The Truth of Valor

by Huff, Tanya

  “Her codes would have been a starting point for hacking the lock.”

  “Tricky.” Big Bill nodded slowly. “But possible if you have someone sufficiently skilled.”

  “I have someone.” Depending, of course, Cho qualified silently, on how much his thytrins had exaggerated young Nadayki’s talents.

  “Good.” With the eye at full magnification, Big Bill examined every millimeter of the lock, then—after snapping his slate back onto his belt—turned and swept a critical gaze over Cho and his two companions. “If you actually manage to get that open, do you know what you have?”

  “A cargo we can sell for one fuck of a lot of money,” Nat told him.

  “No.”

  “No?” she repeated, eyes wide.

  “What you have,” Big Bill said quietly before she could continue her protest, “is a means to an end. With those weapons in the hands of free merchants ...”

  Doc turned a snicker into a cough.

  Big Bill ignored him. “. . . you, we could take what we wanted.”

  “We take what we want now,” Nat pointed out, wiping bloody fingertips on her overalls.

  “No.” Cho answered before Big Bill could. “We take what we can. There’s a difference.”

  The big man nodded again. “That’s what I like about you, Mackenzie Cho. You see the whole picture. The information about how the little gray aliens played puppet master across known space and beyond has the Confederation teetering on the edge,” he continued. “We apply pressure at the right point and we can keep everything we can take.” Reaching back, he pressed one hand against the cargo bay hatch. “With what’s in here, we can take enough to make a difference.”

  “The Navy will try and stop us,” Doc said slowly. Folding his arms over his chest, he frowned and added, “Advantage always goes to the side that doesn’t play by the rules.”

  It was like both halves of his personality had made their own point.

  “With this ...” Big Bill smacked his palm against the hatch, the sudden impact loud enough Nat jumped and swore. “. . . we can make our own rules. Now then . . .” His smile was genial as he leaned back and folded his arms, smile broadening when Doc scowled and unfolded his. “. . . let’s go over our options. I could purchase this from you, as is. You’d make less than you would if you sold the contents piece by piece, but opening the armory would be my concern. You would, of course, no longer have first choice of the weapons for your own personal use, nor would you be at the forefront of the revolution.”

  Cho could feel Doc and Nat staring at the back of his head. “No deal.” This was his chance. The way Vrijheid had been William Ponner’s

  “I thought that would be your answer.” He nodded his approval. “The second option involves you returning with a new and preferably less broken CSO and, once you have the codes, I do the hack myself.”

  And Cho remembered how Big Bill had acquired the station.

  “There’s two reasons I don’t like that plan,” Big Bill continued. “First, the Corps objects to outsiders getting their hands on their toys, and they make that objection with extreme prejudice.”

  “I thought it’d just blow up,” Nat muttered.

  “Exactly.” Big Bill beamed at her. “And I do not risk blowing myself up for anything less than one hundred percent of the profits. Second, I can’t be associated with something that might not work. Bad for business. Option three begins the same way as option two, but you hook up to the old ore docks—there’s an old explosives storage pod there that should protect the station should things go wrong. Once that lock is off, I get fifteen percent of the contents for the use of my secure space, and you can sell whatever you don’t personally want after you and I discuss distribution.”

  “You and I?” Cho asked, his voice level even as he fought the urge to sneer. “You’ll get your fifteen percent off the top, sure.” He didn’t want the Heart blown to shit any more than Big Bill wanted his station damaged. “But I have a Marine armory full of weapons. Why will I need your to help get rid of them?”

  One of the Grr brothers growled.

  Big Bill, however, seemed pleased to have been asked. “Weapons change everything. I know where they should go to both get you top price and have the most advantageous effect. But, more importantly, before it even comes to that, you’re going to want my help because I can see that you capture a working salvage operator.”

  “How?”

  “Captain Firrg has a small outstanding debt she’ll be happy to clear.”

  Two ships would make it a lot easier, turning the nearly impossible to even odds. Cho nodded. “She follows my orders.” Mackenzie Cho, Captain of the Heart of Stone, took orders from no one.

  “Of course. I’ll set up the meeting. Say, 1600 at the Golden Griose?”

  Cho glanced over at Nat, who shrugged. “Schedule’s clear, Cap.”

  “Good. We’ve got some lovely potential for change building here, Captain Cho.” Big Bill’s expression suggested he was moments away from rubbing his hands together. “Get me some actual and we’ll talk again. Try to grab a Human,” he threw back over his shoulder, heading for the air lock. “I’ve always felt we have the strongest, not to mention least ethical attachment to self-preservation.”

  Falling into step behind him, the Grr brothers laughed.

  Cho took Huirre with him to the meeting at the Griose. Firrg’s crew was completely Krai, and he had no idea how good her Federate was. Good enough to function, definitely, but he wanted no confusion on either side.

  “I hear she’s out here because of lost love,” Huirre said as they made their way across the Hub to the Griose. “The one she wanted, wanted another, and it blackened her heart.” He ducked a shoe thrown out of the pushing match over by the falafel cart, paused, and frowned. “Or that might’ve been on a vid I picked up at Cully’s when I was in for those gloves.”

  “Keep up,” Cho growled. “And I don’t give a H’san’s ass why she’s out here,” he added as Huirre fell back in beside him. “She follows my orders, no questions asked. And she doesn’t fukking need to know what we’re carrying, understood?”

  “Aye, Captain. But if she asks?”

  “I do the talking.”

  “Aye, aye Capt . . . gunin yer chrick!”

  Edible was the highest compliment in the Krai language. As far as Cho could see, Captain Firrg didn’t look significantly different from Huirre—a bit bigger maybe, about a meter high, greenish-gray mottled scalp, lightly bristled, three sets of paired nose ridges—currently expanded as though she were smelling something nasty as they made their way toward her.

  “I don’t like this,” she growled before Cho could actually sit. “And when I say this, I mean Humans. Don’t like them, never have. Only reason I’m in on this is because Big Bill says you’re taking down a Human.”

  “And because you’re into him for a new set of air scrubbers,” Cho reminded her, sitting down. Anything could be bought on Vrijheid, including information. Firrg’s Federate was better than he’d expected—fluent and without so much as an accent. He could have brought Nat instead of Huirre, who sat staring at the other captain with hunger. With the Krai, hunger covered a number of options.

  “Serley son of a bitch wants his pound of flesh,” Firrg snarled. Smart people didn’t assume they could tell what another species was thinking but the hatred in her eyes was unmistakable. Cho wondered if Big Bill knew. Or cared if he did. “I have no choice,” she continued, “the Dargonar is by your side . . .”

  “And under my command.”

  “And under your serley command,” she agreed through clenched teeth, shifting a little of that hatred toward him. “But that’s it. Everything goes through me. I don’t want your kind having any contact with my crew, and I don’t want any part in what you and Big Bill are up to.”

  “Are you that certain without knowing what it is?”

  “I’m that certain. One job together and I go back to not giving a shit about what you or this
cark sucker gets up to.” Holding up her slate, she nodded toward his. “I’ve got a set of temporary codes you can use to contact me.”

  She had a jagged scar across her forehead, Cho realized as the codes transferred, the angles too regular to be accidental. When she saw him staring, she drew her lips back off her teeth, and Huirre whimpered. Cho curled his own lip in response. He’d been hated before; it didn’t bother him much. During his court-martial, the hatred coming off the families of the dead sailors had been so virulent the Navy’d had to remove them from the courtroom in order to get anything done. “Any suggestions where we can pick up a Human CSO fast and easy?”

  Her nose ridges snapped shut. “Fuk you; I’m support during take-down. That’s it. You can do your own serley research.”

  He wouldn’t have trusted her information anyway. “I’ll be taking the Heart of Stone out in about fifty-six hours. Be ready.”

  “If you can’t give me an exact time now, I want a four-hour heads up,” she told him flatly.

  “Deal.” In the interest of keeping his fingers, Cho didn’t hold out his hand. He watched Huirre watch her leave the Groise. “You know why she hates Humans?”

  Huirre snorted. “Why does anyone hate Humans? Pity she won’t be part of the revolution. I’d love a chance to sink my teeth into that one. What a pair of amalork.”

  Only the Krai would get hot about jaw muscles. “She’d have you for breakfast.”

  “I’d die happy.”

  Cho rolled his eyes and waved a server over. Krai bar or not, if he left now, it would look like Firrg commanded his movement, and he wasn’t having that. “Just as well she doesn’t want in on the buy. I wouldn’t trust the psychotic bitch not to turn on me the moment she was armed.”

  “That, Captain . . .” Huirre reached across the table and drained Firrg’s abandoned glass. “. . . is because you’re a very smart man.”

  “You sure you’re okay with this?”

  Torin glanced up from her slate, more than happy to be pulled away from studying government regs defining legal salvage. “With working?”

  “Yeah, because you used to lay about on your arse.” Spinning the control chair around, Craig lifted his legs and dropped his heels on the scuff mark at the edge of the panel. “You’ve called CSOs carrion crows in the past.”

  “Never to you.”

  He shrugged. “You were tanked for quite a while after Crucible, and Sergeant Jiir has both a low tolerance for alcohol and a touching belief in the fairness of the universe.”

  “He’ll draw to an inside straight?”

  “Every damned time.”

  Torin thought about asking how many times but decided Jiir was an adult and a sergeant, and if the first time he’d played cards with Craig hadn’t taught him to back away slowly, well, that wasn’t her problem anymore. As for tales told under the influence . . .

  She set her slate down on the small table. “I didn’t like you—collectively you—making money off the dead. Which . . .” She held up her hand to cut off his protest. “. . . was pretty fukking hypocritical considering how I made my living. I know. But these were my dead, and . . .”

  “And I wasn’t in the club.”

  “Yeah.” It sounded petty and arrogant put like that, but Torin had long since learned to own her shit. “Then there was you, personally . . .” She rolled her eyes as he flexed. “. . . and by the time I woke up in that tank, it was clear you and me, we weren’t an every now and then kind of thing, so I did a little thinking. When they gave me back my slate in rehab, I did some research. Do you know how many families of military personnel Civilian Salvage Operators have given closure to?”

  Craig shook his head. “Nine out of ten times, it’s scrap, Torin. Maybe some retrievable tech.”

  “And that tenth time has added up to three hundred and seventy-one thousand, two hundred and twenty brought home. And counting.”

  “That’s . . .” He blinked. Frowned. Swung his feet down to the deck and leaned forward, elbows braced against his thighs. “That’s a lot.”

  “Those little gray plastic bastards have kept us at war for a long time. And that number doesn’t include the DNA evidence from the Primacy on record. As soon as the politicians stop talking out of their asses, they can go home, too.”

  Torin watched his mouth move as he repeated the number silently to himself. “That’s what changed your mind about salvage operators?” he said at last.

  “That’s what changed my mind.”

  “Made it all right for you to throw in with me?”

  They didn’t talk about what they had between them, so she shrugged. “It didn’t hurt that the sex was amazing.”

  “Was?”

  “It’s been a few hours, I don’t like to apply old intell to new condi . . .”

  She could have stopped him from toppling her off the chair and onto the deck, but as that had been the reaction she’d been trying to evoke, she’d have just been shooting herself in the foot.

  A little over two hours later, the alarm went off.

  “Ten minutes and we’re out of Susumi space.” Craig kissed her bare shoulder and sat up. “You should take the controls.”

  “I should? Why?”

  “Because either things are good and there’s nothing you can screw up. Or,” he continued getting to his feet, “things’ll be fukked and we’ll die instantly, so there’s still nothing you can screw up.”

  “Or we enter regular space next to a big yellow alien ship that turns out to be the mastermind—masterminds—behind centuries of inter-galactic bloodshed.”

  “Yeah, right,” he snorted holding out his hand. “Like that’ll happen. Again. Come on.”

  Scooping her shirt off the floor as she stood, Torin tossed it onto the pilot’s chair before she sat down. She checked the runout on the Susumi equation, then she posed her hands over the thruster controls in case they needed to avoid the unexpected.

  Promise counted down from ten, then the stars reappeared in the small front port.

  “Another trip where we didn’t come a gutser,” Craig patted the bulkhead. “I count that a win.”

  “Navigation says we’re right where we’re supposed to be,” Torin told him as the forward thrusters came on and they began to brake. Half her attention on their speed, she asked, “So where are we?”

  “Just on the edge of an old debris field. It’s big but well picked over. There’s definitely nothing left here but chunks of metal and plastic for the recyclers. No tech. No DNA. I figured it’d be best for your first time out.” Out of the corner of her eye, she could see him skimming back into his shorts. “Of course, that was before we had our talk. Maybe you’d rather ...”

  “Scrap for a first time out is fine.”

  He reached over Torin’s shoulder, and activated the long-range sensors. “There should be another ship out here. Old guy named Rogelio Page has been working this patch for years.”

  “He won’t mind that we’re here?”

  “The debris field is big enough for two tags. He has first tag but second tag is open. He’ll appreciate the company, tell us what sector we can clear, and be backup if something goes wrong. And it’ll give me a chance to check on him. He doesn’t come in much.”

  “Oh, yeah. Rugged individualists,” Torin muttered. “Alone and independent.”

  “What was that?”

  “Nothing. I just . . .” A sudden alarm from her implant cut her off. She tongued the volume down and frowned. “Strange. I’ve picked up another implant.”

  “Picked up?”

  “Turns out the upgrade the techs put in when they rebuilt my jaw has a finder in it.” The techs never left a scar. Torin rubbed at her jaw anyway. “Nice of them to tell me.”

  “You didn’t read the documentation?”

  “No one ever reads the documentation.” An alert from an implant shot down Craig’s belief only scrap remained out here. “I can link with Promise, give her the coordinates.”

  “So what a
re you waiting for?”

  She worked best under a hierarchy, knowing where to push and knowing where it was best to give in. This equal partners thing took some getting used to.

  As Promise brought them up to the new coordinates, Torin expected to find a piece of jaw, overlooked in the vastness emptiness of space, not an entire naked body, cartwheeling slowly against a backdrop of stars.

  Even before bringing the body on board, two things were obvious.

  The Marine hadn’t been dead long.

  And he’d been tortured.

  THREE

  TORIN KNELT BY THE BODY of the dead Marine, cataloguing his visible injuries. Had she been able to download the stored medical data on his implant as well as receive the BFFM beacon, she’d have been able to list internal damages as well. As it was, she could record only what she could see. That was enough. All the bones in his hands and feet had been broken, the cartilage in his nose had been removed, and one eye had been punctured multiple times. No point in destroying both eyes—that would have kept him from seeing what was coming.

  His torturer had known how to use fear.

  His kneecaps had been twisted to the side. His genitals had been both bruised and burned. Given the purple-and-green discoloration covering his torso, the odds were good ribs had been cracked and then pressure had been applied to the damage.

  Over the years, Torin had seen a lot of injuries—limbs lost, guts literally spilled—but nothing that provided evidence in flesh and bone of such deliberate brutality.

  He had a crest tattooed on the bicep of his left arm: 3rd Division, 1st Re’carta, 4th Battalion, Sierra Company.

  “Did you know him, then?”

  Torin took a final recording, shifted her weight back, and stood. “He has a sergeant’s implant. Given his apparent age, I assume he’s been retired for more than a few years.” Which wasn’t exactly what Craig had asked. She hadn’t served with him, but she knew him. Had stood beside him on the yellow line that first day at Ventris Station. Had sat beside him on a VTA dropping for dirt. Had lain beside him in the mud, hands steady on her KC-7 as he bitched about the weather. Torin sent a copy of the file to Promise’s data storage. Just in case. “He didn’t tell them what they wanted to know.”