Valour's Choice

by Tanya Huff

  “Yes, sir. The Marines have trained these people to survive on the edge. It’s what they’re used to, and, after a while, it’s what they’ll go looking for. They need the rush that comes with facing the unknown.”

  “You think I should let them look for that rush.”

  “Yes, sir. I think you can use whatever they find to make field observations and to bleed off the excess energy before the whole system blows.” She’d shifted her weight from foot to foot as she considered how much more she should say, then, finally, had added, “I told the general right from the beginning that this was no job for a combat unit.”

  “You don’t think that sending a group of boredom-crazed Marines out among the Silsviss will set diplomatic relations back to square one?”

  “No, sir. Not if we maintain control.”

  “So, you believe that since something’s going to happen anyway, it shouldn’t happen randomly?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Lieutenant Jarret had stared at her in silence for a few moments. “How do you suggest we control the situation?” he asked at last.

  “When a group large enough to make observations valid goes out the lock, Cri Sawyes and I will follow them, observe them, and keep them out of trouble if need be.”

  “No. I don’t think we should involve the Silsviss.”

  “I don’t think we should let our people out without involving the Silsviss,” Torin told him dryly. “And Cri Sawyes has the authority to stop anything that might start.”

  Although he clearly hadn’t liked the idea, he reluctantly nodded. “All right. Cri Sawyes goes, but why you? Why not one of the sergeants?”

  “The sergeants are specific to each squad, sir, and we can’t be certain which squad will go over.”

  “Whereas you’ve put the fear of the gods into the whole platoon?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He’d stared at her a moment longer, lilac eyes dark. “I see.”

  At the time, Torin had considered his response nothing more than a noncommittal way to end the conversation. Now, though, she wondered what he’d seen. Had he seen past her reasoned arguments, noticing that the forced inactivity and the pointless ceremonial duties were driving her just as crazy as the six Marines now leading the way up the stairs? Had the night’s adventure been as much for her to release pressure as for the platoon or for their orders?

  Was he actually a good enough officer to see what she needed, or had that one unfortunate night together taught him more about her than he had any right to know?

  Give it up. He’s a di’Taykan. Sex may be a large part of their lives, but they keep it separate. Is it so hard to believe that he might actually be becoming a good officer?

  It seemed a little early, but she supposed it was possible. It was always a difficult transition to begin thinking of second lieutenants as more than merely warm bodies in a uniform, to realize they were actually beginning to take command.

  He’s got a lot of bloody nerve trying to manipulate me battled with They grow up so fast.

  Her half-dozen malcontents/observational subjects were waiting in the hall outside Lieutenant Jarret’s door. Torin walked through them, looking neither left nor right as they shuffled out of her way, and she knocked on the worn wood.

  When the lieutenant’s voice told them to enter, she turned to the Marines. “Form a line, single file, along the south wall under the row of high windows.” Fortunately, the latch—its dimensions uncomfortable in human hands—gave her no trouble. Few things undermined authority like public fumbling. “Private Mashona...”

  Binti paused in the doorway and Ressk turned sideways to get around her.

  “...the gash on your shoulder is bleeding again. You should see the doctor immediately.”

  “What about your leg, Staff?”

  “What about it?”

  “It’s bleeding again, too.”

  Torin looked down at her leg and up at Binti. The younger woman’s expression was easy to read: If you don’t need to see the doctor immediately, neither do I, so I’m not abandoning my team. And besides, if I’m standing there bleeding on his floor, the lieutenant’ll keep it short.

  There were just the two of them and the Silsviss in the hall now. Her own face expressionless, Torin moved out of the way. “Get in there, then.”

  When she turned to Cri Sawyes, he shook his head.

  “Thisss isss no busssinesss of mine. I will wait and ssspeak with the lieutenant later.”

  “Thank you for your help.”

  “You’re very welcome, Ssstaff Sssergeant. It wasss not unenjoyable. I sssussspect I leamed asss much about your people asss you did about mine.” He slapped the floor with his tail.

  Good thing you’re on our side, then, Torin mused, entering the office, and taking her position to the right of the line.

  The lieutenant’s outer office was empty of everything except an unplugged and therefore inoperative vending machine the Silsviss had considered either too heavy or too unintrusive to move. Because the triple banks of lights buzzed continually, Lieutenant Jarret preferred to work in one of the inner rooms.

  Almost immediately upon Torin taking her place, the door to the next room opened and the lieutenant emerged in full dress, gloves tucked into his belt.

  “Shouldn’t I be waiting for them?”

  “No, sir. They wait for you. You don’t wait for them.”

  He didn’t look any more perceptive than he ever had— no matter how much circumstances seemed to support Cri Sawyes’ observation.

  “These are the six?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The ceiling was so high, the room so large and empty, that their voices echoed slightly.

  As Lieutenant Jarret walked slowly down the line, Torin was pleased to see that all eyes were locked on a position about six inches above his left shoulder—all eyes except for Corporal Hollice’s shiner, which had swollen shut. After a second pass, where he tersely told Haysole to adjust his masker, the lieutenant paused and said before he turned to face them, “I gave orders that no one was to leave our assigned area.”

  He pivoted on one heel, the ends of his hair flicking back and forth. “You six chose to disobey that order.” A lilac gaze raked them up, down, and side to side. “What happened after is not my concern, but if the Silsviss chose to make an issue of it, I shall have no choice but to let them. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir.” The unison was a little ragged. Although the question was no doubt right out of the officer’s handbook, Torin hoped he wouldn’t ask any more—this lot was just as likely to start giving him answers he didn’t expect.

  “Three days’ stoppage of pay. As your entire fireteam was involved, Corporal Hollice, you will all be standing night two until we leave Silsvah. Corporal di’Hern Mysho, you’ll be using your off duty time to help the doctor scan his specimens. Private di’Stenjic Haysole, you may continue cleaning the sanitary facilities. When you’re dismissed, you’re all to go directly to the doctor. He’s expecting you. You can dismiss them now, Staff.”

  “Yes, sir.” Torin gave the one word order but watched the lieutenant as the Marines obeyed. Had she been close enough, she suspected she’d have been able to hear his hearts pounding. Fortunately, everyone else in the room had been focused over his left shoulder and on their own predicament, so they hadn’t noticed how nervous he’d been. There was nothing like a discipline parade to make a junior officer realize the power he held over the forty-odd lives in his platoon.

  It was also the place where a junior officer could abuse that power were he so inclined, and senior NCOs had learned to watch them closely at such times.

  “Staff?”

  “Yes, sir?” Torin shifted her weight back onto both legs and straightened.

  “Do you think I...” He took a deep breath. His hair stilled. “How do you think it went?”

  How did I do? They weren’t the words he’d used, but it was the question he’d asked. She hid a smile. Her baby wasn’t quite
ready to leave the nest. “It went well, sir. You didn’t waste time talking at them and at no point did you talk down to them. The punishments were fair, hard enough so they’ll think twice about going out the lock again, not so hard they’ll say ‘fuk you’ and go just to show you they can.”

  “We came up with punishments together.”

  “Yes, sir. But you could have overruled me.”

  Relief made him smile. “Really?”

  Torin lifted a brow and said, in the dry tone her second lieutenant expected, “Not easily, sir.”

  “Thank you, Staff Sergeant. You’d better go see the doctor about your leg.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Staff?”

  “Sir?” She turned, sucking air through her teeth as the movement pulled the damaged muscle.

  “Did we win?”

  She paused, waiting until she was certain she wouldn’t be overheard. “We kicked lizard butt, sir.”

  “Good work, Staff.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  * * *

  “Three days’ loss of pay.” Binti sighed and poked at her shoulder. “That sucks.”

  “We’re stuck on this serley mudhole until Berganitan comes back,” Ressk reminded her. “Where are you going to spend it?”

  “Maybe I’m saving it for my retirement, asshole.”

  “Maybe cark’ll fly, but I doubt it. Stop poking at the sealant or it won’t heal clean.”

  “Stop telling me what to do.”

  Upper lip curled, he smacked her hand away from the wound. “Then stop poking.”

  “Private di’Stenjic Haysole, you may continue cleaning the sanitary facilities,” Haysole snorted. “Guess Second Lieutenant di’Ka Jarret’s too high class to call it a crapper like everyone else.”

  “Poor baby.” Juan patted his cheek as he rose to take his turn with the doctor. “You think the lieutenant was too fukking hard on you?”

  Haysole looked confused. “No. I just think he should’ve called it a crapper.”

  “He ought to thank us for dragging him out of whatever sexless diplomatic function he was at,” Mysho grumbled. “But he won’t.”

  * * *

  By the time they got back to the barracks, the rest of the platoon was waiting only for specific details. Military structure inadvertently encouraged gossip and di’Taykans practically considered it a competitive sport. With the two combined, facts chased speculation through the troops at full speed.

  Once the story had been told—and embellished—the unanimous belief, freely expressed, was that they’d gotten off easy.

  “Then you can stand fukking night two for as long as we’re on this rock,” Juan muttered, checking the spare clip on his belt.

  On station or on board ship, the second night watch, or night two, lasted from 2700 hours until 0430—a twenty-seven-hour day being the compromise among the three species who made up the military arm of the Confederation. No one liked it. Night one was at worst a late night. Night three was an early morning. Night two was a convenient punishment watch. On Silsviss it lasted four standard hours and twelve minutes.

  “Too easy,” Drake repeated, tossing a six-sided die from hand to hand. “Nothing on your record—clean a few toilets, help the doctor, lose some sleep, then finished and forgotten. If that’s all you’re getting, we can all go out the lock.”

  “Won’t be as easy the next time,” Hollice grunted, shrugging into his tunic. “They let us go. Haysole already went out that door once. You don’t think they’d have taken care of a known weak spot in the perimeter?”

  “Corporals.” Ressk shook his head. “Paranoid.”

  Binti frowned. “No. He’s got a point. Who told Staff where we were?”

  “No mystery, the Silsviss who ran the savara obviously called someone when we arrived.”

  “Who? Who would a bartender call to report aliens walking in? The local cops?”

  “The military cops.”

  “Yeah, right. Hello, Officer, I’d like to report aliens in my bar. They’re not going to bother someone high enough to talk to our people until they know it’s not a false alarm.”

  “Probably been a lot of them since we landed,” Mysho said thoughtfully, fingering her masker.

  “Right. So the MPs go to the bar, see us, then the news starts heading up the chain of command until it gets to someone who can open a diplomatic channel.”

  “But the MPs were at the bar.”

  “Because of the fight. Staff showed up on the patio way, way too fukking fast unless she already knew we were there.”

  “Probably wanted to see us interacting with the Silsviss. There’s been some concern about the lack of one-on-one unsupervised action.”

  Everyone turned to look at Haysole, who grinned. “Hey, you overhear a lot when you’re always cleaning the crapper.”

  “All right, you want paranoid, think about this,” Hollice suggested, taking his weapon down off its rack. “Staff and our assigned lizard were in a fight.”

  After a brief pause, where those who’d seen the staff sergeant filled in visuals for those who hadn’t, Corporal Conn set aside his latest letter home, and said thoughtfully, “Maybe he didn’t want her to take you guys away from Silsviss authorities.”

  “They weren’t fighting with each other.” Hollice checked his charge and hitched the strap up onto his shoulder. “Use your brains for more than insulation; they were coming to get us and they got jumped. I think there’s some Silsviss who don’t want us here.”

  Binti reached out and smacked his shoulder. “Hey! We got jumped in the bar.”

  “That was a bar fight, nothing more. But Staff wasn’t with us when she got jumped.” A jerk of Hollice’s chin got his fireteam moving out the door.

  The Marines still in the room passed confusion back and forth until, at the last minute, one of the di’Taykan called out, “Which means?”

  “I think there’s something going on here.”

  * * *

  “I don’t think so,” Torin snorted. “Cri Sawyes says they were the type who keeps challenging and losing and are too stupid to stop challenging.”

  “I don’t like it.” Cradling a jar of beer between both hands, Mike frowned up at the senior NCO. “I don’t like that they were in the same bar you were in. Too convenient.”

  “I got the impression that every bar has a few.” She poked at the sealant on her thigh and did a few experimental deep knee bends.

  Holding the destroyed uniform trousers between thumb and forefinger, Anne Chou snorted. “Gee, I can’t wait until I’m a staff sergeant and I get to be beaten up by the locals in the name of cultural interaction.”

  “Yeah? Well, when you’re a staff sergeant, you’ll know that staff sergeants beat up the locals in the name of cultural interaction, not the other way around.”

  “So essentially what you’re saying is, you should see the other guy?”

  Torin grinned. “Essentially.”

  * * *

  Cultural interaction had an immediate result.

  * * *

  “All right, people, let’s get this place packed up, we’re moving out!”

  Jerked out of his bunk and onto his feet by Sergeant Glicksohn’s bellow, Haysole grabbed for his pants. “I thought we were supposed to stay here for another three days.”

  “And that would be relevant, Private Haysole, if the Silsviss cared what you thought. Since they don’t, get moving. Sleds are on the way in from the VTA.”

  “What about breakfast, Sarge?” Ressk asked as the room of Marines began resembling an anthill stirred with a stick. “Squad Three hasn’t eaten yet.”

  “We pack the mess up last. You get in there as soon as Squad Two gets out.” He paused and they could hear Sergeant Trey’s voice rising and falling in the next room. “If I were you, I wouldn’t worry about chewing everything a hundred times. Hollice, your team sees to it that the personal effects of Corporal Conn’s team are packed up and put on the sleds.”

  �
�Come on, Sarge,” Hollice protested, “we stood night two.”

  “And your point?”

  “Get someone else to do it.”

  Sergeant Glicksohn stopped talking long enough to smile broadly. “No.” Then he fell back into the familiar cadence. “Once our sled’s loaded, we load the civilians’, then the whole platoon forms up in the square. Lieutenant Jarret wants us leaving for the landing field at 0930.”

  Juan glanced down at the time on his slate. “Fuk.”

  “Well put. Fortunately, the Dornagain are already moving.” His eyes unfocused for a moment. “Sleds are here. You can start humping gear outside any time.”

  “Hey, Sarge?”

  He paused in the doorway.

  “You know why we’re leaving?”

  “Yes, I do, Haysole. Because the lieutenant gave us an order.”

  The di’Taykan closed the distance between them. “Aw, come on, Sarge.”

  “Don’t even try it, Haysole. And turn up your masker.”

  “He knows,” Binti snorted as the sound of the sergeant’s bootheels faded. “He’s just not going to tell us.”

  “Ours is not to reason why,” Hollice muttered.

  “You think this has something to do with last night?”

  The answering silence was a clear affirmative.

  “You think the Silsviss are pissed?” Binti wondered.

  This time the silence wasn’t so sure.

  “Do we fukking care?” Juan snarled under his breath.

  As two billion Silsviss significantly outnumbered one lone platoon of Confederation Marines, everyone ignored him.

  “I think they’ve come to a decision,” Hollice answered at last.

  Ressk picked up a game biscuit with his toes, checked the number, and tossed it at Binti. “Don’t I keep saying he’s too paranoid to be a corporal?”

  * * *

  As the VTA shuddered into the air, Torin watched Lieutenant Jarret unhook his harness and make his way to the front of the troop compartment. In spite of the uneven ride, he moved well, and she had to admit he looked good. Of course, from a Human perspective, it was difficult for a di’Taykan to look anything but.

  I wonder what would happen if we did it again...

  Frowning, Torin denied ownership of the stray thought. They weren’t going to do it again, end of discussion.