The Privilege of Peace

by Tanya Huff

  “Almost?”

  “You weren’t available.” She could see him considering further protests, saw when he decided not to, and relaxed. Promise was a part of him, she understood that, but it was his ship not his liver. Occasionally, he’d have to surrender control.

  Elisk shook his head as he watched the terrorists being dragged over by the inner bulkhead, ignoring the whining about unnecessary roughness from the three who’d surrendered. “We gave them too much credit.”

  Torin spat out another mouthful of blood. “They infiltrated the Justice Department.”

  “True that.”

  When Craig finished sealing her left hand, she stepped carefully over a clamp and bent to retrieve Paddison’s knife. It hurt to bend, it hurt more to straighten up again. “This is a quality blade.”

  “Torin.” Craig tugged the knife out of her grip and moved close enough to take part of her weight. “Your forehead just split again.”

  She’d slammed it against Paddison’s nose at least twice. “I’m fine.”

  * * *

  She spent another three days tanked.

  The shit hadn’t yet died down when Torin got out of quarantine two days after that, the Wardens running everyone on the station through extensive background checks, having been examined themselves by an independent observer.

  “Shouldn’t it just be Humans under investigation?” Torin asked, having been escorted to the office of Internal Affairs.

  Watches Over, who had one of the shortest Dornagain names Torin had ever heard, shook his head, dark brown ruff swaying with the motion. “If we merely investigate the Humans, we’d appear to be supporting those members of Parliament calling for the removal of the Younger Races from active participation in the Confederation. The Justice Department doesn’t take sides.”

  “Not even the sides between keeping the law and breaking the law?”

  He narrowed his eyes. “You’d better hope not, Warden Strike Team Leader Torin Kerr. Disabling the proximity alert is a class three felony as well as a safety violation, and you’ve insisted on carrying the entire blame.”

  “I was the senior Warden involved, and the others are used to following my lead.”

  “U’yun just got here. They want to follow you.” Watches Over tapped long, curved claws against the inert edge of his desk. “Now, again, from the beginning. You were out of the tank . . .”

  SIX

  “UNCOVERING AND SHUTTING down a terrorist cell inside the Justice Department tipped the scales. I was told not to do it again, and if it came up that I felt I couldn’t trust Humans, I was to report the situation directly to Watches Over rather than take care of it on my own.”

  “You were hardly on your own,” Binti pointed out as Tylen helped her set another round of drinks down on the table. “You had two Strike Teams with you.”

  “Didn’t want to remind them of that.” Torin took a beer, pushed another into Craig’s grip, and settled back against the warm weight of his arm.

  Ressk shoved the nearly empty bowl of hujin chips toward Elisk. “They’re not likely to forget. There’s talk about docking our pay and confining us to quarters.”

  “Uncovered and shut down a terrorist cell inside the Justice Department,” Torin repeated. “Slap on the wrist, and we’re clear.”

  “Slap on the wrist? We all have to retake the course on nonviolent conflict resolution.”

  “I just finished it,” Lorkin moaned, head on the table.

  “We all did, Lor.” Zhou shoved him hard enough his chair rocked. “At least you lot . . .” His wave took in the Alpha Team members at the table. “. . . haven’t had to go through it for a couple of years.”

  “So boring.” Nostril ridges closed, Lorkin bounced his head against the polished wood. “If a nonviolent resolution is even possible, why call us in?”

  “They’re conflicted,” Binti told him, patting his back hard enough to bounce his head down one more time.

  “You ass.”

  Binti grinned. “Little bit.”

  “I notice no one has mentioned . . .” Craig tossed a pretzel over the neck of Torin’s bottle. “. . . that you should be excused a disciplinary hearing for recovering an abducted Warden.”

  “Abducted?” Tyler’s hair flipped back behind her ears. “You walked into their arms like they’d shut their maskers off. You practically shouted, take me, I’m yours.”

  Craig didn’t tense up at the laughter, so Torin let it continue. He didn’t seem terribly traumatized by his hours of captivity, but considering his time with the pirates, why would he be? At least this time he came out of it with the same number of body parts he’d had going in. He’d been waiting for her outside the IA offices and after walking back to their quarters in silence, they’d dealt with the situation the way they usually did. More sex than dialogue. Albeit very careful sex given that she’d just been detanked for the second time in a tenday. It worked for them. She’d reminded him he was part of a team over post-coital coffee and that, next time, he might want to remember that.

  “Hey, Gunny? What if it . . . or something similar to it,” Marie amended, “happens again and we can’t trust the Dornagain? Who are we supposed to go to if we can’t go to Watches Over?”

  Torin took a long swallow of beer before answering. “It’s not going to happen again.”

  “It could.”

  “No, it couldn’t. Because the next person who goes off on their own is going to have to rescue themselves on their own.”

  “Sorry, Gunny. Not very convincing.”

  The entire table agreed with Elisk’s assessment.

  “No,” Torin admitted. Ch’tore had been in and out again while she’d been retanked, Delta had returned and gone on leave, and none of the others were back yet, but Musselman’s seemed less empty than it had the last time there’d been only two teams in the bar. She glanced over at Alamber and Nicholin arguing good-naturally by the KDA board, at Yahsamus leaning on the bar, trying to convince Paul to add tomagoras to the menu, at most of Alpha and U’yun around the two tables they’d pushed together. No one got left behind. She aborted the motion toward the vest she wasn’t wearing and laid her hand on Craig’s thigh instead.

  “Hey, Gunny,” Zhou leaned in, dark eyes locked on hers. “How did you know Paddison would give us enough time to get into place?”

  “She’s a terrorist. Terrorism can be distilled to violence supporting a belief system. People who believe in things always want to convince you their way is the right way. That they have a good reason for whatever fukkery they’re up to. Assholes are a lot less predictable.”

  “Actually . . .” Tylen paused dramatically. “No, that’s accurate by both definitions.”

  “So, I heard Paddison had eleven broken bones,” Zhou said when the laughter stopped.

  That called for another drink. “I know. I’m back to weekly therapy sessions, no excuses.”

  “Fingers and noses shouldn’t count,” Werst grunted.

  “Good thing Craig was bleeding,” Elisk noted thoughtfully. “It’s undoubtedly what allowed for unreasonable emotional provocation to balance out the excessive force.”

  Craig hadn’t been bleeding when the chair went over. His hand closed around her shoulder and squeezed lightly.

  * * *

  • • •

  Two days later, Torin looked up to see Ranjit and her team enter Musselman’s and helped shuffle bottles and bowls as Sirin and Ru pulled another table over. Werst and Ressk shifted the chairs. U’yun had gone out that morning on a run to Ventris, leaving Alpha alone on the station to the unanimous agreement that their time out of the rotation was a passive-aggressive form of punishment. Commander Ng hadn’t denied it.

  “Where’s Craig?” Ranjit asked dropping into the chair next to Torin.

  “On the Promise. He cleaned up in a two-day poker game with e
ngineering, and he’s peopled out.” Sometimes Craig needed solitude. Sometimes Torin needed to hit things.

  “So, the rumor out among the stars is that Humans First had been poised to take over the Justice Department.”

  “Poised?” Torin shook her head as Ranjit snickered. “The investigation found one true believer . . .”

  “Mimi Paddison.”

  “. . . and fifteen . . .”

  Ranjit held up a hand. “The report we saw said twelve.”

  “Twelve in the fight, but we picked up three later. So fifteen in a station of over ten thousand. Sleepers waiting for orders that would probably never have come had Paddision not shown initiative. Not exactly poised.”

  Ru set a platter of Gambas al Ajillo on the table. “Way we heard it, Gunny, it wasn’t so much Paddision showing initiative as you having set a bad example for Ryder over the years, inspiring him to take on the bad guys all on his own.”

  “I have never done that,” Torin protested. “I was with a platoon on Silsviss and Crucible, had a recon squad on Big Yellow, and teamed up with the fukking Primacy on that prison planet. It’s Presit and her damned lone warrior bullshit.” She ate a prawn, washed it down with a swallow of beer, and added. “But the Craig part is true.”

  * * *

  • • •

  “Paddison’s the only one who knows anything at all, Boss, and she knows squat that’s helpful. Marteau’s very good at keeping his pieces from touching.” Alamber had been working with station security, installing new code to keep anyone else from shutting down the alerts. They were idiots if they believed he hadn’t built himself a backdoor—Big Bill’s tutelage during Alamber’s formative years wasn’t easy to shake. Pertinent to the current discussion at Musselman’s, working with security gave him access to a new source of gossip. “And Paddison,” he continued, “she’s the only true believer. She recruited the rest of them, vets just disgruntled enough to want to stick it to the system.”

  “They were willing to get into a firefight,” Ressk pointed out. “That’s pretty fukking disgruntled.”

  “No, they were there to kill me,” Torin reminded them. “They responded to the Strike Teams’ attack with a firefight. That’s understandable.”

  Werst snorted. “Yeah, killing you is so much more gruntled.”

  “We’ll never know if they’d have gone through with it.”

  “Only takes one, Torin.”

  She leaned into Craig. “I could have taken one.” She’d served with one of them her second year in. He’d been on his last deployment then. She didn’t remember him, but that’s what his intake paperwork said.

  “One plus Paddison, Boss.”

  “Still not a problem. And they’re not our problem.” She glanced around the table at her team. “They’re all getting the rehab they need.”

  * * *

  • • •

  “So you are having once again single-handedly having saved Craig and the Confederation.”

  Torin leaned back in her chair, the camera on the desk adjusting to keep her in focus. “I had two Strike Teams with me. I wasn’t alone.”

  “I are going to be mentioning them,” Presit told her, as though it were a foregone conclusion when it wasn’t. “I are thinking it are going to be a good time to be pulling out the recordings from Vrijheid Station where you are also having been saving Craig.”

  The recordings from Vrijheid had been illegally obtained, but that information kept getting lost in the explosive dismantling of Big Bill’s crime empire. “Presit, I’m not supporting your run for Parliament.”

  She ran bronzed claws through her whiskers: right side, left. “Why would you? You are being in the same Sector, certainly, but you are being in a completely different district. No one here are caring about you, Gunnery Sergeant Warden Kerr. And . . .” The end of her muzzle wrinkled, showing small, white, pointed teeth. “. . . I are having discovered for you there are being a good chance the ships who are having been skirmishing on the border are having been skirmishing in agreement with the Primacy. Trying to be keeping the Navy’s funding up on both sides of the border now the war are being over. I are having no proof yet, but I are sure enough to pass the information on to you.”

  So you owe me.

  Torin sighed. “Clear any new Vrijheid footage with Craig. He was the one who needed rescuing.”

  “Of course.” Presit crossed both glossy black hands under her ruff and pressed them into the thick fur. “I are never wanting to be upsetting Craig.”

  When Craig came out of the bedroom, shirtless, a pair of ancient sweats hanging low on his hips, Torin was still sitting behind the desk. He glanced down at the blank screen and said, “I thought Presit was going to call.”

  “She called. We talked.” Torin got to her feet and rolled the stiffness out of her shoulders.

  “You talked?”

  “We talked. Let’s go to Musselman’s. I need a drink.”

  “I’ll put some clothes on.”

  “If you must.”

  * * *

  • • •

  “The cook?”

  Commander Ng nodded. “Per Paddison identified Petty Officer Marilissa Kotas as a member of Humans First.”

  “I was shot at close range by a Navy cook?” Torin shook her head. “That’s embarrassing. Any chance Paddison could be lying?”

  “Her rehabilitation councillor says no.”

  So Ng had already asked. “If Humans First inserted a shooter into a PLE facility . . .”

  The commander waited a moment, but when it became clear Torin had no plans to continue, said, “Wardens Peels Back the Layers of Lies and Quentizen are on their way to Seven Sta.” He glanced down at his desk. “Their ship is a hundred thousand klicks out from the jump buoy.”

  Nice to be told. “Alpha’s still benched, then.”

  “Alpha doesn’t ask discreet questions, Alpha demands answers. There’s a subtle difference. We’ll let the less violent Wardens do their jobs.”

  A muscle jumped in Torin’s jaw as she unclenched her teeth. “I’m not going to apologize for keeping you in the dark about Craig’s abduction. Same situation, same circumstances, I’d do the same thing again.”

  “I’m aware.”

  He wasn’t angry. If Torin had to put a name to the emotion lurking behind his eyes, she’d say he was hurt that she, and—by extension—Alpha and U’yun hadn’t trusted him. That, she did regret. She respected Commander Ng, but she wasn’t going to apologize for choosing a course of action that gave her the best odds for getting her people out alive. “Would it help if you yelled at me, sir?”

  “Is that what they’d do in the Corps?”

  “Most of the time, sir.”

  He met her gaze and said flatly, “Try to remember you’re no longer in the Corps, Warden.”

  * * *

  • • •

  “Yeah, but we never shot a bennie at the plastic, did we?” Tylen looked around the table.

  Zhou frowned. “Why would we do that?”

  “Bennies destroy organic molecular integrity,” Ressk said thoughtfully. “And the plastic is organic.”

  “And back in the day, Big Yellow took apart the boss’s benny, then rearranged itself so it couldn’t be affected.” Alamber sighed and finished his drink. “It’s all there in the report.”

  “You read the report?”

  Alamber shrugged. “I read all the reports.”

  Beta Team had been pulled into a long-term surveillance since they were right where they were needed when needed, but the other teams were home. Gamar wore a sleeve tank to repair the damage a bullet had done to his elbow, but that was the worst injury among the lot. Musselman’s was crowded, and Torin felt settled in her skin. Binti, Cap, and Yahsamus were playing darts, although they were making Binti play with her nondominant hand, Werst and Cr
aig were at the KDA, Werst having taken her place when her lives had run out. U’yum had continued sitting with Alpha, and Torin felt like she’d suddenly acquired younger siblings.

  “Musselman!” Doug Collins banged on the bar. “There’s a match on!”

  Paul flipped him off and returned to polishing an already spotless glass.

  “Looks like we’re watching a Parliamentary debate,” Ressk sighed.

  “Shoot me now.” Zhou stood, swayed, and moved around the table to poke Lorkin in the side. “Hey, trade seats with me, so I don’t have to see their smug faces.”

  While none of them were exactly watching the screen, it was hard to completely ignore the debate. Torin heard her name and looked up to discover a Niln MP laying out the details of her recent shooting.

  “You’re famous again.” Ressk saluted her with his cup of sah.

  “At least no one sold them an illegal shot of me in the tank.” Everyone looked pathetic floating in viscous fluid. Torin didn’t do pathetic. Bad enough she’d been shot by a cook.

  The MP finished by tasting the air and saying, “Perhaps instead of involving all of the Younger Races, we should just keep Warden Kerr confined to her planet.”

  The sound that followed was probably laughter, although with some of the species present it was hard to be sure. Torin wasn’t laughing.

  “Come on, Boss. You have to admit it’s a little funny.”

  “I really don’t.”

  “You okay?” Craig asked, dropping into the seat beside her. She turned toward him, and he shrugged. “Heard your name. Wondered what you were thinking.”

  “About the natives of Threxie and how the plastic might have devolved them.” When his brows went up, she shrugged and waved a hand at the politician listing the ways the Younger Races had been disrupting the smooth running of the Confederation, her tail lashing back and forth. “If they did it once, there’s a chance the plastic’s been devolving individuals all over known space.”