Valor's Choice

by Tanya Huff

  “The upper door leads out onto the street that runs behind the compound.” Haysole murmured as they climbed. “It’s mostly an access alley, so there’s no windows overlooking it. Unfortunately, Sergeant Glicksohn was standing there waiting for me, so I don’t know where the road goes.”

  Binti reached the door first. “I’m assuming the letters on that light say exit—which reminds me, we have a small problem. No translation program.”

  “Not entirely accurate. And quit looking at me like that!” Ressk snapped as all six pairs of eyes turned toward him. He pulled his slate off his belt. “Staff’s implant’s acting up, so she asked me to have a look at her translation program. The data was too scrambled for me to fix the problem, but…” He finished keying in his entry and from the small speaker came an extended string of sibilants.

  “And that means?” Binti demanded.

  “I’ll have whatever he’s drinking.”

  She beamed down at him. “You know, for a short, hairless troll, you’re pretty damned smart.”

  “I still say it wasn’t very smart not to bring our fukking weapons,” Juan muttered as Haysole worked on the door.

  “We’re going out for a drink, not to start a war,” Hollice reminded him. “Besides—anyone who’s not actually armed in some way, speak up now.”

  The silence stretched and lengthened, broken finally by Haysole standing and cracking open the door. The air that pushed in was significantly hotter than the air in the tunnel.

  “It doesn’t even fukking cool down here at night.”

  “Ra Navahsis was cool at night.”

  “And that would mean something if we were in Ra Navahsis.”

  Mouth slightly open, Mysho waved a hand vigorously in front of her face. “I really hate the way this place smells.”

  “What?” Juan demanded. “Your fukking nose plugs aren’t working either?”

  “They’re working. But I still hate the smell.”

  One by one they slipped outside, the two di’Taykan, eyes at their darkest to utilize the minimal amount of light, on point.

  As they rounded the first corner, two dark figures slipped out of the shadows and followed.

  FIVE

  Silsviss street lighting consisted of dim globes bulging out of the sides of concrete pillars, designed to imitate the phosphorescent fungus that grew on many of their trees. It shed a diffused green light that didn’t so much pierce the swirling mist as it was absorbed and reemitted by it.

  “Why are the streets so empty?” Binti asked as they hurried from pillar to pillar. “There aren’t even any vehicles moving around out here.”

  “You don’t think they put potentially dangerous aliens near where people live, do you?”

  She reached out and lightly smacked the back of Ressk’s head. “Who are you calling potentially dangerous?”

  Maintaining defensive positions, they crossed a narrow parklike strip of short vegetation, every step disturbing a cloud of tiny insects that buzzed around their knees before settling back to the ground.

  “Fukking bloodsuckers,” Juan muttered and crushed one against his thigh.

  “They’re not sucking your blood,” Hollice told him, “so leave them alone. And since we’re speaking of alone—Haysole! There’s nothing out here. Where are we going?”

  The di’Taykan pointed through a masking screen of giant ferns toward a cluster of low-lying buildings skirting what looked like the Silsviss version of a chain-link fence. The buildings behind the fence had the unmistakable appearance of barracks. “This is the direction the soldiers came from when we went through maneuvers today,” Haysole explained. “And where you find soldiers, some enterprising sort has to have built…”

  “A bar.” Mysho finished.

  “Do we really want to drink with Silsviss soldiers?” Ressk wondered.

  “Would you rather drink with civilians?”

  “Good point.”

  “Stop skulking.” Hollice grabbed Juan’s shirt and hauled him upright. “You skulk and you attract attention.”

  “So if I don’t skulk, are they going to fukking ignore us?” he demanded, yanking the bunched fabric down.

  “Probably not, but at least they won’t think we’re up to something.”

  “We’re not up to something.”

  “The Silsviss don’t know that.”

  “Binti’s right,” Ressk snickered. “It’s time you took your sergeant’s exam. That kind of paranoia isn’t normal.”

  “Look, you walk like a tourist out seeing the sights, that’s how you’re treated. You walk like you’re heading into enemy territory…” The corporal shrugged, his point clear.

  As they emerged from the ferns and stepped out onto another road, the two di’Taykan slowed, allowing the rest of the group to bunch up at their backs. “We’ve been spotted,” Mysho murmured. “A pair of soldiers, over against the end of that building.”

  “Officers?”

  “No, their harnesses are too plain. They’re just a couple of regular grunts.”

  “I wonder how they think we’re walking?” Binti asked sarcastically.

  “Here they come.”

  The six Marines split into three pairs and moved far enough apart to maneuver should it come to a fight.

  One of the Silsviss soldiers spoke, and a moment later Ressk’s slate demanded to know where they were going. Everyone looked at Hollice, who looked at Binti.

  “Your idea,” he reminded her.

  She rolled her eyes and stepped closer to the Krai. “We’re looking for the real Silsvah, not what the politicians decide to show us.”

  The soldier who’d spoken before snorted and no one needed the slate to translate, fukking politicians.

  “Not likely,” Binti snorted. “Probably catch something.”

  The translation program seemed up to the play on words and both Silsviss hissed appreciatively. After a quiet conversation the slate couldn’t pick up, they came to an obvious agreement.

  “We’re heading to our savara…”

  It took the slate an extra moment to translate the new word into the closest Confederation equivalent.

  “…frequently visited drinking establishment. You can come as our trophies.”

  “Trophies?” Hands dropped toward hidden weapons and Ressk’s lips curled back.

  The translation program tried again. “Guests.”

  Raising an eyebrow at Ressk, Binti accepted for all six. “Love to. Frequently visited drinking establishment?” she asked a moment later when names had been exchanged and the Marines had fallen in behind their new friends. “Trophies? What the hell is that all about?”

  “I pulled the program out of Staff’s head while doing a diagnostic. I may be missing a few variables. At least it’s not hissing.”

  “You ever think that we’re only hearing what the program wants us to hear?” Mysho mused. “I mean, when those oxymorons in Military Intelligence get through with it, how do we know that Silsviss doesn’t go in one end and complete garbage comes out the other?”

  “You sure you want to be a corporal?” Ressk asked Binti dryly. “It’ll only make you paranoid.”

  “Mysho’s got a point,” Hollice objected.

  “See?”

  “We don’t know what we’re saying to them any more than we know what they’re saying to us.” Hollice lowered his voice further. “Look at their throat pouches.”

  Both pouches were slightly distended, the stretched skin startlingly pale in the darkness.

  “They’re fukking pleased with themselves, aren’t they?”

  “Hey, they’re kids,” Binti reminded them. “Remember the first time you met an alien up close and personal?”

  The two di’Taykan exchanged a meaningful snicker.

  “At the risk of being species specific,” she muttered, “not quite what I meant.”

  They could hear the savara before they reached it, and even the Humans could smell it soon after that.

  “Outside patio,
” the Silsviss who introduced himself as Sooton explained, leaning in close to the slate. “We’ll wait here and Hairken can go around and give them some warning. The known fellow soldiers have been drinking—if they’re startled, they might take a shot at you.”

  “Don’t want that,” Binti agreed. “Known fellow soldiers?” she sighed when Hairken had disappeared around the corner and Sooton had moved to a vantage point where he could watch both his friend and the Marines. “That sort of thing’s going to get old fast.”

  “’Specially if you fukking repeat it every time,” Juan muttered.

  Hairken reappeared and waved. Sooton beckoned them forward.

  “Once more into the breach, dear friends,” Hollice declaimed quietly.

  The other five turned to stare.

  “It’s a Human reference.”

  Juan snorted. Binti rolled her eyes.

  Hollice sighed. “Just forget I said anything.”

  Taking a step toward them, Sooton hissed and beckoned impatiently. The Marines hurried to his side. “Look, all the fellow soldiers want to meet you, but there’s six members of my partizay there—eight counting Hairken and me—I think we should join them. There are assurances of less violence in numbers.”

  “Safety in numbers?” Binti hazarded.

  The translator hissed her question back at the Silsviss who nodded, “Yes.”

  Turning the corner onto the patio brought them under the scrutiny of between thirty and forty pairs of eyes. Only the four throwing steel darts at a dangling target ignored the new arrivals. The background music didn’t quite fill in the sudden silence.

  After a moment, about half of the staring Silsviss decided it was beneath them to seem impressed by the same aliens they saw daily on the parade square, and conversations started up again, defiantly loud. The remaining eyes tracked them as they moved single file through the gate in the simulated woodgrain plastic fencing and threaded a careful path through tails to a large round table off to one side.

  A shuffling of stools gained everyone a space about the same time Hairken arrived from the service window with a tray of beer.

  “Thanks.” As his slate spat out the Silsviss translation, Ressk slid it out onto the table.

  One of the soldiers stopped clawing an obscene sketch into the tabletop to poke the slate with a finger. “This will allow us to speak to each other?” he asked.

  Ressk swallowed his first mouthful of beer with a happy sigh. “More or less,” he acknowledged, wiping foam out of his lower nasal ridges. “But the program’s set up for officers, so it’ll probably add in a lot of bullshit.”

  The flickering tongues around the table spread throughout the room as those near enough to hear passed on the quip. Tension levels eased somewhat.

  “Hey, artras!”

  “You like artras?” a scarred soldier asked passing the platter so that the Marines could help themselves to the salty pastry. When the answer came back a solid affirmative, his tongue flickered out and he said, “Then you should try a kritkar. Yrs!” The smaller male beside him jerked erect so quickly he almost spilled his beer. “Go to the place in this building where the food is prepared…”

  Hollice kicked Binti under the table before she could either repeat the phrase or roll her eyes and get them all eviscerated. Somehow he doubted that the damage to the side of the Silsviss’ face was the only reason the big soldier appeared to be snarling.

  “…and get a big bowl of kritkar for our alien friends.”

  Clearly feeling responsible, Sooton and Hairken indulged in a brief shoving match. Sooton lost. “Wait a minute, Yrs.” He turned to the scarred soldier. “You said it yourself, Plaskry, these are aliens. Why would they eat kritkar?”

  “Why wouldn’t they?” Plaskry’s throat pouch inflated slightly. “Do they refuse my hospitality? Or do they not have the male equipment to eat soldiers’ food?”

  Wondering what Plaskry had actually said before the translation program mangled it, Hollice touched Sooton lightly on one arm. “We can handle it,” he said, then added more loudly, “bring on the kritkar.”

  Yrs continued to hesitate.

  “What?” Plaskry demanded.

  “Kritkar’s expensive, Plas, and I got my pay chit docked for a moldy tail guard.”

  The snarl broadened. “I’ll pay.”

  “Hey, it’s his partizay, and he’ll pay if he wants to,” Hollice said brightly as the smaller Silsviss scurried away.

  Everyone in ear shot turned to stare.

  “Just fukking ignore him,” Juan advised.

  * * *

  Moving between the pockets of deep shadow created by the dim street lighting, the pair of dark figures had followed the Marines from the embassy to the bar. There’d been a brief exchange when the six had met up with the two Silsviss soldiers, but they hadn’t interfered. Seconds after the Marines had followed Sooton and Hairken onto the patio, they’d slipped into the savara by a side door. The taller of the two had pulled the proprietor aside for a hurried conversation and, after an official bit of hardware had been flashed, they’d been led along the edges of the room and up a flight of stairs to an empty loft overlooking the patio.

  Down below, the Marines were waiting for the kritkar to arrive.

  “I see why no one uses this place,” Torin complained, pulling off the leather cap that had hidden her hair and reshaped her head to a vaguely Silsviss silhouette. “It’s hotter than bloody blue blazes up here.”

  “How hot isss bloody blue blazesss?” Cri Sawyes wondered, settling himself at the edge of the loft.

  “Not as hot as this. Are you sure they can’t see you?”

  He pulled his tail back into the shadows, “Posssitive. I would, however, be more concerned that they don’t sssee you. I very much doubt that any of your lot would recognize me at this dissstance.”

  “The two di’Taykan might. They have a highly developed sense of smell.”

  “Even over thisss?” His gesture took in the nearly visible miasma of beer, greasy food, and heated bodies rising from the patio.

  “Probably not.” Torin made a note of both exits, then settled down beside him. “Should I be worried about the Silsviss we passed downstairs? One or two of them seemed to be giving me what I could only call a flat, unfriendly stare.”

  “We interrupted their drinking. Thossse inssside are not necessssarily here for a good time. They’re the ssseriousss drinkerssss.”

  “From the scars, they looked like serious fighters.”

  “Yesss…” Cri Sawyes fingered the scar on his hip. “They’re the type who challenge and lossse and challenge and lossse—they can’t win, but they can’t ssstop challenging either. I expect it’sss why they drink. Pitiful really.”

  “And the boys on the patio?”

  “I doubt there hasss ever been a ssseriousss challenge made by any of them.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Few ssscarsss. And besssidesss…” His tongue flicked out. “I helped to ssselect the sssoldiersss who would guard the politiciansss who would meet with the aliensss.”

  “Ah.” A quick glance over the railing showed Ressk had slaved his slate to Binti’s. “It’s not going to be hard to keep an eye on my lot, is it? Given sizes and colors, they stick out like half a dozen sore thumbs.”

  Cri Sawyes glanced down at his hand, looking more than a little puzzled. Then he shook his head, having clearly decided it didn’t matter. “To be perfectly honessst, I’m amazed your Lieutenant Jarret allowed you to go through with thisss.”

  “Our orders state that we’re to report on how the Marines and Silsviss interact. We can’t do that unless we have some actual interaction.” Torin nodded toward the patio. “Besides, there’re three Humans, two di’Taykan, and a Krai down there, and if any one of them can’t get along with your common Silsviss soldier—or vice versa—I want to know now. Not when we’re facing the Others and it might cause a problem.”

  “And you don’t think it will caussse a proble
m now?”

  She shrugged. “It’ll cause a bigger problem if it’s accompanied by live ammunition.”

  “True. But sssuppossse the right combination of Marinesss hadn’t decided to go over the wall?”

  “I’d have sent them back until they got it right.”

  “Ssstaff Sssergeant…”

  “All right, when it came down to it, this is essentially the group I expected to make the break. Everyone’s rapidly reaching the point where they need to do something that doesn’t involved standing guard at an unused door, but these six are a little closer to that point than the rest.” Torin swiped at the sweat on her neck, then rubbed her hand dry against her hip. “It’s also why four of them are in the same fireteam—complementary temperaments ensures they work well as a unit.”

  “And their copy of the transsslation program? You planned that asss well?”

  “I made it available to Ressk. He did the rest.”

  “I sssee.” Cri Sawyes sat quietly for a moment, tail tip twitching as he thought. “You know your people,” he said at last.

  Torin nodded. “They’re my people.”

  * * *

  The kritkar arrived in a covered dish. An expectant silence followed its path from the kitchen to the table as the Silsviss on the patio waited to see what these alien soldiers would do.

  A few tongues flicked out as Plaskry elbowed Yrs out of the way the moment he’d set the dish down. It was the bigger male’s joke, after all, and he wanted to deliver the punch line.

  “Help yourself,” he said and lifted the lid.

  A claw, about half an inch long, appeared over the edge of the bowl as the first of the kritkar attempted a last minute escape.

  The tongue flickering grew more pronounced.

  “Like this,” Plaskry hissed, scooping up a handful of the tiny live crustaceans and popping them into his mouth.

  “Oh, like that.” Ressk looked around at the others as though he’d only been waiting for instruction. “Not one at a time…” He scooped an equally large handful out of the bowl. “…like this.”