Valour's Choice

by Tanya Huff

  “Pity you didn’t leave enough to run past a slate,” Hollice grunted. “We could’ve checked to see if they were poisonous to the rest of us.”

  “And you’d have eaten a handful?”

  “Hey, I once ate two dozen raw oysters to impress my best friend’s date and crunchy could only be an improvement over that phlegm on the half shell.”

  “You figure tall, tailed, and ugly over there is going to spring for another bowl?” Binti wondered.

  On cue, Plaskry rounded the table and clamped one hand down on Ressk’s shoulder. “Your little food eaten before the main meal...”

  Binti snarled and hooked her slate back on her belt.

  “...cost me a third of my pay chit!”

  Continuing to dig at the bit of shell, Ressk grinned. “Guess there’s no chance of seconds, then.”

  The big Silsviss hissed, and his tail whacked Ressk’s stool at the spot where a tail would usually have hung. “Seconds? You aliens have got more male equipment than a large carnivorous quadruped!”

  Ressk snatched his slate to safety before Binti could edit the program with her fist. “Then I guess I owe you a beer. Yrs!”

  Attention jerked away from his mournful examination of the empty bowl, Yrs looked first to the slate and then up at Ressk.

  He tossed over his souvenir credit chit. “Beer for the partizay on me!”

  * * *

  “Deftly done,” Cri Sawyes acknowledged as Yrs left the patio to renewed noise.

  “It’s an old shtick,” Torin told him. “The Krai can eat almost anything on almost any world. They have the Galaxy’s most efficient gut.”

  “I wasss referring more to the way they usssed that efficient gut to manipulate the sssituation. Only the Krai, who asss you sssay can eat anything, had to eat the kritkar and yet all the Marinesss benefit. They have been accepted by the sssoldiersss.”

  “So far,” Torin agreed. “But don’t forget they’re also buying a round. That helped.”

  “True. You do realize that the sssoldiersss will now attempt to get your people drunk.”

  “I realize.”

  “And?”

  “It should be interesting.”

  * * *

  The high-pitched beeping cut through the ambient noise like a hot knife through field rations and fell right smack in the middle of the tonal range guaranteed to produce maximum irritation. Swearing in three languages, all six Marines dropped their attention to their slates.

  “Mine,” Sooton muttered, plucking a black rubber cylinder off his harness. He flicked out an antenna, opened his auditory ridge to insert a round knob and bent the rest of the cylinder around by his mouth. “Yeah... Just a minute. I’m getting interference from the buildings...” Pushing back his stool, he walked over to the edge of the patio, talking as he moved.

  “You think they operate on fukking radio waves?” Juan wondered, eyes gleaming.

  “That’s always been the cheapest.” Mysho waved her beer around at the Silsviss. “And they’ve got to be cheap. Almost everyone seems to have one.”

  “Low tech,” he sneered. “They’ve only got audio.”

  “Give them a break, Juan. They’d barely got off the planet before the Confederation contacted them.”

  Grunting a reluctant agreement, Juan moved over beside Sooton when he returned to the table and asked if he could see the cylinder.

  “Sure. It was Blarnic,” he added to the table at large. “Wanted to know if anything was happening here tonight.”

  Tongues flickered.

  Squinting down at the handset, Juan rubbed a finger over the rubberized controls. “How does it work?”

  “You mean inside?”

  “No, I mean how does it fukking break rocks. Yeah, I mean inside.”

  “No idea.” Sooton looked around, then pointed. “But Hars over there is a tech. He should know.”

  Juan grabbed for his slate as he stood, but Ressk blocked his hand. “Not yet. I’ve only copied half the translation program.”

  “You haven’t even started copyin’ it onto Haysole’s slate, and he seems to be fukking managin’ without it.”

  They both looked over to a dark corner where the di’Taykan had gathered a small group of his own.

  “He’s probably playing ‘I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.’ I doubt he’s talking much.”

  “Wonder if he’s winning.”

  Ressk snickered.

  * * *

  “What isss the young male with the blue hair doing?”

  “Plopping his pecker on the table, as near as I can tell from up here.”

  Cri Sawyes turned from the view below to stare at Torin. “I beg your pardon, Ssstaff Sssergeant.”

  “It’s a di’Taykan thing. They like to know where they stand.”

  “He isss comparing the sssize of his reproductive organ to thossse of the sssoldiersss?”

  “Yeah. Don’t Silsviss do that?”

  “Yesss, when we are young in the pressservesss but not usssually at thisss age.”

  “The di’Taykan can be pretty persuasive, and he’s probably curious because nothing shows.” Her gaze dropped. She didn’t intend it to, but she couldn’t help it.

  Cri Sawyes’ tongue flicked out. “I am not going to show you mine.”

  “No, sir.” Ears burning, she returned her attention back to the patio.

  * * *

  “...so we’ve got them pinned down in this small village, the civilians cleared out when they saw trouble coming, so it’s just them and a couple of nasty artillery pieces that don’t seem to be running out of their powering medium any time soon, and those egg suckers with the most metal send us in to clear the place residence by residence!”

  “Idiots!” Hollice slapped the table for emphasis. “Why didn’t they just call in an air strike?”

  Sooton hissed and smacked his hand down, beside the corporal’s. “That’s what we wanted to know!”

  * * *

  Juan grabbed a small electrical component just before it rolled though a puddle of beer and tried to snap it back into Hars’ headset. “So this goes here?”

  “No.” A somewhat unsteady claw tapped the rubber “Here.”

  “That’s what I fukking said, here.”

  Hars belched.

  * * *

  “But you’re a mammal!”

  Mysho’s eyes lightened. “Your point?”

  * * *

  Binti’s third dart hit the spinning target on the outer edge and during the instant between the cancellation of the old momentum and the application of the new, her fourth dart hit the black triangle in the middle.

  “Harttag!” roared her partner, smacking her in the backs of the legs with his tail. He hissed, disappointment coloring his glee, and smacked her again. “How can we celebrate harttag when you have no tail!”

  “I don’t have a tail,” Binti agreed, moving inside the painful blows. “But I do have hips.” Her answering blow lifted him over an empty stool and into the lap of a Silsviss who’d been watching the game.

  After a moment’s stunned silence, tongues began to flick.

  With his own tongue flicking so fast he could hardly breathe, Binti had to help her fallen partner to his feet.

  * * *

  “Your people ssseem to be drinking in moderation.”

  “Moderation might be a bit of an overstatement.” Torin tracked Mysho’s path from the bar to the table and noted whom she unloaded the beer in front of. “But they’re being careful.” It helped that the Silsviss beer contained less alcohol than they were used to, but she saw no need to pass that information on. “It shouldn’t be long now.”

  Cri Sawyes blew out his throat pouch impatiently. “What shouldn’t?”

  “See that group over in the corner? I’m guessing they’re a different partizay than the group my lot hooked up with and that the two don’t get along. Maybe one partizay feels like they’ve been pulling more crap duties than the other, maybe it’s personal, it
doesn’t really matter—they’ve been glaring across the patio all night.”

  “Maybe they just don’t like aliensss.”

  “No, they’d like aliens fine if those aliens were with them, but since they’re not, they’ve become a convenient excuse.”

  “For a fight?”

  “Yes.”

  His throat pouch inflated slightly as he studied the movements in the crowd below. “And the fight becomesss a ssstudy in the sssocial interplay between ssspeciesss.”

  Torin shrugged. “When something is inevitable, you might as well learn what you can from it.”

  “We are not Human, Ssstaff Sssergeant.” He turned his golden gaze from the patio to her. “Nor are we Krai, nor are we di’Taykan.”

  “No, but you are a social species with a paid fighting force who share intoxicants in a social setting.” She shrugged again. “If it walks like a duck...”

  The movement of his inner eyelids made him look momentarily cross-eyed. “What,” he demanded, “isss a duck?”

  “A medium-sized water bird from Terra.”

  He opened his mouth, clearly thought better of what he was about to say, and shook his head. “You really are a most confusssing ssspeciesss.”

  * * *

  Hollice felt something compact under his foot, wasted a second wondering where that something had come from, as the floor had been clear when he’d started the step, and then suddenly realized what that something had to be.

  “That was my tail!” A large Silsviss, nearly Plaskry’s size, rose off his stool and spun around to face the Marine. “Clumsy alien, egg sucker,” he snarled into the silence that had answered his first bellow. “Clumsy alien, tailless, egg sucker.”

  From the reactions around him, Hollice suspected the insults had lost a little in the translation. “Sorry. Didn’t see it. Let me buy you a beer to take your mind off the pain.”

  “You think that is all my tail means to me!” The throat pouch began to distend. “I will rip your miserable alien heart out and eat it!”

  He felt more than heard Binti move from the dart game into place behind him. The others were too far away to add much initial backup, and he couldn’t see Haysole at all. “Look, I said I was sorry and I offered to buy you a beer. I don’t know what else I can...” The blow glanced off his left shoulder. It threw him sideways without doing any real damage, and he came up smiling. First contact had been made.

  His return blow took the Silsviss in the belly and would’ve had more impact had he not been avoiding a swinging tail when he made it.

  The Silsviss’ companions rose as one.

  Hollice heard the high trill of a di’Taykan attack cry, saw Binti smash a tray into a Silsviss face, and then had time to notice nothing beyond his immediate survival.

  * * *

  “There, see! The us-against-them split isn’t Silsviss, nonSilsviss. There.” Torin pointed. “And there. Silsviss fighting beside Marines.”

  “Thisss isss what you wanted to sssee happen?”

  “This is exactly what I wanted to see. The lieutenant will be pleased.”

  “Then if you have the information you need, we’d bessst ssstop the fight before sssomeone isss... before sssomeone elssse isss...” Nostrils flaring, Cri Sawyes glared down at the battle. “When you sssaid the Krai would eat anything, I never assumed that included tailsss.”

  “Your boy bit him first.” Torin watched a Silsviss who’d been thrown down onto the floor bring the claws on both feet into play and nodded thoughtfully. “But you’re right, we should stop it before an outside authority arrives.”

  They turned together and came face-to-face with two of the uglier customers from the room below. A little surprised they’d been able to move into position so quietly, Torin ducked the fist blow.

  The second connected.

  Had the rail been an inch shorter, she’d have gone over it. As it was, she dropped, rolled, and came up holding a Silsviss tail in both hands. A yank and a kick toppled her attacker sideways, his claws barely tearing the fabric across her thigh.

  He was fast, she acknowledged as she leaped into an answering kick.

  Son of a... I should never have let go of that tail! Sucking a painful breath in through her teeth, she wondered if the ribs were broken.

  The Silsviss responded to her pain by inflating his throat pouch and roaring.

  Heart pounding, the taste of her own blood in her mouth, Torin scooped up her stool and smashed it into the side of his head.

  He finished the roar on the way down, and it ended with impact.

  “Well done, Ssstaff Sssergeant.” Throat pouch still slightly extended, Cri Sawyes cleaned his claws against a bit of his opponent’s harness. “You were certainly not what he expected.”

  “Oh?”

  “A challenge isss alwaysss anssswered before the fight continuesss.”

  She poked the prone body with her foot until he moaned, reassuring her he was still alive. “I answered the challenge.”

  “In your own way, yesss. Are you hurt?”

  Shallow gouge, bruises, one rib possibly cracked. “I’m fine. What about you?”

  His tongue flicked out, and he tapped his fallen opponent lightly with his tail. “I told you, they challenge and lossse and challenge again.”

  Torin grinned. “Pitiful really.”

  “Indeed.”

  Which was when she noticed it had gotten very quiet down below. “Wonderful, looks like the authorities have arrived.”

  “Tarvar ssselk.” After a moment, her translator came up with, “Military police.”

  * * *

  “You, alien, tell me who issued challenge.”

  Hollice shifted his weight off his swelling right knee. “I didn’t notice.”

  The Silsviss swept his gaze over the rest of the Marines. “And I suppose none of you other aliens noticed either?” When he receiyed the expected negative chorus, he turned his attention to his own people. “Well?”

  Wiping his claws off on his leg, Plaskry snarled, “Happened too fast.”

  “What about you, Yrs?”

  “Didn’t see nothing.”

  “Really?” The MP smacked his tail guard against the floor as he swept his gaze over the rest of the room. “Ranscur. Looks like you took a few hits. You wouldn’t know who hit who first would you?”

  The big Silsviss who’d made first contact gazed over the heads of his companions at the Marines then at the MP. “No idea.”

  “Don’t give me that ara srev crovmirs shartlerg!”

  All six slates hissed and sputtered but surrendered the attempt at a translation.

  “Someone challenged first, and we’re all going to stay right here until I find out who!”

  * * *

  Standing just off the patio, Torin watched Cri Sawyes walk over to the MP and show his credentials. Their discussion didn’t last long. The MP wasn’t happy, but Torin suspected his unhappiness didn’t come close to how the Marines felt when they were escorted out of the savara and found their Staff Sergeant waiting.

  Haysole finally broke the silence. “Did you know your leg is bleeding, Staff?”

  “Yes. I know.”

  “Were you fighting?”

  “I’d worry less about what I was doing, Private, and more about what you’ve been doing.” Eyes narrowed, she very deliberately examined each of them. Injuries seemed minor although they’d all been marked by Silsviss claws.

  “The military police officer tellsss me that none of your people will sssay who ssstarted the fight.”

  Torin looked past the Marines to Cri Sawyes and past him to the Silsviss standing quietly on the patio. “Is that true, Corporal Hollice?”

  “Yes, Staff Sergeant.”

  “And do you know who started the fight?”

  “It all happened so fast, Staff Sergeant.”

  She snapped her gaze down to meet Hollice’s level stare— slightly less level than usual due to a rapidly spreading black eye—and smiled. “Of course i
t did, Corporal.” Still holding his eyes with hers, she raised her voice. “Cri Sawyes, if you could please see that things are settled here, I’ll take my people back where they belong.”

  “Of courssse.”

  * * *

  He caught up just before they reached the embassy. “The proprietor hasss been paid for damagesss, the military police officer hasss left—nothing will come of thisss adventure.”

  Torin grinned as a certain amount of tension left the shoulders of the six Marines marching in front of her. “Nothing will come of it from the Silsviss,” she amended.

  The shoulders tensed again.

  She marched them to the west door, managed not to laugh at the faces of the two Marines on guard, and waved them through. “Lieutenant Jarret wants to speak with you.”

  “Now, Staff Sergeant?”

  “Do any of you need to see the doctor immediately?”

  “No, Staff Sergeant.”

  “Then the lieutenant would like to speak with you now.”

  Just inside the door, she paused to watch them climb the stairs and note who was favoring what. Her own injuries had died to a dull throb, easy to ignore. As she followed, she realized she actually felt better than she had in days.

  “You enjoyed that, didn’t you?”

  Torin glanced up at Cri Sawyes. He could be requesting information, but she suspected that he’d learned to read Human reactions fairly accurately during the last few weeks and was, in fact, asking only for confirmation. “Yes,” she told him, trying not to smile as broadly as her mood demanded, “I did.”

  He nodded thoughtfully. “Remember how you told me you knew what would happen tonight becaussse you knew your people?”

  “Yes.”

  His tongue flicked out. “I would say that your lieutenant knows his people, too.”

  SIX

  “I would say that your lieutenant knows his people too.”

  Torin frowned as she limped up the stairs to Lieutenant Jarret’s office. Their orders had wanted them to report on the interaction between the Marines and the Silsviss. To do that, they had needed interaction to occur but, more importantly, they’d needed to control the inevitable rebellion born of inactivity that was brewing in the platoon.

  “Inevitable?” the lieutenant had repeated.