[Confederation 04] Valor's Trial

by Huff, Tanya

  Inside the cave, a naked male body lay crumpled where it had fallen, pale skin streaked with drying blood, one hand reaching toward her, his face turned away. Whoever he was, he’d been brought in when she had. Whoever he was, he had probably been in the same battle.

  He was Human. Not Jarret.

  He was white. Not Tutone. Hell, Tutone would make two of him.

  It could be Hollice. Or Captain Rose. Too much blood had spilled from the gash over his temple to see hair color.

  The skin of his throat was still slightly warm. Too cold for the living. Not quite cold enough for the dead. The flesh still gave under the pressure of her fingertips.

  No pulse.

  Gently, she turned his face toward her.

  No one she knew.

  His eyes were green, truly green and not hazel or gray. Torin brushed them closed with the edge of her hand. He had a dusting of freckles over the bridge of his nose and more on the right side of his chest, the side that hadn’t been ripped open by something harder and sharper than muscle and bone. Not young. Not Kyster young anyway.

  No one she knew except . . .

  She knew him. Had arrived with him on the shuttle at Ventris and watched him take his place beside her on the yellow line. Had learned to march and shoot and survive with him. Had crammed into a VTA beside him, KC-7 held close, hearts pounding together as they slammed through atmo. Had gone drinking with him after, toasting those who’d made it, remembering those who hadn’t. She’d given him orders. Or taken orders from him.

  Known him.

  He’d been alive when the hunting party had found him.

  Torin backed out of the cave and straightened. She drew in a deep breath. And then another. The air in the tunnel coated the back of her throat with the taste of iron.

  She could hear the hunting party around the corner. They hadn’t gone far.

  Removing the gear from live Marines and then using it to subjugate those same Marines . . . to the strong go the spoils. Torin didn’t like it, but she understood it. Removing the gear from dead Marines made perfect sense.

  Removing the gear from a dying Marine, allowing that Marine to die . . .

  The hunting party—two big Humans and a di’Taykan—had stopped two caves from where Kyster hid on the opposite side of the tunnel, all three facing the low entrance. One of the Humans, bare arms glistening, held a weighted club, a hunk of rock tied to the thicker end. Torin couldn’t see what weapons the other two carried, but overconfidence had left their hands empty. Certain nothing in the tunnels could touch them, they stood around a bloody bundle of fabric and argued about whose turn it was to check the cave. Finally, the di’Taykan threw up his hands and bent down.

  With her first step, Torin heard her boot come up off the rock, the blood that coated the sole half dried and adhesive. Second step, second boot, more blood. She closed the last couple of meters at full speed, spun the woman with the club around and slammed the heel of her hand up into her nose—the bone shattering as the momentum of her approach met the momentum of the spin. Torin grabbed the club one-handed as it dropped from nerveless fingers, ducked inside the other Human’s wild grab, and jabbed her elbow into his throat. As the di’Taykan backed out of the cave, she brought the club down first on the bow of his spine to knock him flat, then back around to crush his skull.

  Two dead. One with bone fragments from her shattered nose driven up into her brain, one with his brain spread out over the dressed rock. One man choking on his own blood, heels drumming on the floor of the tunnel as, thrashing from side to side, he grabbed at his beard and tried to pull air in through his crushed larynx. Torin swung the club again and he stilled.

  As she knelt by his side to be sure, she heard a small sound from back the way she’d come, and she looked up to see Kyster staring.

  “So fast,” he stammered.

  Torin blinked. Let the world rush back in. Found her voice. Barely recognized it. “Can’t give the enemy a chance to think,” she told him, bending to remove the stone knife from the dead man’s boot. Lingering adrenaline kept her heart thrumming, but her breathing had begun to slow. The knife was obsidian, its edges flaked to an unexpected razor edge.

  “They died so fast.” He waved his hands as he limped closer. “In vid fights, people get pounded and pounded, and they don’t fall.”

  It was one of the longer sentences he’d managed since he found her.

  “This wasn’t a fight.” Blood had turned the di’Taykan’s pale blue hair a streaky lavender. “It’s only a fight when both sides are involved. This was . . .”

  Up on one knee, she froze, one hand on the di’Taykan’s knife, the other resting on his thigh, on the leg of his combats. Her fingers were outlined in blood, dark against the gray on gray.

  These were Marines. Had been Marines.

  This was . . .

  Revenge. For a Marine stripped and left to die, his blood pumping out to pool on the rock floor of an impossible prison.

  Reaction. To what she’d heard about Harnett and what she knew her only option would be when she reached the pipe. Harnett had three fewer goons standing beside him now.

  Execution. For crimes committed against the Corps.

  Here and now, her decision to make, and she’d stand by it. Her job to keep her people alive, and sometimes that meant removing those things that would keep her from doing her job. Remove the things that were killing her people.

  She could live with that.

  And she could live with having killed in anger because she had every Goddamned right to be angry about a young man who’d bled out while they joked about the mess.

  Torin looked at the dead, at the people she’d killed, really looked at them, remembering their faces. The Corps left no one behind. She’d carry them out with her, too.

  After months in here, she wondered, bending to brush the blood from the dead woman’s eyes so she could close them, will I be them? Did they think they were doing the right thing when they started?

  It didn’t matter how it had started, what mattered was where it ended up.

  “Kyster.”

  “Gunny?”

  “If I become that,” she shoved the di’Taykan back into the small cave, “find someone to kill me.”

  He ran one hand back over his mottled scalp, eyes locked on her face. “Who, Gunny?”

  Torin sighed as she shoved the second body into the cave. “Improvise, Private.”

  “Yes, Gunny!”

  As she moved the third body, she became aware of the way Kyster’s gaze never left it. Marines didn’t eat other Marines. The Krai had a long history of devouring the bodies of their enemies. “You hungry?”

  She heard him swallow, the sound wet and wanting. “Yes, Gunnery Sergeant.”

  “Eat in the cave, then, and make it fast.”

  As eminently practical as it was, she couldn’t bring herself to watch. No way to avoid the crunch of tiny bones, though. No way to avoid the thought of fingers as she used a wet wipe to clean the blood from her hands.

  Torin’s ears alerted her to the closeness of the pipe before her nose did—and the fact he’d maintained control over basic sanitation was the first positive piece of information she’d received about Colonel Harnett. Granted, he’d probably maintained control with a club, but things hadn’t degenerated to the point that people were shitting where they lived. Of course, since he lived there, too, it was in his own best interest, but it was still a point in his favor, and it gave her another piece of the man who was running the node like his own private fiefdom.

  He had a practical side.

  She’d expected more than a low murmur of sound. No one seemed to be shouting or laughing or screaming. No screaming was good.

  Kyster tensed up the closer they came, his limp becoming more pronounced until he stopped in the center of the tunnel. When she turned to face him, he stared up at her in mute entreaty, his right leg visibly shaking. He wasn’t going to say he couldn’t go closer, she realized. He wa
s afraid to say he couldn’t go closer.

  She weighed having to protect him against the use she could make of him.

  “I’m going to need you in there,” she said quietly.

  Nose ridges opened and closed, air whistling through the half-blocked passages. That wasn’t what he’d expected. “Can’t fight like you.”

  “Of course not.” She kept her tone matter-of-fact. “I’m a gunnery sergeant, you’re a private. I’ve had years more training and years more practice.”

  He glanced back down the tunnel although the bodies were over half a day’s travel away. “You going to kill him? Harnett?”

  She should try to take him alive; bring him before a military court, allow him to face his accusers and mount a defense, trust the Corps to see that justice was done. Except . . . until she got rid of Harnett, she was the Corps, and if a single person hoped to remove a brutal regime, she couldn’t afford to be subtle.

  “Yes.”

  The word hung between them for a moment.

  Kyster thought about it for a moment longer, then he pushed the fear aside and, although his right leg still trembled, his lips curled up off his teeth. “What can I do?”

  Torin nodded, once, allowed her pride in him to show in the gesture, and said as his chin rose and his shoulders squared, “You can say, Yes, Gunnery Sergeant! promptly and loudly where required.”

  He looked confused. “What good will that do?”

  “It’ll remind these people that they’re Marines.” Torin leaned in slightly, caught Kyster’s gaze and held it as she smiled. “A Marine can get through a full contract and never have any contact with an officer above captain, but gunnery sergeants are a known quantity. Aren’t they, Private Kyster?”

  “Yes, Gunnery Sergeant!”

  The response was instinctive.

  Torin waited until she saw that he understood, then she straightened, turned on one heel and started toward the pipe. “Let’s go, then.” After a moment, she heard Kyster fall into step behind her left shoulder.

  They left the club and the di’Taykan’s knife in the next cave they passed, but Torin kept the Human’s knife in her boot sheath. It fit well enough; the material was forgiving. She’d have liked Kyster to take the other knife, but without boots it seemed like a bad idea to walk in with him so visibly armed. Given the difference in height, a knife sized for a di’Taykan hung from a Krai’s hand like a short sword, and nothing was likely to set off the people she had to face faster than a subliminal game of mine’s bigger. Particularly since it was a game Torin intended to win.

  Provided she’d been slapped in stasis directly after the explosion, and a complete lack of any memories regarding transport suggested she had, it had already been over thirty-eight hours since she’d last eaten. The combat she’d been pulled out of didn’t allow for a lot of reserves, and the fight in the tunnel had used up nearly all she had left. The longer she waited to deal with Harnett, the more the lack of food would affect both her judgment and her strength. As the colonel controlled the only food source, the more it placed her under his control.

  That wasn’t going to happen.

  “Around that corner, Gunny,” Kyster said at last. “Then it’s about a ten-meter walk to the place where the pipe is.”

  No individual voice rose above the muted hum. Either Harnett had everyone thoroughly cowed or it was nap time. Maybe both.

  Torin pulled one of the three stims out of her vest and tucked it under her tongue, where it dissolved into a fizz so bitter her eyes watered and her nose ran. The taste was intended to discourage addiction—with her system tagged, a second stim within eighty-one hours would taste even worse.

  After a moment, the world shifted into a sharper focus.

  “Let’s do this. Remember, Private,” she continued as Kyster hesitated, “you’ve got two things those people in there don’t. A belly full of meat and me.” She rubbed a bit of dust off one toe cap, twitched her vest down into position, and rounded the corner.

  There was a trick to making boots—the same boots worn to slip silently up behind the enemy—ring against stone. As she wouldn’t be able to slip silently up behind Colonel Harnett, Torin announced her presence with authority. It was less efficient but a lot more fun.

  The tunnel opened out into a chamber that wasn’t actually circular but seven-sided with a tunnel in the middle of each of the walls she could see—a sort of a nexus or node in the tunnel system. The ceiling was a broad cone, about three meters high at the edges to easily five times in the center where a smooth pipe dropped down to . . . possibly the floor, the billowing walls of crude tents hid the lower two, two and half meters. Torin assumed the tents were Harnett’s command center.

  Striding forward, she had time to see that most of the Marines present were sitting or lying on pallets. The faces turned toward her were uniformly gray, the Human males easily distinguished by their beards, depilatories long since worn off. Torin had stridden barely two meters from the tunnel mouth when the first of Harnett’s people reached her, the di’Taykan staring at her with a combination of fear and disbelief, violet eyes dark as her gaze flicked between her face and her collar tabs.

  There was an old joke in the Corps about a man who’d gone to his eternal rest in the Garden and, while he was sitting by the gate, he saw one of the newly dead welcomed by three acolytes and a small child throwing flowers.

  “I didn’t get a welcome like that,” he complained to an acolyte near him.

  “Ah,” said the acolyte, “but this is the High Exalted of the Church of the Red Star’s Light.”

  And that satisfied the man until the next day when he saw another of the dead welcomed by a dozen acolytes, half a dozen small children, fireworks, performing animals, and a full brass band. As he watched, mouth open, he saw the Gardener walk over to greet this new arrival in person.

  “The High Exalted arrived yesterday,” he reminded the nearest acolyte. “Who the hell is that?”

  “That,” said the acolyte proudly, “is a gunnery sergeant. We’ve never had one of them before.”

  Torin made sure that every millimeter of her said, this is a gunnery sergeant. Given the situation around the pipe, she was willing to bet they hadn’t had one of those before. She locked her gaze on the di’Taykan.

  Who slowly straightened. Her head rose. Her shoulders went back. Her feet shuffled out into parade rest. Odds were good she didn’t even know she was doing it.

  Torin glanced down at the club, essentially identical to the one she’d left back in the cave, and raised a single brow—the ability worth every credit she’d paid for the download.

  The club came up to shoulder rest.

  Torin waited.

  Violet hair began to scribe short jerky arcs in the air.

  “I assume you’ve been sent to find out who I am, Private . . .”

  “Di’Ferinic Akemi, Gunnery Sergeant!”

  Torin waited a moment longer. She could hear the background noise falling off.

  The violet eyes darkened and lightened, and Akemi’s gaze flicked to Torin’s face and away. “Ah . . .”

  “Identify . . .” Torin prompted.

  “Identify yourself and state your business!”

  Torin’s voice filled those parts of the node the background noise had vacated. “Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr. I’m here to see Colonel Harnett.” She had to force herself to use the rank, but she managed it. No need to force herself to sound impatient. Every moment she had to spend on Harnett was one more she wasn’t spending on escape.

  Akemi shook herself, as though trying to wake up, and managed to bark out, “Why?” in a voice that only proved how shaken she was.

  “Why is none of your business,” Torin snapped. She nodded toward the half dozen watchers. She’d have thought that the monotony of imprisonment would have pulled more of them toward a change in their routine, but it seemed only the closest cared enough to make the effort of rising off their pallets.

  They were thin, unifor
ms hanging loose, and the three di’Taykan standing remained in constant physical contact, a sure indication of distress. Shoulders slumped, their faces wore a patina of dirt and hopelessness.

  Looking at them, Torin saw only Marines.

  One by one, they began to straighten.

  Then a swaggering Human, a good half meter taller than Torin’s 1.8 and burly to near beefiness shoved one of the watchers hard enough to knock him off his feet and stomped forward to glare down at her from barely an arm’s length away. She’d been keeping half her attention on his approach while talking to Akemi. His red-blond beard actually bristled; she’d never seen a beard do that before, and she’d seen Craig’s beard do some fascinating things. Like the woman in the tunnel, he’d removed his sleeves—an impressive bit of tailoring since the construction of Corps combats was definitely Marine resistant. The watching Marines drifted away, Corporal Bristly Beard’s presence negating any interest they had in what was going on.

  “You tell me your business with the colonel, or you don’t come any closer.” He snarled so broadly, she could see bits of food stuck between his teeth.

  The brow rose again.

  He frowned, realized where she was looking, and stopped snarling, cheeks flushing self-consciously.

  “My business with the colonel is need to know, Corporal . . .”

  “Alejandro Edwards, Gunnery Sergeant.” He drew out her rank, his tone mocking.

  “Corporal Edwards . . .” Her tone suggested she hadn’t quite decided if he was worth the time it would take to bring him up to Corps standards, but the odds were against it. The difference was subtle, the biggest difference that Torin’s words slipped in under the skin, their edges so sharp the immediate damage remained unnoted.

  “Fine.” He sounded a little sulky now. “You want to see the colonel? I’ll take you to see the colonel.”

  The final statement was clearly intended to be a threat. Torin didn’t give a half-eaten rat’s ass what his intentions were. “Thank you, Corporal. Lead on.”

  He scowled past her. “Akemi! Check out the fukking tunnel. See if she’s got friends out there.”

  “And do what if she does?”