The Truth of Valor

by Huff, Tanya

  How close to death would Ginger Mustache have to be to bring the salvage operators together?

  Or did only the dead get parties?

  Spotting Jenn over by a group of Krai who were probably complaining about the waste of food—they ate their dead, and saw no real reason why they couldn’t eat everyone’s even if the articles drawn up when they joined the Confederaton expressly forbid it—Torin caught her eye and nodded toward Jeremy, silently asking if she wanted him back.

  When it appeared she didn’t, Torin allowed the child to drag her over toward the stage where a band named Toyboat—two Humans, a di’Taykan and a Niln on the beatbox—were doing a power chord cover of H’san opera. She could honestly say she’d never heard a better version of O’gra Morf Dennab. And she’d definitely had worse dancing partners.

  By 2100, most of the kids had gone and the serious drinking had started. Craig knew of three stills which meant there had to be at least half a dozen more on the station he didn’t know about, all supplying alcohol for the funeral—and that wasn’t even counting perfectly innocent food and drink that got a lot less innocent when it crossed species lines. Personally, Craig was sticking with the fernim made by the Katrien collective; sweet and dark, about 80 proof and the best fukking thing ever to put in coffee. If there was anything resembling justice left in the universe, he’d be taking a bottle or two away with him. The Katrien collective hadn’t been part of the station last time he’d been by. For the sake of the fernim alone, he hoped like hell they stayed.

  From where Craig was sitting, he could see Torin deep in discussion with a couple of di’Taykan. Kiku had served one contract in the Corps as a comm tech and Meryn had been Navy, so the odds were high they were rehashing old battles. Or at least the di’Taykan were. It wasn’t something he’d ever heard Torin do. He supposed, as career Corps, she’d seen enough battles the novelty had worn off. If the di’Taykan were trying to impress her, well, they didn’t stand a hope in hell. Any hell. Pick one.

  If he were a betting man—and he was—he’d bet the conversation had started with a proposition, even given that Torin had been named a progenitor and every Taykan in the Confederation seemed to know it. Still, it wasn’t like she was planning to start a Taykan family line. Or, given the differences in biology, a Human line on Taykan. Or that anything much kept a di’Taykan from suggesting sex. They’d never discussed where they stood with the di’Taykan, Torin and him. Although it was pretty much a consistent belief across known space that sex with a di’Taykan didn’t count, he found he was pleased Torin hadn’t gone with them. If that made him unevolved—he took another swallow of coffee and fernim—he didn’t fukking care.

  “So pendejo ...” Pedro dropped down on one side of him, Alia on the other. “. . . you are serious about this woman, yes?”

  Craig toasted Pedro with his mug. “Would I have exposed her to your ugly ass self if I wasn’t?”

  “You might have been trying to scare her off,” Alia said thoughtfully, crossing her legs at the ankles. At some point during the evening, she’d had the H’san symbol for life hennaed onto the tops of both bare feet. “Tossing her into the deep end. Seeing if she’ll swim.”

  “She swims fine. Threw me in a freezing, fukking lake on Paradise.”

  Alia snickered. “You suck at metaphor when you’re drinking.”

  Craig toasted her, too.

  And nearly coughed the mouthful back up when Pedro jabbed a bony elbow into his side. “Your woman, she’s used to ordering a lot of people around. You sure you going to be enough for her?”

  Yeah, it wasn’t like he hadn’t wondered about that. He shrugged. “She chose to come with me.”

  “Never doubted it.”

  “Never thought for a minute you could make that one do anything she didn’t want to,” Alia snorted.

  “’S truth.” Craig nodded. “Or she didn’t feel she had to.”

  He could hear the frown in Alia’s voice although he kept his attention on the last swallow of his coffee. “Isn’t that the same thing?”

  Pedro leaned across him, reaching for her mug. “How much of that have you had?”

  “Not enough.” She easily evaded his grab and got to her feet, graceful in spite of the swaying. Or maybe swaying gracefully, Craig wasn’t entirely sure. “You two behave,” she added as she left.

  “I love that woman. ¡Te amo, mujer!” Pedro shouted at her back.

  Alia flipped him off without turning.

  “She loves me, too.”

  “She married your ugly ass, she must.”

  “So are you and ...”

  “Don’t know. We haven’t talked about it.”

  “She took you home to meet her family.”

  Craig shrugged, unwilling to read any more into that than there’d been. “I’d already met her father. Back when she was dead.” Fukking mug was empty. He pulled Pedro’s from lax fingers and swallowed a mouthful of . . . “What the fuk is this?” he gasped, eyes welling up.

  “Something Kevin’s been fermenting in the greenhouse.” Pedro took his mug back and drank. “Good degreaser, too.”

  He could almost feel his tongue again. “No doubt.”

  “So, how long you planning to stay this . . .”

  A howl from over by the empty stage cut him off as Newton Winkler ripped off his overalls, screaming obscenities. Looked like he’d gotten a couple of new tats since Craig had seen him last.

  “Fukking Winkler’s been into the sah again,” Pedro sighed, hauling himself slowly to his feet.

  Craig stood with him. For the Krai, sah had an effect about equal to a cup of coffee. To Humans, the mild stimulant caused—as well as a host of nasty physical reactions—delusions, paranoia, and an inability to feel pain. Craig had learned the hard way that last bit was the kicker. Hopped up on sah, the restraints self-interest put on violence were gone, and Winkler would keep fighting long after the damage he’d taken should have forced him to quit.

  “Oh, fuk it, Jurr’s trying to talk him down.”

  Jurr probably hadn’t intended to get his ass thrown across the room. Fortunately, Krai bones were hard enough he bounced. Also, fortunately, the cluster of people he bounced off of were drunk enough they’d probably suffered nothing more than minor bruising.

  Then Torin’s left arm went around Winkler’s throat, her right hand wrapped around her left wrist forcing the hold tight. Face growing darker in the crock of her elbow, Winkler clawed at her arm, blunt nails sliding off her sleeve. His bare feet paddled against the stage, then slowed, then stopped. Torin eased him down, studied him for a moment through narrowed eyes, then straightened. “He won’t be out for long,” she snapped. “Tie him or trank him.”

  Craig grinned as a couple of Krai he didn’t know moved quickly in and carried Winkler away. Their sah, their responsibility. Allowing a Human to get his hands on the liquid could mean charges laid if anyone on the station wanted to push the matter.

  “She could kick your ass from here to the edge,” Pedro murmured, draping an arm over Craig’s shoulders.

  “Not news.”

  “Bet she’s realmente bueno in the rack.”

  “Not telling.”

  “You’re in love.”

  Craig watched as every Krai still in the room dropped their eyes rather than meet Torin’s gaze. Even those far enough away she couldn’t possibly see their expressions, stared at the floor. Pedro hadn’t actually asked a question, but Craig answered anyway. “Yeah,” he said as Torin glanced his way. “I am.”

  “. . . so try to stay away until we’ve forgotten what your ugly face looks like. Torin can come around any time, though. What?” One of the family said something just out of range of the comm unit. “Jeremy says he’s going to marry Torin when he grows up,” Pedro translated.

  “I’ll consider that fair warning. Stay safe, asshole.”

  “And you, pendejo.”

  It was, Torin thought as Craig maneuvered the Promise out past a long line of the polyvolta
ic cells that helped power the station, one of the strangest clearances she’d ever heard. The station OS had been involved only in the resealing of the access lock.

  “So ...” Craig sounded amused. “Something you’re not telling me?”

  “About?”

  “You and Jeremy.”

  “He’s a cute kid.”

  “I never knew you liked kids.”

  She shrugged. “I find I’m liking them more now I don’t have to watch them die.” Not that she’d ever actually watched them die; she’d fought like hell to keep them from dying. “Jeremy’s young enough, he’ll never get mixed up in this mess.”

  “Fifteen, sixteen years; you think the fighting will stop by then?”

  “I think the war will have stopped by then. Fighting? In general?” The Elder Races of the Confederation believed that an interstellar presence could be achieved only by those species that had evolved beyond the desire to blow themselves—and others—into extinction. This caused them a problem when the Primacy, who clearly did not share this belief, attacked. And continued to attack, diplomacy be damned. When it came down to fight or die, the Confederation bent the rules enough to allow Humans, Krai, and di’Taykan to join their club even though none of the three had managed to do much more than break out of their own gravity well. As it turned out, it was entirely possible that the “plastic aliens” had juiced the Primacy, but that wasn’t the point. The point was, there were three aggressive species buzzing around Confederation space, and no matter what Parliament seemed to think, they weren’t all likely to put down the weapons they’d been using.

  “Torin?”

  “Do I think the fighting will stop?” She thought of saying ask Jan and Sirin, but he was asking her. “No.”

  “Pessimist.”

  Folding her arms along the top of his control chair, she rested her chin on his head. “Realist.”

  “You’re thinking of the pirates.”

  “Not specifically.” Pirates. Actual pirates. That was going to take some getting used to.

  “So,” he said again after a moment, still sounding amused, “you made an impression.”

  “On a four year old.”

  “Winkler was over aces, and you kept him from hurting anyone.”

  “Okay, I made an impression on a four year old and a sah addict. Winkler needs help.”

  “He needs to stay off the sah.”

  Torin sighed. The Corps would have slapped him into a program before the charge of self -inflicted damage had even hit his slate and then would have gone after the Krai who’d allowed his access to the beverage. Much the same thing would have happened on Paradise and on any station that maintained a government presence. Any hint of Humans getting their hands on sah and the Wardens would move in attempting to limit the damage. Salvage operators, though, they refused to interfere in the man’s personal choice.

  Individually, they were smart, tough, and adaptable. Working together, as a unit . . .

  Would they work together as a unit, though; that was the question? Would they? Could they? What would it take?

  Torin was just as glad to be leaving them behind. Individuality at the expense of the group went against everything she’d believed her entire adult life.

  Once Vrijheid had been just another government station, but the mining operations it had been intended to support had been destroyed in the war, and the cartels had cut their losses rather than rebuild. When William Ponner arrived, the station had been stripped to bare bones personnel, waiting to be moved off its L5 point and folded through Susumi space to a new location. Rumor, stripped to bare bones, said he’d barely been there a tenday when he’d hacked a database and convinced the powers-that-be the station’s orbit had decayed due to damage taken during the attack. That it had crashed into the planet, all hands lost.

  Apparently, he’d even implanted records of the Navy’s investigation.

  Cho figured hacking the Navy took balls the size of small moons and only doing it once took more brains than were usually evident in the Human species as a whole.

  William Ponner—Big Bill to his friends and everyone who used the station was either his friend or about to become a statistic supporting the dangers of living in space—had used balls and brains to create his own personal fiefdom. If a captain had cargo to sell, it could be sold at Vrijheid, no questions asked, fifteen percent to Big Bill. If a captain wanted to outfit his ship so that picking up new cargoes became a little easier, he could do that at Vrijheid. Fifteen percent to Big Bill. If a crew wanted to spend their share of the money, they could do that, too. Sex, drugs, alcohol, high tech, low tech, and useless pretties that sparkled and shone. Fifteen percent to Big Bill. If a person with skills wanted to sell them to the highest bidder, no questions asked, they could sell those skills at Vrijheid. Fifteen percent to Big Bill.

  He’d created a sanctuary for those who were tired of a Confederation designed to support the belief that the Elder Races’ shit didn’t stink. Humans, Krai, and di’Taykan almost exclusively—the so-called Younger Races who were treated by the government like they were too stupid or too unstable to be anything but cannon fodder—although every now and then, another race found a niche and filled it.

  Cho gave the Ciptran standing by the entrance to the bar as much room as possible—the big bug made his skin crawl. Once inside, he crossed to join Nat and Doc at a table against the far wall. Although all races drank in the Sleepless Goat, the staff was predominantly Human, albeit Humans the universe had chewed up and spat out. No one ended up slinging drinks in a place like the Goat if they had options. Every server in the place showed the signs of one or more addictions, but Cho preferred it to any of the other dozen or so bars on the station. When he wanted a drink, he wanted a drink. Period. Not a proposition. Not meat pies that might have once had a name.

  “Tyra’s dead,” he grunted, dropping into a chair. “Crazy old woman took a walk in vacuum about six tendays ago.”

  Doc drained his glass and held up three fingers to the server. “Her codes were so old, they probably wouldn’t have worked anyway.”

  “We’ll never know now.”

  Drinks arrived with a promptness that suggested the word had been passed on to new staff and the servers were keeping bloodshot eyes locked on Doc. No one wanted to be the one to tip him over. Not if the stories were true.

  Most of them were.

  “We need to take another fukking salvage operator alive,” Nat growled, fingers curled and heading for her scalp. She scowled at Doc as he wrapped his fingers around her wrist and pulled her hand back down to the table. “What?”

  “It won’t heal if you keep scratching it.”

  “It itches!”

  They did need to take another salvage operator alive. Nat’s declaration had been stupidly obvious but accurate for all of that. Cho took a long drink of his beer, then sat staring into the foam. Trouble was, most CSOs ditched their pens and ran the moment they figured out what they were facing, and oblivious idiots like Rogelio Page were few and far between. Not likely they’d get that lucky again.

  “Cap.”

  Cho lifted his head slowly, acknowledging Nat’s warning but not reacting to it. Half of the bar’s clientele could literally smell fear, and all of them would take advantage of it.

  Big Bill and the Grr brothers were heading toward the back of the bar. Once his destination became obvious, the noise level rose as the other patrons played nothing to do with me.

  “Mackenzie Cho, as I live and breathe.” Big Bill smiled widely, showing a lot of teeth. Given that his closest associates were Krai, teeth weren’t exactly reassuring. He pulled the fourth chair out from the table, and sat, not caring that his back was to the room. Given that the Grr brothers were at his back, that wasn’t even a little surprising.

  Grr was not their actual name. Nor were they necessarily brothers. Both the Krai and di’Taykan in Cho’s crew agreed they were male—the subtle differences in scalp mottling that made up Krai secondary
sexual characteristics confused the hell out of Humans. More importantly, they were two of the nastiest sons of bitches in known space. Cho had once seen them eat a man’s feet, totally ignoring the screaming.

  That they barely came up to Big Bill’s shoulders when he was sitting down didn’t matter in the slightest. Even Huirre, who’d eaten a body part or two in his day, gave them a wide berth.

  “Thanks, sweetheart.” A beer and a shot appeared in front of Big Bill almost before he sat down. He smiled up at the server, tossed the shot back, set the glass back down on the table with an audible click, and smiled again. “We need to talk, Cho. People you’re selling to are talking about how you’re holding back, and today I find out that you’ve been asking after Tyra, bless her withered heart. What did you find out there between the stars?”

  And why are you trying to keep it from me?

  People who tried to keep things—or at least fifteen percent of things—from Big Bill on Vrijheid didn’t live long.

  The Grr brothers smiled.

  Nat dug at her scalp again, and Doc tapped the edge of one thumb against the table. Cho felt a drop of sweat run down his back. He took a deep breath and reminded himself that he hadn’t kept anything from anyone. Things were being kept from him. “I can’t talk about it here.”

  Let this lot of degenerates find out he had a Marine armory on board, and the fukking losers would be fighting over who got to try for it first.

  Big Bill made a noncommittal noise that still managed to sound like a threat.

  Dragging his tongue over dry lips, Cho added, “Let me show it to you.”

  Big Bill maneuvered the eye deftly around the armory in absolute silence, fingers ghosting over the surface of his slate. When he reached the CSO seal, he snorted. “Given what you told me of your captive’s unfortunate death, I see why you were looking for Tyra. Not the sort of lock you can plug your slate into and have it run down the combination; salvage operators write in some bugfuk crazy layers. That said, you do realize Tyra’s codes would have been too old to open this?”