Valor's Trial

by Tanya Huff

  “I’m guessing that’s the way out,” Ressk murmured. “About ten kilometers, Gunny?”

  “About,” Torin agreed, shifting to allow Kyster in between her and the panel. The Krai were not going to be able to cover the distance without boots. Although there looked to be solid paths among the lava fields, the rock would be too hot for bare feet.

  “Definitely a landing site,” Freenim allowed as a gust of wind temporarily cleared the air but stirred up half a dozen small firestorms and one large enough to collapse what had looked like a secure rock bridge.

  “I don’t see a ship.” Sniper trained, Mashona had the best eyes in the group.

  Werst snorted. “In this weather? Probably parked inside.”

  Torin lifted the filter she still held. Given the pyrotechnics on the other side of the window, it seemed a ridiculously fragile protection. Given that they hadn’t yet found the door . . .

  A panel slid down on the left wall, disappearing into the floor, exposing the hatch and the keypad beside it. A light bar running across the top blinked orange and . . . well, Torin saw a shade that looked to be lavender, but the way it shimmered she suspected it was lavender only to Human eyes.

  “Technical Sergeant?”

  He shrugged. “It was the next switch.”

  “All right. We need to get this thing open, so concentrate on the keypad. We know what it . . .”

  Through the soles of her boots, Torin could feel the same faint vibration they’d felt back on the lower levels.

  The Artek went crazy. With all three emitting, the scent of lemon furniture polish was unpleasantly strong. By the time the quake finished, they were tucked into the angle between wall and floor, torsos folded down, both sets of arms holding them into what looked like a painfully compact position.

  “If they react that way to little quakes,” Torin murmured to Freenim as Sanati tried to talk them into unfolding. “How would they react to a big one?”

  “They believe we will have a chance to find out. Soon.”

  “Soon? The quake damage I saw down below was fairly recent. It should take time for pressure to build up again to something big.”

  “On a stable landmass, perhaps.” He nodded toward the window. “On that?”

  “Good point.”

  “The Artek feel that in a large enough quake, this structure could collapse.”

  It seemed the Artek enjoyed stating the obvious. “In a large enough quake, any structure could collapse.”

  “According to Sanati, they have been expecting a large enough quake since we found a section of collapsed tunnel.”

  Another section of collapsed tunnel. “You think they’re overreacting?”

  The other NCO shrugged. “Maybe a little.” Outside the window another chunk of the landscape fell into a lava pool, sending up sprays of molten rock. “Maybe not.”

  “Technical Sergeant!”

  “Gunny?” He didn’t bother looking up from the keypad.

  “ETA on the door?”

  “No.”

  “All right, then.”

  “Gunny, I’ve found the communications board!” Perched on the edge of a stool, Ressk had all four extremities working the panel.

  “Can we get a message out?”

  His nose ridges opened and closed. “I, uh, can’t actually get it to do anything. I just know where it is.”

  Torin just barely resisted the urge to slap him on the back of the head. “Try for a little more substance next report, Corporal.”

  “If the slate was up and running . . .”

  “A Marine should be able to control a situation without tech.”

  He shot her a look over one shoulder and sighed. “It’s a tech situation, Gunny.”

  “We could force the door.”

  Torin turned toward the durlin, but Freenim was there before her.

  “It’s an air lock, sir. We will need to close it after.”

  A drifting cloud of ash hit the window with a noise like tiny claws scrabbling against glass, reducing visibility.

  Kichar and Everim were glaring at each other again.

  Helic’tin and Bertecnic had their claws out, and Kyster and Werst were showing teeth. A biological response from both species, but it was effect not cause that concerned Torin. And she didn’t care who’d started it.

  It was probably quiet and peaceful back down at the pipes.

  “All right, that’s enough!” Torin’s voice in Federate and in whatever language was spilling out of the slate filled the room, leaving no space for fidgeting or attitude. “We’re going nowhere until that door is open, so find a spot, put your ass in it, and turn off your mouth. When the durlin has something she wants you to do, she’ll let you know!”

  Somewhere around the time the durlin had taken responsibility for not going down to retrieve Jiyuu from the bottom of the shaft, Torin had stopped pretending to take orders from her.

  Over by the door, Firiv’vrak clattered something and wafted a bit more lemon polish around the room.

  “You can’t stop the building from collapsing; it’s not your problem,” Torin snapped. “Sit!”

  All three Artek folded their legs and settled to the floor. “Durlave Kir Sanati, the control panel.”

  “Yes, Gunnery Sergeant.”

  A moment later the only people standing besides Torin, Freenim, and Dulin Vertic were working on tech.

  Freenim’s expression was admirably blank as Torin crossed the room to stand next to him and the durlin—nothing for him to react to in a senior NCO acting as senior. Vertic looked slightly startled, but she recovered quickly and hid it well.

  “Gunnery Sergeant, Durlave Kan; perhaps we should use this time to inventory our supplies. We can shorten the rations, but if we do not find water soon . . .”

  “If we assume this control room is some kind of central maintenance station,” Torin began.

  “Then how were the workers supplied?” Freenim finished.

  “Werst!”

  “Gunnery Sergeant?” Her tone pulled him up onto his feet, but he made it look like it was his idea.

  “Head back out into the tunnel. Take Kichar and Kyster with you; you’re looking for living quarters.”

  “Merinim!”

  “Durlave Kan?” The Druin’s reaction was a mirror image of Werst’s. The Primacy’s equivalent of a corporal, then. Torin made a mental note.

  “You and Everim go with. Take one Artek, they may can sense . . .” He waved a pale, long fingered hand. “. . . whatever the xercan it is they sense.”

  “Xercan?” Torin asked quietly as the six jostled for position leaving the room.

  “Leftover profanity from religiously intolerant time,” Freenim explained, cracking his knuckles.

  “Yeah,” Torin sighed, “we’ve got those, too.”

  “Corporal?” Kichar moved as close to Werst as she could get without actual physical contact. “Do we watch them?”

  “Watch who?”

  “Them!”

  Kyster turned with the other two Marines. The Druin were checking out the opposite wall of the tunnel much the same way they were—using fingertips and eyes in place of scanners. He had no idea what the big bug was doing. His stomach growled.

  “They’re doing their job,” Werst snorted returning his attention to the wall. “Nothing to watch.”

  “But they’re the enemy!”

  “Not right now.”

  “That’s not something you can just turn off.”

  The older Krai snorted. “Corps tells me to turn it off, I turn it off. Gunny talks for the Corps down here, and she says you turn it off.”

  “But how can she expect us to do that? How can she do that?” Kichar thumped the wall with the side of her fist. “She’s been fighting them longer than any of us.”

  “She’d be most tired of it, then, wouldn’t she?” Kyster flared his nose ridges as they turned toward him but stood his ground. He couldn’t tell what the corporal was thinking, but if he was reading the
Human signs right, Kichar was going to argue. Yeah, big surprise.

  And then the big bug pushed between them to rub its antenna against the wall, claws tapping lightly along the same path.

  Startled, Kyster stepped back. His good foot came down on something soft. Before he could recover his balance, a hand closed over his shoulder and shoved him aside. He stumbled, rolled off his bad foot, and cracked his head against the wall.

  The big bug was right there, pushed up against him. He grabbed at it, felt air flow over his fingers, and realized it had side gills. Too weird. It smelled like roast arlin. Kyster’s stomach growled again. Did it taste as good as it smelled?

  “Stand down, Private!”

  His mouth snapped closed before he realized the corporal wasn’t talking to him. Kichar and that Everim were toe to toe. Again.

  When Werst reached out to haul her back, the other Druin— Merinim—stopped him. To Kyster’s surprise, Werst glanced over at Merinim but didn’t even expose his teeth. He shook free of her grip, but that was . . .

  Kichar was down!

  Kyster charged forward and rocked to a stop, a segmented foreleg hooked diagonally across his chest.

  “No biting, Private!”

  Teeth closed on air, lips barely grazing the bug’s shell, neck kinked from jerking his head up at Werst’s command.

  Kichar knew a number of dirty moves from ground level. Everim dropped. From where Kyster stood, it seemed the Human was heavier but the Druin more flexible. Bigger didn’t always mean squat—people who came up against the Krai learned that all the time—but Kichar was using her size to keep the other guy pinned. As she drove the hard wedge of her fingers into the muscles of his thigh, the point of his elbow caught her in the nose. The spray of blood was amazingly red among all the gray.

  “All right, that’s enough.” Werst had a fistful of Kichar’s combats, right up by the neck, and he used the pressure on her throat to haul her up onto her knees. He didn’t have the height to get her standing.

  Merinim was doing much the same to Everim, and Kyster would have bet his next full meal that she’d said the exact same thing.

  Stepping back, Werst’s gesture jerked Kichar up onto her feet. “Gunny’d object if we let you beat each other senseless, so that better have taken the edge off.”

  “I was winning!” Even muffled by the hand pinching her nostrils shut, Kichar sounded pissed.

  “Don’t care. Playtime’s over; let’s get back to work. Kyster!”

  He jumped. Steadied himself on the bug, who didn’t seem to mind. “Corporal?”

  “What’s your buddy found?”

  Found? The bug smelled like a type of candy he remembered Humans sucking back on Ventris and was stroking the wall with her antennae. She sat back on her lower legs—chitin plates clacking against each other—tapped the wall with a foreleg, tapped his head with an antennae—it felt like being hit with a stiff feather—and tapped the wall again. Her hands weren’t heavy enough to make much of an impact.

  “I think . . .” He frowned, nose ridges opening and closing. “I think she heard something when I hit the wall, and she wants me to do it again.”

  “So do it again,” Werst grunted.

  It kind of hurt the second time.

  Werst sighed. “Not with your head, Private.”

  Face flushed, he tapped the wall with his fist until the bug stopped him. She rose up, first and second set of limbs braced against the wall, shuffled left, shoving him back out of the way, leaned back, and fell forward.

  A door slid open in the tunnel wall, exposing a small, bright room.

  “Good work, Kyster.” Werst’s hand came down on his shoulder. “You and the bug have found the crapper. Find me a news reader and a cup of sah and I’ll get you a fukking promotion.”

  “Want to tell me about it, Private Kichar?”

  She’d washed her face and wiped down the front of her combats, but blood remained caked in red-brown rings around the inside curve of both nostrils. Drawing in a deep breath through her mouth, she came to attention. “Beginning at roughly 18:20 by my sleeve, I was involved in . . .”

  Raising a hand, Torin cut her off. “You don’t have to tell me about it, Kichar. I asked if you wanted to. Do you?”

  Her cheeks flushed. “Uh, no, Gunnery Sergeant.”

  “You learn anything from the incident?”

  “That the Druin are bendier than they look, Gunnery Sergeant.”

  Torin was tired enough she almost smiled. “Not quite what I meant, Private. Don’t do it again.”

  “Yes, Gunnery Sergeant!”

  Kichar pivoted on one heel and almost managed to march smartly away. Bruises under the fabric, Torin decided, watching her move, but nothing more serious. The corporals seemed to think it was the kind of fight that could safely be ignored—puppies fighting for dominance—and she trusted the corporals. Well, she trusted Werst. Turning to face him, she said, “Fill the canteens, then see that everyone drinks as much as they can hold. Have our people take it in turns with theirs.”

  “On it, Gunny. And the actual crapper?”

  “Using it won’t interfere with filling the canteens.”

  “That’ll make the job a joy.” He didn’t specify which job.

  Torin didn’t ask. “Welcome to another glorious day in the Corps.”

  The sound of claws scraping stone announced one of the Polina behind her. Smelled like Vertic—she was a little less musky than the males.

  “The technical sergeant does not have the door open yet.” The durlin stared down her long nose at Torin who added another check mark in her all officers state the obvious regardless of species or affiliation column.

  “No, sir, he hasn’t.”

  “Find out why.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Given that Vertic was standing less than two meters from where the technical sergeant was working, it seemed like she could safely say that the chain of command had been firmly established.

  Mike had cannibalized one of the plastic bands from the filters to make tools. Torin’d had no idea there’d been so much small shit in there. She dropped her voice below the level the slate could pick up. “Durlin Vertic is wondering how much longer it’s going to take you to make a totally unknown alien tech bend to your will. Anything I can tell her?”

  “No.”

  “All right, then.” She passed on Mike’s response to the durlin, edited slightly for length, and went back to staring out the window at the landing site, trying to map a route through pools of lava and firestorms, vision impaired by the blowing smoke and ash. If Mike didn’t solve the hatch soon, she’d be finding patterns in chaos and that was never healthy.

  “Gunnery Sergeant?”

  “Private Darlys.”

  “Is there a way across?”

  The wind slapped another cloud of ash against the window, and Darlys’ hair snapped back in reaction, falling forward again almost sheepishly a moment later.

  “It’s ten kilometers, Darlys. You should be able to cover that in your sleep.” Not quite the answer to the question. There was a way between the landing site and the prison because there had to be although, with no visible road, it was likely their captors used a variation on a skimmer. Still, even skimmers had trouble over lava pools.

  “It’ll be dark soon.”

  “You know when sunset is?” Torin leaned forward and peered up at overlapping layers of burnt-orange clouds. It looked as though the atmosphere was on fire, and until she had intell to the contrary, Torin wasn’t going to rule that out. “Have you even seen the sun?”

  “Not dark out there, Gunny, I mean in here. If Technical Sergeant Gucciard doesn’t get the hatch open soon . . .”

  “He’ll work by cuff light. He’ll manage.”

  “But if he doesn’t get the hatch open . . .”

  “He will. It’s a hatch, Private.” Fully aware that everyone currently in the control room was listening, she raised her voice slightly. A little hope couldn’t
hurt. “It has a limited range of function—it opens, it closes. The tech may be alien, but it’s not complicated.”

  “But it is alien and . . .”

  “Technical Sergeant Gucciard will get the hatch open.” Her tone made it clear she’d just said the final word on the subject.

  “Got it!” Mike’s tone, on the other hand, was triumphant.

  Darlys’ eyes darkened, but before she could put words to the awe visible on her face, Torin snapped, “Tell Corporal Werst to hurry with the water. We won’t be here much longer.” Pivoting on one heel, she returned to Mike’s side listening for the sound of Darlys’ boots moving away. That kind of timing was only going to strengthen the di’Taykan’s belief in her developing godhead.

  Metal whispered past metal as the hatch unlocked. Mike moved away from the controls and nodded up at the bank of lights now burning a steady pattern of blue and yellow over the door. “Should mean we’ve got air pressure.”

  “Should?”

  “Alien tech, Gunny.” He cranked the handle around one-handed and pulled gently. At the soft sigh of a seal breaking, he glanced down at his sleeve. “Contained atmosphere escaping reads as identical. Do I have a go, Gunny?”

  “Durlin?”

  Her claws squealed as she scraped a rear foot against the polished stone floor. Torin winced and mentally listed everything they still had to do in order to keep from tying the durlin’s feet together. To her credit, she almost managed to hide her excitement as she said, “You have a go, Technical Sergeant.”

  Mike pulled the door open.

  And the earth moved, bucking once, twice, three times. The sound of crumbling infrastructure rolled down the tunnels and into the control room—cracking rock sounding so much like weapons fire that Kichar wasn’t the only one to throw herself to the ground reaching for the weapon she wasn’t carrying.

  Torin, left hand grabbing the edge of the center control panel, unlocked her knees and rode it out. With her sleeve readout turned away from her, and unwilling to loosen her grip, she had no idea how long the earthquake lasted. It felt like fifteen or twenty minutes.

  The Krai were still standing at the end of it—their preferred real estate never entirely stopped moving, giving them a highly developed sense of balance. Torin had cracked her knee against the panel but remained on her feet as had two of the Polina—Bertecnic had dropped back onto his haunches, rear legs spread to either side. The position would have looked comical if not for the scimitar curve of ten-centimeter claws fully extended from each foot. Everyone else sprawled where the quake had thrown them. The Artek, tucked back into the angle of wall and floor were—with no danger of misinterpreting their reaction—just one side of hysterical.