by Tanya Huff
Behind the neutral mask she wore for superiors, Torin laughed at the C&C Lead’s blatant disbelief.
“If we get lucky, we’ll find bio evidence unrelated to that of the gunrunners and will be able to search military records for a match. Given how many of the Younger Races have served over the centuries, that should throw up at least a partial.”
Fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, cousins, uncles, aunts, nieces, nephews . . . Torin’s hand twitched toward the combat vest she wasn’t wearing, toward the pockets where she’d carried out the cylinders of ash, all that remained of lost Marines. She gripped her thigh, digging her fingers into the muscle, to keep her hand from rising.
Finds Truth Through Inquiry made a dismissive sound, unexpectedly small given her size. “Considering the high percentage of ex-military responsible for the current violence the Strike Teams are called to end, I fully expect a search of military records for a match will easily identify the anonymous provider of the pistol.”
From the way the fur rose along Finds Truth Through Inquiry’s spine, the growl surprised her.
It surprised Torin, too, and she’d made it.
“Kerr . . .”
“No, Strike Team Commander Lanh Ng, the fault was mine.” It wasn’t easy to read facial expression under fur, but Torin had plenty of practice over the years and Finds Truth Through Inquiry looked embarrassed. “I referred to numbers only, millions who’ve served, hundreds who broke under the weight of war. I forgot that to Strike Team Alpha Lead, Warden Torin Kerr those numbers referred to comrades, many of whom didn’t survive to see peace.” She laid a large hand over Torin’s, the heat from the hairless palm relaxing Torin’s hold on her thigh. “My people’s history teaches that we voted against bringing the Younger Races into Confederation. In due time, because they would be worthy members, yes. Merely to fight our war, no. Better we die, my ancestors thought, than have the young die for us. It’s why so many of us . . .” Her other hand covered the badge hanging from the lanyard around her neck. “. . . go into public service.”
Torin met her gaze. “Not a species obsession with bureaucratic detail?”
The Dornagain had evolved on proteins from shellfish and insect larva, nothing they had to chase, but their smiles still held a lot of teeth. “Yes. That, too.”
“Are you done?” They turned together to find Ng wearing a bland expression of polite disinterest. “While I approve of you two building a better working relationship, I’d approve more if you’d do it in a bar like everyone else and not during a debriefing we need to finish before my ten o’clock with yet another political subcommittee worried we’re promoting aggression.”
“We’re done.” Torin gave Finds Truth Through Inquiry’s hand a brief squeeze as she lifted it.
“And only an idiot would believe the Strike Team Program promotes aggression,” Finds Truth Through Inquiry added. “We harvest the aggression the war germinated.”
“Do you hear me arguing?” Ng shook his head—at the analogy, Torin assumed—and took up the thread of the debriefing. “If we find nothing in the military databases, we’ll have to do it the hard way and hope Mackenzie gives us something during further interrogation.”
“I look forward to speaking with ex-Corporal Mthunz Mackenzie again.”
Lots of teeth.
Torin ran back over what they knew, tuning out a detailed list of the forms Mackenzie would have to fill out during a second interrogation. The poor bastard. “Sir?”
“Kerr.”
“We know the crates of weapons were stolen from Marteau Industries’ warehouse.”
“Your point?”
“If MI can manufacture large guns, why not small? The principle’s the same, the materials are the same; only the size is different and that thing had to have come from somewhere.”
“Granted. But all weapon designs have to be approved by a Parliamentary committee . . .”
“Sir, I think we can assume that whoever created this pistol did it without seeking Parliamentary approval.”
“Better to ask forgiveness than delay production of a prototype?”
“Or he didn’t give a shit.”
“Also possible, but—if by he you mean Justin Marteau—Marteau Industries isn’t the only company continuing to manufacture weapons post war.”
“Yes, sir, but Sector Eight already has Wardens on site dealing with the unsolved theft. As long as they’re there, why not have them check the manufacturing records and the subatomic signature of their materials? If there’s no match, we can eliminate that particular production line as the source of the pistol without needing to commit more personnel.”
“Sucking up to budget, Kerr?”
“Will it get us new labs faster?”
“Unlikely.”
“Then, no.” She took a deep breath. Thought of the unmistakable and highly visible bulk of the KCs and the people trained to use them. Trained when to use them and, more importantly, when not to. Thought of the pistol and how it fit into a waistband or a pocket. “We need to find who made it so we can find out why.”
“To see if they could?”
“I hope so.” It was, after all, curiosity that had gotten every species in the Confederation up out of their gravity well. “But then why give it to Mackenzie?”
“Field testing.”
“Then who’s retrieving the data? And how?”
“Excellent questions.” Ng folded his hands together and rested his steepled forefingers against his upper lip. After a moment, he nodded. “I’ll send a message to my counterpart at Sector Eight Station, she can pass it on to the investigative team. Although I can’t see Marteau Industries or any of the big armament companies creating an illegal product; they’ve got too much to lose.”
Justice wouldn’t stop at rehabilitating the manufacturer of the pistol. Not when the Elder Races had tried to wipe out all knowledge of it the first time around.
“I wonder . . .” Finds Truth Through Inquiry slouched and fluffed the fur on her arms again, “. . . why Marteau Industries continues to make weapons if the war is now over. Surely there’s weaponry already available to deal with any final, lingering violence.”
“You’d think so.” Ng pulled Marteau’s logo up into the air above his desk, the MI centered within the shifting stars of an exploding galaxy.
Torin watched the galaxy explode and felt two puzzle pieces shift closer together. “I wonder if there’s a connection between the successful theft of these weapons and the attempted theft of the ancient H’san weapons.” They were no closer to discovering who’d financed the latter attempt. Not even Alamber had been able to follow the money back to a source although, before Torin called him off, he’d bent a few laws and had dug one layer deeper than the forensic accountant Justice had put on the trail. “It could be they’ve had to downgrade from the legendary to the modern.”
“It’s possible there’s a connection, but finding it isn’t our problem. You . . .” Ng pointed at Torin. “. . . neutralize violence. You . . .” His finger moved to indicate Finds Truth Through Inquiry. “. . . make sure it stays neutralized. And, if we’re done, I have half a dozen bureaucrats to appease while wondering why I ever agreed to take this job.”
“Boredom, Strike Team Commander Lanh Ng?”
“I wasn’t aware they offered you a choice, sir.”
“Get out of my office. Both of you.”
• • •
“No one died on your last mission.” Dr. Allan tapped a fingernail against the edge of her slate, the faint plink, plink not quite retreating to background noise. “How do you feel about that?”
Torin maintained her neutral expression. “I haven’t lost a team member since we started.”
“Ah, yes, but I mean that none of the opposing forces died this time.”
“Opposing forces? You mean the gunrunners?”
<
br /> “Yes.”
“This isn’t a war.”
“Isn’t it?”
The Justice Department had concerns about the mental health of personnel involved in an institutionalized armed response. Since it was an institutionalized armed response that had created the need for the Strike Teams in the first place, Torin acknowledged their concerns had merit. She found less merit in their insistence on mandatory therapy for all Strike Teams and Cleanup Crews, but—to their credit—Justice had staffed the new support department broadly enough everyone could see a therapist of their own species. Torin was of two minds about that now her court-appointed therapy with a Marine psychologist had ended, mostly because she found Dr. Erica Allan, who’d never served, annoyingly superficial. And occasionally perky.
Torin felt her endurance of that intermittent perkiness was a good indicator of how mentally stable she actually was.
Still, she’d followed worse orders than “go to therapy.” If things changed and she came to believe she needed help to keep functioning, she’d switch to Dr. Verrir. The Krai therapist had fought at Fortune Station.
“Torin?”
“Doctor.”
Finally realizing she wasn’t going to get an answer to her question, Dr. Allan tried another. “Do you think guilt brought you to the Wardens as much as a sense of responsibility?”
“For the people I couldn’t save?”
“Yes and no. For not realizing sooner that both the Confederation and the Primacy were being manipulated by the plastic aliens.”
“How was I supposed to realize that any sooner?”
The doctor smiled, radiating approval. “And that’s my point.”
Only decades of facing officers, staring at the wall over their shoulders while they ignored reports from the front and laid out plans to win the war by sectus, kept Torin from responding.
• • •
While Ressk’s circlet of leaves hung rakishly over one ear, Werst’s head looked as though it were being devoured by a bush. Torin hadn’t written off sentient plant life—as circumstances continued to remind them, space was big—and there was nothing to say it wouldn’t be carnivorous if and when they found it. That said, Feerar, the station’s chief agricultural scientist, must have all but stripped hydroponics to provide wreaths for the number of Krai gathered in the bar.
Torin knew the eight Krai from the other Strike Teams on station—Delta, out tracking the Berins, had sent regrets—as well as a couple of the Krai lawyers—property damage caused by a Warden was significantly more complicated to resolve than property damage caused by a Marine—and she knew one of the aides working at entry-level politics because Sarrk, the aide in question, had turned out to be part of Ressk’s extended jernine. She knew them, but she’d have a hard time identifying them with the wreaths covering the scalp mottling other species used as identifiers.
For all that it was a Krai ceremony, for all that at least half the people in the bar were Krai, only Ressk, Werst, and Sarrk stood apart. The crowd itself remained mixed, undivided along species lines. Torin would have liked to have seen more of the Elder Races, given their dominant numbers on the station, but the Niln and the Dornagain and the Rakva from C&C had come out and eight Dornagain was about two more Dornagain than the bar could comfortably hold.
“Time has passed!” Sarrk raised her glass as the crowd echoed her words. Werst appeared to be checking for escape routes, but his nostril ridges were open and his fingers interlaced with Ressk’s. “We celebrate the continuance of . . .”
Krai names were matrimonial and long. From a top-of-the-tree family, Ressk’s should have taken the rest of the evening to recite. Sarrk, showing an affinity for the politics she studied, shortened it until it was barely longer than Werst’s.
“May they climb side by side toward the sun!”
“Harr tur!” The Krai shouted it first. The non-Krai echoed it. The Dornagain politely modulated their volume so as not to deafen everyone in the room.
Sarrk drained her glass and set it down. “Now, we eat!”
“Short and sweet. Aces.” Craig touched his glass to Torin’s as the Krai began eating their wreaths. Which, to be fair, Torin should have expected. The Krai had the most efficient gut in known space and could digest anything organic—taking the “only omnivores have achieved sentience” belief to the extreme. While escaping Big Yellow, Werst had eaten what they’d later discovered to be a piece of the plastic aliens to no ill effect.
“You’re frowning.”
“I just realized we should have checked Werst’s shit to see if the plastic reformed after digestion.”
Craig stared at her for a long moment, then shook his head. “Your thought processes scare me sometimes. Come on, let’s abuse your rank, get a table, and bog in.”
Musselman’s, the bar on Berbar Station claimed by the Strike Teams, was no Sutton’s. It was smaller, darker, and had only two small vid screens at either end of the long, carbon fiber bar. But the beer was good, the food cheap and filling, and Paul Musselman, the owner, had adapted to the sudden influx of ex-military by hiring more staff and extending hours to cover variable schedules. Barely making ends meet before Werst wandered in while exploring the station, he managed to combine appreciation for the new business and a polite refusal to put up with shit into the kind of welcome that bureaucracy-weary veterans could appreciate.
And he was likely to make a small fortune off the vertrasir, Torin noted. The food provided for the ceremony was predominately Krai, much of it imported, and could only be improved by enough alcohol to dull the taste buds—although every non-Krai in the bar knew to stay away from the hujin chips. Even the Dornagain had been warned—Torin having canceled the intended trial by fire. A gassy, five-hundred-kilo forensic pathologist in a sealed environment wasn’t funny.
She was defending her last piece of trupin from Craig and arguing with Captain Ranjit Kaur of Strike Team Ch’ore about how it seemed likely the gunrunners had been given a heads up when Werst dropped into one of the empty seats at the table.
“Gunny, Ryder, Cap.” He snagged her trupin, and Craig’s beer, and side-eyed the captain’s remaining trio of giant shrimp. “When I catch the fukker who added pine to my wreath,” he growled around the trupin, “I’m going to add my foot to their ass.”
“You can’t eat pine?”
“I don’t like pine. It’s like chewy turpentine.”
“When did you taste . . .” Captain Kaur shook her head. “Never mind.” She pushed her shrimp over. “Your need is greater.”
He stuffed one into his mouth. “Sun in your face, Cap.”
“Bend without breaking, Werst.”
He waved the second shrimp at Torin. “Notice that, Gunny? Officers get taught manners.”
“You weren’t, so what difference does it make?”
“It’s my vertrasir. I’m faking it.” He snagged a small, round loaf of bread out of the air, and waved his thanks to the server who’d thrown it. “Ah, gheran. What are we talking about?”
“Gunrunners who knew we were coming.”
“And who spilled,” Craig said. “That’s the question.”
“Spoiled for choice.” Werst set the gheran down and spread his hands when they turned to look at him. “Justice is a government department. Government funded means open book. Privacy redaction within the department is minimal. Information’s there if anyone wants to look, so anyone with enough time to sift out the crap could’ve told them. Or blabbed in a bar to some asshole who passed it on in turn.”
“Keeps slipping my mind you’re smarter than you look.”
“Fuk you, Ryder.” He finished the beer and added, “Or it’s a Humans First conspiracy, and we’re headed for shit up to our chins. That one’s for you, Gunny.”
“Thanks.” Torin caught a server’s attention and waved her empty glass. “Conspiracy theories
call for another drink. Cap?”
She shook her head. “No thanks, Gunny. I’ve reached the line between beverage and intoxicant.”
“Craig?”
“If everything we do is public record . . .” He emptied his glass and slid it across the table. “. . . and some poor fukker has to comb through the resulting shitload of files, we should make it interesting for them.”
Cap’s brows went up. “With alcohol?”
Craig winked at her. “It’s a start.”
It didn’t take long after Werst and Ressk left—to an unsurprising number of explicit suggestions—for the crowd to thin down to more bearable numbers. The lawyers and politicians were gone, scientists and researchers condensed around one table, and Captain Kaur had called it a night when it became clear she was in a sober minority of one.
“Commander Ng needs to find a few more Sikhs for this gig,” she’d said as she stood.
Post-Confederation, some religions had disappeared and some had evolved after deciding faith and a wider universe were not mutually exclusive.
Enough room having opened up in the bar to minimize potential accidents, Binti and three other snipers had begun a game of darts, all four of them drunk enough to find knocking each other’s darts out of the air the funniest thing they’d done all evening. Torin didn’t worry about Binti, because she understood Binti. She’d been with the platoon pinned down by a thousand adolescent Silsviss. One of the three survivors when Sh’quo Company had been destroyed. Though Torin had given the order, she’d taken the shot that had destroyed the Heart of Stone. She had her demons; no one came out of a war without a few, but she had them in hand.
“Is that safe?” Craig asked as a dart ricocheted into a pitcher of beer.
“Depends on how you define safe.”
“Fair go you’d have more than one definition.”
Under the table, she pressed her thigh against his. “I try to stay flexible.”