[Confederation 04] Valor's Trial

by Huff, Tanya

  *Three of the Others’ battle cruisers showed up. We hid up behind the moon, and when they headed home, we used those suicidal equations Presit’s old pilot worked out—remember them?—turns out Presit had hung onto them and lied to the military.*

  *I are not needing to give them full disclosure.*

  Presit sounded sulky, and Torin had to close her teeth on a laugh that would have sounded hysterical.

  *Anyway, we hitched a ride on their Susumi trail. We got dumped in-system, though. No idea where the ships ended up.*

  “Are you out of your fukking mind?”

  She heard him snicker; pictured him sitting back in that ratty, old control chair, heels up on the edge of the board. *Possibly.*

  “So it’s you and Presit in the Promise?”

  *Yeah.*

  Even if they could get to the Promise, two people in the cabin had to be more than a little friendly. Eighteen people, seven species, became a dirty joke.

  The edge of the salvage tag cut into her palm. “You have to go get help, Craig.”

  *Fuk that. You’re not getting rid of me so easily. We’re in uncharted space. There’s no way of writing the equation that’ll get us home.*

  She was almost glad to hear that. One small corner of her mind had played with the suspicion that the Elder Races were somehow involved and the prison was tucked away in an unfrequented corner of the Confederation. “There’s no matching star charts in Promise’s memory?”

  *None. I haven’t the faintest fukking idea of where we are. I’m coming down.*

  “No!” That brought her up onto her feet so quickly abused joints screamed a protest and one of the blisters on her calf made a sucking sound as it detached from the floor. Grounding Promise, a ship with Susumi but no VTA capability would end everything. “We have a shuttle!”

  *A VTA? A way into orbit? So this prison you’re in . . . *

  She felt his smile against her skin.

  * . . . is not exactly holding you?*

  They had an alien VTA locked behind a force field. Their only pilot was a comatose giant bug. In orbit was a two-person vessel, already holding two people, lost and unable to return to known space. “Not exactly,” she agreed dryly. “Presit, do you have your camera?”

  *Of course I are having my camera!*

  “Good. Because, if nothing else, we have a story to tell.”

  *We are being too far from a transmission satellite, Gunnery Sergeant. You may be telling your story, but there are no way to have it being heard.”

  “Craig can pulse it on Promise’s emergency beacon.”

  *If you are wanting just anyone to hear it,* Presit snorted.

  “I am.” She wanted the whole fukking universe to hear it. “Freenim, get Durlin Vertic.”

  “You hear him in your jaw implant?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Are you sure you hear him?”

  “Yes, sir. If I were imagining his voice,” Torin added when the durlin indicated she needed more convincing, “he’d be in a battleship and he wouldn’t be lost.” Nor would he be traveling with a reporter, particularly not Presit a Tur durValintrisy, the recurring fuzzy burr in Torin’s butt.

  “Then I believe you, Gunnery Sergeant.” Eyes on Torin, vertical pupils nearly closed, Vertic’s right hand worked the fur under the front edge of her vest. “Do you know what the odds are?”

  “Sir?”

  “The odds of this male arriving here, out of all the places he could have been in a vast universe, arriving with one who can record our last words. We have a saying among my people, space is big.”

  “We have the same saying, Durlin.”

  “We also say coincidence should be left to poets.” She shifted her weight to scrape her claws against the deck, sucked a breath in through her teeth as she remembered the injury just a little too late. “He said the battlefield was glass?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “My people dead as well as yours.”

  Thirty square kilometers of glass made that likely.

  “There was rumor of a weapon, untested, that . . .” A glance at the slate made it clear the pause was a search for a translatable term. “. . . unmade matter. The result was very like glass. The rumor was that a high number of the council were against ever using it.”

  “Seems like it got used.”

  “Yes.”

  “Your people dead as well as mine.”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s past time this war ended.”

  Lips drawn back off her teeth, the durlin nodded. “Long past.”

  The lights flickered.

  “Gunnery Sergeant Kerr! Durlin Vertic! We have the force field . . . Oh, fuk!”

  The lights flickered again, then steadied.

  “Down! We have the force field down!”

  “Well done.” The durlin moved slowly back out into the corridor, still on three legs. “Now, we need a pilot.”

  Firiv’vrak rose unsteadily onto her feet and swayed in place for a moment struggling to lift her antennae up off her body. She shuffled forward a few steps, got tangled in her own legs, and toppled into Sanati’s arms. After Sanati, clicking sympathetically, set her back on her feet, she turned and swept the feathered tips of her antennae slowly just under the edge of the upper chitin plates of the other two Artek. One of them kicked out and made a noise like a malfunctioning pressure suit. The other didn’t move.

  Grief smelled like burning spices—pungent and unpleasant. Species with nictitating membranes used them, the rest wiped watering eyes and watched as the two living Artek dragged the third into the stairwell, away from prying eyes, and devoured her.

  “They shouldn’t get to eat it all,” Kyster muttered, clenched fist rubbing at his stomach as Kichar handed around the last pieces of biscuit and everyone but the Krai tried not to hear the faint crack of chewed chitin.

  “It is how the Artek honor their dead,” the durlin told him.

  “It’s how the Krai honor our dead, too. If Darlys dies, can I eat her?”

  “She is not Krai.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Torin answered before Kyster could. “We do what we must to stay alive.”

  Head cocked, the durlin looked from Torin to the Marines sitting beside her. “Is that what your Corps believes?”

  “It’s what I believe.”

  Kyster stared down at half a biscuit. “I don’t want to be last, Gunny. I don’t want to be alone again.”

  Torin had nothing left to give him.

  “Don’t worry about it, kid.” Werst dropped a chunk of biscuit into his bowl of water and glared at it until it began to dissolve. “I have every intention of being too fukking tough to die.”

  Kyster seemed to find that comforting.

  *A giant bug? Weren’t they trying to kill us last time we met?*

  “That was then. She’s the only pilot we’ve got.”

  *And what am I?*

  “In orbit.”

  *Right.* She listened to him breathe for a few minutes, the sound inside her head like it was a part of her. *They told me you were dead.*

  Torin wiped blood off on her vest from where the edge of the tag had cut into her palm. “I know.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Jealous, kid?”

  Kyster showed teeth.

  “Thought so,” Werst snorted. “He’s a Civilian Salvage Operator. Guy who found Big Yellow by screwing up a Susumi equation.”

  “And now he’s here.”

  “Gunny says he is.” Werst’s tone suggested that was good enough for him.

  “You don’t find that weird?”

  “Bit.”

  “Maybe it’s love.”

  They glanced up at Mashona together. “Love finds a way,” she said as she passed. “That’s what the songs say.”

  “What songs?” Confused, Kyster turned his attention back to Werst.

  Who snorted again. “Humans. Who the fuk knows?”

  Firiv’vrak seemed neither impressed nor p
articularly intimidated by the VTA. She wedged her abdomen between the two stools and began tapping her upper four limbs and both antennae over the screens. Once or twice she flicked a switch and just as quickly flicked it off again.

  Either determination smelled like singed insulation, or one of the switches hadn’t been shut off quite quickly enough.

  When she finally got the pilot’s console on-line, it gave Ressk and Sanati access to whole new sections of the control panel.

  “If Firiv’vrak can get it off the ground, we can reverse those equations and use them to dock her again.”

  Down in the docking bay, the VTA roared, rose up about a half a meter, and dropped again. Torin could feel the vibration through the soles of her feet.

  “If she can get it off the ground,” Ressk repeated, picking at the flaking skin on his jaw.

  “How far can she drop that thing before she does some actual damage?”

  “No idea, Gunny.” They winced in unison as the bow rose, fell, and the whole ship rocked. “But it seems pretty sturdy. She says the design’s damned near idiot proof.”

  The stern rose and fell.

  “Did something just go poink?” Torin asked. “Because, generally, that’s not a good sound.”

  *I met your father. At Ventris.*

  Torin thought about that for a minute. Tried to imagine the meeting. “You get along?”

  *He didn’t believe you were dead either.*

  Of course he didn’t.

  They were completely out of food by the time Firiv’vrak got the VTA up into the air. Where completely meant they’d fed the handles of the stone clubs to the Krai, remembering finally that Harnett’s people had made them out of the kibble

  Torin fought the urge to yell over the roar of the VTA’s main engines kicking the cloud cover around about a hundred meters above the building. “She’s on her way.”

  *Joy.*

  “Just get Presit and her equipment down here. This is important.”

  *What about me and my equipment?*

  “We need Promise’s emergency pulse to broadcast.”

  *Nice to be needed.*

  Torin could hear his grin. He thought she was kidding, but sex was the last thing on her mind. Presit, she expected to show up uninvited, but Craig—that was still a bit surreal.

  “I know what you’re doing, Gunny.” The whites of Mashona’s eyes had gone yellow. Torin couldn’t remember when it had happened. “You’re sending out our last will and testament, aren’t you? Letting the Corps know how we died.”

  “We’re not dead yet, Corporal.”

  But they both knew it was only a matter of time. Only Darlys continued to watch Torin with hope. Even Kichar had decided her time was better spent scowling at Everim.

  Presit peered out the hatch at the undulating tube attaching the Promise to the VTA and crossed her arms with enough emphasis they compacted the fur under her HE suit and disappeared into a fold in the orange fabric. “I are not going into that.”

  “It’s exactly the same tube you used to get off Big Yellow,” Craig snarled. He briefly considered tucking her under one arm but decided he’d rather survive the trip.

  “And Big Yellow are such a happy memory!”

  “You’re about to break a story about a third force in known space, a group that’s imprisoning our people and the Others—no, the Primacy—and you’re worried about what?”

  Under the faceplate, her lip curled. “Nothing.” She pushed herself forward, sliding headfirst down the tube as though she actually knew what she was doing in zero G.

  Maybe she did.

  Picking up the camera, Craig adjusted the bag hanging off his shoulder, and followed.

  They still didn’t know where the fuk they were, and they still had no way to get home—even for enormous fukking values of home. They were entering a VTA designed by unknown and evidently unfriendly aliens piloted by a giant bug who, last time out, had been trying to kill them. They were about to land on a surface that was the fukking poster planet for unstable geology with no real plan for leaving again.

  But Torin was alive.

  So who the fuk cared about the rest of it?

  They’d been on minimal calories for a while. Even with sufficient water, that made a difference. Torin gave the di’Taykan, who hadn’t completely recovered from their collapse after the run between buildings, two tendays. No more. The three surviving Humans, maybe another tenday. Maybe not. None of them had been carrying extra body fat when they arrived. The Krai, with their flexible definition of food, would live the longest. As for the others, Torin had no idea, but the teeth on the Polina seemed to suggest a willingness to crack bone for marrow. Except Durlin Vertic had lost her fur about five centimeters around the burns, and the skin underneath it was an angry red and hot to the touch. She had a chance if it didn’t go septic. If it did . . .

  Kyster spent a lot of his time limping between the durlin and the taps, bringing her water and shoving the two males out of his way— he’d acquired status with that punch in the balls. Once again, some things were universal.

  Kichar and Everim were fighting. Yelling about old battles, the slate between them and the soldiers around them taking no side in the fight. Eventually, yelling would escalate to shoving and someone would break it up. Torin wondered what would happen when no one bothered. A broken body at the bottom of the stairs would keep the Krai alive longer.

  When Firiv’vrak got back, they’d send her to the prison for kibble. And biscuits. And maybe they’d all go back to the prison. Presit could reach the Promise just as easily from there.

  “Incoming!” Ressk and Sanati were the only ones left showing any real interest in the world around them, and their focus had tightened to discovering the mysteries of the control panel.

  The building began to vibrate.

  Torin moved over to stand beside them.

  “You sure you want to be so close to the window, Gunny?” Ressk plucked at her vest. “We’re only mostly sure we’ve got the landing sequence worked out.”

  “I’m sure.”

  FOURTEEN

  THE SEATS WERE BENCHES PROPPED up at an angle. A couple of the straps on the safety harness were more than a little suggestive of possible alternative uses, the kind that involved slick and a willing partner. The actual pilot’s console looked vaguely familiar and, all things considered, that wasn’t right.

  Teeth exposed, Presit spent most of the trip trilling at their pilot in Katrien. The pilot had less chance than a boil on a bug’s arse of understanding her—hell, Craig’d been spending more time shepherding the reporter around the universe than he wanted to think about and he didn’t understand her—but at least one of the patterns those antennae were making in response was definitely rude. Turned out some gestures really did cross species lines.

  Gravity took care of getting the VTA back into the atmosphere. It wasn’t exactly rocket science; rocks did it all the time. Landing, though, landing became a bit tricky if survival got taken into account. And he needed to survive this.

  Torin wasn’t dead.

  She was Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr; she didn’t just fukking die.

  He never should have doubted that.

  And the little voice of reason that kept saying, well, this is just fukking wonderful, mate, now you two can die together, was easy enough to ignore.

  Mostly because the odds seemed good the landing was going to kill him.

  “Hey! Uh . . . Firivak! Not that I’m criticizing, but we’re coming in a bit steep! And fast! And . . . holy crap!” He clenched his teeth before he bit off the end of his tongue. The last time he’d had a ride this rough, there was a set of twins involved.

  “You okay?”

  Torin’s voice in his military surplus PCU sounded distant. Flat.

  “Rough ride,” he growled without relaxing his jaw.

  “You’re thinking about the twins, aren’t you?”

  “Might be.” That had sounded more like Torin.

&nbs
p; “Relax. The landing bay is guiding you in.”

  “Landing bay know there’s meat on board?”

  “Oh, please, you are not to be talking about your penis again!”

  “I didn’t quite catch that.”

  Craig shot Presit a look that made her snicker. Definitely time to work up a new intimidating expression. “It was nothing.”

  “All right, then.”

  Except all right, then sounded more like whatever. Torin fighting her way out of an impossible situation and taking her people out with her, that was business as usual. A Torin who didn’t much care, that was wrong. It was true what they said about coming back from the dead—it changed a person.

  The shield came up over the window automatically as the VTA hit the brakes, filling the landing bay with smoke and flame. On the single screen they had functioning, the bay looked a lot like the surface of the planet. Smoke and flame.

  *Torin?*

  “Coolant, then force field, then the air lock opens. You know the drill.”

  *Yeah, okay, anxious to get out of this antique torture implement but mostly just making sure you were still there. Hate to have come all the way from the back of Bourke and crushed you during that fukking disaster of a landing!*

  He was shouting by the end, probably so that Firiv’vrak could hear him.

  “You all right?”

  *Fine.*

  She thought about calling him on the lie. Didn’t. “Firiv’vrak?” No need to ask about Presit. If the reporter had sustained any damage, Torin would hear about it.

  *Who? Oh, right, Frivark, hang on. Oh, crap . . . *

  Not a situation where an expletive followed by an extended pause was likely to be good news.

  *Torin? She’s lost a leg.*

  “Lost it?”

  *Yeah, it’s lying there on the deck. Not much blood, though, and she seems to be . . . Ow! Hey, watch it with the snapping claws, I’m helping here!*

  The shield came down as the smoke cleared. Torin caught one quick glimpse of the VTA, scorched but intact, and then the bay filled with billowing clouds of white vapor.

  “Sanati, Firiv’vrak has lost a leg.”

  The Druin leaned toward the window, as though she were trying to peer through the coolant and right into the VTA, then turned to frown at Torin. “How did she lose it in the ship? It is not that large a ship.”