The Truth of Valor

by Huff, Tanya

“Twelve hours,” Craig reminded him.

  Nadayki blinked, and his eyes lightened enough they looked green again. “She’s fukking scary, isn’t she? I mean . . .” His hands sketched impossible meanings in the air. “She doesn’t look that scary in the vids.”

  “Yeah, well . . .” Craig stretched out his legs, sucked some air in through his teeth, and set his left heel gently down on his right ankle. “The vids add almost five kilos and a veneer of civilization.”

  “What can Big Bill do with fifteen percent if we control the other eighty-five? I mean, basically it’s fifteen guns to eighty-five guns, isn’t it?” Nat lifted her hand to scratch, glanced across medical at Doc and lowered it again.

  “Look what he’s already done with fifteen percent?” Cho snarled. “Made himself his own little kingdom. Having any gunnery sergeant train his people would give him an advantage, but that gunnery sergeant? She’s got a rep outside the Corps. This lot’ll actually listen to her.”

  “This lot,” Doc sighed, “will challenge her repeatedly to see if she’s all the vids say she is.”

  “Not repeatedly,” Cho corrected grimly. “Once.”

  Nat opened her mouth, frowned; her gaze flicked across sick bay to Doc—who continued to tidy away medical instruments—and closed her mouth again. The quartermaster wasn’t the brightest star in the cluster, Cho knew, not by a fukking long shot, but she had excellent instincts for self-preservation. “Like that, then,” she murmured. “Good to know.”

  Doc had been challenged once by someone too stupid to recognize the difference between threat and certainty. The fight had lasted seconds. Doc had dropped the fool’s eyeball on the body when he walked away.

  Kerr’s eyes held the same certainty Doc’s did.

  “But ex . . .” Cho came down hard on the ex. “. . . Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr isn’t our problem. Her kind’s shit without an officer . . .” According to the vid, she’d even followed an enemy officer out of the prison, more than proving his point. “. . . and Big Bill’s holding her leash. Big Bill is our problem. He threatened me with her. Reminded me that he’s in control.”

  “His station,” Doc pointed out mildly.

  “This goes beyond the station. He says he knows where I can sell the weapons to my best advantage, that my best advantage is his because it increases his fifteen percent. I say, any sale Big Bill sets up is to his best advantage period.” When neither Nat nor Doc disagreed, Cho continued. “He thinks he can sit here in his web and send us out to do his bidding. I walked away from that kind of shit once.” They hadn’t needed to court- martial him; he’d been all but gone when the MPs had shown up.

  “We sail under no colors but our own. A phrase the ancient sea pirates used to use,” Doc added when Cho turned toward him.

  “Exactly.” Cho might be seeing other ships move out through known space under his colors, under his command, but command wasn’t like control. “You two need a drink.”

  Nat grinned. “Well, aye, Cap, but didn’t you say we were to stay with the Heart? Loose lips and all that. Don’t want folk to find out what we have until we’re actually holding it and can return fire, you said. Don’t want them ganging up on us.”

  “I know what I said!” He wiped the grin off her face with his tone. “Now I’m saying get out there and find out what the fuk Big Bill is up to. Something this big, there has to be someone who can’t keep their mouth shut.”

  “Someone who knows what’s going on.” Nat nodded. “Loose lips in our favor. So, we won’t be actually drinking then?”

  “You’ll keep your fukking mouths shut.” Huirre had hit his bunk and couldn’t keep his mouth shut besides, Krisk was a brilliant engineer and a useless shit if dragged from the engine room, but the di’Taykan . . . “Find Dysun and Almon, make sure they know they’re to be listening during sex, not talking. I’m sending the code to get back in the docks to your slates, don’t fukking lose it. And you all stay away from ex-Gunnery Sergeant Kerr.”

  “Once,” Doc murmured, closing the equipment drawer and activating the lock. “That’s a fight I’d like to see.

  “You’re very quiet,” Big Bill said as they crossed the Hub.

  Mapping alternative routes from the docking arm to the Second Star, Torin unclenched her teeth. He’d said nothing after she’d caught up to him at the hatch; it wasn’t like she’d been ignoring his conversation.

  They skirted a mixed group yelling profanity at a large vid screen showing the Dar peed finals on the Taykan home world. Torin had watched the finals on Paradise. With her family. And Craig.

  “You must have questions, Gunnery Sergeant.”

  The distinctive sound of half a dozen or so di’Taykan working out logistics drifted down from an upper level. Torin pitched her voice under the argument. “Neither the time nor the place.”

  “You think this lot ...” Big Bill’s gesture included both the seen and the unseen. Those behind bulkheads in the pubs and the shops and the pleasure palaces as well as those actually out in the Hub, drinking, dealing, and fighting. “. . . hangs on our every word?”

  It took every moment of every year of experience to plant a gunnery sergeant face firmly in place over her rage before Torin turned toward Big Bill and raised a brow.

  Big Bill laughed as he stepped over a Krai lying in a puddle of mixed blood and vomit. The sound sent a ripple of imitation laughter through the Hub. “All right, then. We’ve covered that we’re both smarter than we look.” He paused and raised his voice only little. “Can we get this mess cleaned up before the stink adds to the load on the ventilators? Remember you pay extra for repairs.”

  The vertical smelled of unwashed bodies. Torin hung onto a rising strap and listened to Big Bill greet everyone who passed. No one seemed too thrilled by the attention although everyone did a reasonable job of faking it. About half of them recognized her, which made a station full of thieves and murderers more observant than the general public.

  When they got back to the outer office, the Grr brothers were still watching news vids. This time, only one screen had anything to do with her. Both Krai looked up as she entered, stood as Big Bill came in, and headed out into the station as soon as the hatch was clear.

  Torin saw no hand signals. Big Bill and the Grr brothers had implants, then. But Big Bill wouldn’t want his conversations recorded by the station—too much risk—so there had to be a way of opting out. A way for her to be in contact with Craig. Ressk would know.

  “So.” Big Bill settled in behind his desk and smiled up at her. He didn’t look like a man heading into his second 28-hour day. Maybe he didn’t sleep on the station’s day/night schedule. “Your best guess as to the armory’s contents.”

  No reason not to tell him, Torin acknowledged silently. He’d never get a chance to use the weapons.

  The way Craig saw it, he now had a few options.

  He had somewhere to go if he made a run for it. He’d made it from medical out of the ship to the storage pod; he could make it to Torin. Now he knew she was on the station, now they weren’t watching him so closely—or at all—he could get to her.

  Except there was a chance that Nadayki could crack the seal in the eleven hours he’d claimed—the kid was almost as good as he thought he was. Once the armory was open, Craig didn’t trust Cho not to siphon off guns immediately regardless of what Big Bill’s plans were.

  If that happened, Torin had to know.

  The farther the guns got from the armory, the harder they’d be to destroy or remove or whatever Torin planned on doing with them.

  As much as he wanted to be anywhere else, anywhere Torin was, he had to stay here with the Heart to keep an eye on things.

  Torin’s eyes inside. Undercover work.

  “What are you smiling about?” Nadayki demanded petulantly.

  “Grown-up stuff.” He hadn’t realized he’d been smiling.

  “Fuk you.”

  “Missed our chance, kid.”

  Problem: if Cho started moving the we
apons, how did he let Torin know?

  The only thing Torin had been able to tell him in that first instant of contact was that the implants were tapped. He didn’t know how the fuk that was even possible, although Nadayki might, but he had to respect the importance of information given top billing over everything else she’d wanted to say. Over everything he’d seen on her face.

  No matter how frustrating it might be.

  Torin attracted more overt attention crossing the Hub back to the Star than she had crossing the other way with Big Bill. No surprise. He was a known factor. She had yet to define her place. If she were staying, if she were planning to do the job, she’d have to prove to the locals it was in their best interests to listen to her.

  The pair of di’Taykan watching her from over by the verticals, the Krai and Human on the bench by the kiosk selling cumot’d-on-a-bun, and the Human crossing diagonally from her, laden down with boxes—even a cursory sweep identified them as having spent at least one contract in the Corps. The ex-Navy were a little harder to spot, but the three Krai who’d paused to stare before going through the hatch into one of the bars, definitely.

  Ex-military had specific responses to senior NCOs conditioned in, but the ex-military on this station had you’re not the boss of me shoved so far up their collective asses it had impacted on their thinking. Yet another parallel between the pirates and the CSOs.

  Because the ex-military thought they knew what she was, they’d see to it that the first challenger wouldn’t be a loser with more balls than brains but would be handpicked to beat her.

  Wouldn’t happen.

  The first fight would also be the last fight. Fear would give her the control she needed; respect could come later.

  If she were staying. If she were she planning to do the job.

  If Big Bill hadn’t decided to wait until the armory was open to announce her position, she’d be fighting right now. Beating her frustrations out on a thieving murderer no better than the bastards who took Craig. Tortured Craig. Bastards she couldn’t yet touch.

  In a just universe, she’d be accosted by another drunk declaring she didn’t look like such hot shit, but although they were staring, the scum in the Hub were giving her a wide berth.

  Recent events, she decided, reaching the decompression door un-accosted and digging her thumbnail into the gray plastic trim, had proved that the universe was anything but just.

  “An armory? Intact?” Mashona swung her legs out over the edge of the bunk and sat up, her gaze never leaving Torin. “Fuk.”

  Werst’s nose ridges flared. “Good thing we dropped by.”

  “An intact armory in the hands of pirates would light a fuse under the Wardens,” Ressk pointed out from the second chair. “They’d send in the Navy for that.”

  “And what would the Navy do?” Torin asked, stopping in front of him. Unable to remain still, she’d paced the cabin while she filled them in. “Send a warhead into the station to blow the armory? Kill citizens of the Confederation no matter how misguided? No. Confederation law states explicitly that the military will not be used against citizens of the Confederation.”

  “But the Wardens can send the Navy against pirates,” Ressk protested.

  “Specifically pirates,” Torin reminded him. The damned cabin was too small. “Not everyone on this station is a pirate.” She started pacing again. “Some live off theft and murder second or thirdhand. The Wardens can’t legally send the Navy after them, and the Wardens are all about the bureaucracy. What’s more, even if the Wardens get their slates out of their asses and send out the Navy, the Navy will argue for landing Marines to take the armory back.”

  “The Corps’ armory, the Corps’ problem,” Mashona muttered.

  “Exactly. Even if Presit allowed Merik to fold the moment they got the first image ...” Presit’s camera now rested on the edge of the control panel with no way for them to tell what Presit’s reaction had been to the new information. “. . . what are the odds of the Corps getting out here in under fourteen hours when they’re not going to be able to cut the orders without a Parliamentary decree?”

  “Slim,” Mashona offered.

  “Slim,” Torin agreed.

  “So it’s up to us.” Ressk nodded at whatever plan he had unfolding inside his head. “We rescue Ryder. We get the armory far enough from the station to blow it without the explosion sending pieces back through the station.”

  Torin stared at Ressk for a long moment. “We figure out a way to blow the armory,” she said at last. “We’re not military, and I don’t give a H’san’s ass if the station goes with it.”

  The silence thickened until it dragged at her legs. Six paces across the cabin. Six back. That was weird. Seven paces across Promise’s cabin and the Star was larger. One. Two. Three . . .

  “Gunny.” Werst stepped out in front of her. No room to go around him, so she stopped. “Bartenders. Waiters. Whores. Shopkeepers. Maintenance personnel. Techies. Hell, even that weird black-and-white di’Taykan with the hots for you. Okay, sure, they live off theft and murder second- and thirdhand like you said, but they don’t deserve to die. And you don’t get to make that decision.” His nose ridges opened and closed, slowly. “You don’t have to make that decision. Not this time.”

  Werst didn’t look bad, all things considered, but his natural mottling couldn’t hide the bruises, one eye was swollen almost closed, and Kyster had definitely been supporting him as they moved toward her. Torin could see abrasions on one wrist and knew there’d be a matching set on the other wrist and both ankles. He hadn’t just laid there after he’d been staked out, he’d fought the bindings. A bloody scab weighed down one corner of his mouth, but his lips still rose off his teeth. “Harnett?”

  “Dead.”

  “Edwards?”

  “Also dead.”

  His grunt suggested he found the news of Edwards’ death disappointing. Torin assumed that was only because he’d had plans to take care of it himself. “How many total?”

  “Seven. Eight, including Harnett.”

  A sudden impact jerked Torin out of the memory. She blinked and stared at the blood smear marking the place where she’d slammed her right fist into the bulkhead.

  The pain hit right after the visuals.

  “Gunny?”

  Raising her left hand, palm out, she drew in two deep breaths and let them out slowly. Clear and bright, the pain sliced through all the shit in her head and left only three things behind. Craig. The armory. The certain knowledge that this couldn’t happen right now. The shit couldn’t win. She had to hold things together for just a little while longer. One more deep breath, then she let her left arm fall back by her side and nodded.

  She’d barely finished the motion before Ressk, holding her right wrist in a gentle grip, pushed her back into the pilot’s chair. Mashona knelt beside her and opened the first aid kit.

  “That was stupid.”

  “Werst!”

  Looking over their heads, she locked eyes with Werst. “No, he’s right. Seeing Craig threw me, but I’m thinking clearly now.”

  “So you punched the wall to clear your head? Bullshit.”

  “And yet, my head is clear.” Her tone told him to drop it. Trouble was, Werst hadn’t listened back when she had actual rank to enforce the order. And now . . .

  He folded his arms, his tone matter-of-fact. “If you’re losing it, Gunny, we need to know.”

  “Fuk you.”

  “He’s right, Gunny.” Mashona’s hand rested warm on her thigh. “You don’t have to prove anything to us. We’re here.”

  Yes, they were.

  Ressk flashed Werst a look that made Torin suspect Mashona might be right about something going on between them then, nose ridges flaring, asked, “What would you say, Gunny, if one of us pulled a dumbass move like punching a bulkhead?”

  Good question. The pain blocker he’d shot into her hand dulled the edges of the clear and bright but not so much the shit could creep back in. It was all
still there—Cho, Big Bill, Craig’s injury, a station not entirely full of thieves and murderers—but she owned it now, not the other way around.

  “I’d tell you to not let it get so bad again.”

  “Yeah,” Mashona snorted. “But you’d be more emphatic.”

  She’d have been as emphatic as required for them to hear her. “True.”

  “So, consider yourself told.” Werst’s teeth flashed white. “What’s the plan?”

  “First . . .” This was the easy part. “. . . we need to be able to communicate with Craig. Not only to get him out, but because he’s with the armory.” She sucked air in through her teeth as Ressk’s thumb pushed at cracked bone.

  Ressk’s grip tightened. “No point in bonding the knuckle when it’s halfway down your fukking hand,” he reminded her. “Stop twitching. If Big Bill’s blocked his codes, then I can block yours and Ryder’s. I just need to get into the sysop. Once in . . . Gunny!”

  “I’m not twitching.”

  He snorted noncommittally and maneuvered the bone into place. The pain flared bright and clear for an instant, then settled back to a constant reminder of why punching bulkheads was definitely dumbass.

  “Once in,” he began again, “I can lock our slates out, too.”

  Mashona handed him a tube of sealant and sat back on her heels. “Wouldn’t it be easier to just lock out the Star? Since we use her as our SP?”

  “If I lock out the Star, the docking clamps release because the station thinks we no longer exist.”

  “So you’ll be locking out the codes.” With the split skin over Torin’s knuckle sealed shut, Mashona dropped the empty tube back into the kit. “Good thing you’re an evil genius.”

  “Doesn’t take a genius to lock out codes,” Ressk snorted, frowned down at the repair, then set the hand gently on Torin’s knee with a look that said it was the best he could do. “But it’ll take time to get into the system unnoticed.”

  “We now have less than thirteen hours for the entire mission.” Torin reminded him.