The Truth of Valor

by Huff, Tanya

  “The comm . . .”

  “You think I’m fukking useless, is that it?” As her eyes darkened slightly, he dove into the guts of the operating system. Theoretically, the entire ship could be flown from the captain’s board, but the defaults had to be overwritten first. Thank the Navy for making sure every idiot who joined could slap together a patch. When he looked up, she was still staring at him. “Go!”

  “Captain?”

  He looked up from his board to find Huirre watching him. It was too dark to see the Krai’s expression. Hell, it was almost too dark, given the lack of hair, to be positive he was starring at Huirre’s face. “What?”

  “If we want lights back, I’d better help Krisk.”

  “How stable is our orbit?”

  “Doesn’t need watching if that’s what you’re asking.”

  Given Huirre’s careful tone, Cho figured he must smell like he was fukking furious. Good call, given that he was. “Go. Tell Krisk I said you were to concentrate on the lights. If he gives you any shit, I’ll deal with him.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  They needed the scanners and weapons back on-line. Dysun would need the lights to repair her board. “Oh, and Huiire.” He heard the helmsman pause by the hatch. “You saved our asses. Good work.”

  “I was mostly concerned with saving my own ass, Captain.”

  “I don’t give a flying fuk what your motivation was.”

  He could hear Huirre grin. “Aye, Captain.”

  The ship’s original OS had been sliced and diced when safeties had been removed and new programming added, so it took him longer than he liked to get the external comm patched through. The system was barely up and running when it grabbed an incoming repeat from the Dargonar.

  Cho considered ignoring it. Didn’t.

  “So you’re not dead,” Firrg sounded disappointed. “Your salvage operator is.”

  Somehow, Cho managed to hold his temper. No point in starting something he couldn’t finish with Dysun’s board out. “We’ll find another. They’re like cockroaches.”

  “You’ll find another, not me. Not my problem if you’re incompetent. I did what I said I’d do, and that clears me with Big Bill. You say otherwise, I’ll hunt you down and eat your liver.”

  It sounded more like a statement of fact than a threat.

  “Good news is the armory took no damage.” Nat snorted. “Of course, that’s a little obvious since we’re not a smoking hole in space. Marines are hard on their toys, so the Corps builds those fukkers to last.” She swept her thumb over her slate and scowled down at the data. “Fact is, Cap, the cargo hold came through aces. The galley, not so much. The Susumi energy changed all of the protein strings. Won’t kill us right away, but cumulative effects would be unpleasant. Doc says we should space anything with the new markers. Not even let Huirre and Krisk eat it.”

  “And that’ll leave us with what?” Cho demanded.

  She shook her head. “Not a lot. We can stay out maybe a tenday with supplements, but we’re going to be hungry after a couple of days, very hungry by the end of the tenday, and sharing a ship with very hungry Krai, specially given why those two are out here—well, frankly, Cap, that doesn’t appeal.”

  Krisk had been a Navy engineer. Accelerated promotion to petty officer and moving up fast. Then, during a battle, he’d eaten his lieutenant. Eating her had meant Krisk could stay at his post and make the repairs that saved the ship. It might have been ignored—heat of the battle, circumstances needs must—except that there had been other organics Krisk could have eaten instead. Not to mention that the review board hadn’t been entirely convinced it had been the enemy that killed her.

  Cho glared down at his screen. Krisk had advised against bringing the Susumi engines on-line until he checked them out.

  “Shielding could’ve held. They might be fine. ’Course, we’re toasted if they’re not. Take me some time to make sure.”

  “How much time?”

  “If you trust Lemon-and-Lime-boy to do the external patching, I can run basic tests in three. Results’ll tell me how much longer.”

  “You’ve got two.” Cho indicated that Almon should suit up and join Nadayki outside.

  “Well, that’s fukking great. My jernil always said there’d be no one to eat me after I’m gone.”

  Two days minimum before they could get the Susumi drive back on-line. Five and a half days folded into Susumi space to get back to Vrijheid Station. Seven and a half days with food for two. Even if the Humans and di’Taykan went on short rations to keep the Krai fed, that was dangerous bordering on covering each other in steak sauce.

  “Keep rations as short as you can,” he told Nat finally. “Use the supplements. How are we for water?”

  “We’ve got water up the wazoo, Cap.”

  “If a wazoo is what I think it is . . .” Almon grinned, pausing half into his HE suit, “. . . there’s this place where you can ...”

  Cho glared Almon to silence and bent over his slate, searching for a closer station where they could resupply without attracting the attention of the sector’s Wardens.

  Torin checked the balance on her slate one more time as they walked away from the quartermaster’s office. “You’re certain people make a living doing this job?”

  “Some of us do.” Craig bumped against her, his shoulder warm and solid. “MidSector stations pay more, but they need less and they charge more for docking and respiration. OutSector stations need the materials, so they’ll take everything you have, but they haven’t the lolly. It’s a balancing act.” His gesture took in the minimal distractions offered in the station’s commercial pier where there was one bar and an undersupplied store. “And how could you refuse these hardworking people the pleasure of our company?”

  Torin shook her head. “Let me guess. Bored people are more willing to play cards with you even though the last time you were through, you cleaned them out.”

  He grinned. “I may have won a couple of hands.

  “Unfortunately, Lurell, at least for you, full house, tens over threes, beats three nebulas.” Craig scoped in the pot as Lurell ruffled her feathers and made quiet hooting noises.

  Lurell’s pale blue crest hadn’t entirely grown in making her just barely adult by Rakva standards. Old enough to be in the bar, therefore, old enough to play. Although Torin knew better than to extrapolate an emotional state from the facial expressions of a nonmammalian species, she felt safe assuming that, like most kids her age, Lurell believed her luck would change if she just kept playing long enough. Technically true, given that continued play would teach her luck had less to do with winning than learning when to fold. From the way her feathers kept ruffling up along the back of her neck, Torin suspected she’d already lost more than she should have—in spite of the credit chits still in front of her.

  Lifting her head, Torin frowned past Lurell’s shoulder and across the bar toward the windows—Craig liked the potential for a quick escape an outside seat represented, Torin preferred a wall at her back. “Lurell, you know a big male Rakva with a dark blue crest?”

  Lurell jumped and only just managed to keep from looking over her shoulder. “This one has a brother with a dark blue crest,” she admitted, with studied nonchalance. “Why does one ask?”

  Torin shrugged. “He just went by outside on the concourse. He didn’t look happy.”

  “How could one tell?”

  “Could have been the way his crest was up,” Torin told her, blandly. “Or could have been because people were hauling ass out of his way.”

  “Ah. And he is . . . ?”

  Taking a long swallow of beer, Torin put the bottle down before answering. “He’s gone now.”

  “Ah.”

  Cards shuffled, Kensu, the scarlet-haired di’Taykan dealing, paused as Lurell pushed her chits around on the table “You in, baby bird?”

  “Yes . . . No.”

  His eyes lightened. “Which is it?”

  Crest flattened, she scoope
d up her chits and stood. “This one remembers this one has things to do. This one ...” She opened and closed her beak a couple of times, then ruffled her feathers—the Rakva equivalent of a blush—and headed for the door. Where she paused and turned. “This one wonders which way . . .”

  “That way.” Torin pointed.

  Lurell nodded. Left the bar. Went the other way.

  “Not that I’m objecting ...” Kensu dropped a red nebulae in front of her on his first circuit of the table. “. . . but why make up stories to scare the baby bird away?”

  “I don’t like taking money from children.” Torin checked her cards again. They hadn’t changed into something she could use.

  “No brother?” Craig asked, brow up. He hadn’t been able to see the window. Kensu had.

  “No brother.” The quartermaster had been a Rakva with Lurell’s coloring. Pictures of his fledglings had been scattered around the office. The blue feathers in the crests were fairly distinctive, so she’d played the odds.

  “How’s she going to learn if you mollycoddle her?” Surrivna Pen, one of the two Niln at the table wondered. “Kid needs to learn the world’ll shit on her if it can.”

  “She doesn’t need to learn it from me,” Torin said.

  The Niln snorted something that sounded very much like, “Soft.”

  Rolling her shoulders, Torin considered responding to the deliberate provocation and decided against it. A fight would end the game, and given what they’d made for the salvage, Craig’s skill at the table had taken on a new relevance.

  “Done dealing,” Kensu pointed out. “Ante up, people.”

  Torin sighed and turned her facing cards down. Time to call it a night. “Try not to lose the ship,” she murmured, gripping Craig’s shoulder as she passed.

  He grinned. “Have I ever?”

  “Not so far.”

  Heading out the door, she passed an older Human woman with short gray hair hurrying in on a direct line to the poker table. With her was a Human male, moving a little slower, paying more attention to his surroundings. There was nothing about him that attracted attention, but Torin figured it was a surer thing than her last hand that his outer calm covered an inner twitchiness. No mistaking the tension that pleated the soft skin around his eyes. Ex-military—the tells were obvious to anyone who’d spent as much time in uniform as Torin had—with the look of someone who’d seen too much and not been able to let any of it go. He was the first person she’d met since getting out that she wasn’t entirely positive she could beat if it came to a fight. He’d nodded in her direction as they passed, an acknowledgment that carried the hint of a warning.

  Torin had no intention of sharing war stories. She let the warning stand.

  “So.” Craig watched the Human woman lay her money on the table and grinned, “Who are you when you’re home, then, mate?”

  “None of your damned business who I am at home.” But she smiled as she said it. When making an effort to be charming, Craig knew he was hard to ignore. “I’m Nat when I’m here, though.”

  “You’re not local.”

  “You psychic?”

  “These fine folk are local ...” He indicated the other four players, “. . . and they don’t know you from a H’san’s ass either. That tells me you’re docked here. Like me. Salvage.”

  “Do tell.” She grinned and scratched at her head. “Cargo.”

  Nearly an hour later, Craig watched a small pot move across the table to Surrivna Pen who flicked her nictating membranes across her eyes twice when she got a good hand. Unlike Yavenit Tay, the other Niln at the table, who tapped his tail. With everyone’s tells identified, he could start winning.

  “So . . .” He turned to Nat, who stopped scratching when the cards went her way. “What’re you hauling?”

  “Bad luck,” Nat snorted, beckoning the server over. “Had a hinky fold that wasted a galley’s worth of food. Had to resupply.”

  The Heart of Stone had been at the other end of the docking arm for seventy-two hours. The story had spread. “So that’s you, then.”

  She shrugged, aware that kind of luck would get talked about.

  “And you . . .” Kensu nodded at Craig, hair flicking out and back. “. . . sold a double pen of scrap to the quartermaster for recycling. Now we’ve established strangers get talked about, it’s your deal, Ryder.” He tapped a long finger against his pile of chits. “Or am I playing with myself here.”

  Nat glanced under the table. “Oh, sure, get my hopes up.”

  Concentrating on the worn cards—this late in the game they were a bit sticky, and he sure as shit didn’t want play called for perceived cheating, not now, not with the groundwork done—Craig missed Kensu’s response. Not that it mattered. Given the comment, any response by a di’Taykan would merely be variation on a theme.

  A couple of hands later, in the pause while refills arrived, Nat turned to him, much the way he’d turned to her earlier, Human to Human, and asked, “So where you heading after?”

  He shrugged. “Not a hundred percent sure.”

  “Well, before we got fukked by that Susumi wave, we might’ve stumbled over a tech field out by the edge; not more than a day’s fold away.”

  Everyone always knew where the treasure was.

  “Math makes it a debris drift from where those bastards took out the Norrington and the M’rcgunn and the Silvaus? The Salanos? Fuk it, the other ship that was with them.” She topped up her new glass with the dregs of the old and handed the empty to the server. “Cap even thought about checking it out. Didn’t.” When she smiled broadly, her face folded into pleats that gave some indication of her actual age. “Or I wouldn’t be mentioning it. Us having no tags and all. Anyway, I’m not sure anyone’s tagged it yet and even if they have, it’s the kind of field that a second tag or even a third tag could make some haul on.”

  A tech field, Craig admitted silently, even on third tag, could very well net them enough credit they’d be able to add another three square to the Promise sooner rather than later. He’d expected Torin to have trouble rubbing elbows 28/10 on a one-man ship, but her years in the Corps had trained her to share limited space—accepting or ignoring other bodies as required. He, however, had been used to working alone—being alone—and regular sex could only compensate for so much.

  Sooner, rather than later, sounded damned good to him.

  “Any chance you remember the coordinates?” he asked, checking his cards.

  Nat snorted. “I might have them on me.”

  “How much?”

  Her eyes narrowed as she studied the chits in front of him. “We’ll talk when the game’s over. Time to play now.”

  “Dangerous on the edge,” Kensu pointed out absently, frowning at the pair of threes he’d just been dealt.

  Craig had a nine and a seven showing, an eight and a six down. “Danger is my middle name.”

  “And the female you travel with?” Yavenit asked, tail still.

  He laughed. “Danger is her first name.”

  “She looks familiar,” Surrivna said thoughtfully, dealing out the final round.

  So far, only the quartermaster had recognized Torin as the gunnery sergeant who’d blown the lid off the little gray aliens’ power-behind-the-war gig. Unavoidable, given that he’d had her codes on the docket. Without the uniform, without the expectation of seeing her in a half-built OutSector station, she’d gone unnoted by everyone else. Although his economic reasons were valid, that anonymity had been a deciding factor when Craig had chosen where they’d empty their pens. Even among the salvage operators—who collectively used none of my business as a mantra, for fuksake—someone had tried to pick a fight and, as far as he was concerned, Torin had already done more fighting than any two people should have to.

  By morning, the whole station would be talking about her, but by morning they’d be gone.

  “Are we playing or talking?” he asked the table at large as Nat dug bloody fingernails into her scalp.

 
Sleep when you can was not one of the Corps’ official mottos, but Torin had always figured it should have been. Head pillowed on her jacket, she woke when Craig approached their air lock. Ankles crossed, she rolled up onto her feet.

  “They charge us every time we use the lock,” she reminded him as his brows rose.

  He grinned and spread his hands. “I wasn’t going to ask.”

  “How’d you do?”

  “I won big.” He moved closer when she turned to code in.

  Torin leaned back against his heat. The floor had been a bit cold. “And then?”

  “How do you know there’s an and then?”

  Torin said nothing as the telltales turned green.

  “Okay, there’s an and then.” He shifted, trying to get a look at her face. “Are you smiling?”

  She was. “So you blew your winnings on racing stripes for the Promise?”

  “Not quite.” Torin felt his chest rise and fall against her back as he took a deep breath. “I used my winnings to buy the coordinates for a tech field from a cargo jockey.”

  “Magic beans were going to be my next guess.”

  FOUR

  CRAIG BLINKED UP AT THE top of the bunk, wondering what had woken him. He shifted, realized he was alone, and from the lack of residual heat, probably had been for some time. Rolling up onto his side, he could see the back of the pilot’s chair silhouetted against light rising from the control panel and assumed Torin was in the chair.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you,” she said before he could speak.

  It would never not be fukking creepy when she did that.

  “Your breathing changed,” she added, spinning the chair around far enough so he could see her against the lit screen.

  Craig thought about pointing out that most people wouldn’t have noticed, but Torin wasn’t most people, never would be. The hour seemed to call for the direct approach. “What’re you doing?”

  “Threat assessing. Go back to sleep.”