us.”
Craig’s thumb drew warm lines against her neck. “And if Justice doesn’t see it our way? And we find ourselves facing an extensive rehabilitation?”
“For what?” she asked. “Acting as concerned citizens . . .”
“With a special skill set,” Werst muttered.
“. . . and stopping a group of mercenaries from stealing and selling ancient H’san weapons?”
“Justice isn’t usually about the end justifying the means,” Binti pointed out.
“I think this time they will be. But . . .” She raised a hand and cut off further protests. “. . . if the Justice Department thinks stopping ancient H’san planet-busting weapons from reaching the black market and being used by the sort of people who make Big Bill look both civilized and restrained isn’t enough of an end to justify us acting independently, if the word rehabilitation is even mentioned, we’ll break away, guns blazing.”
“We’ll be rehabilitated in their eyes by becoming Wardens.”
Torin grinned a
cross the table at Werst. “There’s that.”
“So are we telling the H’san?” Alamber dropped his chin onto his fist. “I mean, letting the H’san know we stopped a group of mercenaries from airing their dirty armaments couldn’t hurt.”
Binti grabbed a handful of pretzels off the table. “They might wonder why we didn’t go to them in the first place so they could deal with it themselves.”
“H’san against trained mercenaries?” Craig leaned back and snagged another coffee. “Like that would end well. What would they go in armed with? A cheese plate?”
“Don’t,” Torin pointed at Alamber, who closed his mouth and looked innocent, “say it.”
“Hey, Boss.” Torin took her feet off the second chair so Alamber could sit, but he waved them back and leaned on the pilot’s chair instead. He nodded toward the window. “Staring out at a mathematical construct?”
“Working on my sitrep for the tribunal.” She’d left Craig in their quarters, sleeping, satiated, and snoring.
“You should’ve recorded yourself convincing us and played it for them.”
“They weren’t there, they’re going to need more detail.”
“I guess.” She could feel his fingers in her hair. “So, Boss, when you said we were going to be Wardens, you meant all of us, right?”
“I did. Although if anyone doesn’t want to . . .”
His fingers stilled. “It’s not that.”
“They take all of us or none of us, Alamber.”
“And we stay together?”
“Our value to the Justice Department is as a team, not as individuals. Yes, we stay together, or we don’t stay.”
His sigh sounded a little shaky, but his fingers began moving again, fingernails scratching lightly at her scalp, the heightened sensuality distracting from any hinted weakness.
It felt good, so Torin didn’t stop him.
“Boss, you know how you’re always saying we could use another di’Taykan?”
“Yes.” Not entirely an unexpected conversation given that they now had another di’Taykan.
