by Huff, Tanya
“Yes, Gunnery Sergeant.”
“What in this shithole is any danger to us?” Terantowicz muttered as they began to walk away.
“A hundred Marines you helped screw over,” Divint told her.
Torin read the realization of just what that could mean from the sudden stiffening in all five backs. There were only three platoons, but the di’Taykan, likely to be shunned by the rest of their species, would need to be kept together anyway. As for the hunting party still out and the two goons plus a runner at the barricade, well, six more would mean two more in each platoon—easy enough to keep apart and still under the minimum number necessary for them to begin to feel comfortable enough to plot. With so few Krai in the infantry, there’d been a lot of research done by the wetware squad into how many of a species were needed for them to feel secure. Right now, Harnett’s group was essentially another species.
“You going to hit the hunting party before they get home?” Werst asked, falling in beside her as she started for tunnel two.
“That’s the idea.”
“Not going to clear it with the major first?”
She should.
Before she could answer, Werst grunted a noncommittal addendum. Never mind, stupid question, probably came closest in translation.
If she waited to face the hunting party in the node, there was always the chance one of them would be smart enough to yell for reinforcements. Terantowicz, at least, would be right there. Stopping them out in the tunnels kept it between the four of them. Five, if Werst had to get involved although she hoped he wouldn’t—these were her lives to carry out. With any luck, the hunting party would accept there’d been a change in the chain of command, and no one else would die. Torin wouldn’t bet her pension on it, but a little optimism never hurt. Optimism backed by kickass hurt a lot less. Hurt her a lot less anyway.
Tunnel two looked exactly like tunnel four, the tunnel she and Kyster had entered the node through—ten meters with no small caves and then a corner. The corner seemed like a good place for an ambush; cut the hunting party off just out of sight of home.
As they reached the corner, the sound of six bootheels hitting rock told her she was just in time. They weren’t in sight, not yet, thanks to the drunken worm layout of the tunnels, but they were very close.
“Stay here,” she told Werst.
“And if you need backup, Gunny?”
“I’ll yell.”
His nose ridges flared. “Really?”
“Really. I’ve had a long day,” she added when he didn’t seem to believe her. As he snickered, she rounded the corner.
The boots rang louder.
The sound was intended to strike fear into anyone listening.
Or would when they got close enough to the node for anyone to hear it.
It definitely sounded less cheesy when she did it.
This hunting party consisted of two females and one male although once again two Humans and one di’Taykan. Twice as many Humans out in the tunnels explained why there seemed to be a disproportionate number of di’Taykans with Harnett in the node—not that Torin really gave a shit about species, but she preferred to have that kind of discrepancy explained. They all wore knives. Two of them had clubs. One of them had removed her sleeves.
Pity she hadn’t been around to see Edwards prove why that was a really stupid idea.
They were talking about their patrol, about how boring walking the tunnels was when they found no new Marines, about the things they wanted to find on the next new Marines they found.
“I would fukking kill for a pouch of coffee.”
“What, again?”
They didn’t see Torin until she moved out from the tunnel wall and when they did, they stopped laughing. If she’d needed a reminder of why Harnett’s people deserved to die, they’d just given her one.
“Who the hell are you?” the Human female snarled.
“I am Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr.” Her lip curled as she noted their collar tabs. “Who the hell are you, Corporal . . . ?”
“Honisch.”
“I’ll have something to say about the state of your uniform later, Corporal Honisch.”
Honisch glanced at her bare arms, opened her mouth . . .
“Later,” Torin repeated, cutting her off. “Right now, I’m here to tell you that there’s been a change in command at the node.”
“Colonel Harnett . . .”
“Staff Sergeant Harnett is dead, Private . . .”
“Thurman, Gunnery Sergeant!” His cheeks flushed above the edge of his beard as he snapped out the trained response. Then he shifted into a more belligerent stance. “So you think you’re in charge now?”
“Major Kenoton is the officer in charge.”
Honisch snorted. “Major Kenoton is . . .”
The di’Taykan’s hand on her bare arm cut her off. She stepped forward, looking young and uncertain, ocher eyes dark and locked on Torin’s face. “I had a thytrin on Silsviss with you, Gunnery Sergeant Kerr.”
Torin waited. She lost sixteen of her people on Silsviss.
“Corporal di’Merk Mysho.”
Mysho had made it home.
“I saw her just before we shipped out to Gantry Three and then . . .” A graceful gesture managed to include the tunnel, the node, the entire concept of captivity. “She said no one would have survived the slaughter if it wasn’t for you. She said you would have been willing to take on every giant lizard on the planet if it meant getting your platoon out alive. She said you were der heen sa verniticna sa vey.” Her companions stared as she drew in a long breath and came to attention, her eyes never leaving Torin’s face. “I am Private di’Hern Darlys, Gunnery Sergeant. I surrender to your authority.”
Torin held out her hand. “Your weapons.”
“Hey,” Thurman began as Darlys handed over first her club and then her knife, but Torin silenced him with a look. It had become quite clear from the moment Darlys realized who Torin was, it was no longer three goons to one gunnery sergeant but even odds, and the type of people willing to follow a man like Harnett wouldn’t think much of that.
“Go to Staff Sergeant Pole; tell him I said you’re to be put into platoons. No di’Taykan will be left alone,” she added, answering the question before Darlys asked it. “Honisch! Thurman!” Her tone froze them in place as they started to follow the di’Taykan around the corner. “Weapons!”
“We’re not giving . . .” Thurman’s protest trailed off when he realized he was making it alone.
“Corporal Werst.”
He strode around the corner like a Marine off a training vid. “Gunnery Sergeant Kerr!”
She handed over Darlys’ club and knife. “Take charge of their weapons.”
“Yes, Gunnery Sergeant!”
Neither Thurman nor Honisch were happy about it, but they obeyed the order, and that was all that mattered. The whole lot of them had been just a little too happy for just a little too long.
Torin let the three walk far enough ahead of her she could watch their body language while keeping close enough they couldn’t plot without her being aware of it. Not that there was any plotting going on—Darlys hushed both her companions when they tried to speak.
“What did it mean, Gunny?” Werst asked when the hunting party was safely with Staff Sergeant Pole and no longer immediately her problem.
“What Corporal Mysho said?” Eyes narrowed, Torin watched as the three platoon sergeants came forward to claim their new people. Pole had the di’Taykans grouped under a Human sergeant. Smart move. “Roughly, that I was fit to start a family.”
His nose ridges flared as he looked up at her. “That’s it?”
“Roughly.”
The grunt suggested he’d ask around later, and that was fine with Torin; she hadn’t lied to him.
“All right . . .” She ran a hand back through her hair. “. . . that’s thirteen taken care of, fourteen counting Harnett. Three to go.”
“Like you said, Gunny, bus
y day.”
“Not over yet. Kyster!”
He limped over so quickly he’d clearly been waiting for her call. A quick flash of his teeth at Werst, then he moved between them. “Major’s sleeping, Gunny.”
It seemed that most of the prisoners were. Given their condition, the extra food and shuffling about into platoons had been enough to exhaust almost everyone. A quick sweep over the pallets showed mostly Krai sitting up, more or less alert. Had the Krai been supplementing? If it was even partially organic, they could digest it. The pallets of the dead, maybe?
She’d work it out later. “Who was in the hunting party that got attacked?”
Kyster glanced toward the tunnel then back at her. “Don’t know, Gunny.”
It took her a moment to realize that he was confused about which hunting party she meant. “The one you saw out in the tunnels. Before I arrived.”
“Edwards.” His teeth snapped together. “Dark pink di’Taykan.”
“Jiyuu.”
“And a di’Taykan with pale blue hair. Male.”
There were no di’Taykan with pale blue hair among the surviving goons. “He was in the hunting party we ran into this morning?”
Kyster frowned, considering it. Finally, he said, “Yes, Gunnery Sergeant.”
That left Jiyuu the only one still alive.
“Go get Private Jiyuu, Kyster. Bring him here.”
“Yes, Gunnery Sergeant.”
“Fuk, Gunny, good thing your body count wasn’t one higher,” Werst snorted as the younger Krai scurried off.
Torin raised an eyebrow in his general direction.
“If you’d offed Jiyuu, too, we’d be facing tunnel trolls with our heads up our butts.”
“Tunnel trolls?”
He shrugged. “Good a name as any.”
Jiyuu’s eyes, when he looked at her, were so dark they’d lost nearly all their fuchsia. With all the fallen di’Taykan together, Darlys had clearly used the opportunity to pass on her thrytin’s opinion. Jiyuu was staring at her the way the H’san stared at cheddar.
She snapped her fingers in front of her face and his focus slid in. “I need to know what attacked you out in tunnel seven, Private. What’s that guard post watching for?”
“It was Edwards’ fault we got beat!” Both hands rose to defensive positions. “He was an idiot. He thought they’d crawled out of the caves and come together.”
“What had come together?” Jiyuu was going to need that defensive position if he didn’t start making sense.
“Incomers.”
She didn’t need to turn, she felt Werst’s expression change. Not tunnel trolls, then. “Marines?”
“Yeah, Marines. But these weren’t incomers.” Hair flipping back and forth in choppy fuchsia arcs, he leaned closer and lowered his voice. “They were exploring from another pipe.”
Torin raised both brows, experience adjusting astonishment to look like disbelief. “Another pipe?”
“They were going to do us, Gunny!”
“Why?” Then she realized there could be only one reason. “They came on you just as you left one of the small caves. Just after you stripped a Marine of anything useful and left him to die.”
“Would have died anyway.” Jiyuu muttered the protest as he slid quickly back out of reach, then took two quick steps to the left as both Werst and Kyster snapped their teeth.
Forcing her fingers to uncurl, Torin took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Have they ever come back?”
“They tried once, but we drove them off.” Fingers clasped together up by his chest, Jiyuu sidled another step left. “They never came back since.”
Why the hell not? Torin wondered. The Marines had to have reported what they’d seen. Their CO knew something was wrong on the other side of the barricade—how could they have allowed it to continue? “So there’re three people out there, standing guard?”
“Yes, Gunnery Sergeant.”
Why hadn’t the other Marines attacked the barricade in force? Overwhelmed the guards, continued through the tunnels to take out Harnett? Why hadn’t they dealt with this mess so that she didn’t have to?
“It’s about a day’s walk away,” Jiyuu continued ingratiatingly. “We take enough food for five days, eat one day’s on the way, then we’re relieved after three and have food for the walk back.”
So the barricade was out about as far as Kyster’s water hole and the collapsed tunnel. Since Kyster had seen the aftermath of the attack and had clearly not cut back through the node to return to the area he claimed as his, there were cross tunnels and, somewhere out in the deranged nonpattern, there was a way to get from point A to point B. Either Harnett knew the tunnels well enough to put the barricade on the far side of the cross tunnel or he’d been one lucky s.o.b. Evidence suggested the latter.
“How long before the three out there now are relieved?”
“Relief team needs to leave tomorrow morning, Gunnery Sergeant. Team that’s there now, they’ll be back here evening after that.”
Very little time to decide what to do about it and not her decision anyway. She wished she’d had time to learn how Major Kenoton thought before presenting him with something quite so far up the scale of could turn into a situation that’s totally fukked.
“Gunnery Sergeant Kerr? Darlys said, you were der heen sa verniticna sa vey.”
“What of it?”
“I’ve never . . . It’s just you have . . . Well, it explains . . .” He took a deep breath. “What are you going to do now?”
“I’m going to send you back to your platoon and then, not that it’s any of your business, I’m going to take this information to Major Kenoton.”
“No. We need to maintain the barricade.”
“Sir?”
“What if the other node is run by someone like Harnett, Gunnery Sergeant? Granted, you descended on this place like an avenging nartar, but should they attack us, there’s no guarantee your luck will hold a second time.”
Nartars were spirits that in Taykan mythology watched over the righteous. Translated into Human terms, the major had just referred to her as an avenging angel. Torin wasn’t entirely certain how she felt about that. Kind of depended on whether nartars ranked gunnery sergeants.
“My luck, sir?”
“Gunnery Sergeant Kerr, you have killed eight armed insurgents today, survived a coup attempt and killed a ninth by throwing him into the disposal pit, and been proclaimed sa verniticna sa vey, which allowed you to take the weapons from the remaining three armed insurgents without a fight. Luck had to have something to do with that.”
“Luck is nothing more than taking advantage of a situation, sir. Although, I will grant that, as I had nothing to do with it, Private Darlys’ declaration was lucky.”
“Indeed.”
However the rank and file reacted, Major Kenoton seemed less than impressed, his eyes still not changing tone. Lieutenant Myshai, on the other hand, kept glancing over at her as if Torin were about to start a family right then and there.
“Yes, sir. However, given the reaction of those behind the barricade to Edwards and his hunting party stripping a Marine and leaving him to die, I doubt we’ll have another Harnett to deal with.”
“And if they were merely upset that Edwards stripped the incomer before they could?”
Torin had to admit that was a possibility.
“As I have no wish to trade the attentions of one psycho for another . . .”
It took Torin a moment to realize she was neither of the two psychos referenced.
“. . . we will, for now at least, maintain the barricade.”
“Yes, sir.” The major had a point; it wouldn’t hurt to leave the barricade staffed until they were sure. On the other hand, there was only one way to be sure. “Request permission to be part of the relief party, sir. I can do a little recon and . . .”
“No. Until we are all stronger, you’re needed here.”
“Sir . . .”
“No, Gunne
ry Sergeant. Remember, you’ll have to subdue the three out there now when they arrive. Make sure they don’t connect with the rest of the survivors. Make sure it doesn’t . . .” His voice trailed off.
Make sure it doesn’t happen again.
“Yes, sir.” Once again, he had a point, and more, she should have thought of it. She wanted out so badly—and she was going nowhere until the Marines at the other pipe were dealt with one way or another—that she was losing sight of the job. “If we send three out, sir, then fifteen servings of the extra food will have to be sent with them.”
Lieutenant Myshai looked a little panicked at the thought, but the major merely shrugged. “Take the loss out of every bowl. No one will notice.”
“Doesn’t mean fit to start a family, it means you’ve been named a progenitor.”
Shifting through the odds and ends Harnett had tucked away in his storeroom—inventory was a time-honored military way of avoiding hard decisions—Torin snorted. “Same thing, Corporal.”
“Matter of degree, Gunny. While you were getting your orders from the major . . .” Werst’s tone stayed just close enough to the edge of sarcasm that Torin could ignore it. “. . . I had a little chat with Jiyuu, and I learned that being named a progenitor is the highest honor a Taykan can get.”
To be able to begin a new family had sociopolitical implications that cut to the heart of the Taykan culture.
“Don’t know if you noticed Werst, but I’m not a Taykan.”
“They don’t seem to care. And here I thought that with Private Kichar nowhere around only Kyster thought the sun shone out of your ass.”
“Illumination is just part of the job, Corporal.” She lifted a stack of pale blue felted paper and saw it wasn’t blue all the way to the bottom. It was a third pale blue, a third pale pink, and a third pale yellow. Something about those colors . . .
“So, Gunny . . .” He squatted beside her and rubbed at the cuff of bruises around one wrist. “Harnett’s asswipes aren’t prisoners?”
“No. You and I are the only two Marines in here not likely to fall on our asses if attacked, so we’d be doing the guarding and we’ve got other things to do.”
