Valor's Trial

by Tanya Huff

  “Come on, Private. Let’s move some rock.”

  By midafternoon, they’d switched to three at the rock face, three carrying the debris back out of the way. By early evening . . .

  Torin turned away from the face, wiping her sweaty forehead on her sleeve. The sides of the tunnel were closing in, and work was slowing as the three Marines carrying had to move farther and farther back. “That’s enough of this shit,” she snarled and raised her voice. “Darlys! Jiyuu! Watura! Turn your maskers to maximum and haul ass! If you plan on going through after us,” she added as the three di’Taykan appeared a little better than five hundred meters away at the first bend in the tunnel, “you can damned well help haul rock! Double time, Privates! Move!”

  “I thought you didn’t want them with us?” Mike murmured as the three small figures began to run.

  “I don’t,” Torin growled. “But I’m not wasting the time to drag them back to Staff Sergeant Pole, so if we’re stuck with them, they might as well make themselves useful.”

  “You brought supplements for all three species.”

  She turned to glare at the tech sergeant, who gave her a blandly neutral expression back. “Force of habit,” she said at last.

  By dark, although the rockfall looked no different, Jiyuu swore he could smell a change in the air up near the ceiling.

  “ ’Cause stink rises, you fukking ass kisser,” Werst snarled. “And only Gunny here is still smelling like heritaig.”

  “If I didn’t know that was a type of meat pie, I’d be flattered.” Immediate area around her illuminated by the light in her sleeve, Torin chewed a mouthful of biscuit. “We’re not setting off the kinds of slides we were,” she said thoughtfully after she swallowed. “We work in shifts through the dark and we should get through tomorrow.”

  By midday, no more rock slid down to replace rock removed. By midafternoon, they were making significant forward progress. By evening, a slide opened the fall up to the other side, both the di’Taykan and the Krai swearing they could smell a change in the air.

  Standing on Mashona’s shoulders, her hands gripping his ankles to hold him in place, Kyster twisted his body through the space, arms stretched out in front of him. Broken rock snagged the sleeves of his uniform, and jerking his head away from the line of pain as a protruding shard scored his scalp only drove the opposite temple into a point rather than an edge.

  “You okay, kid?”

  He tightened his grip with his good foot and muttered, “Not a kid.” as his fingers butted up against a barrier of loose rock. The little light that managed to seep around his body told him nothing, so he squirmed a little closer and shoved, swearing as the rock spilled through to the other side and a piece from the side of the narrow passage fell loose and smacked against his cheek.

  “Kyster!”

  Nothing else seemed to be falling, but he could feel . . . not a breeze but movement in the air against his face. “I’m okay, Gunny! We’re through!”

  “What do you see?”

  He twisted to let a little more light through from behind him, but it barely pushed the gray out past the ends of his fingers. “Feels like open space, but it’s dark.

  “Use your light!” Mashona barked, whacking him in the calf with the side of her head.

  His light. He’d spent so much time in the dark, his uniform doing nothing more than covering bruises, he’d forgotten that most of the tech was back on-line. Glad that Gunnery Sergeant Kerr couldn’t see him flush, he tapped his left cuff and peered, eyes watering, along the beam. No mistaking the curved walls or the light dangling from the ceiling or the darker patch of a small cave.

  “Gunny! It’s more tunnels!”

  EIGHT

  AS THE ONLY HUMAN MALE, TECHNICAL Sergeant Gucciard was the bulkiest, so they sized the break to the new tunnels for him.

  “He’s tech, he’s not a fukking tank,” Torin sighed, stopping Watura from dragging out one of the larger rocks. “You remove that and you’ll start another slide. Just make sure he can get his shoulders through; everything else is compactable.”

  Another time that would have been more than a di’Taykan could resist, but here and now none of them were comfortable enough around her to make the obvious comment. That didn’t bother her much although, to those used to serving with di’Taykan, the innuendo was conspicuous by its absence.

  Stomachs sloshing with water—the easiest way to carry another couple of liters—they went through: Krai, di’Taykan, Human, one representative of each species at a time. Facing the unexpected, it was smartest to have the strengths of all three species available as quickly as possible. Torin went through after the first three, an extra Human, safe enough to leave her people in the tunnels behind where she knew there was no threat, needing to be with those facing the unknown. Wanting to be first but well aware that leading from that far out front wasn’t smart.

  The passage added new bruises to old ones turning green under her combats. The width of the rock fall was the only thing that made it even relatively stable, and, at that, the exit into the other tunnels was less a controlled descent than a function of gravity and loose rock.

  Torin rode boots and ass to the floor of the new tunnel, rising, club in hand, only when stability was assured. Gunnery sergeants did not go slip sliding away. It was in the manual.

  Moving away from the fall to give the rest of her team room to come through, Torin played her light over the walls. The shadows took over before she could determine the lay of the land, but it looked exactly like the tunnels they’d come from—exception, the lack of lights with just over three hours to go before dark. The only thing she could smell was the faint oily odor of the rock dust they were disturbing, and the only thing she could hear was the slide and clatter and profanity of the rest of her team coming through.

  The nearest small cave was empty and skewed slightly as though the force that had brought the section of tunnel down had twisted it off center. Torin ran her fingertips over the cracks in the rock by the low entrance—rough, smooth, rough again—examined the residue on her skin with more paranoia than it probably merited, then headed back to the fall.

  Mike had chosen to come through last and seemed to have paused, stretched out along the broken rock. Torin could just see the top of his head as he squirmed around until he was lying on his back. Given the tight fit she’d experienced and the width of his shoulders, that was some serious compression going on. “You still with us, Technical Sergeant?”

  “Yeah.” He shifted, sending a piece of loose rock down the slope. “Thought so. Power cable.”

  “What about it?”

  “I’ve got one.”

  Jiyuu murmured something obvious in the background as Torin said, “I’m missing the significance, Sergeant.”

  “I might be able to give us some light. Ressk! You got a dangling cable down there?”

  Torin turned to look as Ressk did.

  “Not dangling, Sarge, but loose. The light’s hanging off the one-eighty end and here at zero the cable’s dropped a belly.”

  “Give it a tug!”

  Ressk glanced over at Torin, who nodded. At best, multiple cuff lights created variable patterns of light and dark and, given a choice, she preferred a few less shadows for an enemy to hide in. And they’d find enemies eventually; they were Marines, that’s what they did.

  Reaching up over his head, Ressk wrapped his fingers around the bottom of the bell and tugged. With a soft hiss, the cable pulled out of the ceiling. The watching Marines moved respectfully back against the wall, no one wanting to be the casualty who discovered the cable was live.

  “Got a dangler now, Sarge.”

  “Pass it up.”

  “You’ll come up a bit short,” Torin noted as she waved Ressk forward.

  “Empty sleeve’ll work as a temporary patch,” Mike grunted. Half a dozen smaller rocks slid free as he worked a hand back and out past his shoulder. “Same principle as using the internal tech as a conduit,” he added
before Torin could ask.

  “Okay. Jiyuu, get Ressk up on your shoulders, that’ll put him close enough to help if needed. You have a time frame on this fix, Sergeant?”

  “I’m repairing alien tech with a sleeve, Gunny.”

  Torin glanced down at her cuff. “So, ten? Fifteen?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Good enough. Werst, Kichar, give me five out into the tunnels, mark, and head back.”

  “Yes, Gunnery Sergeant!”

  Werst rolled his eyes at Kichar and slapped the end of his club lightly into his left hand. “My light’s not working, Gunny.”

  “Kichar’s is.”

  “And if we run into a troop of tunnel trolls?”

  “Don’t engage. Get your asses back here and report.”

  Torin didn’t hear Kichar’s question, but Werst’s answer rang out loud and clear as the recon team moved out. “Yeah, well no one believed in the H’san either, not until they showed up in our serley orbit.”

  He had a point. “Everyone else, stay ready to pull Technical Sergeant Gucciard clear should the slide collapse.”

  Without a light actually on her face, Torin couldn’t see Mashona’s expression, but she could hear the amusement in her voice. “You expecting a collapse, Gunny?”

  “The technical sergeant is repairing alien technology with a piece of torn uniform—I’m expected the Goddamned tunnel to blow up.”

  “Ressk’s helping.” Mike’s voice sounded muffled.

  “And that makes all the difference,” Torin snorted.

  “Ah, come on, Gunny, have some faith.”

  “It’s still alien tech and a dirty sleeve, Ressk.” Feet spread to shoulder width, weight evenly distributed, she cradled her club in the crook of her left elbow—a position she could hold indefinitely. She wanted to walk down the tunnel and crawl into that cave. Crawl, because the twisted entrance was low enough even Kyster would have to duck. But if she checked that one, rubbed her palms over every nook and cranny waiting for a response, torn between hoping something would or something wouldn’t, then she’d have to check them all and the walls of the tunnels, and that would help no one—because who was to say that if Big Yellow was involved, it couldn’t move the entrance as it pleased? Walking down the tunnel to that cave smacked of obsession, and she had no time for that sort of shit if she was going to do her job. So stop fukking thinking about it.

  Ten minutes of Mike swearing softly to himself and once or twice not so softly to the tunnel at large, then Werst and Kichar were back.

  “Nothing out there, Gunny.” Werst was senior by a considerable margin, but Torin could tell he was making the report because Kichar wanted to. “Tunnel’s the same, though. Same curves, same caves.” He grunted and amended: “Same lack of caves for the most part. More rocks on the floor of the tunnel, some continuing damage from whatever caused this shit.” A nod toward the fall. “Looks stable, though, and if the pattern holds, we’ll hit another pipe.”

  “It’s dark,” Watura snorted, waving his cuff light until Torin’s expression snapped his arm back down to his side. “How can you tell the pattern’s the same?”

  “They’re Recon,” Torin reminded him. “It’s what they do.”

  “We took a look inside the two caves we passed, Gunnery Sergeant.” Kichar’s need for Torin to notice her won out over protocol. “They were empty of everything except, well, rocks.”

  “Marines never come in this far on the other side,” Kyster reminded her.

  “Gunnery Sergeant Kerr did.”

  “She was chosen,” Darlys announced breathily.

  Torin felt the muscles in her jaw clench independent of any conscious action. “She is the H’san’s mother, Private.” It was something Staff Sergeant Beyhn used to say.

  Darlys’ hair stilled. “Sorry, Gunnery Sergeant.”

  The pause lengthened, Ressk’s background muttering about power flux capacitors louder than it should have been.

  “So . . .” Mashona flicked her light up into Kichar’s face. “. . . did you check under the rocks.”

  The young Marine stared from Mashona to Torin under the arm she’d thrown up to cover her eyes. “Should we have checked under the rocks?”

  “No, we shouldn’t have,” Werst muttered, shaking his head.

  “Gunny . . .”

  She turned in time to see Kyster’s nose ridges flare as, eyes squinted nearly shut in Torin’s cuff light, he looked up toward the top of the rockslide.

  “. . . cooking!”

  “Like meat,” Werst agreed, moving until he stood shoulder to shoulder with the younger Krai. “But not.”

  Torin stepped forward until she was standing next to Jiyuu. “Technical Sergeant?”

  “What!”

  Not exactly the correct military response. Ass-deep in a problem, it seemed Technical Sergeant Gucciard got a bit terse.

  “What’s cooking?”

  “Not me.” Still lying in the gap, he sounded more amused than hurt so Torin took his response at face value. “The kibble is conductive.”

  “I’m more thrilled to be eating it than ever,” Torin muttered. “You almost . . .”

  All three di’Taykan swore as the lights came up. The multiple tiny light receptors in their eyes had probably been a fraction of a second too late slamming shut.

  “Cuff lights off, people. Let’s get Technical Sergeant Gucciard on solid ground.”

  “You weigh a fukking ton,” Jiyuu muttered as Ressk climbed down off his shoulders. He twitched a bit as Watura came up behind him, then settled back into the other di’Taykan’s touch. “Feels good,” he sighed as long fingers dug into his back.

  “At least wait until the lights are out,” Mashona snorted. “We don’t need . . . Ow!” She aimed her light at the floor. “Fukking rock hit me in the ankle!”

  “Fall’s shifting!” Leaping forward, Torin wrapped one hand around Mike’s right wrist. “Mashona, grab his other hand and get him the hell out of there!”

  They managed to drag him free as the rockfall collapsed, dancing back as he belly surfed the wave of rock. When the dust cleared, they were ankle-deep and his lower legs were buried.

  “Guess we’re not going back,” Ressk noted thoughtfully.

  “Good thing that was never the plan,” Torin grunted, moving one of the larger pieces just far enough for her to free her right foot. “You all right, Sergeant?”

  He peered down at his sleeve. “Impact seems to have fixed my clock.”

  “Glad to hear it. Darlys, Watura, dig out the technical sergeant, and let’s get moving.”

  “Kilometers to go before we sleep, Gunny?” Mashona asked, arms flailing as she fought her way free.

  “Farther than that,” Torin grunted.

  With the lights on, even Watura had to agree that the tunnels they were traveling were the same pattern as the ones they’d just left although these were marked with cracks and fissures.

  “Looks like whatever brought the tunnel down ended at the rockfall,” Torin noted, stepping over a rock that had clearly dropped from the ceiling.

  “How do you figure, Gunny?”

  She shrugged. “No damage on the other side.”

  “Could have started at the rockfall,” Mike offered, reaching up to poke at the ceiling and stepping quickly aside as a two-centimeter-thick slab the size of his hand dropped and shattered. “But all the force was expended in this direction.”

  “So, not natural?”

  “Couldn’t tell you without more intell, but the universe is a big place and natural means what you want it to.”

  “Uh-huh.” Here and now, Torin didn’t really care what had caused the damage. “Let’s go, people! Sing out if you smell or hear anything in the caves. Otherwise, we’re making time. Let’s remember this is an escape, the Others are definitely monitoring the pipes, so sooner or later they’ll know we’re on our way out.”

  “Do we expect a fight, Gunnery Sergeant?”

  “We always expect a fight,
Private Kichar. We’re Marines; it’s what we do.”

  They hadn’t gone far before she headed back through the march to Ressk and Mike bringing up an increasingly distant rear. “No one told you to stop walking,” she pointed out as Darlys paused and started to turn. “And you two . . .” Reaching out, she pulled the slate from Mike’s hands and snapped it onto her vest. “. . . you’ll get this back when we stop.”

  “You can’t,” Mike began, glanced at the slate, checked her expression, and spread his hands. Beside him, Ressk wisely remained silent.

  “We’re racing the additive in the food.” Her voice pitched to carry, she knew even Werst and Kichar out on point could hear her. “Sooner or later, we’re going to want to sit down and give up, so if we’re going to escape, we don’t have time to let reprogramming slow us.”

  “That reprogramming could help us escape,” Mike reminded her.

  “Please,” Torin grinned. “Tech’s a crutch. An unarmed Marine in underwear can deal with anything the universe can dish out.”

  “Vacuum?”

  “For that, we’d also need boots.”

  “So we can die with them on?”

  “Pretty much. Since you’re back here anyway . . .” She nodded at the club hanging from a loop on his vest. “. . . you’ve got our six.”

  When the lights went out, she kept them moving for another two hours on the cuffs. Four hours’ sleep would be plenty given that a large part of the day had consisted of standing around and waiting for the rest of the team to inch through the passage in the rockfall.

  “Least no one’s shooting at us,” Werst grunted as he stretched out and flexed his feet.

  “Hey!” Mashona reached across Kichar to smack him, her cuff light drawing an arc across the ceiling of the tunnel. “You trying to get your fukking ass blown away? Anyone’s short,” she grumbled as she flicked off her light and pillowed her head on her arm, “you can keep that to yourself, too.”

  Without perimeter pins, Torin set half-hour watches. “You two,” she added to Mike and Ressk, lit once again by the slate, “are excused, but I want no more than an hour’s work before you get some sleep. I’ll take third watch to make sure of it.” Settling on the floor by Kyster, fully aware Darlys, who had first watch, would spend it staring at her rather than an empty tunnel, she closed one hand around the salvage tag, and closed her eyes.