Valor's Trial

by Tanya Huff

  The volume level dropped to muttering and the muttering fell off sooner than Torin expected. Sleep was something to do, at least. There were other things being done as well, and not only in the tent with the di’Taykan where sex was a given.

  “I heard the colonel tried to stop this lot from so much as having a wank after lights out. I heard his staff talked him out of it. I wonder if he has hair on his . . .”

  “Corporal Mashona, go to sleep.”

  “Yes, Gunny. Sorry, Gunny, it’s just . . .”

  “I know.” It was just seeing a familiar face. Having someone there who knew her, who tied her to her past. Torin had felt much the same way about Werst. Now, however, her head hurt, her left leg ached, and she was more tired than she could remember being. Which was weird, because she’d certainly been awake longer and done more. One hand slipping inside her vest to close around the salvage tag, surrounded by the comforting sounds of a hundred Marines, she closed her eyes and slept.

  “I’ve sent messengers to the barricade and to Lieutenant Colonel Braudy.” Colonel Mariner attempted to lock his gaze with hers, failed, and stared at his hands folded on his desk instead. Torin continued looking just past his left shoulder. “I believe it is necessary for you to tell your story to the lieutenant colonel yourself, Gunnery Sergeant. I see no way she’d believe it if it came to her secondhand. I will inform your Major Kenoton that you are remaining here for further debriefing and that as soon as he is physically able, I shall expect him to report to headquarters.”

  “Headquarters, sir?”

  “Here, Gunnery Sergeant. Or have you missed the fact that I am the ranking officer in these tunnels?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Structure of the Corps must be imposed. Staff Sergeant Harnett’s abuse of power is a prime example of what happens when that structure is ignored.”

  He hadn’t asked a question, but he seemed to be waiting for a response. Torin spent a moment considering an honest answer but she really didn’t need to deal with the fallout so she stuck with a bland, “Yes, sir.”

  Highlights gleamed as he settled back, satisfied. “As you will not be remaining permanently, I see no reason to assign you to a platoon. Technical Sergeant Gucciard seems to think he can get that slate of yours up and running; it might be best, the least disruptive anyway, if you kept yourself busy assisting him until Lieutenant Colonel Braudy arrives.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Mike gazed up at Torin from under brows nearly meeting in a vee at the top of his nose. “You know anything about working with tech?”

  “I know how to use it, and I know how to delegate when I need something done with it.”

  “Nothing personal, but what kind of help does the colonel think you’re going to be?”

  Grinning, she held out her hand. “I can pick you up when you touch a live wire and get knocked on your ass. I can field dress any injuries that happen when you’re flung backward and your head connects with the rock. And I can do CPR if the power surge stops your heart, although you’ll probably stay dead since, as I understand it, your lungs will have filled with liquid and you’ll have drowned.”

  He snorted and put his hand in hers, allowing her to haul him back up onto his feet. “Yeah. You’re going to be a big help.”

  “It are looking now we are being here, live, remarkably like it are looking in the vids,” Presit said, the dry wind ruffling her fur. “Imagine that.”

  The battlefield, the battlefield where Torin had died, looked like a rippled sheet of gray-green glass. Shining. Lifeless. Craig went to one knee, reached across the seam where melted rock met dirt and rapped his knuckles against the glossy surface. Felt like glass, the kind tourists to backwater worlds picked up as “a primitive remnant of precontact culture” without ever realizing it was mass-produced at a filthy factory down streets a little less quaint.

  “Artisans,” Presit said suddenly.

  Craig twisted to look at his reflection in her mirrored sunglasses, his position putting them eye to eye. “What about them?”

  “There are being a seven hundred and thirty-eight dead mixing into this glass. I are thinking those who are mourning would be liking a piece of it.”

  “No.” He straightened.

  “It are being presented tastefully,” she argued. “Could be having piece of glass set in metal enclosure for garden or be cutting flat and are using for patterns in windows.”

  “No,” Craig repeated, a little louder.

  Presit sighed. “You are being the only one who are getting closure, then?”

  He didn’t answer that, just as he didn’t respond to the number of the dead. The difference between seven hundred and thirty-eight and seven hundred and thirty-seven was the difference between hope and despair. He hadn’t come here because he believed Torin was dead. He hadn’t come here because he hoped she was alive. He just needed to see. Shouldering the camera, he stepped onto the glass. “Let’s go find those scientists.”

  “Based on the coordinates the military has given us, we know that Captain Gordon Rose was standing right on that spot . . .” The Niln scientist half turned away from the camera to point. “. . . when the attack occurred. Captain Rose’s DNA becomes, in effect, our control. We have his pattern on file; we know where it should occur within the melt. Once we can develop a way to pull a clear reading out, we can use the same techniques across the battlefield to bring closure to the families of the other Marines.”

  “Closure are being important.” Presit’s left ear tip flicked pointedly toward Craig. “So if I are understanding you, Harveer Umananth, you are not having the techniques to be getting the captain’s DNA out yet.”

  The harveer’s nictitating eyelid flicked across both eyes but whether in reaction to the dry wind or the question or to Katrien syntax, Craig wasn’t sure. “Whatever weapon the Others used to do this, it had an effect like nothing we’ve ever seen. Strictly speaking, it didn’t melt the ground; it reformed everything in this immediate area—where immediate area refers to everything within 38.172 square kilometers—at the molecular level. Essentially, it took it apart and put it back together again as something new.”

  “So you are saying you are not having the techniques to be getting the captain’s DNA out yet,” Presit repeated, smiling toothily.

  Harveer Umananth sighed, the tip of his tail making lazy figure eights by his right leg. “Yes, that is what I am saying.”

  “And how long are you being working on this new technique until you are successful?”

  “There’s no way of knowing. We could work it out today. It could take years.”

  “Years? And when the Others are returning, what are you doing then?”

  The young Niln’s tail snapped out straight as he hissed. “The Others are returning?”

  Presit’s species was omnivorous. Her smile suggested otherwise. “This are being a front line and there are being a war on. Also . . .” She waved at the undulating hectares of glass. “. . . there are being Others reformed in this, are there not? I are having seen the last recorded battle positions, and they were definitely being within 38.172 kilometers. Are you being sure that this are being caused by one of the Others’ weapons?”

  Craig shifted position to stare around the camera at Presit. She hadn’t mentioned any of this to him.

  “We have data from the Navy that indicates the weapon was deployed from one of the Others’ ships,” Umananth insisted.

  “On friend and foe alike?” Presit combed her whiskers. “That are being very careless of them, and I are imagining someone are catching trouble for it. If I are being them, I are definitely returning to analyze results.”

  “Logically I suppose, but . . . you have no actual data on the Others returning?”

  “I are having no actual data on the Others staying away.”

  “Yes, right.” His tail scribed agitated figure eights in the air. “Well, I should get back to the team. You may, of course, wander around, but please remain outside the
tagged area. We don’t want your DNA to mix with that of Captain Rose.” He bobbed his head and turned to go.

  “You are thinking you might be mixing up my DNA with DNA of Captain Rose?”

  Keep going, mate. Craig thought at him. You can’t win this one.

  The harveer paused and almost reluctantly faced the reporter again. “Captain Rose is Human. We could never mix your DNA.”

  “Then why are we being kept outside the tagged area?”

  Katrien syntax was usually so scrambled that those times it matched up with Federate always came as a bit of a shock.

  “Are you hiding something?” Presit continued.

  “No! We just . . .”

  “Full disclosure laws are allowing me full access.”

  “Yes, I know, but . . .”

  “If I are not allowed full access, I are thinking you are being up to no good.”

  “But you have full access.”

  “Except to the tagged area.”

  “It’s barely three square meters! And that camera . . .” He waved a green-gold hand in Craig’s general direction. “. . . can zoom to practically microscopic levels. I assure you, we are hiding nothing.”

  “Well, good, then.” She smiled.

  He blinked.

  Craig sighed and jerked his head toward the group of scientists clustered around their equipment. It took Umananth a moment to realize what he meant, then his tail went up and he hurried back to the safety of the group as Craig asked Presit about an editing function on the camera and didn’t bother listening to the answer.

  The scientists had set up their equipment on the back of the big hoversled—maybe so they wouldn’t contaminate the site, maybe so they could make a fast getaway if the Others did return. He may have pulled the possibility out of his ass in order to get Presit to agree to the trip, but she was right, there was nothing that said the bastards wouldn’t return. They were standing on the front lines, and there was a war on.

  Craig watched Harveer Umananth scramble up onto the sled, talking and pointing back their way. He was well within range of the microphone on the camera—all Craig had to do was put the ear in and he could eavesdrop on conversations up to 500 meters away. Well, not eavesdrop exactly since the moment the software analyzed the distance it would apparently do something to prevent sentient beings being recorded without their consent. He had no idea of what. Or how it knew if it had their consent. Or why it was restricted to 500 meters. He suspected the latter came out of the same laws that kept official media recording equipment large enough to be seen, resulting in a camera that held—as well as two separate recording devices—a full editing program, broadcast ability, the personal game, music, and vid library of the operator with room left over inside the casing to pack a change of clothes and some snacks.

  Hell, given that the harveer had already spoken to the press, it was possible that anything further he said in range of the pickup could be considered recordable. But Craig liked him—he spoke plain Federatewithout sounding as though he’d dumbed things down for his audience—so he kept the recorder off. He supposed that if Umananth had made harveer so soon out of the egg, he was smart enough he didn’t have to keep proving it by confusing people.

  “We definitely are being shooting the tagged area,” Presit said, one small hand on his wrist, the ambient heat making her touch seem cool. “And then you are setting the camera on a tripod and I are interviewing more scientists because I are a glutton for punishment, and you are going that way . . .” She pointed. “. . . and are finding Gunnery Sergeant Kerr.”

  He was suddenly finding it hard to breathe.

  Nothing marked the spot, but he bounced a signal off Promise—she was hooked to the cruiser that had brought the science team across space, locked together in a geosynchronous orbit over the battlefield because the downside of a Susumi drive was the loss of VTA capability— and stopped walking when the little red dot that was him matched up with the little green dot that was Torin’s last recorded position.

  She was in a dip in the melt, as if she’d been taking cover in an artillery crater when it happened.

  Craig turned that thought over as he dropped down to one knee and realized that a year ago, while he’d have been able to figure out “artillery crater” from context, he sure as shit wouldn’t have spent any time considering the implications of diving for one during battle.

  The glassy surface was warm under his hand, but that was hardly surprising given the height of the sun and the lack of cloud cover. If he swept his hand around, would he find a cold spot? Torin’s feet were always freezing, and she was flexible enough she could tuck them up under the warmest parts of his body.

  “What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing!”

  “Warming up.”

  “Yeah?” Hand wrapped around her ankle, he hesitated before turning it into a wrestling match he’d probably lose. “And if they freeze and snap off, what then?”

  Her smile was wicked. “I’ll warm them up before it comes to that.”

  His knuckles were against the ground now although he didn’t remember his hand clenching into a fist.

  He didn’t know what he’d expected, but she wasn’t here.

  Not, she wasn’t dead—he’d pretty much come to believe that.

  Mostly.

  He uncurled his fingers and pressed only the tips against dirt and rock and flesh and blood and clothing and weapons and everything else that the ground had been before it had been reformed.

  She wasn’t here.

  “Listen to what I’m saying, Private! Gunnery Sergeant Kerr is fine!”

  Watura closed his hand around Kyster’s shoulder, his eyes darkening as he tried to get a better look at the four Marines who were shouting at them from down the tunnel. “They’ve got no reason to lie to us,” he said quietly.

  “They’ve got no reason to tell us the truth,” Kyster growled, but he let the di’Taykan hold him in place up against the barricade even though his hand was close enough to bite. He wanted to charge toward this new hunting party even as he wanted to run from it. It seemed safest for the moment to stay where he was.

  Someone in the new hunting party started shouting again. “Colonel Mariner has ordered her to remain and debrief Lieutenant Colonel Braudy when she arrives!”

  Kyster shook his head—although he knew they probably couldn’t see the motion given his height and the height of the barricade. “Why should we trust you?”

  “Sir!”

  “What?”

  “Why should we trust you, sir?” the someone yelled back.

  Watura snickered. “Second lieutenant.”

  Kyster’s nose ridges opened and shut. “No shit.” He shook himself free of the di’Taykan’s grasp. There’d been something so stupidly normal about that exchange it made him feel the way Gunnery Sergeant Kerr did, like he belonged again. “Sorry, sir, is that what we report to our CO? That Colonel Mariner ordered her to remain and debrief Lieutenant Colonel Braudy?”

  The distance was too great for them to hear a sigh, but the lieutenant’s tone carried the same effect. “Yes, Private, that’s what you’re to report to your CO.”

  “Ouch, sarcasm,” Watura snorted quietly.

  “You’re smoking again.”

  “It’s from the last time.”

  “You sure?”

  Mike’s grunted response sounded fairly positive, so Torin let it go. He’d fried a bit of the tech in his own combats when his sleeve had brushed against the exposed wire and had taken that as a sign he was on the right track. It wasn’t actually wire, of course, not as Torin understood the word, but since long, narrow, alien power conduit was a mouthful, they tended to stick with the technically inaccurate descriptions they recognized.

  The evening kibble had been served, so Colonel Mariner’s orders had to have reached the third node by now. If Lieutenant Colonel Braudy started back with the corporal who’d run those orders over, she’d be here by the next evening kibble. A day to go throu
gh the sitrep one more time and Torin could head back, report to Major Kenoton, and begin doing something approaching useful by clearing that rockfall.

  Arms folded, her back against a smooth spot on the tunnel wall, she wondered if Mariner would let her have Mashona. The most recent arrivals seemed to be the only ones who gave a shit about getting out. Maybe it was something in the food. Maybe after a while it caused complacency. Complacent prisoners would make life a lot easier for their wardens. Kyster’s willingness to consider escape seemed to support that. He’d been around for a while, but he hadn’t started eating the kibble until recently.

  She’d like to have Gucciard with her, too, but figured there was no way in hell Mariner would ever give up the tech sergeant.

  “Hey, Mike, have you ever heard of the Others taking prisoners?”

  Standing on a hunk of rock they’d carried from one of the small caves, leg of the combats in his teeth, both hands still working the wires, he grunted a negative.

  “No. Me either.” Torin frowned. Three pipes. Approximately three hundred Marines. That was a tiny fraction of the number of MIA since the war had begun. Logically, that meant there were a lot more places like this. Except that logically, if all those MIA Marines had been taken prisoner, someone would have seen something. Rumors would have started. The Corps was like a fukking high school when it came to gossip and rumors.

  She couldn’t figure out what the hell the Others were up to, and it was driving her nuts.

  As Lieutenant O’Neill came around the corner, Torin pushed off the wall and fell into an easy parade rest. She could play the game. It gave her something to do.

  “As you were, Gunnery Sergeant. Carry on with what you’re doing, Technical Sergeant Gucciard.”

  Since Mike was completely ignoring the lieutenant, Torin figured that last order was a given.

  “The colonel wants to know what progress you’ve made.”

  “The power source has been isolated, and the technical sergeant is now adapting it for use in our equipment. Sir.”

  “And how much longer will it take?”