The Truth of Valor

by Huff, Tanya

  Craig rubbed at the reddened dent the plumbing hook-in from the HE suit had left on his hip. “You know that because . . . ?”

  “There’s nothing here that would have killed him outright.” She gestured with the slate. “He died of the cumulative effect of his injuries, so his death was unintentional. Also, they didn’t destroy his ability to talk—his lips are split, but they didn’t go after his teeth or his tongue although he’s bitten through his tongue himself.”

  “Doesn’t look like he carked it that long ago either.” When Torin shifted her attention off her slate and onto him, he shrugged. “If he’d been in vacuum any length of time, he’d have dehydrated more.”

  “So, not left over from the battle.”

  “Battle?”

  “The one that created the debris field.”

  “Fuk, no,” he snorted. “That battle happened back before you enlisted.”

  A lifetime ago. “Where’s the nearest Warden’s office?”

  “Torin . . .”

  One hand on the sergeant’s shoulder, she met Craig’s gaze. “This one’s mine.”

  “They won’t . . .”

  “Craig.”

  “Nearest Warden’s office is on Sulun Station—Sulun’s a recent di’Taykan expansion planet.” He rattled off the coordinates, but when Torin raised a brow at him, he added, “It’s a short fold.”

  “How short?”

  “About a day and a half in Susumi.” Craig gestured at the body and added in a tone so neutral it had to be deliberate. “He’ll have to be secured in the pen.”

  Torin thought about Jan and Sirin laid out for viewing in the market. “You say that like you think I might object.”

  “He’s a Marine.”

  “He’s a dead Marine. I don’t get sentimental about the dead.”

  Craig stared at her for a long moment. “You get angry,” he said at last.

  “Sometimes,” she admitted.

  He nodded although she wasn’t entirely certain what he was acknowledging. “Well, the sergeant here’s not going to get any fresher. Throw out one segment while I suit up again, would you.”

  With a last look at the body, Torin moved to the pilot’s chair and called up the screen that deployed the salvage pen. She’d ridden in it—with the survivors of the recon team sent to Big Yellow—and even if the sergeant had still been in a position to care, he’d likely had rougher rides over the years.

  “So who do you think dumped the poor bastard out here?” Craig asked. She could hear the creak of his HE suit going back on.

  “I’m hoping pirates.”

  “Hoping?”

  “I don’t like the alternative.” She didn’t need to voice the alternative; Craig had been there for the reveal. If the gray plastic aliens had maintained an interstellar war for generations in order to use it as a social laboratory then they could easily torture a few individuals in order to provide more context. “The sergeant’s spent a lot of the last few years in space. His feet have no calluses and there’s a scar on his hip where a suit’s rubbed.” Glancing up as the segment began unfolding, Torin muttered, “They can come up with broccoli in a tube and yet they still can’t design a plumbing hook-in that doesn’t leave a mark.”

  Her fingers drummed against the inert trim of the control panel. One more unnecessary mark on the sergeant’s body. This one placed by bad design rather than cruelty, but still.

  Then she realized the only sounds she could hear, other than her fingers, were the distant booms and scrapes of the pen moving into position against the hull. “Craig?”

  Half into his suit, he stood and stared down at the body like he was seeing it for the first time. Then he stepped over the sergeant’s splayed legs, the suit’s bright orange arms flapping around his waist, and reached past Torin to tap the control panel. His lips were pressed into a thin line, and a muscle jumped in his jaw.

  Torin breathed shallowly through her mouth—the insides of HE suits worn as often as CSOs wore theirs emitted a distinctly pungent aroma—and waited. Ships the size of the Promise were too small for secrets. He’d tell her in time.

  When Craig straightened, a man’s face filled one of the screens. The image had light brown eyes, a broad nose, salt-and-pepper stubble, and an expression that suggested he didn’t think much of having his image recorded. “Is this him?”

  “Is this who?” Torin asked.

  “The dead Marine.”

  She twisted and stared down at the body on the deck. The chin, at least, was the same. “Probably. Who is he?”

  “Rogelio Page.”

  They found Page’s ship, Fortune’s Fancy, drifting by the far edge of the debris field, two sections of pen deployed, both half filled with scrap. Plastics in one, metal in the other.

  Craig zoomed in on the trailing safety line. “They took him while he was securing the load. That line’s been cut.”

  Torin could think of no good reason why a man might cut his own line although a few bad ones occurred to her. “Pirates?”

  “Pirates would take the pen.”

  “Whoever took him didn’t want what he had, they wanted something he knew.”

  Page’s ship was smaller even than the Promise.

  “If we tighten his salvage into one pen, power Fancy down, and deploy all our panels . . .” Craig’s fingers danced over the screen; the complex mathematics of maneuvering unique parameters beyond Torin’s current skill set, “. . . we can take ship, salvage, and Page to the Warden at Sulun. Dying’s one thing,” he said in answer to Torin’s silent question. “What Page went through, that’s not part of the accepted risk package. And you’re right. Dealing with this kind of shit is what the Wardens do.”

  “So to sum up . . .” One Who Maintains Order at the Edge, rested long, golden-furred forearms on her desk and laced gleaming claws together, “. . . you believe that two Civilian Salvage Operators—Jan Garrett-Wong and di’Akusi Sirin—were killed for salvage they had gained possession of and another—Civilian Salvage Operator ex-Sergeant Rogelio Page—was tortured in order to elicit information and although you do not know if Civilian Salvage Operator ex-Sergeant Page had been in contact with either Civilian Salvage Operator Garrett-Wong or Civilian Salvage Operator Sirin ...”

  Craig shifted, and Torin closed her hand on his arm, shaking her head when he glanced her way. Experience had taught her that the Dornagain could not be hurried. Would not be hurried. Their obsessive attention to detail and insistence on considering every possible variable before coming to a decision made them the perfect civil servant. At least from the government’s point of view.

  “. . . you postulate that these terrible crimes were somehow connected.” Highlights rippled slowly across her fur as she shook her head. “Your service in the Confederation’s defense has perhaps made you paranoid, ex-Gunnery Sergeant Kerr.”

  To the Dornagain, titles and names were one and the same. Torin gritted her teeth and let it stand. Besides, being paranoid had been part of her job.

  “Civilian Salvage Operator ex-Sergeant Page clearly had a falling out with someone, of that we can agree.”

  All Dornagain sounded vaguely patronizing. Torin reminded herself not to take it personally.

  “But to extrapolate his unfortunate fate into something larger is distinctly premature. We do not yet have his post mortem . . .”

  Page had been so lovingly brutalized the odds were good his torturer had left DNA behind.

  “. . . or any forensic evidence from his ship or salvage that might connect this to the previous incident—which, I must remind you, did not occur in my jurisdiction.”

  It would have only muddied the waters to admit that the other murders hadn’t been reported. Given the distances, it would take some time before the Wardens could compare notes across sectors.

  “We are able to recognize coincidence,” One Who Maintains Order at the Edge continued. “But I assure you, we will conduct a full investigation once all the evidence is in. Thank you for bringing
this to the attention of the Wardens’ office.” Unlacing her claws, she tapped out a fast sequence against an active screen on her desk. “If you provide the pertinent data to my assistant, you will, of course, be compensated for the fold.”

  “Feel free to say I told you so.”

  Craig turned far enough to see Torin’s profile. She didn’t look particularly angry. If he had to say, she looked weary. “What about?”

  Her snort had no force backing it. “The Wardens.”

  “I told you so.”

  “Fuk you.” There wasn’t a lot of force behind her laugh either, but at least she was laughing.

  Leaning out over the railing, Craig swept a critical gaze over the station’s central hub. He could smell chilies cooking although he couldn’t nail where the smell came from. Not that it mattered; most Taykan food was hot enough to fry Human taste buds—ghost peppers had been an early Taykan import—and he’d be willing to bet he could get decent tucker anywhere on the station. “We’ve got a hookup paid for by the government until tomorrow, might as well eat out.”

  “Can we afford it?”

  “We can. There’s a card game in maintenance with my name on it and it’s bangers to bust that someone’s going to put their faith in trip nines.” Torin was a competent player; if she joined the game, he had faith in her ability to break even. When he turned to face her, she was staring off into the middle distance, one finger tapping on a plastic plug cover. “Beer and tomagoras.” He nudged her shoulder with his. “Maybe go crazy and have a little armee on the side. What do you say?”

  She frowned. “Can you hack Fancy’s system?”

  Not what he’d expected her to say, that was for damned sure. “You want to use Page’s credits?” When Torin turned to face him, Craig raised both hands and took a step back, fairly certain she wouldn’t take a swing at him but not one hundred percent positive and definitely not willing to find out. “Hey, I talk about replacing what we spend on food in a card game and you ask if I can hack his ship. I jumped to the logical conclusion. Now I’ve had a chance to think about it, what I should have asked was: What the fuk are you talking about?”

  Torin narrowed her eyes but stopped looking like she wanted to disembowel him. “The Dornagain don’t work quickly.”

  “No shit.”

  “Jan and Sirin died defending their cargo from pirates. Pirates tortured Page but ignored his salvage. Two exceptions to the rules could mean the rules are changing. If the pirates are changing the rules, they’re going to be moving a lot faster than One Who Maintains. I want to know if Page was in contact with the Firebreather. If so, they could have passed on the information that got him tortured to death.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” she repeated.

  He hadn’t been shot that look since the early days when, he suspected, she’d considered him a distinct species. Not a Marine, therefore nothing to do with her. “I know you’re angry about this, Torin, hell, I’m angry about this, but a tenday ago you didn’t even know pirates existed.”

  “And?”

  “And now suddenly it’s your responsibility to stop them.” He scratched at the spot on his jaw where the depilatory wore off first. “Look, I get that your first inclination is to fix shit, but this shit, you can’t fix. We’ve brought it to the Wardens, who will take their time doing sweet fuk all, and now we get on with things.”

  “You done?”

  Worse than the look was the tone. Craig hated that tone. That gunnery sergeant tone. Both tone and look had been way too close to the surface since they’d found Page. “No, I’m not,” he growled. “We risked our necks to bring this to the attention of the authorities—and don’t look at me like you don’t understand what I’m talking about. A ship in a pen doesn’t make for an easy Susumi equation. You and me, we’re not living in a cheesy vid; it’s not our job to illuminate the dark between the systems with the light of justice.” It was a SpaceCops quote. He’d never seen the show before he’d hooked up with Torin, but she loved it. When Torin folded her arms, waiting for him to go on, he sighed. “Okay, now I’m done.”

  “We work and live in the dark between the systems,” she pointed out. Unnecessarily, considering how she’d just started the job and he’d been doing it for over a decade. “This isn’t about the light of justice, it’s motivated self-interest.”

  And about the undeniable fact that ex-Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr was incapable of walking away from a fight.

  “All right, fine.” It wasn’t like he hadn’t known that about her from the beginning. He could get into the Fancy; he’d done it once already to power her down before the jump. The ship had known Page had been out too long for his air supply, so emergency protocols had gotten him in. Whether he could access her data stores though, that was another question. If Page had locked his board down before he went out, the odds weren’t high he could crack it before they attracted attention. CSO codes were idiosyncratic at best, and his codes would only take him so far. “Say I can hack Page’s ship. First I have to get to it. What happens if the Wardens have put a guard on it?”

  Torin snorted. “We’re on a Taykan station. They’re not that hard to distract.”

  Page’s ship wasn’t guarded. No reason why it should have been, Torin supposed. One Who Maintains wouldn’t consider it part of an ongoing investigation until she had, as she’d said, a lot more evidence. They walked unchallenged into the repair bay and across the deck, footsteps echoing. Without the added bulk of her pen segments—they’d been tethered outside—Fancy looked dwarfed by her surroundings. Someone had run a ramp up to her air lock, but the outer door remained closed and the telltales were red.

  “Let’s hope they haven’t recoded the lock,” Craig muttered, fingers on the pad. On cue, the telltales turned green, and both outer and inner doors opened.

  Torin followed Craig into the tiny air lock. He paused at the inner door and when she put one hand flat against him to steady herself, she realized that the muscles of his back had twisted into knots under his shirt. He’d only just learned to tolerate having another person on the Promise with him, using his resources, and Fancy was smaller. From what she could see over Craig’s shoulder as the inner door opened, depressingly smaller. The toilet and sink folded up into the bulkhead and Page had left the toilet folded down before his last trip out. It smelled like he’d forgot to hit reclamation when he finished. Or maybe he was just a lousy shot.

  He’d decorated by attaching old-fashioned, two-dimensional, Human-centric porn to every vertical surface. The closest piece proved just how flexible a bipedal species could be. Not something Torin would want to look at every day, out in deep space, alone, but it took all kinds.

  “I’ll wait out here.”

  Craig turned just far enough to glare. “I’m fine.”

  “I know.” Since her hand was already on his back, she traced the valley of his spine with her thumb, fingers trailing over the heavy muscle to either side. “But you don’t need me hanging over your shoulder, and if I go in there with you, there won’t be any other option.”

  His gaze swept around the cabin, then back to her. It didn’t take long. “Good point,” he said.

  As she took her hand away, she felt him begin to relax.

  Back at the bottom of the ramp, habit dropped her into an easy parade rest. If it turned out Page knew what Jan and Sirin had salvaged, knew what they’d died trying to protect, that connection might be enough to light a fire under One Who Maintains’ enormous, furry ass. If it didn’t, it was still information they could take to a military station in order to direct the Navy patrols. The patrols responsible for hunting down and removing the pirates.

  Pirates.

  She still had trouble believing it.

  There wasn’t enough organized violence around? People had to freelance?

  Maybe the Elder Races were right. Maybe a species shouldn’t achieve interstellar capability until they’d learned to manage their aggression. Not that it mattered, after a c
ouple hundred years of war, that ship had well and truly folded and there could be no going back. She wondered how the Primacy, made up entirely of young aggressive species, was managing without the focus the gray plastic aliens had provided. Odds were about even they’d started pounding on each other.

  In much less time than Torin had expected, the sound of Craig’s boots ringing against the ramp pulled her around to face him.

  He shook his head as he walked toward her. “Not locked, not that it mattered. There’s no record of contact between Page and Firebreather , but,” he added before Torin could respond, “he had been messaging someone fairly frequently on the Two-four. No idea who, but I uploaded their codes so we can find out. A mate of Alia’s is maintaining a database—who uses what codes when. Not that I’m saying some might use more than one set of codes,” he added, seeing her expression. “If Jan or Sirin happened to have been talking to the same person Page was ...”

  “Long shot,” Torin acknowledged, falling into step beside him as he stepped off onto the deck. Even a tenuous connection would be better than nothing but it wouldn’t get One Who Maintains or the Navy moving against the pirates.

  “We’ll bog in first, I’m starving.” Craig threw an arm around her shoulders. “Then we go make Rogelio Page proud by taking a group of hardworking engineers for every credit they have.”

  “That would make him proud?”

  “It’d make me happy.”

  When it came right down to it, the living had to be more important than the dead. “Good enough.”

  Torin finished checking the Susumi equation and glanced up at Craig, who backed away and tried to look as though he hadn’t been checking it over with her. Given that mistakes were usually fatal, she didn’t mind. “So, tell me why we’re returning to the same debris field?”