[Confederation 04] Valor's Trial

by Huff, Tanya

  “Yes, of course,” she said as he stood and held out his hand. “I’m very pleased to meet you, Mr. Kerr, and wish it had been under better circumstances.”

  “High Tekamal? That’s . . .”

  “High Tekamal Louden is the Commandant of the Corps,” the colonel pointed out.

  John Kerr shot him a disinterested glance. “And you’re not,” he said dryly. Dismissing the man with an ease that caused the corner of the commandant’s mouth to twitch, he indicated the table’s third chair. “Join us for a drink, Commandant?”

  “I’d like to, yes. I’m sure you have things to do, Colonel.”

  Too well trained to react, the colonel managed a neutral, “Yes, sir.”

  Sure money he’d be waiting when she left the bar, Craig thought as he turned and walked stiffly away.

  “You’re here, both of you, because you were notified about Gunnery Sergeant Kerr,” Louden said as the bartender sent over a glass filled with a lager significantly paler than the ales the two men were drinking. Either she came in here a lot, or every bar on Ventris had Commandant Landen’s preferences on file. Given the demands on her time, probably the latter.

  “And you’re here . . . ?” John prodded. “Not that I don’t doubt my daughter was an exemplary Marine, but from what I hear, you lose a lot of those every day.”

  “Too many.” She raised her glass slightly before she drank, and the men drank with her. “But most of those,” she continued after the glasses returned to the table, “don’t have a . . .” Eyes the same pale gray as the station walls swept over Craig and back to John. “. . . friend who uses my name to access sections of the station off limits to casual civilians.”

  The snort was deeper but similar in every other respect to the sound his daughter made. “Is he in trouble?”

  “No. We, the Corps, indeed the entire Confederation, owe Mr. Ryder a debt . . .”

  She wasn’t, Craig realized, going to explain what exactly that debt was. Probably not a good idea to remind civilians about the infiltration of the military by molecular-sized bits of intelligent plastic.

  “. . . and he’s taking advantage of that.”

  John nodded. “And you like him.”

  A network of fine lines bracketed the pale eyes when she smiled. “And I like him.”

  “Good. The Corps was everything to my daughter for a long time. We always figured that when she finally met someone, they’d be a part of that. When he wasn’t, we were curious. But you, for all intents and purposes, you are the Corps, so if you like him, well, that’s another point in his favor.”

  “The gunny didn’t tell you much about him, then.”

  He took another drink. “Torin was never one for passing on details of her personal life.”

  “Thank fuk for that,” Craig muttered into his beer.

  “I need to know what happened to my daughter, Commandant.” The tip of one finger rubbed a pattern into the condensation on the tabletop. “I can’t go home and tell them that the Corps doesn’t know.”

  She died. Craig thought. He could barely hear Louden’s answer over the roaring in his ears.

  “Gunnery Sergeant Kerr died while performing her duty as a Marine.”

  “You’ve got no evidence of that.”

  “We have no evidence she survived either. We’re no longer receiving a signal from her ID, and she couldn’t possibly survive anything able to destroy that chip.”

  John Kerr shrugged broad shoulders. “Chip could have been removed and destroyed.”

  “Mr. Kerr, we lost seven hundred and thirty-eight people in the attack that took your daughter. Another twenty-seven died in other actions during that same battle and we had three hundred and twelve wounded. We took . . .” Both her hands tightened around the base of her glass. “We took catastrophic losses that day and I would give anything to believe that even one of those seven hundred and sixty-five people survived, but I can’t.”

  “I can.”

  “How?”

  A good question and one Craig wanted the answer to as well. He wanted his belief in Torin’s invincibility back.

  “This whole thing could be a ploy by the Others. They could have cleared the battlefield before they destroyed it, before they destroyed the evidence.” He held up a calloused hand. “I know what you’re going to say, the Others don’t take prisoners—but they could. They could be covering their tracks. Could have been covering their tracks from the beginning. Every body you never found could have been a result of the enemy scooping up your people, questioning them, learning about the Confederation, using them for slave labor, hell, using them for food.

  The High Tekamal sighed and shook her head. “I’m sorry, Mr. Kerr, but we learned early on in this war that if you surrender to the Others, you die, even when it’s in their best interests to keep you alive. We don’t know why, but we do know that they don’t take prisoners.”

  Based on her initial experience, Torin had to say that the afterlife truly sucked. Her entire body ached, her mouth tasted like she’d been licking shell casings, and she had a headache centered over both eyes that pounded on and on like a silent artillery barrage in her skull.

  No noise, just the kind of pounding that shook teeth free.

  No.

  Not quite no noise.

  A soft scuffling.

  Bare feet on rock.

  To both Krai and di’Taykan, the Human sense of smell was limited, but she had no trouble identifying the sharp, old-cheese scent of unwashed flesh.

  Holding her breath, she waited until the first tentative touch, then grabbed about ten centimeters back, wrapped her fingers around a warm cylinder of flesh, and slammed it to the ground. By the time she had her knee pressed against the familiar ridges of a bowed spine, she had her eyes open.

  Krai. Problem, but not a bad one. Krai bone was one of the toughest substances in known space, but joints were, as always, the weakest part of the design, and a spine was essentially a long line of joints. She’d have been in trouble had she not managed to flip . . . him, Torin guessed from the size and the pattern of mottling on the nearly hairless scalp, but as it was, all she had to do was hang on.

  And hope she hadn’t taken down a medic come to check on her condition.

  That would be embarrassing.

  And not the first time.

  Although medics were usually cleaner.

  “Arshantac chrick!” she barked as he struggled. The approximate translation: Yield or be food! Historically, Krai battles became banquets with astonishing speed although, even had she been Krai, Torin doubted she’d have made a meal of her captive. To begin with, the smell was distinctly off-putting, but more importantly, he wore a Marine Corps uniform, and the Corps had worked very hard to instill the belief that Marines did not eat other Marines.

  Impossible to read his collar tabs while she had him flat on his face on the . . .

  Floor of the cave?

  Looked like a natural pocket in the rock off what was definitely a constructed tunnel if the lights she could see hanging from the rough curve of the ceiling were any indication.

  The Marine under her knee had neither the leverage nor the strength to move her, but he gave it his best shot.

  Torin appreciated that even as she blinked away new pain from where the side of his fist had connected with her cheekbone, impact creating a counterpoint to the pounding that continued in her skull. “That is enough,” she snarled, at the end of her patience. She was not surprised when he stilled. There were theories that a senior NCO could stop artillery fire using that tone. Shifting her weight back onto her heels, she stood, dragging him to his feet and spinning him in place to face her.

  He tensed to bolt.

  “Don’t.”

  He didn’t.

  Private first class. Not surprising given his youth. In spite of the smell, he didn’t actually look too bad. Combats were designed to repel dirt and, given the filth of his exposed skin, his had obviously been fully tested. The fit of his uni
form suggested he’d been eating, if not frequently at least regularly. He stood with his weight almost entirely on his left foot, only the outside edge of his right touching the rock.

  Physically, she’d seen a lot worse. Emotionally, though . . .

  There was desperation in his eyes that made her think of a whipped dog. He wanted to move toward her, he wanted her to make it all better, but pain and terror kept him away.

  Torin arranged her face into its best every Marine in the Corps is mine expression. “Name, rank, and unit number, Private!”

  Muscle memory attempted to bring him to attention. “Kyster . . .”

  The Krai had family names that went on for hours and could not be shortened.

  “. . . Private First Class . . .”

  Not surprising given his youth.

  “. . . 6th Division, 2nd Recar’ta, 1st Battalion, Tango Company!”

  Name, rank, and unit number spilled out as one long word—a drilled response rather than a conscious reply, his voice rough as though he hadn’t been using it enough over the last little while to wear down the edges. Years of practice slotted the breaks in, and Torin frowned. Sixth Division? Interesting. Same Defensive Sector as Torin’s 7th Division but, given the distances involved, not exactly right next door. They’d never fought together, that was for damned sure. “How long have you been here, Kyster?”

  “Don’t . . . can’t . . .” He frowned, struggling to find the right the word. “. . . remember . . .” His gaze flicked to her sleeve, as he struggled to stand straight. “. . . Gunnery Sergeant.”

  “Kerr. Gunnery Sergeant Kerr. Sit down before you fall down.” She nodded toward a reasonably flat-topped chunk of rock. “There.”

  The downside of Krai bones was that if they broke they took a long time to heal. Kyster had broken at least one bone in his foot—maybe two; she’d need a closer look to be sure. They’d healed unset, but they were healed. Given that he’d clearly been on short rations and just as clearly had been using the foot, Torin figured it had been at least twenty-five tendays since the break. Minimum.

  As he settled, his gaze never leaving her face, she checked herself for injuries and found nothing more than the bruising she’d already been made aware of and the headache that was beginning to fade. Atmosphere was clear breathable. Gravity . . . She flexed her knees. Gravity was approximately Human norm. Maybe a little less. Station norm, not dirtside. With muscle and bone developed in Paradise’s heavier gravity, that gave her a slight advantage although against what was still to be determined. She was in her combats with vest and boots, but her helmet and her slate were missing. She still had two filters— she remembered using one just before all hell broke loose—all three stims, a packet of wet wipes, and a tube of sealant. Her KC-7 and grenades were gone as was the knife from the sheath in her boot—no big surprise that her weapons had been removed. Both sleeves were blank, so she had to assume that the tech in her uniform was dead.

  Unsealing her vest, she slipped a hand inside and smiled.

  Kyster bolted.

  “Not a threat,” she snapped, grabbing the back of his collar and reapplying his ass to the rock as carefully as circumstances allowed. “Just happy they missed something.” Two somethings actually, but she wasn’t going to think about the salvage tag still hanging between her breasts, not right now. Not until she knew she could control her reaction. “Hold out your hand.”

  There were pinkish-gray scars on his palm and a half-healed sore between thumb and forefinger. His weight hadn’t dropped much, but nutrition levels were low enough his body wasn’t diverting much to nonessentials like minor wounds. That, at least, she could do something about.

  Part of an organization with the best support system in known space, Marines carried everything they needed into combat, fully aware that supply lines could be cut. A burden in the beginning, eventually, and sooner rather than later, the pack—food, first aid, coffee, dry socks, porn—became another appendage like an arm or a leg or a KC-7. But packs could be lost or destroyed, and everyone kept something tucked into his or her vest.

  Torin, responsible since her promotion to staff sergeant for a minimum of forty Marines, kept three strips of food tabs—one for Humans, one for di’Taykan, one for Krai. They were supplements only, but since living off the land meant sweet fuk all if even one essential amino acid went missing, they could easily mean the difference between strong-enough-to-fight and roll-over-and-play-dead.

  When she dropped a tab on Kyster’s palm, he stared at it as though he’d never seen it before.

  He probably hadn’t. Given the impressive parameters of the Krai digestive system, supplements for their species were considered almost an oxymoron. Torin carried them because of that almost. If she had to guess, given that they were clearly underground, she’d say the odds were good Kyster’s diet had been limited as to selection.

  “Eat it,” she said.

  Air whistling past the mucus plugs in his nose ridges, Kyster obediently licked the tab off his palm.

  Torin nodded once in approval and took a look out into the constructed tunnel. At some point, and not recently given the way the edges had lost the look of raw stone, there’d been a rockfall about three hundred meters to her right. The broken pile plugged the tunnel, spilled out about nine meters and left the last light dangling in pieces although the wire apparently continued unbroken. To the left, the tunnel ran about half a kilometer and then curved. No more than two meters at their widest point, the walls were rough and rounded, floor and ceiling only barely flattened. It looked like the work of a mining bore—an access shaft to the work face. Darker shadows suggested other natural alcoves like the one she found herself in.

  It smelled too much of Kyster for her to identify any other scents, and the absolute silence told her nothing at all.

  In a war that spanned both centuries and galaxies, time and space, there were three absolutes: the Navy had better food, the Corps left no one behind, and the Others didn’t take prisoners.

  When she turned, Kyster was staring up at her as if he expected her to have all the answers.

  Good thing that was part of her job description.

  “All right.” Moving back inside, she sat facing the young Marine and gentled her voice to keep him from trying to bolt again. “What the hell is going on here?”

  “Here, here?” His gesture included her and the small cave.

  “Start here.”

  “Must’ve been a battle.”

  He paused, so she nodded. Heerik and number three squad and 744s dropping by eye and the brilliant white light . . .

  “After battles, people in little caves. Marines. Sometimes.”

  Torin forced herself back to the here and now, filling in the missing words. “Marines show up in the little caves? How?” she demanded when he nodded.

  “Don’t know.”

  She looked around the cave, stood, ran her hands over all of the rock she could reach, and methodically moved everything that could be moved. With her sleeve light out and only the dim spill from the tunnel, it was possible she missed a hatch or some other entrance, but she didn’t think so. Kyster stayed where she’d put him, never taking his eyes off her.

  “All right. Fine.” She sat down again. “Where are we?”

  “Underground.”

  Succinct, but a bit obvious. “Where?”

  “Don’t know.”

  An underground POW camp, then. All right, she could work with that—she didn’t like it, but she could work with it. “Where’re the other Marines who’ve shown up in the caves?”

  “By the pipe.”

  “Why aren’t you by the pipe?”

  “Didn’t want me.” He thrust his right foot forward and took a deep breath. “Said I was a waste of food ’cause I came with my foot busted.”

  Some of the words ran together, and some of the pauses between them went on a little too long, but it was an actual sentence.

  “Who said?” Torin asked, pleased to see Kyster�
�s lips curl back off his teeth. The kid had taken the rejection as a challenge. That attitude had likely kept him alive.

  “Calls himself Colonel Harnett. Not!” His nostril ridges flared wide. “More like a . . . a beranitac!”

  A large predator on the Krai home world. They formed packs, and the alpha male ruled by tooth and claw—both of which they had in abundance. There were theories that the beranitacs were one of the main reasons that the Krai hadn’t bothered coming down out of the trees until they’d developed the necessary weapons tech to deal with them. There were very few wild beranitacs left.

  “Is he a Marine?”

  He nodded. “All Marines here.”

  And this Marine had said Kyster was a waste of food because of his injury. And other Marines had allowed it. Corps structure didn’t break down that rapidly on its own. It had been broken.

  “Dumped in the tunnels, away from food. I . . .” He seemed to fold in on himself and wouldn’t look at her.

  “You survived,” Torin told him, struggling to keep her growing rage from her voice. The last thing she wanted right at this moment was for Kyster to think she was angry with him. He’d survived. Alone. All those tendays while his foot was healing. No wonder he was having trouble talking. “I suspect only a Krai could have.”

  “Marines don’t eat other Marines.”

  And that answered the question of how he’d survived. A limited diet indeed. “Were they dead?”

  “Chrick . . .”

  When he didn’t go on, when he stared down at his misshapen foot, lips still off his teeth, his whole bearing a combination of abject misery and defiance, she nodded and said, “But one of them was very badly injured.” Kyster had been scooped injured off a battlefield; it didn’t take a genius to figure it wasn’t the only time it had ever happened. “So you sat with them until they died, and then you ate them. They were chrick. Edible. Is that what happened?”

  “Yes, Gunnery Sergeant.”

  “Well done, Private.”

  The words jerked his gaze up onto her face.

  “Under these circumstances,” she continued in a tone that left no room for argument, “those Marines would be proud to have kept you alive. And when we haul ass out of here, they’ll be going with you because they’re a part of you now. You’ve seen to it that we don’t leave them behind.”