by Huff, Tanya
Then he wondered how true all those stories were. Once a Krai tastes your flesh, they’ll do anything to get more of it. He straightened, rolled his shoulders to loosen stiff muscles. If Huirre wanted more, Craig would start him off with a mouthful of fist.
“Captain says you’re to pull some rack time.”
Braced for a fight, that wasn’t the opening line Craig had expected.
“Oh, fukking great,” Huirre sighed. “I eat your toe, you get all weird around me. Well, pull your shit together, and go grab a few hours sleep.”
Pulling his shit together sounded like a good idea. So did sleep. Craig dug the heel of his hands into his eyes. “The captain told me to watch that exit to the station, let him know immediately if Big Bill returned.”
“And he sent me here to replace you, you serley chrika.” Holding the edge of the hatch, Huirre leaned into the pod. “Not done yet?”
“Asshole,” Craig heard Nadayki mutter. “Ryder was talking to himself.”
When Huirre leaned back out to snort a wordless request for an explanation, Craig shrugged. “Trying not to fall asleep.” He rolled his shoulders again, cracking his upper back. “He’s lucky I didn’t sing.”
“Yeah, well he’s lucky about a lot of things.”
Craig heard boots ring against the deck then Nadayki stood in the open hatch, scowling down at the Krai, the ends of his hair flicking back and forth in short, jerky arcs. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Hurrie ignored the question. “You going to get that thing open in time?” His nose ridges flared and closed, slowly, deliberately, and—although Craig realized his perceptions might be colored by lack of sleep—he suddenly sounded dangerous. “Cap’ll pitch a fit if you promise and don’t deliver. You don’t want to piss him off, do you?”
Nadayki’s eyes darkened. “If the captain does anything to keep me from working, he’ll never get through this seal. Not when I’m the only one who understands the groundwork I’ve laid.”
“Was that a threat, kid?”
“No.” Nadayki’s chin rose, but his hair flattened. Mixed messages. “It’s a simple if/then statement. If he hurts me because I haven’t finished, then I can’t finish. Cause and effect.”
“Yeah?” Huirre flexed his toes against the deck. “Does it effect you if he hurts one of your thytrin to motivate you?”
“Affect,” Nadayki snapped. Craig had to suppress a completely inappropriate desire to laugh. “And no. If he hurts one of my thytrin, I won’t finish.” This, he was sure of. His hair started moving again.
“If you’re not going to finish,” Huirre pointed out thoughtfully, “he might as well hurt you.”
“What?” Nadayki’s hair stopped moving again.
Craig sighed. “Huirre’s fukking with you, kid. Getting you to waste time. Then he tells the captain, and he’s golden while you catch shit.”
Huirre snickered. “You’re no fun at all. Tasty, but no fun.”
Eyes darkening, Nadayki frowned, then smirked in triumph. “You hate that I’m more important right now than you!”
“Moment of glory. Enjoy it.” The Krai dipped a hand into his pocket and held it out, a stim on the tip of one finger. “Captain wants you to take this.”
“I don’t need a . . .”
“Yeah, you do, kid.” Back against the bulkhead, Craig worked himself up onto his right foot, keeping his weight off the left until absolutely necessary. “You get tired, you’ll make mistakes. You make a big enough mistake, we all die. Bottom line, that’s what the armory blowing up means. We all die. I don’t want to die. You don’t want to die. Take the stim.”
“Stop calling me kid!” But he took the stim.
Huirre picked up one of the takeout boxes with his left foot and tossed it up into his hand. He sniffed the stained interior and took a bite. “Chrick. Just like my jernil used to make. Now get lost, Ryder. And you might want to fukking shower. You stink.”
Considering he was still breaking out in a sweat every time he moved his foot, Craig wasn’t surprised. He hadn’t thought of showering until Huirre mentioned it, but right now, there was only one thing he wanted to do more than stand under hot water. Torin’s implant could reach dirtside to a ship in orbit. It could reach him in the Heart.
He took a careful step away, weight on his left heel, and remembered Torin had wanted him to check on how they’d moved the armory into the pod. The deck was smooth. They had to have shifted the armory from the ship’s cargo bay doors in through the big decompression doors—it was too gods damned big to get it to the storage pod any other way—but they hadn’t moved it on rails.
“Hey, Huirre.” He nodded back toward the pod. “You know how they got that thing in here?”
“The armory? Yeah.”
Craig waited.
Huirre snickered. “I’m not going to tell you. Ask the captain. Or Almon. He could beat you up again before he fuks you.” He took another bite of the box. “I don’t give a shit about Doc’s pirate guidelines. Far as I’m concerned, you’re not crew until you’re in deep enough you can’t screw us over with the Wardens. Until then, you’re walking snack food.”
After showering, Torin felt a lot more Human. They still had ice in the hopper, and the Star had a top-of-the-line recycling system; they’d have plenty of water to get them through the next . . .
She glanced at her slate.
... five hours and seventeen minutes. Given what Big Bill charged for water—up front—that was no small thing.
The station schematics had proved without a doubt the armory had come through the ore dock’s decompression doors—the armory was just too big to have gotten onto the station any other way. But how had they maneuvered it from the doors to the storage pod? That was the question. The schematics showed nothing capable of maneuvering that kind of . . .
Her implant didn’t so much ping as ring loudly enough she felt her jaw vibrate.
*Good morning, Gunnery Sergeant. I hope I’m not waking you.*
Torin had survived under fire more times than Big Bill had charged his fifteen percent. No way was she going to show that the son of a bitch had startled her. “I’m up.”
*Good. Meet me at the old smelter in thirty. I’ll send a route to your slate.* The ping when he broke the connection was at a volume significantly closer to the default.
Torin fought the urge to beat her head against the bulkhead, reached for clean clothes instead, and began dragging them on. She couldn’t believe she’d forgotten that Big Bill had her codes. Technically, he was her employer, so she’d had no good reason to refuse when he’d asked. Actually, she’d had any number of good reasons, but none she could give him.
She paused, one arm through her shirt. Big Bill’s implant codes didn’t go into the system. As far as the station sysop was concerned, that call hadn’t happened. Therefore, her codes hadn’t been put into the system and she could still contact Craig without putting him in danger.
“Probably,” Ressk agreed as she put her boots on. “I’ll go in and check. Easy enough to take them out now anyway.”
“Easy enough?”
“I set it up as a link to the communications boards.” He waved his slate. “Full access from here.”
“Can you eavesdrop on Big Bill’s implant?”
“Not yet. But I’m working on it.”
“Good.” Second boot on, she took a moment to lay her head on her knees and get her shit together. “I’m a soldier,” she muttered. “I fukking suck at this undercover shit.”
“You’re doing okay so far, Gunny.”
She straightened then and glared across the cabin at Ressk. “Just okay?” That pretty much proved her point.
He grinned. “I’m sure you’d be happier if someone was shooting at us.” He held out his hand, a familiar white dot on his palm. “Mashona found stims in the first aid kit. Look like ours—the Corps’—don’t they?”
They did. She crossed the cabin and lifted the tiny white pill on her fingertip. “
How many?”
“Two. I took the other one. Mashona and Werst’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way. They’ve fought a war on less sleep.”
“War.” Torin swallowed a mouthful of saliva caused by the familiar, bitter taste of the stim. She shrugged into her tunic, checked that Presit’s camera was secured, and headed for the air lock. “War has rules. Whatever this is, it could use some rules.”
“Harder to break an arbitrary decision,” Ressk agreed as the lock cycled closed.
Five hours and six minutes. They needed a plan.
The route Big Bill had sent to her slate would have taken her more than thirty minutes even if she’d left the ship immediately after receiving it. With only nineteen minutes remaining, she took a short cut. First up to the Hub’s mezzanine level, moving quickly through the public areas—senior NCOs did not run in order to reach their destination on time. At least not where they could be seen. Once through a locked hatch, Torin picked up the pace, racing down the pale gray corridor that led to the staff quarters, left at the t-junction, then past twenty identical darker gray hatches . . .
“Hey! What the fuk are you doing up here?”
Torin ignored him, opened the maintenance access she’d been aiming for, and stepped into the darkness, closing the access behind her. Using her slate as a light, she hooked two fingers under a bit of gray plastic conduit, and, having given it as much time as she could spare to respond, pushed herself down toward the smelter level—for representational rather than gravitational values of the word down. Like the verticals, the maintenance shafts were kept at zero G—one of the reasons so many maintenance workers were Krai. The Krai, as a species, suffered no nausea, no disorientation; without gravity, they were able to use both hands and feet to double their efficiency.
She skimmed her free hand along the plastic cables.
One deck. Two. Three.
Snapping her slate back on her belt, Torin snagged another conduit to stop her descent and flipped the access panel open with her free hand. She swung her feet out onto the deck, twisting sideways to clear her shoulders as gravity took over and her weight pulled her clear.
Six seconds to twitch everything into place, and she walked around the corner to the smelter with a minute and a half to spare.
The Grr brothers noticed her first, turning slowly, nose ridges flared, hands out from their sides. The position was half reassurance that they weren’t reaching for weapons, half loosening up for a fight. The swelling had mostly gone down, and although the mottling made it difficult to tell for certain, it looked as though the bruises had begun to darken.
Bruises made her think of Craig and the evidence of violence still marking his face.
Both sets of nose ridges slammed shut. Torin fought to get her expression under control before she faced Big Bill.
He started to turn as she passed his bodyguards, frowned when he saw her, then glanced back in the direction he’d expected her to arrive from.
Torin fell into parade rest and waited, counting the seconds they were wasting. She’d counted to six when Big Bill said, “I see you found your own way.”
It wasn’t a question, so she didn’t answer it.
His slate chirped.
One of the Grr brothers snorted.
Big Bill had intended her to arrive late, putting her on the defensive, allowing him to give her shit or grant clemency depending on his mood. Torin kept her expression neutral. Compared to General Morris, he was a complete amateur.
“Why didn’t you use the route I sent you?”
When she looked directly at him, his gaze slid off hers—not so obviously it seemed deliberate but consistently enough Torin knew it had to be. “You expected me in thirty.”
“And you always do what’s expected of you?” His tone sounded more speculative than curious, no doubt wondering how he could use that information.
“It’s part of the job.”
And the camouflage.
“Well, as you’re here so promptly, let’s use the time you saved and have a look at the smelter. Boys, open the hatch. It’s a community arena now,” he added as the Grr brothers hurried to obey. “Used for courts and fights and the like, but I thought you might use it as a training facility.”
The small decompression hatch led into a large rectangular area, with high ceilings and nearly as much floor space as the central part of the Hub but empty except for black metal bleachers around the bulkheads. At first, Torin thought the walls had been allowed to rust. A moment later, she realized they’d been painted a dark red-brown—the shade somewhere between rust and dried blood. A double set of glossy black decompression doors broke up the seating at ninety degrees from her zero. Patches rough welded into the floor showed where large machinery had been removed.
She doubted there was much difference between the courts and the fights.
There was no visible plastic. That was less comforting than she’d expected it would be.
“The seats can come out if you don’t need them, or they can be rearranged into more useful configurations.” Big Bill slapped a meaty palm against the bulkhead. “Industrial reinforcing—it’s the best place on Vrijheid to put a range even with targets designed to absorb the impact.”
Not everyone would hit the target. On military stations, they built a barrier designed to neutralize the rounds from a KC-7 and set the targets in that. As Torin enjoyed the thought of pirates shooting holes in their own station, she didn’t bother correcting the flaw in Big Bill’s design.
“For the larger weapons, we may need to set up something on the planet. Although it’s not like the big stuff needs precision shooting, right?”
He was waiting for a response. “Just needs to be pointed in the right direction,” she agreed. Pirates blowing themselves to hell with heavy ordinance would also be celebrated. She scuffed her sole against one of the welds, frowned at the big double hatch, and laid out the station schematics in her head. “The smelter machinery; how did you get it out?”
“Why?”
Torin gave him her best that question is too stupid to require a facial expression. “We’ll need to move some large equipment back in.”
“Of course.” Big Bill moved out into the center space. “The double hatch leads to the ore dock. We cut the gravity in both sections, opened the hatches, ran leads in from the runners in the ore dock and floated them out. Then we cleared the ore dock by putting a couple of crews in HE suits and shoving the machinery—stripped of anything useful, of course—out the big exterior hatch the ore carriers used. The crews that did the work got to grapple the scrap in and sell the metal to my recycling contacts. You’ll merely need to reverse the process.”
Or repeat the process to get the armory off the station.
Torin nodded. “It’s a plan.” She needed to get the hell back to the Star, but Big Bill wasn’t finished.
“It’s more than a plan, Gunnery Sergeant, it’s a beginning.” He faced her, arms spread. “The Navy can shoot at individual ships the Wardens designate pirate—bureaucracy runs slower than a H’san in the sun, so no ships have yet been designated, but it’s only a matter of time before the Wardens get their opposable digits out of their anal passages and convince Parliament to declare the free merchants enemies of the Confederation. Ships will therefore only take us so far. But, if we take over stations, who’s to say who’s a free merchant and who’s part of the station crew? If we control stations, the government will have to talk to us. We can form a Free Merchant Alliance.” His voice bounced back off the metal surfaces, layering on a patina of aural crazy. “When we control enough stations, we’ll sue for representation in Parliament.”
Torin stared at him. There were holes in his plan a battle cruiser could slide through, but the son of a bitch thought big, she’d give him that. “And all you get from this . . .”
“Is fifteen percent.”
When Torin raised a brow, he smiled. She glanced over at the Grr brothers who looked more bored than impressed by t
he rhetoric. If she had to guess, she’d say they’d heard it before.
“Problem.” She made it sound like a single problem, not a problem with the crazy-ass concept in general. “Even with the armory on the station, doesn’t Cho control most of the weapons?”
“Captain Cho will, of course, be one of the leaders of the Alliance, and he’ll sell the weapons he and his crew don’t personally need.”
“To people you’ve chosen.”
“To the people who will give him the best price.” Smiling, Big Bill beckoned her closer. When she was an arm’s length away, he said, “I’d like you to have the training facility ready to use the moment the Free Merchants have weapons in their hands, but the ore dock is off-limits until the armory is open, so that’ll limit any large-scale changes.” With his volume dialed back to conversational levels, he might have been discussing sweeping out the Hub instead of the first steps toward violently commandeering stations and holding their inhabitants hostage. “It’s eight fifty-three now . . .”
Four hours and thirty-three minutes until Craig said Nadayki would have the armory open.
“. . . I’d like to see a design by 1130,” Big Bill continued, unaware of the change Cho had made in his schedule. “Include a list of everything you’ll need to make it happen—material, tools, workers—and once I’ve approved it, you can begin.”
“Then I’d better get started.” She pivoted on one heel and headed for the hatch, roughing out a plan that would not end with the Free Merchant Alliance gaining representation in Parliament or Big Bill using the weapons in the armory to gain fifteen percent of anything.
As Torin stepped onto the Star, Werst handed her a mug of coffee. “We cut the gravity, open the exterior decompression doors, use the overhead runners to get the armory out of the storage pod and out the doors, grapple it, use the Star to tow it away from the station, blow it up, and fold before any of the pirates come after us, illegal weapons blazing?”
Torin nodded. “Bare bones.”
“What about Ryder?” Mashona asked, breaking the seal on a packet of eggs.