The Better Part of Valor

by Tanya Huff

  “Or so?” Her attention back on the captain’s head wound, she could hear the grin in Ryder’s voice. “I’d have thought a staff sergeant of your caliber would know for certain.”

  “I know. You don’t need to.” She checked the sealant before rocking back on her heels and standing. “How’s the reporter?”

  “No broken bones, no lacerations, no dark glasses, so it’s a good thing it’s a little dim in here, and she definitely uses a conditioner when she shampoos.”

  “Ryder…”

  “Other than that…” He sat back, hands on his thighs, and looked up at Torin, “I haven’t the faintest idea. You don’t have her specs in your slate?”

  “Why would I? No Katrien in the Corps. Her heart’s beating, she’s breathing.” Torin shrugged. “Other than that…Nivry, this is Kerr. Is your Katrien awake yet?”

  “Negative, Staff. We’ve stopped the bleeding and her vitals seem steady, but she’s still out.”

  “Roger that. Let me know when she comes to. Any progress on reaching the Berganitan?”

  “Negative. The air lock’s fused—completely unusable—and we’ve determined we can no more get an unassisted signal out through the hull than they can get one in. Heer thinks if we set a benny on narrow band and drain every charge we have, we might have juice enough to cut a pinprick hole through the hull: big enough so the Berganitan could pick up the energy signal, not so big we’d decompress, and easy enough to patch.”

  “Considering what happened to Dr. Hodges, let’s try to avoid poking holes in the ship if it’s at all possible. There’s no chance of cobbling something together out of all that scientific equipment?”

  “Not unless you or Mr. Ryder can make a comm unit with a mess kit; everything else has been slagged.”

  “I can’t even make a decent pouch of coffee with a mess kit. And since we’re down here and the mess kit’s with you…”

  “Johnston may have something on that, Staff.”

  “Staff Sergeant Kerr, Johnston here. I was checking the site of the explosion—it left one fuk of a hole in the wall and at the back of it, we’re scanning six centimeters of solid and then an area that reads like a vertical shaft. I suspect it’s what Dr. Hodges was aiming for. It seems to go down to your level. Do you want us to start through?”

  “What part of ‘avoid poking holes in the ship’ are you having trouble understanding, Johnston?”

  “Yeah, but the material at the back of the hole is different. It’s still a mix of metal and organic, but the explosion changed the organic part.”

  “How?”

  “Layman’s terms—it cooked it. I’m extrapolating a bit from available data, but if we smack this stuff hard enough, it’s going to shatter.”

  Torin considered implications for a moment. As much as it would simplify things to have the team in one place, another explosion was on no one’s wish list. “Let’s make sure the shaft actually reaches this far before we risk it. I’ll take a look and recontact. Kerr out.”

  “Take a look at what?” Ryder asked as she snapped her mike up. He was standing so close, he’d clearly been attempting to overhear the other end of the conversation.

  “One of our engineers may have found a vertical.”

  “Down to this level?”

  “That’s what I’m going to find out.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “You’ll stay with…” Catching sight of his expression, Torin bit off the rest of the order. Not a Marine, she reminded herself. “Look, Ryder…”

  “You know, you called me Craig while we were being sucked through the floor.”

  Had she? “Extenuating circumstances.”

  He grinned. “Look, I don’t care what you call me, just remember I’m not one of your soldiers and I’m not going to ask how high on the way up. You want me to stay with these two.” Still grinning, he folded his arms and nodded toward the floor. “Then ask me nicely.”

  Torin lifted her upper lip off her teeth. “Mr. Ryder, as an investigation of the location of a possible vertical is not going to require both of us, and because I have the PCU and can therefore stay in contact with the Marine engineer who needs the information, would you mind staying with Captain Travik and the reporter while I check things out?”

  “You’re being sarcastic again.”

  “Just get out of my way before I knock you on your ass.”

  “Now that,” Ryder stepped back as she approached, “sounded sincere.”

  The good news, Torin reflected as she made her way around the crates toward the far wall, is that our experiences thus far seemed to have caused no lasting trauma—never a given with a civilian—and he’s regained his sense of humor. And the bad news is…She froze as one of the lights flickered and then continued on more cautiously. …he’s regained his sense of humor.

  Directly below the point where the explosion had occurred there was an exact replica of the hatch they’d used to enter the room. More because it was procedure than because she thought it would do any good, Torin scanned for traps.

  Nothing.

  Yeah. Big surprise.

  “Mr. Ryder, does CS23 have a hatch in this position?”

  “Not that I remember. We’ve got one?”

  “We do.”

  “Everything all right, Staff Sergeant?”

  “Everything’s fine, Mr. Ryder.” She could hear him clearly although his voice had picked up a hollow, big-empty-room timbre. As the room was not empty, she assumed sound waves were being screwed with—certainly an effect well within the established tech level of the ship. Sound waves had shown them the way out of the cube. We got to use them once; we don’t get to use them again. Which was either paranoia above and beyond the call or evidence of an emerging pattern. Since she could do nothing about either—yet—she wrapped her left hand around the bar latch and shoved it down. Metal hinges screamed.

  “What the hell was that?”

  “Bad maintenance. I’ve just opened the hatch.”

  “It wasn’t locked?”

  “No.” No need. Her CSO had already shown them, whoever they were, that he could get through the lock.

  The hatch opened into a vertical shaft a meter square made of the same rusted steel plates. There were no lights, but the spill from the storeroom was enough for Torin to see two more hatches, once again identical to the first. It’s like the ship pulled out one hatch pattern and decided it didn’t need any others. One was in the bulkhead to her right, the other straight ahead. To her left, metal rungs had been welded to the steel and painted yellow, the paint dabbed sloppily over the welds. Definitely not military. The ship seemed to be sticking to what it had pulled from Ryder’s head.

  Torin looked up, way up, eventually losing the shaft in darkness.

  “Johnston, this is Kerr. You reading my thermal sig in the shaft you’re scanning?”

  “Affirmative, Staff. Do I kick the wall down?”

  “You sure you can get through it safely?”

  “Not one hundred percent sure, no. But close enough for government work.”

  No point in bringing a specialist along and then not listening to him. Torin looked up again and then back through the hatch toward Captain Travik and the two civilians. “Do it. Safety level three. Once you’re through, there’s a whole lot of vertical above you, so keep an eye topside.”

  “This’ll take time, Staff.”

  “Keep me informed. I’m exiting the debris field. Kerr out.” Flipping her mike up, Torin hurried back to find the captain and the reporter lying alone where she’d left them. Oh, fuk. She reached for her absent benny, swore again, opened her mouth to yell, and spotted the missing Ryder bent half inside the packing crate that had accompanied them through the floor. Kicking his ass is looking better and better. Crossing silently to the crate, she leaned over and, close enough that her breath moved a strand of his hair, said, “What are you doing?”

  He jerked back, his head missing the edge of the lid by centimeters. “You wa
nt another body to lug around, do you? Because if you do, keep that up!”

  “You were to stay with the injured.”

  “I was looking for something we could carry them on.”

  She folded her arms. “Really?”

  He mirrored the movement. “Yeah. Really.”

  Maybe he had been. It was a good idea and it wouldn’t kill her to give him the benefit of the doubt. “Find anything useful?”

  “No!” And then a little more calmly, “Nothing we could use as a stretcher, but remember when you said the di’Taykan were going to use explosives after lunch?” Holding out his left hand, Ryder slowly opened the fingers. Lying across his palm were a pair of demolition charges. “You weren’t kidding, were you?”

  “Actually, I was.” When she went to take the charges, he closed his fingers around them.

  “Not Corps equipment, Staff Sergeant. My salvage.”

  “And if we need them to get off this thing?” If they’d all still been in HE suits, she’d be tempted to blow a hole in the hull and start tossing both the living and the dead out for pickup by the Berganitan. Space represented a known danger. This ship…

  “I expect to be compensated. At the going rate.”

  “Which is?”

  “Depends on where we’re going.”

  “Funny.”

  A half smile barely showed within the beard. “I’m not kidding.”

  “You know how to use them?”

  “Try to remember what I do for a living. Most days, the bits you can salvage need to be separated from the bits you can’t.” He tossed the four-inch ceramic cylinders one at a time to his other hand and slipped them both into his belt pouch. “I’d bet I’m better at setting demo charges than you are at getting second lieutenants to run their platoons your way.”

  Torin snorted. “I doubt that.” Still, he had a point. More relevantly, she knew where they were if she needed them and could retrieve them if the situation called for it. Craig Ryder was a large, well-muscled man but, her own abilities aside, she had twelve Marines working for her. “Given the unexpected way things have of blowing up on this ship, the Corps appreciates your willingness to take the risk of providing storage.”

  Ryder stared at her for a moment then shook his head ruefully when she smiled. “Nice.”

  There was nothing else in the crate but packing intended to protect delicate equipment in transit.

  Explosives and bubble wrap.

  “Mixed messages,” Torin sighed, straightening. “That’s what’s wrong with the universe.”

  A noise from the captain drew her back to his side. “Sir?” She dropped to her knees. “Captain Travik?”

  His eyes flickered open. “Fleruke ahs sa?”

  Torin’s implant, keyed to automatically translate both Krai and di’Taykan, murmured an unnecessary, *Where am I?*

  “We’re a level below the air lock, sir. In…” An actual explanation was far too complicated. “…a storage facility.”

  “Explo…sion!”

  “Yes, sir. There was an explosion. Then the floor opened up and we went through it.”

  “Telling…Gen…eral Morris.”

  Torin ignored the whiny tone. “I wish you would, sir. I’d be a lot happier if the Bergani…God damn it!” She sighed and looked up at Ryder. “He’s gone again.”

  “You think there’s brain damage under that dent?”

  “Not for me to say.”

  “Brain damage caused by the dent?”

  She sat back on her heels. “I know what you meant.”

  “Okay. So, how can he contact the big B if you can’t?”

  “Officer’s implants are a couple of grades higher than mine.” Torin’s left hand rose involuntarily to her jaw. “More memory and more power—maybe enough to get a signal through the hull.”

  Ryder squatted and studied the captain’s face, pulling thoughtfully on the edge of his beard. “I’ve got an external mike in mine, tucked in under a molar…and what?”

  “You have an implant.”

  “Yeah. Won the installation in a poker game.”

  Torin kept her voice quiet and nonthreatening. She had a feeling she should pace herself. “Have you tried to reach the Promise?”

  “Nope. I figure this is your problem.” His hands rose into a protective position at her expression. “Kidding. I’ve tried, no luck—not even static. It’s only a seven-aught-four. So I was wondering,” he continued when Torin didn’t respond, “why can’t you just reach in and activate the captain’s implant and talk loud enough to be picked up?”

  “Because Captain Travik is a Krai.”

  “So?”

  Using only one finger, Torin pushed against the captain’s chin just hard enough to open his mouth. Then she leaned back and picked up the broken arm of Presit’s dark glasses.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Making sure you’ll believe what I’m about to tell you. This is something we show the Human and di’Taykan recruits. Most of them have never worked with Krai.”

  The moment the end of the arm passed between the captain’s teeth, his mouth snapped shut. As he chewed and swallowed the plastic, Torin held up what was left. “Never stick your finger in a Krai’s mouth. You stand a slightly better chance of keeping the finger if they’re conscious, but only slightly.”

  Ryder looked impressed. “How do they get the implant in there?”

  “No idea; I’m not tech.”

  “He swallowed that plastic.”

  “And if there’s anything organic about it, he’ll digest that and pass the rest.”

  “So his implant’s useless to us?”

  “Unless he dies, then we have a three-minute window until it powers down.”

  “So, our best chance to contact the Berganitan involves holding a piece of bubble wrap over the captain’s face?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.” Sighing, Ryder stood. “We’re not going to do that, are we?”

  “No.”

  The sound of debris hitting the floor of the shaft occurred simultaneously with Johnston’s voice announcing he was through. After that, the debris came thick and fast, huge pieces falling and shattering. Then a moment of silence. Then Johnston again.

  “We’ve got access, Staff. Waiting for orders.”

  “All right, everybody listen up. Given that the explosion destroyed the air lock and blew her shuttle to shit, Captain Carveg will assume that survivors will make their way to the next air lock and wait for pickup. My download of the Berganitan’s scan of the exterior put the next air lock down on the belly of the beast—maybe another seven levels and about four klicks aft and three and a half inboard. Since we’re going down anyway, I want supplies and the injured brought to this position. Any questions?”

  “Dursinski, Staff. Captain Carveg doesn’t know we’re alive, does she?”

  “That’s correct. Unless they’ve come up with something that can read through the hull since we left this morning, Captain Carveg has no way of knowing if anyone survived the explosion.”

  “Then how do we know she’ll wait for us to get to the other air lock? We’ll be moving injured personnel through unfamiliar territory inside an alien vessel—it’s going to take time.”

  “You’re Recon, Dursinski, moving through unfamiliar territory is what you do.”

  “But Captain Carveg…”

  “Will have a shuttle waiting by that air lock until she knows we’re dead.”

  “Speaking of the dead, Staff, what do we do with them?”

  Body bags were standard equipment on combat vests. Every Marine carried one. Activated, the bag would use the single charge it carried to reduce its contents to fit inside a narrow cylinder less than two inches long. Marines didn’t leave their own behind. Since she’d made sergeant, Torin had carried more cylinders than she wanted to remember—every one was one dead Marine too many.

  Of the ten scientists, there were eight dead. Plus Cirvan a Tar palRentskik. Nine.

&
nbsp; “You said you bagged them, Nivry; what in?”

  “Depends on the size of the piece.”

  “Send someone down, I’m on my way up.”

  She’d taken only a single step toward the hatch when Ryder’s hand on her arm pulled her up short.

  “Are you going to tell them?”

  “That they’ve designed this part of the ship around bits they pulled from your head? Yes,” Torin added when he nodded. “I don’t hold back information that might help keep my people alive.”

  “You don’t think it’ll distract them?”

  “They’re trained to stay focused while penetrating into enemy territory, Mr. Ryder. As long as it doesn’t pin them down under a withering cross fire before calling in an air strike, I don’t think your head will offer them much of a challenge.”

  * * *

  “Bottom line, Staff Sergeant, if they get themselves blown up, no one’s going to blame you.”

  Begging the general’s pardon, Torin thought, staring at the dead, but sure as shit someone’s going to blame me if I just leave them here.

  “It’s not like you were under fire, Staff Sergeant.” She could hear the Board of Inquiry as clearly as if she was standing before them. “You took the time to make field rations.”

  Field rations. That would certainly solve the problem. And they probably wouldn’t taste any worse.

  “Staff?”

  “What is it, Heer?”

  “Werst and I would like to do ritual for the two Krai. They were spread around a bit, but if we run them through the mess kit, we can probably get four meals each out of them.”

  She frowned down at the engineer. “Did I say field rations out loud?”

  Seven bags.

  Torin ran her thumb along the edges the explosion had ripped in the wall. If more than five Marines died on the way to that other air lock…

  “No one dies.”

  “Staff?”

  “Bag them, Nivry. We’ll carry them out.”

  * * *

  “Harveer Niirantapajee.” Torin looked down at the scientist sitting slumped against the wall, noting three field dressings and, through a singed hole in her lab coat, a glistening blister on one shoulder that had turned gray-green skin a muddy yellow. “I’m Staff Sergeant Kerr. Do you think you’ll be able to climb down a vertical ladder or should we lower you?”