The Heart of Valor

by Tanya Huff

  “I appreciate your concern, Gunny, certain as I am that it has everything to do with your concern for my well-being and nothing at all to do with you needing a place to pass the buck.” As Torin gave the quip about as much of a smile as it deserved, he ran a hand—his right hand, she noticed—over the pale bristles of his hair. “That scout was way too far out in front.”

  “Good news for us, then, sir. I think the lag between scout and attack means we’re facing only a basic programming change,” she explained when he indicated she should continue. “The scout got here when it did because that’s how much faster it is than the other fliers. My gut says the drones have been pointed at us and told to attack, nothing more. No strategy, no tactics—they’re just to overwhelm us by sheer numbers.”

  “And that’s good news for us because?”

  “Because those minimum three fliers will be hitting us sequentially not simultaneously, and because numbers mean squat against a group of well-led, motivated Marines.”

  He stared at her for a long moment. “You’ve been here before.”

  One moment the surrounding low hills were merely an empty purple horizon. The next they were crowned with Silsviss. The thrumming from a thousand throats grew louder and ended in a bass note so deep it continued to buzz through the silence that followed.

  “Yes, sir.” There were, unfortunately, a limited number of ways to fight a war. Surrounded by a superior number and holding until the Navy showed up just happened to be one of the ways she’d regrettably become familiar with.

  “You won last time.”

  Once again, she kept her hand from rising to touch the cylinder in her vest. “I lost thirteen of my people, sir.”

  “Our people, Gunny.”

  His tone was mild and his expression neutral. She watched him rub his left hand with the fingers of his right and remembered why he’d been tanked for so long. “Yes, sir.”

  He heard the apology and nodded, accepting it. “McGuinty seems to think he could use his slate to jam their scanners if he could bounce it through something with a strong enough signal. If you go down, I told him he could crack your jaw for your implant.”

  “Happy to help the cause, sir.” If the fliers fired from as close in as the sergeants seemed to think, then the much greater range of hers and the major’s implants wouldn’t be necessary, even the sergeant’s implants would be strong enough. Not that it mattered as she doubted even Dr. Sloan would be able to extract them from the jawbones of their owners. And except for the implants . . . “The desk.”

  “Gunny?”

  “It’s not working, but it’s not slagged either, and the CPNs are in communication with both the OP and whichever of the ObSats the Others have taken.” When the major nodded, eyes bright, she touched her CPU. “McGuinty. Admin office, now.”

  “On my way, Gunnery Sergeant!”

  * * *

  After only four days in the snow, cold had become relative. Yesterday, during the first part of the hump to Dunstan Mills, it had been freeze-nostril-hair cold. Then, it had snowed and that had brought the temperature up and, this morning, it had been comparatively balmy. If Stone leaned forward slightly he could see one of the snowmen they’d built still standing guard.

  “You see something on the ground, Stone?”

  He snapped his head up. “No, Sergeant Jiir.” He wished now he’d taken his toque off before he’d come up to the roof; his scalp felt damp and itchy, and he couldn’t take his helmet off to scratch it. Shouldn’t have been looking at the snowman either. When the fliers finally showed, they’d roar in close before firing their rockets and the 9s would have almost no time at all to get enough rounds in front of them to stop them. If he let his attention wander, almost no time became no time at all.

  One flier showed—they all fired.

  Two showed—half fired at each.

  Three showed—a third.

  He knew his half, he knew his third, and he suspected he should have taken a piss before coming up here.

  If the fliers had been reprogrammed to fire at their maximum range, well, then the nine of them on the roof had the best seats in the house for the light show.

  * * *

  Jonin refused to believe that taking responsibility for his people had been a bad thing. Staff Sergeant Beyhn’s transition had destabilized them, thrown them right out of the Corps and their training, and they needed to be given the stability of home.

  He was di’Arl. His family understood responsibility.

  Weapon braced against the edge of the window, he slid his bare finger in through the trigger guard and looked through the scanner, all light receptors open, then at the scanner, most of them closed. Then through. Then at.

  He was cold, and that was ridiculous.

  He was di’Arl and he understood responsibility well enough he suddenly found himself relieved that Gunnery Sergeant Kerr had taken it away.

  * * *

  “Morning we left, I got a ping from one of my thytrin.” Ayumi leaned against the window frame and grinned down at Piroj. “She bet me her Crucible would be worse than mine.”

  “How much do you stand to win?”

  “I didn’t have time to take the bet. We’d already been ordered to the shuttle bay.”

  Piroj shifted his grip on his weapon and, balanced precariously on tipped crate, rubbed his right foot against the back of his left calf. “Too serley bad for you.”

  “Tell me about it. So, why’d the gunny want McGuinty?”

  “No idea. Maybe she wanted him to change the ring tone on her implant.”

  * * *

  McGuinty squatted by the ruins of the desk, lifting one tiny piece after another and holding it to his scanner. When they hadn’t been able to find the actual way inside, Torin had made a new one. Like many things, the desk had proved to be Marine-resistant but not Marine-proof.

  “I can do it. My slate to this unit.” The piece held up in McGuinty’s pale fingers looked like any other as far Torin was concerned. “This unit amplifies the signal and bounces it at the enemy. The signal jams their scanners.”

  “What kind of range?” Major Svensson had saved the desktop, whole but for a cracked corner.

  “Distance, pretty far. Area? No idea, sir.”

  “How long?” Torin demanded.

  “As long as the power in my slate lasts.” He blinked at her expression. “Right. How long before it’s working. Don’t know, easy bit of coding, hardware’s all Marine issue, so hopefully no biggie getting them to snog . . . and I should get to work, right?”

  “Good call.”

  * * *

  Any touch, skin-to-skin, seemed to help keep Staff Sergeant Beyhn calm, and that was a good thing because the di’Taykan had been ordered off to wait the way Marines waited for all hell to break loose—in whatever way that differed from the way normal people, non-Marines waited. Right hand lightly resting on the smooth skin of the staff sergeant’s shoulder, Dr. Sloan looked around at her empty infirmary set up at one end of the common room and prayed that it would stay empty.

  With the index finger of her left hand, she picked at the noncombatant chip on her forehead and thought how much more useful it would be were it attached to someone actually in combat.

  * * *

  “Three/two, talk to me.” Torin’s place was with the major until he said otherwise, and she knew the wisdom of not exposing command, but she hated being inside where she couldn’t see. Especially now, when her gut said the party was about to start.

  “Just sealing the last window, Gunny.” Iful sounded slightly breathless. “Latrine, west side.”

  “Leave it.”

  “But . . .”

  “Get inside, now!”

  * * *

  “Flier at 343 degrees Marine zero!”

  Lirit’s voice. Farther south on the roof, Stone shifted a little to the right and picked up the coordinates. At the absolute outside of the scanner’s range, it was faith alone that translated the energy signature into a fl
ier. And then it wasn’t.

  “One flier locked.”

  “No sign of the other two!”

  “Fuk, it’s fast!”

  “Don’t aim at where it is!” Sergeant Jiir’s voice; the familiar DI cadence. “Let your scanner tell you where it’s going to be.”

  Using a belt, rather than the fifty-round box mag, the KC-9 fired 600 RPM, 200 less than the lighter KC-7. Stone figured that from the moment his scanner told him to fire until he threw himself flat behind the low parapet of the roof maybe six seconds had passed. Little better than six rounds a second. Sixty rounds from each 9. Nine 9’s firing. Roughly 544 rounds. Every tenth a boomer. Fifty-four boomers. All heading for the spot their scanners told them the flier was going to be.

  The flyers were delta wings, a wedge no more than two meters along the back edge and a very little less along each side. In order to take it down, they’d have to damage the propulsion system tucked in just under the nose—where damage meant blow it the fuk up.

  Fukking impossible to shoot down a flier that way.

  Except it looked like it was heading down the same time Stone was.

  He hit the roof, slid in tight behind what little shelter there was.

  Impact.

  It was one hell of a lot louder than he’d expected.

  * * *

  Impact but no explosion.

  Debris slammed against the west side of the anchor, but the weight of the structure kept them from feeling the ground-shock effect.

  “Three/two?” No way Iful and his team had time to make it the length of the west wall and then around the south wall to the air lock.

  “Took the long way, Gunny. We’re eastside at the northeast corner, we’re good, and we’re on our way in.”

  “Roger that. One/one . . .” Kichar’s team held the center west position and with the flier coming in just slightly southwest. “. . . report.”

  “Both windows blew out. Snow mostly. Some . . . dirt? We’re knee-deep in debris but no injuries.”

  “Two/two . . .” Second squad was in the medical center. They could spare a team. “. . . help them dig out.” Torin glanced over at the major who nodded and said one word.

  “Go.”

  “One/two?” She took the stairs three at a time. Chunks of snow spilled out the door of the west room into the hall. One/two had the room farther south, just off the direct impact.

  “Lost both windows, but the south window blew out, not in. Ioeyn’s bleeding, cut by something, maybe the window.”

  “I’m on it.” Sergeant Annatahwee followed two/two out of the medical center as Torin reached the second floor. “If Ioeyn needs the doc, I’ll pull someone from three squad to cover.”

  Torin nodded her thanks and continued up to the roof.

  No way to get an accurate distance on point of impact since the flier had clipped one of the surrounding buildings and gone through another before hitting the ground. Forty meters out, maybe forty-two. Too damned close either way.

  “Can’t say I’m impressed with the workmanship,” Jiir said as they looked at the shattered structure, pieces scattered along the trench the flier had subsequently dug in the ground.

  “The Corps probably never expected anyone to drop a flier on it,” Torin noted absently as she traced the trench to the west wall of the anchor. Half buried under snow and frozen earth and bits of building, the flier lay upside down about two meters from the wall. Only a very little of the debris had hit the roof. The Marines under cover had taken more damage than the nine exposed.

  Jiir dropped to one knee on the parapet and leaned forward. “If this thing’s only carrying training rockets, we’re going to feel like idiots for doing all this damage to ourselves.”

  He had a point. The launch tubes had been twisted up on impact. The top two were clearly carrying flashbangs, but the rocket to the left, nearly buried in snow . . . The Corps tagged everything, but there might not be enough visible to get a firm ID. Torin pulled out her slate and tight pinged the tube. After a moment, specs scrolled up on the screen. “Cheer up, Sergeant, that’s a blast fragmentation warhead.”

  “Nice to know we didn’t achieve the impossible for nothing.” He frowned down at the warhead. “BFWs are detonation on impact.”

  This seemed rather miraculous considering that the flier had completely destroyed a building, then flipped over and skidded along the ground for twenty meters or so except . . . “They’re not armed until they leave the tube, and this one looks like it’s still tucked in tight.” Torin tossed in a quick silent thanks to whatever gods were watching over them. Maybe Private Masayo’s praying had actually attracted some positive attention.

  “I don’t like this.” Torin resisted the urge to grab the back of Jiir’s uniform as he leaned farther out. The Krai knew heights, and he wouldn’t appreciate the sentiment. “The drones have boomers, too, and if one them gets a shot in at that later on and it blows, we could still be in trouble—they don’t call them big fukking warheads for nothing. An explosion could slam the bulk of the flier into the lower wall and buckle it.”

  “We’ll just have to hope the drones aren’t capable of that kind of lateral thinking.”

  Jiir blew a mournful cloud of water vapor through his nose ridges as he straightened and brushed snow off the knees of his combats. “Yeah, but I was assuming they’d do it by accident.”

  “Could they yank it out, arm it, and throw it at us?” Bonninski asked leaning out and taking a look of her own.

  Torin and Jiir turned to stare at the private.

  “That one is officer material,” Jiir said at last.

  “Flier at six degrees of Marine zero. Flier at minus forty-three Marine zero.”

  Lirit’s voice, simultaneously on the PCU and echoing back off the surrounding settlement. The last time, although she’d hidden it well, Torin, listening down in the admin office, had been able to hear the strain in her voice as the first flier had been sighted. This time, she sounded cocky. Not surprising, considering that they’d brought the first flier down with no casualties, but the trouble with doing the impossible was that they now had to do it again. And again.

  “Gunnery Sergeant Kerr! I’ve got it working. We can jam the flier’s scanner!”

  She turned as McGuinty appeared suddenly up through the access, his slate and the amplifier cradled in bare hands. What was that the Krai said? One leaf never falls but they all do. It looked like things were finally going their way.

  “Dr. Sloan helped me connect some of the smaller pieces,” he continued. “She’s got a great eye for the little shit.”

  “Probably from surgery.”

  “No, she said it was from beading. It’s a hobby,” he added. “She makes jewelry.”

  Torin didn’t actually care. “Sergeant Jiir, the fliers are yours. Private McGuinty . . .” she grabbed his shoulder and hauled him toward the edge of the roof. “Set it up and let it rip. Marines inside, move well away from the west side of the building. Take shelter against debris.” Contingency plans had changed; it was obvious the fliers weren’t supporting other drones.

  Rocking a little as she let him go, McGuinty dropped to the roof and set the amplifier down on the top of the parapet. “I still don’t know the area,” he told her, aligning his slate.

  “Then aim it at minus forty-three and hope it’s wide enough to cover the other as well. Sergeant, flier at minus forty-three will be flying blind.”

  “Roger, Gunny. Let’s do it again, people. Watch your scanners.”

  Torin’s hands tightened on her weapon as the 9s started firing.

  At 170 meters, the flier at six exploded.

  The voice of experience suggested a boomer had set off BFW in the tube—the flashbangs wouldn’t have taken out the flier.

  Braced against the blast effect, minimal at the distance, Jiir shot Torin a quick grin and yelled, “What do you know; they do explode on impact.”

  The flier at forty-three went through the fireball.

 
“It’s taking hits!” Cho yelled.

  “Yeah, but is it taking damage?” Lirit.

  “Hasn’t fired rockets yet!” Bonninski.

  “It can’t see anything!” McGuinty whooped. “It won’t fire at what it can’t see.”

  Stone followed the changing coordinates on his scanner, leaning back and then dropping to one knee as, proximity beacon still apparently working, the flier pulled up and over the anchor.

  Torin thanked those gods again.

  It was maybe seventy-five meters straight up from Marine zero when it blew.

  Ears ringing, thrown to her knees by the shock wave, Torin heard four flashbangs go off—after the initial explosion, and closer than seventy-five meters. The fifth . . . Not a BFW. Memory threw up Jiir’s voice listing the flier’s load.

  “. . . most of those rockets are flashbangs.”

  “Most,” Torin repeated. “And the rest?” Because if most were, then some weren’t.

  “Gas if the platoon holds a position long enough to be taken down, incendiaries sometimes and . . .”

  “Filters!” She grabbed McGuinty’s arm with one hand dragging him down to the roof as smoking debris began to fall from the sky while she used the other hand to rip the filter off her vest and slap it over her mouth and nose.

  “Stay curled!” Jiir snapped out DI sure over the sound of a thousand small impacts. “Let your vest and helmet do their jobs!”

  It honestly would not have occurred to Torin that Marines would need to be reminded of that.

  A few of the impacts weren’t exactly small, but, because of where and how the flier had finally blown, most of the larger debris had been flung out beyond the perimeter of the roof. So, besides the shock wave, the Marines had mostly had to contend with the bits of rockets that had gone up marginally after the initial explosion. Since both the flashbangs and the gas warheads were designed to be essentially shrapnel free, Torin had high hopes no one had been hit with anything bigger than vests or helmets could handle.

  The gas, though . . . the gas was significantly heavier than the air it found itself in and was following the shock wave down. There’d be little or no dispersal.

  One thing Torin had always liked about gravity, it worked fast. Lifting her head, she scanned the immediate area for debris and when none seemed to be falling, she stood. Without her support, McGuinty sagged over, curled around his slate, filter over his mouth but not his nose. With his helmet cocked sideways over his thin face, he looked about sixteen.