The Better Part of Valour

by Tanya Huff

  “Just?” He looked like he was about to launch himself toward her.

  “Just keep doing what I tell you, and everything’ll be fine.”

  Half a smile showed in the shadow of his beard. “Words to live by, then?”

  “People do. I’ve been thinking...”

  “When did you have time?”

  “Shut up. Did you give your implant codes to anyone on the Berg? Then run mine into the program the Promise uses to contact you,” she continued quickly when he shook his head. “You can talk to me any time you need to with no one else being the wiser.”

  “How did you know I...?” He shook his head again, more in wonder this time. “Never mind. Stupid question. It’s your job to know.”

  “You’re not part of my job—but I think I’ll keep you alive anyway.” Stepping back, she reached for the lock controls. “Inside. Now.” The tone that had terrified a thousand recruits pushed him into the ship as effectively as if she’d reached out a hand and shoved. “Close up and go.” Hand raised, she didn’t touch her controls until she saw his door close.

  And that was all she could do for him right now. He had to get through the next bit without her.

  She had problems of her own.

  “Uh, Staff. You better come see this.”

  Already suited, Dursinski had remained on guard at the barricade.

  Sealing the front of a mercifully pheromone-free suit, Torin ran to join her.

  The bug was standing in the center of the passage. She wore no armor. She carried no weapons. All four arms were spread. The air smelled of cinnamon and melted butter.

  “What the fuk’s she doing?” Dursinski’s benny took a bead on the bug’s head.

  Torin pushed it down. “She’s surrendering.”

  Werst limped up beside them and snorted derisively. “The Others don’t let their soldiers surrender.”

  “Granted, but this lot has lost contact with their ship. They have no leaders left alive. They recognize the sound of an engine and they know what it means as well as we do. They’re desperate. They don’t want to die.”

  “Who does?” Dursinski sighed.

  Two more bugs came out into the passage, armorless, weaponless, carrying vaguely familiar gear across their arms. Behind them, two more.

  “And,” Torin continued, “they’ve got their own suits.”

  “You can’t trust them, Staff.” Nivry’s voice came from behind her left shoulder.

  “They’re the enemy,” Werst agreed.

  “I don’t trust them.” She handed her benny to the corporal and stepped beyond the barricade. “But I’m not leaving them here.”

  * * *

  “This is fukkin’ weird,” Johnston muttered, shrugging his suit up over his shoulders.

  Settling his tank, Heer glanced over at the five surviving bugs getting into their own suits under the supervision of Dursinski’s and Jynett’s weapons. “This is fukkin’ history,” he amended, ridges flared.

  “I flunked history.”

  “And now you’re part of it. Weird or what?” He tucked his head into the collar ring and came up with his emergency rations tube in his mouth. “Soup’s on and life is good.”

  Johnston grimaced as the other engineer swallowed with every indication of enjoyment. “You want to talk about weird...”

  * * *

  “Salvage pen’s in place. Any time, Torin.”

  “First group’s on their way.”

  The first group consisted of four Marines and two bugs. Torin, the captain’s body still propped behind her, opened the outer doors and motioned them forward. The bugs’ reaction transcended both the lack of a common language and the bulk of their suits. They took one look and backed up, pushing Marines and weapons both out of their way.

  “We don’t have time for this, Nivry.”

  Torin grabbed the back of the corporal’s suit as she stepped out into space. A push and release sent her angling down into the pen.

  “Johnston.”

  “But...”

  “Now.”

  Two Marines safely loaded reassured the bugs.

  When we get a minute. I’ll have to find out what “you guys are fukking idiots” smells like, Torin mused, pitching the last of the first group. “Half done, Ryder. We’re...”

  As she closed the outer doors, the background vibrations moved suddenly to the foreground. “Fuk!”

  “Torin?”

  “Not now!”

  Inner doors open.

  “Get in here! Move!”

  Everyone remaining in Big Yellow surged forward.

  Inner doors closed.

  “Here!” Torin tossed the loop of rope still connecting her and Captain Travik. “Grab hold!”

  The three bugs imitated the Marines.

  Torin slapped the outer control panel.

  “Staff! The pressure hasn’t...”

  “Just hang on!”

  The outer doors opened. Five Marines, three bugs, and the rope sucked past her into space. Torin’s boots held but only just. “Another chance for you to be a hero,” she muttered, grabbing Captain Travik’s body with both hands, aiming him toward the clump of Marines now tethered in the pen, and throwing him as hard as she was able.

  The outer door began to close.

  Torin released her boots as the rope around her waist jerked her out through the rapidly disappearing opening. She swore as the door slammed her injured arm and spun her around, Marines, bugs, pen, Promise, all spinning against a background of stars.

  “Get your thumbs out of your butts and pull us in!” she snapped. “Ryder! Get moving!”

  “But you’re...”

  “Six meters from a ship that’s about to fire main engines!”

  The first two bodies on the rope were in the pen.

  “My engines...”

  “Are one thousandth the fukking size!”

  Three. Four.

  She’d stopped spinning and was now moving steadily toward the pen.

  Two bugs holding as much to each other as the rope slipped inside.

  They were probably thinking they should have stayed with Big Yellow. Not that she blamed them.

  Below her, below the salvage pen, the Promise began to move.

  Too goddamned slow! Her breath sounded unusually loud in her ears.

  The rope jerked violently.

  Someone screamed.

  Torin threw out her arms and instinctively grabbed the body that slammed into her.

  “I thought I told you to hold on!” she gasped, hoping the rib had cracked and not actually broken.

  “Sorry... Staff...” Orla’s voice sounded wet and bubbling.

  “You hurt?”

  Her boots touched the outside of the pen.

  “l... don’t... I don’t... I... I...”

  There was no mistaking the sound of someone puking into a contim unit.

  As the rope dragged them down into the pen, Torin reached around and hit the external controls for Orla’s cleanup suction, passing her off to reaching hands in almost the same move.

  “We lose anyone?” she asked as Nivry pulled her to a strap beside the captain’s body. The bugs were strapped along the back wall, the Marines to the sides just above the angled sections that kept the pen from being rectangular.

  “Acceleration drove the edge of the pen into Huilin’s thigh. Bone snapped, but it didn’t break the skin and his suit’s fine. He’ll...”

  The universe became brilliant yellow-white light.

  Torin’s helmet polarized instantly, going completely opaque. Still, she could see nothing but glowing blotches burned into her eyes. The temperature inside her suit began to rise. “Marines! Sound off by number!”

  Only eight of the original twelve, but she heard from all eight. Huilin and Orla both sounded like shit, but they were alive.

  She had no way of checking on the bugs.

  She was sweating now. Squinting, she could just make out the readout on the left curve of her collar.
Environmental controls placed the highest temperatures where her suit was touching the pen. “Marines, loosen your straps. Move out from the sides but do not, I repeat, do not unstrap completely.”

  One of the great things about vacuum, it didn’t hold heat.

  “Torin!”

  Her helmet beginning to clear, still tied to the captain, and unable to tell the bugs to move away from the pen, she headed back to physically shift them. “We’re still here.” One bug was totally unresponsive; alive or dead, Torin couldn’t know. One clutched at her in terror. Pain shooting along her left side, she barely managed to break free.

  “What the hell happened out there?” she demanded, dragging herself back one-handed along the rope to her place between Nivry and the captain.

  “Big Yellow’s gone.”

  And that meant the rules had changed.

  SEVENTEEN

  “Captain Carveg! Our engines are back on-line!”

  “Captain Carveg! The Others’ ship has simultaneously sent a message to every fighter!”

  “Captain Carveg! Mr. Ryder reports he has surviving Marines, scientists, and bugs on board.”

  The last report shut off the noise in C3—from chaos to quiet in an instant. All eyes lifted from monitors and data streams and turned to the captain.

  She alone was looking at the lieutenant charged with monitoring the Promise. “Mr. Ryder has bugs on board?”

  “Yes, ma’am. He says the last five bugs surrendered and are in suits in the salvage pen with the Marines.”

  “Prisoners of war.”

  Not entirely certain it was a question, the lieutenant answered anyway. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Right.” Captain Carveg straightened in her command chair, adrenaline banishing exhaustion. Those species who fought for the Others—or were the Others, no one knew for certain—never surrendered. And now Staff Sergeant Kerr was returning to the Berganitan with five. Things were about to get interesting. “Engineering, I want full maneuverability five minutes ago!”

  “Aye, aye, Captain.”

  “Flight Control, let our pilots know the bugs are likely to attempt some kind of unified attack.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain.”

  “Lieutenant Demoln, see that Mr. Ryder is kept informed.” She reached out and slapped her palm down on the touch pad. “All hands, battle stations!”

  * * *

  Torin was really beginning to miss the quiet inside Big Yellow. “Sir, Captain Travik saved the life of Presit a Tur durValintrisy, Sector Central News’ star reporter. She’ll make sure everyone knows it. Even without Big Yellow, you’ve got what you needed. Captain Travik is a hero.”

  “And he commanded the mission that captured five of the enemy,” the general added thoughtfully.

  “They weren’t exactly captured, sir. They surrendered.”

  “Perhaps.”

  Perhaps? Torin sagged back against the side of the pen, the material no longer hot enough to damage her suit. The stim she’d taken had cleared her head and washed the fatigue from her body but it hadn’t changed the fact that it had been a very long day.

  “As far as the public needs to know, they were captured. We don’t need to tell all we know, Staff Sergeant.”

  She glanced over at the captain’s body, her tone carefully neutral. “Yes, sir.”

  “We can count on the captain to say anything he feels is in his best interest.”

  She could see the general, sitting at his desk, fat fingers spread on either side of the raised comm unit.

  “Pity that reporter’s crew person got killed.”

  “As well as nine scientists. Navy Lieutenant Czerneda, and Private First Class August Guimond. Sir.”

  “All deaths are...”

  “Strap in tight, mates!” Ryder’s shout over the group channel cut the general off in mid-platitude. “We’re about to be swarmed.”

  * * *

  “Never a bug zapper around when you need one,” Sibley muttered, slamming on his thrusters and moving away from the salvage pen to give himself more room to maneuver. “Looks like every bug out here’s heading this way.”

  “B1 to squadron. Heads up, team, we’re about to be visited by every goddamned bug with wings.”

  “Didn’t I just say that?” He switched to the squadron’s frequency. “You got a number on every goddamned bug, B1?”

  “Five squadrons minus the ones we’ve taken out. A whole fukking lot of bugs.”

  “Roger that. Tell me, how did we get so popular?”

  “Maybe they’re attracted to your sparkling personality, Sib. Defensive pattern 12-4-2, people. We let the bugs come to us and hope the rest of the group knocks a few out before they get here.”

  “They’re not having much luck,” Shylin observed dryly. Although the Jades were significantly more maneuverable, the bug fighters flew a lot faster in a straight line and they were heading right for the Promise.

  Black Star Squadron had lost three Jades—Boom Boom’s B8 had been destroyed, B2 and B11 had been grounded; B2 with no loss of life, but B11’s gunner had taken a jagged edge of the control panel in the throat. The twelve Jades remaining in the squadron moved into a two-on defensive pattern, four pairs defending the Promise’s four main axis points, two pairs free to go where they were most needed.

  Sibley found himself beside B6, matching the Promise’s speed a half a kilometer out from the stern of the cargo pod.

  “I’ve got fifty-two bugs on my screen, Sib. There’s no way twelve of us will be able to stop them.”

  “Well, not with that attitude.”

  Light flared in the distance.

  “Now there’s fifty-one,” Sibley grinned. “Piece of cake.”

  “They’re moving too fast to be locked.”

  “Then they’re moving too fast to lock—they’ll have to slow down to get a shot off.” Lifting his hand, he ran though a quick series of finger exercises, then laid them over the complex keypads that controlled the Jade’s thrusters. “I’m ready. Bring ’em on.”

  “Maybe not,” she declared with more energy than he’d heard in hours. “Sib, I need Flight Command.”

  * * *

  “Group, this is Flight Command! Gunners who have a shot, lock missiles on the bug fighters’ trajectories. Repeat, lock missiles on the trajectories, not the fighters.”

  * * *

  “We know where they’re going, and we know they’re taking the shortest way there, so we let missiles and bugs run into each other—very smart, Shy. There’s gonna be pats on the head for you.”

  “How nice for me,” Shylin replied absently, feeding the last of the data into her targeting computer. “Permission to fire two remaining PGMs.”

  Sibley grinned. For a regulation question it had sounded a lot like a statement. “Permission granted. Fire away.” Forty-eight. Forty-two.

  The flares of light made a pattern of destruction against the stars.

  “You’d think seeing other fighters blow would bug them just a little. Enough to try something else.”

  “They know there’s more of them than there are PGMs remaining.”

  “Would they be...”

  “Ablin gon savit!”

  “What?” He jerked against the restriction of his webbing.

  “We lost a Jade in a debris field.” A moment later on the small side monitors that showed Jades in the field, a call sign began flashing. “Red Nine. Jan Elson and Dierik.”

  The webbing felt like it was getting tighter with every second that passed. “I fukking hate waiting. You know, I once saw Dierik eat half a dozen pouches of that crap the grunts call field rations.”

  “Probably enjoyed them, too.”

  “Said it reminded him of his jernil’s funeral.”

  More flares. Closer now.

  Thirty-seven.

  * * *

  “And why the hell can’t I take evasive action?” Ryder demanded, his screens showing three dozen bug fighters plus one still heading right for him.

&nbs
p; “You’re easier for the Jades to protect if they know where you are. You start changing your trajectory, and half their attention switches to you. Just let our people deal with this, Mr. Ryder. It’s what they do.”

  Yeah, well, under normal circumstances, he’d be heading for Susumi space and the hell with sucking small fighters in with him. Unfortunately, he had live cargo in salvage pens and although the field would extend to cover them, they wouldn’t survive even a short jump.

  Not that the odds of them surviving thirty-seven enemy fighters were a lot better.

  We are all going to die.

  Too late to stop himself from thinking about exactly how many “we all” were.

  Crap.

  Denial was a wonderful thing—while it worked.

  His muscles had knotted so tightly it felt as though daggers had been driven into the back of his neck, and every time he had to move his arms, pain shot from his spine to his shoulders. He knew he had six people in the cabin with him, but as long as they were quiet, he’d been able to ignore them. The Katrien had helped by locking themselves in the head with Presit’s small recorder when he’d told them they were going out the air lock if they didn’t shut the fuk up about the light levels.

  Two of the Marines were unconscious. The Niln was sleeping, snoring anyway. He could feel Ken Tsui’s gaze on the back of his head.

  Carbon dioxide levels were rising.

  He couldn’t breathe.

  He had to turn around. Had to. Not a good idea.

  The only thing he could hear was his own heartbeat.

  His fingers were trembling as he had the Promise contact Torin’s implant. Never very good at subvocalizing, he had no idea what was about to come out of his mouth and no desire to have either the general or the Berganitan’s comm station listening in. The eavesdroppers behind him were plenty.