The Better Part of Valor

by Tanya Huff

  “You hear anything coming through, you let me know!” she told him as Heer propped his stump up and he checked the charge on his benny. “You see anything, you shoot it and you let me know!”

  His teeth were a brilliant white arc, slightly chipped on the right side. “You worry too much, Staff.”

  “Yeah, it’s what I do. Heer…” She grabbed the engineer by the arm and dragged him to the edge of the open hatch leading to the lower level. “You and Johnston are in charge of the civilians.” Three quick strides took her across the corridor; half a dozen shorter ones brought her back with the Katrien who clung silently to each other. As much as she’d come to hate the sound of their voices, the silence was disconcerting. Johnston crossed behind her, one arm half guiding, half carrying Harveer Niirantapajee.

  “The bugs break through, you get them down below and into an escape pod.”

  “What if they come up from below?”

  “If they could, they’d be there now, flanking us. No one charges a fixed position, even a piss poor one if they have an option. Once the pods are launched…”

  “We’re back up here to help kick bug butts.”

  Torin looked from the Human to the Krai and saw identical expressions. “Your choice,” she told them. “But don’t spend your lives stupidly or you’ll answer to me—if not in this life then the next.”

  “Staff Sergeant Kerr, I are not…are not…” Presit stared down toward the barricade, now stronger by the stretchers but still a fragile bulwark.

  “It’ll be okay.” Torin pulled the reporter’s attention back to her. “We do this for a living.”

  “I are not wanting to die.”

  “Well, I are not intending to.”

  Presit bristled at Torin’s mocking tone and looked better than she had in hours.

  Some people just prefer being annoyed. And annoying civilians seemed to be a big part of her job. “Stay low,” Torin reminded the two Marines, as she turned. “The bugs seem fixated on this whole brain in the head thing and keep shooting high.”

  As she reached the barricade, a flurry of shots slapped into the packs and sizzled overhead.

  “Here they come!”

  * * *

  “Command, this is B7. We have another extrusion out of Big Yellow.”

  “Roger, B7. Is this second extrusion identical to the first?”

  “Shy?”

  “Not exactly.” The lieutenant bent over her screens, cadmium hair flicking back and forth. “But until you stop flinging us around, I won’t be able to identify the difference.”

  He dropped the Jade fifteen meters, forty-five degrees to the Y-axis. “When I stop flinging us around, we go boom.”

  The yellow coating slid off the sphere and back into the ship.

  “B7, we repeat, is the second extrusion identical to the first?”

  “That’s a good question, Command.” Straight up. Full port thrusters for six seconds. “And as soon as we know, we’ll let you know. Shy!”

  “I’ve got her.”

  The bug fighter went spinning out of control and as the other fighters concentrated on getting out of her way, Sibley brought his Jade in for a tight swoop around the sphere.

  “I’m reading life signs inside!”

  “You catch that, Command?”

  “Roger, B7. What species?”

  “Insufficient data.”

  “Get the data!”

  “Oh, yeah, easy for you to say,” Sibley muttered, slipping his Jade under the arc of two incoming bugs. “It’s getting a little crowded out here.”

  His maneuver threw one bug off enough that her shot merely skimmed the sphere.

  * * *

  “Oh, crap!” Ryder spit the words out through clenched teeth. His inner ear told him he was spinning and damned fast, too, given the pressure pushing him into the walls.

  * * *

  Sibley locked onto the tail of the second bug swinging into the attack and she broke it off before they could get a lock.

  “Command, this is B7. I don’t know who’s inside, but the bugs don’t seem to like them much.”

  “The bugs are shooting at the sphere?”

  “Well, duh.”

  “B7, we didn’t copy that last transmission.”

  Grinning, Sibley spun his Jade one-eighty to give Shylin a clear shot at an enemy fighter. “I said, that’s an affirmative. The bugs are shooting at the sphere.”

  “Lieutenant Commander Sibley, this is Captain Carveg.”

  “Now you’re in for it,” Shylin muttered.

  “If the bugs want that sphere destroyed, I want it picked up and brought in.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain.” He burned upper thrusters for three seconds, dropping straight down out of a missile lock. “Uh, got any ideas how we can do that without getting our asses burned?”

  “B7, this is Red Mace One. We’re moving in to cover you.”

  “Does that answer your question, Mr. Sibley?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Maneuvering over the sphere wasn’t the problem. Canceling its spin, however, was a little trickier.

  “Equal and opposite force?”

  Shylin shook her head. “Given the way the first one went up, I wouldn’t want to risk a shot.”

  “Okay, we extend an energy field, let it transfer momentum, and I correct our spin.”

  “We’ll be sitting rinchas while we’re spinning,” Shylin reminded him. “I won’t be able to get a shot off, and the Maces’ll have our lives in their hands.”

  Sibley barely touched the starboard thrusters, then goosed portside to bring them into position. “What’s the point of having friends if you can’t take advantage of them? Right, Red One?”

  “Don’t worry about it, Shy. We’ll keep you in one piece; your bastard pilot owes me money.”

  “Extending field…”

  * * *

  Double impact against opposite sides of the pod.

  Ryder rubbed at a dribble of sweat running into his beard. All of a sudden, he desperately had to piss.

  * * *

  “Round and round and round she goes.” Stars, bug fighters, Jades, and Big Yellow circled by; once, twice, three times. Sibley’s fingers danced over the controls canceling the spin without sending them around the other way. “Where she stops nobody knows—but me.”

  “Ablin gon savit,” Shylin muttered as they slowed. “You actually figured out how to fly this thing.”

  They hung motionless in space for a moment, then he locked onto the Berganitan’s coordinates and hit the thrusters.

  “Red One, this is B7. I’m taking my ball, and I’m going home.”

  “Roger, B7. We have you covered.”

  * * *

  MDCs gone, Torin switched to laser and dove out from behind the barricade under the reaching arms of the incoming bug. Slicing through the joint in the armor where the thorax joined the abdomen, she hit the deck, rolled, slid, and kicked out hard. To her surprise, the top half of the bug separated from the bottom half. As she rose to her knees, dripping with bug blood and stinking of cinnamon, Dursinski and Huilin took out the pieces.

  The sudden silence made her ears ring.

  The bugs had made it almost all the way to the Marine position. They’d been advancing behind their own dead.

  “Good thing they’re so explosive,” Torin muttered, crawling back behind the barricade. “And I gotta say that’s an observation I never thought I’d make.”

  When she went to stand, an energy bolt sizzled past her right ear, close enough so her PCU reacted with a painful burst of static.

  “They’ve retreated, but they’re not giving up.”

  Torin dropped to a crouch. “I noticed. Anyone have numbers on remaining unfriendlies?”

  Dursinski scratched at the chemical neutralizer dribbling down her cheek. “I saw six go back.”

  “Yeah, six.” Werst grunted, ridges flared. “And there’s nine, maybe ten bodies.”

  Fifteen, maybe sixteen. Half
of the thirty they’d faced in the garden. And if the bugs were willing to keep spending lives, they weren’t going to last through many more charges. And there would be more charges, she was certain of that. Once the bugs regrouped, they’d try again.

  “Stay sharp, people.”

  No need to tell them to consolidate the dregs of their ammo into a single power unit. No need to tell them to stay sharp either, but they needed her to say something.

  Huilin had Frii tucked into the crease between bulkhead and deck. Blood stained the chest of the younger di’Taykan’s combats almost black.

  “How is he?”

  Huilin shrugged. “I’ve got a tube in and he’s breathing okay, but this is way beyond first aid. When we get back to the Berganitan they’re going to have to rebuild the whole front of his throat.”

  He looked up at her as he said it and Torin read the challenge in his eyes.

  “We’ll get back to the Berganitan,” she told him, her fingers wrapping around Frii’s for a moment. “You have my word on it.”

  “All of us?”

  She let Frii’s limp hand slide from hers and fought the urge to touch Guimond’s cylinder. “All of us,” she answered grimly.

  The captain’s vitals were unchanged.

  The Katrien were talking again, a series of high-pitched, overlapping short shrieks and howls. It could have been Katrien hysterics. It sounded like Katrien conversation. The harveer appeared to be in shock, her leg joints drawn up against her stomach, motionless but for the trembling in the tip of her tail. There wasn’t any comfort Torin could offer, so she moved on.

  Tsui licked his lips as she crouched beside him. “I’m having an intense craving for a cinnamon donut.”

  “Yeah?” Torin scraped a congealed bit of bug off her thigh with her thumbnail. “I, personally, may never eat French toast again. You said the vibration’s getting stronger?”

  “That was a while ago, Staff.”

  “I was busy.” Palm pressed against the hatch, she frowned. “There’s a throbbing under the vibration?”

  “Yes, there is.” Tsui frowned. “It seems familiar. It’s like a sound I’ve heard a thousand times, but I can’t put my finger on what it is.”

  “It is a sound you’ve heard a thousand times.”

  And it was the reason the bugs were so riled up and ready to die.

  Big Yellow had started up its engines.

  * * *

  “B7, this is Command. Cut fields and release the sphere into shuttle bay one.”

  “Roger, Command. Shuttle bay one, it is. If we get there in one piece,” he added under his breath. “What the hell’s bugging the bugs?”

  The one hundred and eighteen kilometers back from Big Yellow had nearly doubled. In spite of his escort, Sibley had needed to use every flying trick he had to keep from being destroyed. Normally, the bugs would have pulled back when they came within range of the Berganitan’s guns, but the mass of Jades and fighters were so intermixed, the big guns were useless.

  “Now would be the time for a few Jades to peel off and take out the Others’ ship,” Shylin noted grimly.

  “And which of our escort would you like to lose?” Sibley asked her. “I myself would just as soon not get my ass blown off.”

  Up ahead, the shuttle bay doors were opening.

  “I guess as long as they’re not launching a rescue mission, Big Yellow’s willing to release control. Red Leader, this is B7; am flipping ninety degrees to release.”

  As the sphere seemed to have no propulsion system, the only way to get it into the Berganitan was to line it up on the doors and give it a push—hard enough to get inside before one of the bugs got in a lucky shot, not so hard it was moving too fast for the emergency docking equipment.

  As he began the flip, he caught sight of something out of the corner of one eye and trying for another look, cranked his head around so hard he nearly self-inflicted more damage than the bugs had managed.

  “Uh, Command, is that a big net?”

  “Affirmative, B7.”

  “You want me to toss this thing into a big net?”

  “The item is too smooth for the docking clamps. Is it a problem?”

  “Uh, negative, but I’m outside the foul line, so it’s a three-point shot.” He juiced the top thrusters, released the grapples, and vectored away. The sphere continued along its original course. “And an object in motion will remain in motion unless acted upon by an equal or opposite force.”

  “Sib, are you all right?”

  “Me?” A quick slip sideways took them out between Red Three and Four. “I’m having a ball.”

  * * *

  “Captain, we have the sphere in the shuttle bay. Pressurizing now.”

  She surged up out of her chair. “Tell them I’m on my way.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain.”

  “Captain!” Lieutenant Potter’s voice stopped her at the hatch. “Security reports General Morris and Lieutenant Stedrin on their way to the shuttle bay.”

  A little tired of having the general show up in C3 without warning, she’d had security tracking him. “Delay him,” she snapped. “I don’t want him there first.”

  * * *

  Totally featureless and smoothly gray, the sphere hung in the net about a meter off the deck. Half a dozen technicians crowded around it with handheld scanners and portable science stations, and behind them an equal number of security personnel stood with weapons drawn.

  “Can I assume proper quarantine procedures were followed?” Captain Carveg snorted, glancing around.

  The senior science officer jumped at the sound of her voice and hurried over. “It’s absolutely clean, Captain,” he assured her. “Not so much as a micro on it. And, if we compare it to the preliminary reports of the science team on Big Yellow, it’s the same combination of metals and polyhydroxide alcoholydes as the original corridor just inside the air lock.”

  “Then I suggest we don’t use cutting tools on it.”

  “We weren’t planning to, ma’am.”

  “Good.” She walked forward until she stood a body-length away, security and science alike moving aside for her. “What’s in it?”

  “An excellent question.”

  The science officer jumped again as General Morris’ comment boomed out and echoed around the shuttle bay.

  “You might think about switching to decaf, Commander,” the captain muttered as she turned.

  If General Morris was annoyed she’d arrived first, he wasn’t allowing it to show. He crossed quickly to her side, Lieutenant Stedrin behind his left shoulder, and stood rubbing his hands together expectantly. “Well, is it Captain Travik?”

  The commander glanced from his captain to the general to his slate. “It’s, uh, Human, ma’am. Sir.”

  The general smiled broadly. “No Human scientists survived, so it’s got to be one of my Marines. Now, we’ll find out what’s happening. Might even be Staff Sergeant Kerr.”

  “The staff sergeant would never leave the Recon team, sir,” Lieutenant Stedrin murmured, leaning toward the general’s ear.

  Captain Carveg’s estimate of the lieutenant rose.

  “Well, whoever it is, it’s a Marine. Get it open, Commander.”

  “I’d be happy to, sir, but I don’t know how.”

  * * *

  With the return of gravity came the unwelcome realization that the hatch was now on the bottom of the pod. Straddling it, Ryder stared down at the T-bar. He had no way of knowing which ship he was on. If he’d been taken prisoner by the Others, being upside down was the least of his problems.

  Unfortunately, there was only one sure way to find out.

  He bent, took hold of the bar, and twisted it counter-clockwise a hundred and eighty degrees. It snapped into place. Releasing it, he straightened.

  * * *

  A tech kneeling under the sphere threw herself backward. “Commander!”

  “I see it.” A dark crack now outlined an area about a meter square. “Filters, eve
ryone. Captain.”

  “Thank you.” As she slapped the disposable filter over her mouth and ridges, she turned to check the watching Marines. The lower half of both faces bore an unmistakable sheen. General Morris might have a knack for showing up and being a pain in the ass, but at least he came prepared. Although the odds were better Lieutenant Stedrin had come prepared.

  * * *

  The hatch sighed open.

  Ryder stared down at a familiar square meter of deck. It looked exactly like the deck he’d parked the Promise on. So I’m either on the Berganitan, or the North Fleetrin Shipyards really do have the lowest prices in the universe.

  He was probably no more than a meter and a half up. Less than his own height. So he jumped.

  * * *

  “You!”

  Ryder moved out from under the sphere and straightened. “And g’day to you, too, General,” he replied, adding, as the other man pushed past him to look up into the sphere, “You’re shit out of luck if you think I brought friends.”

  “Nothing!”

  “Told him,” Ryder remarked conversationally to the area at large.

  General Morris slapped the side of the sphere with enough force to start it swinging. “Why you?” he demanded.

  Before Ryder could answer, Captain Carveg stepped forward, her expression suggesting she’d had about as much of General Morris as she could handle and was about ready to chew a piece out of him. “You’re going back for them in the Promise, aren’t you?”

  He was safe and he was going back. He was out of his mind. “Yes, Captain, I am.”

  * * *

  The first energy bolt in some minutes hit the packs, was partially absorbed by the fabric, arced over an area that had been previously fried, and fizzled out to nothing.

  “When we get out of this, remind me to send a nice thank you note to the company that makes these packs,” Harrop muttered, picking himself up off the deck.

  “I hate to discourage good manners,” Torin told him, “but I suspect the bugs are nearly out of juice. That shot had nothing behind it.”

  Dursinski sat slumped on the deck, head between her knees. “So, when they run out, do they give up or what?”

  “What,” Torin answered calmly. “A final flurry of shots to keep our heads down, then it’s hand-to-hand.”

  “Hand-to-claw.” Dursinski’s lower lip went out. “That is so unfair.”