The Truth of Valor

by Huff, Tanya

  Almon looked like he wanted to argue, but to Craig’s surprise, he kept his mouth shut.

  Maybe by the time a person decided to be a pirate, there was nowhere else to go. Get thrown out of the crew, and survival became unlikely. Life at rock bottom explained how a shitkicker like Cho could maintain command. And who’d be stupid enough to challenge him with Doc at his side?

  “You . . .” Pivoting on a heel, Cho turned his attention back to Craig. “Once we’ve got the locker secured on the station, you’ll provide the raw data and Nadayki’ll make it dance. Nat.”

  “Right here, Cap.”

  It was more than a little creepy how Nat was right there whenever the captain called her.

  “Take Ryder back to his quarters and secure him.” The smile he shot at Craig was nearly as unpleasant as Almon’s had been. “I don’t want our new crewmember running around loose while we’re moving the locker. He could get hurt.”

  “I’ll stay out of the way.”

  “I’ll make sure of it,” Nat muttered, taking Craig’s arm. “Come on, gorgeous. If you’re lucky, I’ll tuck you in.”

  Still aching from the effect of Almon’s pheromones, Craig gave it half a thought. If he wore her out, he could make a run for it. Except that any station welcoming this particular ship onto its docking arm and offering a secure location for the illegal entry into a Marine weapons locker made the oldEarth observation about frying pans and fires depressingly relevant.

  “. . . but by far the greatest benefit to processing the ore here in orbit is that we have greatly reduced airborne pollutants in our planetary atmosphere.”

  “I are seeing how that are being a benefit, but you are having to admit that an orbital facility are adding distinct dangers to the job and that . . .” Presit reached out, and Ceelin, who continued walking backward without breaking stride, slid a slate into her hand. “. . . station logs are reporting you are having eight injuries in the last ten tendays and one of them are being fatal.”

  Although Torin could only see the top of his head, she knew Rergis, the facility’s manager, had slammed his nose ridges shut. His whole posture screamed overdone, righteous indignation. “There were extenuating circumstances ...”

  “And here are being one of them,” Presit said brightly as they drew even with what was clearly the station’s roughest drinking establishment. Halfway between the docking arm and the processing plant, against the outer skin of the station, it was perfectly situated for easy access. Easy to get to, after work. Easy to get away from, should the need arise.

  Rergis pulled himself up to his full height, barely reaching the middle of Torin’s chest and towering over Presit by a full six centimeters. “Are you insinuating that these accidents might have been the result of stimulant abuse?”

  “I are not suggesting anything of the sort. I are merely observing that stimulants are often considered extenuating circumstances and ...” she glanced down at the slate and back up again while Rergis stared at his reflection in her glasses, “. . . are being cited in two of these reports. So let’s be taking a look.” Her gesture sent Ceelin in through the hatch, leaving Rergis no choice but to follow the camera or allow Presit to wander unsupervised. He’d been with her for less than ten minutes, and Torin could see he’d already discovered that was a bad idea.

  The ore processors ran 28/10 and few, if any, incoming ships would have matched their clocks to the station’s, so it was no surprise the bar was fairly crowded although station time was officially midafternoon. Most of the clientele were Krai though there were a few Niln. The bartender was Human. So were two of the people sitting at the bar. Nearly everyone had at least part of their attention on the three Silsviss sitting at a table in the corner.

  They were young males and, from the slight distension of their throat pouches, they were here to prove a point—which given how incredibly hierarchal their society was, was pretty much the point of being a young male Silsviss.

  “This are not seeming like a problem,” Presit announced, her voice cutting through the ambient noise with an ease Torin had to admit she admired. Although no one became less aware of the Silsviss, they all became entirely aware of Presit. And the camera.

  Odds were good pirates would prefer to remain off the evening news; Torin noted which Krai were keeping their faces hidden as Ceelin panned the camera around the room. Then she noticed that all three Silsviss were looking at her. When one started to rise, Torin glared his ass back onto his stool.

  “I don’t know what you were expecting,” Rergis began, but Presit cut him off, the points of her teeth barely showing.

  “Pretty much what I are finding, actually.” Turning to look up at Torin, she added, “You are being too big to be following normal-sized people around. You might as well be staying here while Rergis are showing me the facility and explaining what actual extenuating circumstances he are referring to. Ceelin!” She chivied the camera back out the hatch, giving Rergis no choice but to follow her, trying to explain.

  As everyone but the Silsviss returned their attention to their drinks, Torin walked over to the bar, silently acknowledging that Presit had effortlessly put Torin right where she needed to be. Odds were good Firrg was in this bar. No one continued to pay docking fees for the privilege of staying on board their own ship and since the captain’s contact for unloading stolen ore had to be someone fairly high up in the power structure of the processing plant, she wouldn’t drink anywhere they might run into each other. Or, for that matter, anywhere where she might have trouble getting back to her ship.

  Finding her in a dim room full of Krai when most non-Krai couldn’t even tell the genders apart—di’Taykan excepted—would be no problem. Torin had planned to find her by doing some eavesdropping among the Krai who’d hidden from the camera but, fortunately, there was a faster way. Firrg hated Humans. The bartender was Human. The fact that the Corps spent a long time teaching recruits to look beyond nearly universal default species parameters meant said parameters were alive and well in the general population.

  Torin sat down, pointed at the beer spout, and said as the bartender put a glass of pale draft in front of her, “Which one is Captain Firrg?”

  Dark brows rose toward the polished, mahogany dome of the bartender’s head—he was old enough he might have been caught up in the permanent depilatory phase that had been popular with male Humans two decades ago or he might have just felt that in an establishment that catered mostly to a species with minimal bristling across their scalps, hair was a bad customer service idea. Didn’t matter. He leaned toward her and growled, “Who wants to know.”

  Torin took a long swallow of beer, then met his eyes as she put the glass back down on the bar. “I do.”

  After staring at her for a long moment, he snorted and shook his head. If he recognized her, that was the only indication he gave. “You planning on starting something?”

  “Not in here.”

  His grunt was noncommittal. He might have approved, or he might have wanted to see Firrg get hers. Again, didn’t matter. Torin had no intention of taking the captain down in a place where a fight would be so distinctly to the Krai’s advantage.

  “Table just inside the door,” he said after Torin took another swallow and set the glass down again. “Firrg’s in the red, got the jagged scar across her head. But those five she’s with? They’re her crew and they’re male and they’d die for her.”

  Torin nodded her thanks.

  “I don’t care how good you think you are,” he added when she stood. “You can’t take them all.”

  “I won’t have to,” Torin told him, sliding her slate across the credit reader and turning to go. “The thing between us is personal.”

  Torin knew how to walk across a room and draw every eye toward her. She also knew how to blend, look like she belonged. No one noticed her by Firrg’s table until she pulled another chair up, sat down, and said quietly, “I hear you hate Humans. The Heart of Stone, which has, at the very least, a Human cap
tain and two Humans in the crew, has taken a friend of mine captive. I plan on killing whoever gets in my way when I go in to get him back. I figure Humans killing Humans should make you happy, so you’ll be willing to tell me where I can ...” She twisted out from under the hand of Firrg’s crewman reaching for her arm, grabbed it, drove her thumbnail into the nerve cluster on the inside of the wrist as hard as she could, slammed the spasming hand down onto the table, and said to the groaning crewmember still attached to it, “Piss off. The grown-ups are talking.”

  On anyone but a Krai, Firrg’s expression would have been a smile. When a Krai showed that many teeth, something or someone was likely to end up eaten. “Why should I tell you anything when you’re damaging my crew?”

  Torin shrugged. “I could have driven my elbow into his nose ridges and assumed someone would keep him from drowning in his own blood.”

  “You could have,” Firrg agreed, her nod throwing the jagged scar zigzagging across her forehead into relief. The edges looked too even to be accidental and Torin had a suspicion she knew the source of at least some of the pirate captain’s hatred. Scars being easy enough to remove, that was a statement. It said, Hi, I’m completely bugfuk! among other things. “And you’re right,” Firrg continued, her expression holding the rest of her companions in place. “Humans killing Humans makes me very happy. But you’re Human, and I don’t do favors for Humans.” She spread her hands. “So I can’t help you.”

  “Last word on the matter?”

  “Yes.” Firrg looked happy to be turning her down. Her crew laughed.

  Torin had really hoped they could do this the quick way. She didn’t have time to fuk around and no choice but to take the time. Leaning forward, she said in thickly accented Krai, “I’ve heard that the reason you hate Humans is because it was a Human who laughed as you ran like a coward from a fair fight.” Then she stood and walked out of the bar, trailing her fingers over the gray plastic frame around the big menu screen on her way by. Behind her, chairs scraped against the floor as they were shoved back, and there was a lot of loud swearing that Torin would bet serious money came from everyone but Firrg.

  Hating Humans—or any other species as a whole—wasn’t that unusual, no matter how often the H’san sent out slightly sad messages insisting that the member species of the Confederation were one big happy family. Everyone knew someone who hated their family, but no one seemed willing to clue in the H’san. Had Firrg just hated Humans, the odds were good, given that it had been established Firrg was a pirate and pirates were violent and unscrupulous thieves, she’d give the order to have Torin killed before Torin made it back to the Second Star.

  “Captain Firrg hates Humans, I mean, really, really hates them. Don’t know what she thinks about di’Taykan, but Humans, Humans she obsessively hates.”

  Obsession meant she’d do Torin herself. Obsessive hate meant she’d get up close and personal to do it. Rational people were a lot harder to manipulate.

  Just past the Dargonar, about twenty meters from the Second Star, Torin stepped into a large storage alcove, half filled with replacement parts for ore processors unloaded from the fourth ship on the docking arm—the ship that didn’t belong to the Silsviss, pirates, or an ex-Marine hunting pirates. When it came down to it, it was a wonder the station got any work done. The alcove wasn’t entirely private, but the angles would interfere with the security cameras. The two Krai already using it took one look at her face, grabbed their clothes, and ran.

  Then she waited.

  But not for long.

  Firrg hadn’t come alone. The five males from the bar moved into a semicircle behind her, eyes locked on Torin, lips drawn back off their teeth, their presence clearly saying that if a random hell should happen to freeze over and Torin should just happen to win, she’d still lose. Had Firrg stopped to pick up reinforcements, that might have been a problem, but five was doable.

  Firrg’s scar drew an angry red line against the mottled green of her scalp. Her nose ridges flared once, twice, then clamped shut. “I am going to kill you,” she snarled and charged forward

  Torin took half a step out to meet her, then slammed her as hard as she could in the side of the head with the iron pipe she’d been hiding behind her leg. Craig didn’t have time for her to fight fair.

  Krai teeth were among the hardest substances in known space, and Krai bone came a very close second. Firrg was unconscious and bleeding when she hit the floor but probably not badly hurt. By the time Torin had her boot on the captain’s throat, the three Silsviss males—who’d arrived about the time the pipe made contact—had taken care of the crew.

  “I need one conscious,” she snapped, and the claws stopped just on the surface of the Krai’s eyeballs.

  It took the pirate’s brain a few seconds to catch up to his situation, then he pissed himself and sagged in the Silsviss’ grip.

  “We were there,” one of the others said, using the metal ring on his tail to smack down a bleeding pirate trying to rise, “when you accepted the pack’s defeat.”

  Given the way they’d been looking at her, Torin had figured as much. If they’d learned Federate before their trip, they weren’t bothering with it. The cylindrical comm units on their harness translated simultaneously with her implant. And thank tech support that her new translation program had lost the extra sibilants.

  “These little ones were not very good fighters,” another said. Like the two reptilian species already part of the Confederation, they flicked their tongues around an impressive array of pointed teeth when they spoke. “The little ones you had with you in the preserve were better.”

  “They’re called Krai, not little ones, and these Krai aren’t used to fighting for their lives,” Torin told him. When male Silsviss reached the age that their body chemistry required them to challenge for position, they were sent to wilderness preserves where they formed packs and fought it out—pack to pack as well as within the pack for position. It was as much population control as training. If these three had been there on the hill when Torin accepted the pack surrender and had become, for all intents and purposes, their pack leader, then they were only just off the preserve. Fighting for survival was still very close to being their default setting.

  She figured they’d been brought on this trip, not only because of the flexibility of youth, but because they’d had at least some contact with other species even if that contact had consisted primarily of trying to kill them.

  Switching her attention to the only conscious pirate—although she suspected one of the others of faking—Torin leaned in until the watering eyes behind the points of the four-centimeter-long claws focused on her face. “Tell me where I can find the Heart of Stone, or I’ll kill your captain.”

  “You are inedible!”

  “It’s ruder in Krai,” Torin explained as the Silsviss looked confused by the translation. “Tell me where I can find the Heart of Stone, or I’ll kill your captain and have your eyes gouged out slowly.”

  At Torin’s nod, the Silsviss tightened his grip slightly.

  Nose ridges flapping so quickly they sounded like crumpling paper, he gasped. “Vrijheid!”

  “Coordinates?”

  “I don’t know where it is exactly! I’m not helm! The government thinks it was destroyed during the war, but it wasn’t!”

  “Was the name changed?”

  “Why the fuk would they change the name? I told you, the government thinks it did a crash and burn!”

  That was enough information to find it.

  “Big Bill Ponner runs it now! He’ll fukking kill you!”

  “You can drop him.”

  As he hit the floor, Torin took her foot from Firrg’s throat and pulled her slate off her belt. “Presit, I’ve got it. Head back.”

  “There are still being more to the story here. Those accidents . . .

  “Can wait. Craig can’t.”

  “On our way.”

  “What do you want us to do?” Given positioning, this was
the dominant male of the three. They were all a little twitchy. The instinct to fight her for control had only barely been overlaid with more adult socialization.

  “Wait with this lot until security arrives.” Firrg groaned as Torin rolled her out into the camera’s line of sight. “Tell them to check the load of ore that just came in with the Dargonar. The numbers on the sled will match the numbers on a drone that recently went missing during a fold. Someone in the station is accepting stolen goods.”

  “When they ask how we know this?”

  “Tell them you heard it from Presit a Tur durValintrisy’s pilot. If you convince them, you’ll all gain status for bringing it to their attention.”

  “Then why do you leave this opportunity with us?” the dominant male hissed.

  Torin smiled as she passed them. “I have a bigger enemy to take down.”

  Three tails tapped against the floor in unison. To the Silsviss mind-set, that made perfect sense. And they were another species who recognized the baring of teeth for what it was.

  The exposure of someone on the station dealing in stolen goods, not to mention the capture of the thief, her crew, and her ship, would bring in the Wardens, and when Torin’s involvement came to light—if not through the Silsviss then through the payment she’d made in the bar—it might actually light a fire under the ass of the law, given the finding of Page’s body and the attack on the Promise that the Wardens already had on record. The problem was Torin no longer wanted the Wardens suddenly going all gung ho—enthusiasm from that quarter could easily provoke the pirates into killing Craig. Involving the Silsviss—who were not yet members of the Confederation—would slow things back down to diplomatic speeds.

  “Strategy and tactics,” she muttered, stepping into the Star’s air lock. “Your tax dollars at work.”