Valor's Trial

by Tanya Huff

“You asking, Kichar?”

  Her cheeks flushed. “No.”

  “Good, because that’s exactly what the technical sergeant would do.” Torin gestured up toward the hole. “Mashona, take a look.”

  She had to jump for the edge and pull herself up through the floor, but it wasn’t far and the Krai could always climb one of the taller species. Again.

  “What have you got, Corporal?”

  Mashona reappeared at the hole. “More tunnels, Gunny!”

  “Oh, joy.”

  “They are being Others ships?”

  “How the bloody hell should I know?” Craig danced the fingers of both hands over his screens, making sure that Promise had been powered down to the minimal levels necessary for life support. He knew she had, he’d done it himself, but with three ships of the really fukking big variety orbiting Estee, a little paranoia seemed like the logical response. Torin would be so proud.

  “You are going to battles before!” Presit snapped, poking him with a remarkably sharp elbow given the amount of fur padding it.

  “No, I go to battles after, and make and model is surprisingly hard to identify from debris. But they aren’t Navy, I can tell you that.”

  She snorted. “Please, I are telling you that. Nor are they being press.”

  “No shit. Methane Alliance?”

  “I are not thinking so, Methane Alliance ships are . . .” Her hands sketched blobby shapes in the air.

  “Butt ugly?”

  “That are being close enough. These . . .” Bronzed nails tapped against the worn edge of the control panel, and Craig only just managed to stop himself from grabbing her wrist. Experience had taught him there were significantly more annoying things she could be doing. “These are not being butt ugly, but are not being familiar either. Being Others, then.”

  “Because you say so?”

  The thin black line of her lips lifted off sharp white teeth. “Yes.”

  “Okay.” He was actually surprisingly comfortable with that. He might freak out about that later. “Why are they here?”

  “They are removing the glass and are taking it back to their worlds and are melting it and are reconstituting the contents.”

  Heart pounding, he turned to stare at her, which was, at least, a change from staring at his screens. “Is your fur too bloody tight? Has all that fluff overheated your brain?”

  “It are only a theory!”

  “It’s a dumbass theory!”

  “And you are having a better one, then?”

  “Maybe, since they won the fight over this particular piece of real estate, they’ve just come back to set up camp.”

  “Then why are they not staying after they won? Why are they giving our side a chance to fortify?”

  “We didn’t fortify!”

  Even including his reflection in her mirrored glasses as part of her expression, she looked smug. “No, but we are having the chance. First they are leaving and now they are coming back; I are not knowing why, but I are betting it are as I said—for analysis of the damage their new weapon are having done.”

  That, he had to reluctantly agree with.

  Tucked up against the nearer of Estee’s moons, they watched for just under eight hours as the three ships maintained their orbits. The scientists’ chartered ship had fled the moment Captain Yritt had all her passengers on board, but Presit had announced that this was finally a story worth her attention and they would wait until the Navy responded. Craig thought about tossing her in the head and hauling ass out of system, but her curiosity seemed to have infected him.

  “But if they spot us, we run.”

  “If they are spotting us, we are trying for an interview.” She’d laughed at his expression and patted his arm. “I are mostly kidding.”

  It was that mostly that had him change the security codes on the com.

  “You are not trusting me?”

  “Not as far as I can throw you.” And since she couldn’t have weighed more than sixteen kilos, that was pretty damned far.

  During the eight hours they’d been watching, the ships had sent no VTAs down to the surface, but with Promise powered down, Craig couldn’t get a read on how extensively they were scanning. He was more relieved than he let show that they clearly weren’t removing any of the surface their weapons had previously fused. Torin would call him stupidly sentimental, but he didn’t want any part of her ending up in enemy hands.

  Actually, given the number of Marines who’d died down there, it was entirely possible she’d understand.

  “Readings are changing!”

  Craig swallowed the last of the coffee in his mug and crossed the cabin to peer down at the screens. “They’re powering up.”

  “Being ready to leave?”

  “We’ll know in a minute.” He plucked Presit out of his chair and settled into its duct-taped, familiar embrace as she smoothed her fur and grumbled about respect. Ignoring the grumbling in favor of tracking the enemy ships, he coaxed Promise up to the edge of readiness.

  “How are we knowing if we are being spotted?”

  “Easy peasy. We blow up.”

  As far as Craig could tell—and it wasn’t as if he were set up to register alien tech, so he couldn’t be one hundred percent sure—all three ships passed the nearer moon, heading out-system without noticing them tucked up against the edge of the gravity well.

  “We are not blowing up.”

  “Trust me, I’m as chuffed as you are. They’ve likely read the Susumi portals opening as our Navy rides to the rescue . . .” He tapped the three distinctive signatures on the long-distance scanner. “. . . and don’t want to shoot it out.” When he reached out to slide the power buildup back a bit, Presit grabbed his arm. Her hand might be tiny, but her claws made her point.

  “No. We are following now.”

  “The hell?”

  She sighed and repeated. “We are following now. This are being too good a chance to lose.”

  “What is?”

  Her claws tightened just a little before she released him. Crouching down, she rummaged in the bag by her feet—Craig vaguely remembered her taking it out of the locker and had assumed she’d gone for her brushes—and pulled out her personal recorder. Straightening, she held it out on one tiny hand. “Be breaking the case open. Quickly!” she snapped when he hesitated. “We are not having time for you to be questioning me!”

  Frowning, he did as she asked and watched with increasing suspicion as she separated a memory chip from the recorder’s hardware.

  “When Durgin a Tar canSalvais were following the Berganitan through Susumi space to Big Yellow, he are using this program.”

  “You told me you told the military you didn’t know how he did it. They’ve been trying to reverse engineer it!”

  “I are not trusting the military. And besides, I are not lying, I are not knowing how. I are not a pilot.” She dropped the chip onto Craig’s palm. He didn’t remember holding out his hand. “But he are doing it with that.”

  “And why didn’t he tell the military?”

  “Because I are having the equations.” As Craig frowned in confusion, she added, “Durgin are not having them memorized, are he? He are not remembering enough to be of any use, and I are having taken this and replaced it with a corrupted chip before we are going onto the Berganitan.”

  Without knowing the Susumi equations that defined the destination, Durgin had locked onto the tail end of the Berganitan’s Susumi signature. Staying close enough to lock while simultaneously maintaining enough distance to keep from being swept up in the wake and destroyed was an insanely dangerous maneuver. Pilots had known the theory for years, but Durgin had been the only one to ever successfully emerge with his ship not only more or less intact on the far side but exactly where he’d intended it to be.

  Craig slipped the chip into his panel. “These aren’t Susumi equations.”

  “No. These are Susumi adaptations. We are using these to follow the Others home. We are maybe using thes
e to end the war.”

  “We are maybe using these to die in a new and exciting way.”

  She grinned, the tip of her tongue visible between sharp white teeth. “We are all being dead someday.”

  “Fuk it, Presit.” But even he could hear that he wanted to be convinced. “I’m clearly not the mathematician Durgin was!”

  “No.” Her claws were sheathed when she touched his arm this time. “But you are being a much better pilot.”

  The new tunnels weren’t exactly the same as the old. They were wider, and the walls weren’t as smooth. Mashona called them lightly pebbled and that seemed as good a description as any as far as Torin was concerned. There were no small caves and the curves had nearly become actual corners.

  Kyster and Kichar both insisted that they’d fully recovered. They were young enough and anxious enough to please that Torin didn’t believe them, but as they were doing nothing more than walking, surrounded by armed Marines, she let it go. Mike, who’d taken the largest hit, occasionally stumbled and had a tendency to angle off to the right. When asked, he said he felt like shit, and that Torin believed. The readouts on his sleeve had defaulted to Ventris norm and his medical readout kept coming up yellowish orange.

  Without the darker marks of the caves breaking up the pale gray expanse of walls, it was hard to get any good idea of how far they’d walked without actually calculating time and the average speed of a movitated Marine.

  “About twenty-eight kilometers since we hit this level.”

  “Thank you, Ressk.”

  “Think we’re actually getting somewhere, Gunny?”

  “Are we where we were, Corporal?”

  “No . . .”

  “Then we’re definitely somewhere else.”

  “Somewhere closer to getting out?” Werst asked without turning.

  “Yeah. I think so.”

  “Going to tell us why you think so, Gunny?”

  “I expect the belief is based on years and years of experience combined with a number of subliminal clues that I’m not consciously aware of.”

  “Gut feeling?” Mike asked in the stunned silence that followed her declaration.

  “Pretty much, yeah.”

  Mashona’s raised fist halted forward movement and conversation both. They’d come within three meters of their first t-junction—a cursive tee perhaps but a familiar intersection for all that. Passing it after Mashona had scouted ahead and returned with the all clear, Torin couldn’t help but think that there were now three possible ways the enemy could use to come up behind them. And, logically, that they had to run into the enemy soon.

  Although both tunnels remained empty as she brought up the rear of the squad, she thought she could smell something vaguely familiar. Sweet. Not rotten food, dying comrade sweet but truly sweet; like those horrible red candies given out on First Landing Day that were supposed to taste like cherries, but those who took the dare and ate them insisted there had never been such a flavor in nature.

  “Hold up, people.” Their small column stopped dead. “You smell it, Ressk?”

  His nose ridges slowly opened and just as slowly closed. “Like a bowl of jellied aln in the sun? But it’s not close. In the distance.”

  “Everyone back on me; we need some intell.”

  Head cocked, Ressk’s ridges opened again. “I’m not sure which tunnel it’s coming from, Gunny.”

  “Werst, Kichar—give me a quick two minutes each way.”

  “Gunnery Sergeant Kerr, Kichar’s injured,” Darlys began, but Torin cut her off.

  “Kichar’s Recon. Even juiced, she’d do it better than the rest of us.”

  “Not better than you, Gunny!”

  “I wasn’t including me, Kichar, now move.”

  The smell continued up both cross tunnels.

  “Fine. Right it is, then. Mashona!”

  “On point, Gunny.”

  “Why right, Gunny.”

  Torin shrugged. “I’m right handed.” Then she had to spend a few moments explaining to Ressk why right-handed people tended to turn right if given an option. The Krai were not only completely ambidextrous but ambiextremitied as well.

  Six minutes up the new tunnel and around the first of a series of increasingly tight curves . . .

  Ressk tapped her lightly on the wrist, his voice low, not intended to carry. “The smell’s getting stronger but not from in front of us, Gunny.”

  She tapped Mike on the shoulder, signaled that they should keep walking until they were around the next bend and wait, and then she flattened against the wall, dropping to one knee. Without a helmet, the best way to survive a head shot was to keep from being shot in the head, and removing that head from where the enemy was aiming was the easiest way to do that.

  By the time the sound of boots had faded—deliberately silenced for the benefit of their stalker as all nine Marines waited barely eight meters away—she could hear an almost familiar tapping growing closer. Club in her left hand, knife in her right, she waited.

  The bug didn’t exactly have a face, so Torin had to assume the way both antennae flicked straight up indicated surprise. Having tossed a grenade at one while sharing the insides of Big Yellow, she’d learned that the sharp smell of lemon furniture polish translated fairly closely to oh, fuk! They were the only insectoid species of Others she’d ever fought against and wouldn’t have picked them as their jailers if given a choice—mammals knew at least some of the strengths and weaknesses of other mammals.

  She’d barely raised the club when the bug pivoted its entire body around the rear clump of its millipedelike legs—hard to see actual numbers under the skirt of its body armor, but there were at least three involved—and took off back down the tunnel. Torin wanted to say it looked terrified but had long since learned that cross-species generalizations seldom came close to what was actually happening.

  The question now became did they follow the bug or run like hell in the other direction?

  Easy enough to answer; the jailers knew the way out.

  “We’ve got bugs, people. Let’s go!”

  TEN

  BUGS HAD A LOT OF LEGS, BUT THEY WEREN’T particularly long—all that movement down by the floor made them seem faster than they were. While the cherry candy bug might be motivated to get away, Torin’s need for answers drove her to close the distance before the odds changed in the bug’s favor. She could hear boots pounding close behind her—Mashona and the di’Taykan; the Krai couldn’t keep up on the flat and the other two Humans were still shaking off the effects of the current.

  They raced through a series of switchbacks where Torin’s smaller turning radius allowed to her gain a little ground. When they reached another t-junction and the bug started left, hesitated, and then turned right, she dove forward and got her arms around the abdomen, using momentum to bring them both crashing to the ground. Torin wasn’t too concerned about injury, not to herself or the bug—they were both considerably tougher than they looked—she just wanted to slow it down long enough for backup to arrive.

  “Gunny!”

  “Haul ass, Mashona!” She used her elbow to block one of the under arms, claw bouncing painfully off bone, and twisted away from the other. Her position made her relatively safe from the upper arms where relatively meant the bug wasn’t quite able get hold of her but was more than willing to raise bruises trying. Its mouth parts clattered, and Torin got a nose full of the sharp, ammonia scent of evergreens mixed with cinnamon. Xenolinguists in the Corps were fond of speculating on how much the bugs depended on scent; did it stand on its own as a language or did it merely support verbalization. Torin’s gut feeling said both, just as her gut was saying that cinnamon-sprinkled evergreen equaled yelling for backup. Her head slammed into the tunnel wall, but she managed to tip the bug over onto its side, exposing the vulnerable underbelly and giving the bug something to worry about other than taking her to pieces as it began struggling to get away. Apparently, no one had ever told it that the best defense is a good off
ense.

  Odds were very good she was young and had never fought a mammal before. At least not hand to claw.

  The sound of approaching boots got lost between the ringing in her ears and the crack and scrape of bug and Marine against the stone.

  “Gunny!” Mashona’s warning was suddenly up close and personal. “Hostiles!”

  She had a split second to decide. Did she hold onto the bug and use it as a hostage, assuming its companions cared enough about it to stay back, recognizing that in her business, assumptions about alien species usually fell on the early death side of stupid? Or did she jump clear, giving herself and her people more maneuvering room?

  Shifting her grip, she let the bug get her legs under her again and when she thrust up with her abdomen, Torin used the movement to jump clear, rolling and coming up onto her feet just in front of and between Darlys and Mashona.

  “Well . . .” She shoved a tangle of hair back off her face and her fingers came away bloody. That explained why her head hurt so fukking much. “. . . this is interesting.”

  No point in tracking the bug as she scrabbled back to her companions. It seemed a lot more important that Torin keep her eyes on the three quadrupeds, two other bugs, and four members of a bipedal species she couldn’t remember ever fighting. Taller than the Krai but at the low end of Human norm, they were stocky—if she had to guess she’d say muscular—hairless, with ivory skin, thin, almost nonexistent features, and eyes that showed black from lid to lid.

  “What do we do, Gunny?” Mike asked quietly.

  Not a good idea to glance back. Better to assume they were all there, then. Ten of the good guys. Ten of the Other guys.

  “We don’t make any sudden moves,” Torin said at the same volume.

  One of the quadrupeds—the female, the short plush fur on her lower half a tawny gold only a little darker than her eyes—moved slowly out in front of the group, a member of the unidentified species close by her side. They wore dark gray uniforms patterned with black but no helmets. No PCUs. No visible tech at all. No weapons except for . . .

  “Werst. On the far left. Is that a sling?”

  “Looks like, Gunny.”