by Huff, Tanya
Torin gripped the mug tighter, pulling at the bonded knuckle. “I said, bare bones.” With no time to waste, she’d filled them in while returning to the ship. Assuming Big Bill was watching, or would be watching at least fifteen percent of the time, she’d tried to look like she’d already begun to design a training facility for thieves and murderers. Ressk’s tracking program kept her face turned away from surveillance cameras.
“Okay, one and zeros.” Ressk cracked his toes and took a long swallow of sah. “Moving training equipment would be a great cover. Any chance of Big Bill changing his mind about waiting until the armory’s open?”
“No.” When it looked like he was going to pursue it further, Torin raised a hand and cut him off. “You’ve cracked the station sysop, can’t you shut down the gravity and open the exterior hatch from your slate?”
“I’m in Communications, Gunny.”
“Not what I asked you.”
He straightened, responding to her tone. “Yes, I can shut down the gravity and open the big hatch from the slate. But it’ll take time to find the right subroutines and more time to subvert them.”
“How much time?”
His nose ridges opened and closed. “Probably more than we have.”
Torin narrowed her eyes. “You hacked through ship security every time Sh’quo Company was deployed.”
“Yeah. But, Gunny . . .”
“Are you telling me Big Bill Ponner is more paranoid than the Navy with Marines on board?”
“Gunny, he created a digital history that convinced everyone who mattered that Vrijheid was destroyed in the war. He’s either written or adapted every program running on this station. I’m telling you he’s better than the Navy.”
“Better than the Navy doesn’t make him better than you.”
“Well, no, but . . .
“No buts. Get to work; we need the gravity off and the hatch open.” Torin dropped into the pilot’s chair and set her mug on the edge of the board. “All right, before we can open the ore docks to vacuum, we have to get Nadayki and Craig away from the pod. I’ll talk to Craig.” She frowned. “There’s no blast wave in vacuum. Does that change the result if we blow the armory in the pod?”
“Not enough. Atmosphere or no atmosphere, the pod’s not designed to contain large chunks of shrapnel. Pieces of the armory will go through the pod and then the station like cheese through a H’san. We have to get it, on an absolute minimum, thirty kilometers away and even then the station will take damage.”
Every mission came with collateral damage. The brass tried to pretend it didn’t, but the people on the front lines knew better.
“Let’s hope the interior decompression hatches work as planned, then. You two . . .” Torin spun the chair to face Werst and Mashona at the table. “Get down to the Hub and watch for Big Bill. We can’t risk him going to the ore docks and finding out he’s got three hours’ less time.”
“Why would they tell him?” Mashona asked, shoving the last spoonful of scrambled egg into her mouth and shoving the tray in the recycler.
“From what I saw of Nadayki, if asked, he’s likely to brag about it.”
Werst emptied his mug. “Would it matter?”
“Big Bill believes nothing will happen until 1630. If he learns the armory’s due to open at 1330, our cover story tightens up. Without those three extra hours, we blow our cover with Big Bill or we lose the armory. Either way, we’re screwed.”
“Or Cho is. Cho’s betraying him,” Werst expanded off Torin’s look. “Pulling weapons out early.”
“If Big Bill finds out before the armory’s open, Cho’ll argue he was just being gung ho. Wanted to surprise Big Bill with how efficient he is.” Pain from her injured knuckle reminded her to loosen her fist. “If we control the information, we can aim and fire it when it’ll do us the most good, so we have to keep Big Bill . . .”
“From the docking bay.” Werst laid his palm against the air lock’s inner panel. “Check.”
“And if we see him?” Mashona asked, falling in beside Werst.
“Ping me.” So far, the plan had more variables than actual points of reference. A few more variables couldn’t hurt. “Let’s mix things up a bit. Drop a few subtle rumors about Cho while you’re out there.”
“About how this big mystery haul of his is big enough to finally piss off the Wardens and have them kick the Navy into action, putting the station and everyone on it in danger?”
“That’s good.”
Mashona smirked. “More than just a pretty face, Gunny.”
Huirre and Nadayki were at the storage pod; Krisk apparently never left the ship. Cho wasn’t going any farther from the armory than the Heart. Craig suspected he wasn’t standing at Nadayki’s shoulder only because he didn’t want his crew to think he had nothing better to do—even though until the armory was open, he had nothing better to do. Dysun had returned not long after Almon, but Nat and Doc were still out.
With half the crew gone, the ship felt empty.
Craig didn’t much like the ship having a feel. It smacked of familiarity. Of becoming a part of something he wanted no part of.
Sitting on a bench outside the showers, he nearly fell on his face while carefully easing the overalls past his injured foot. Fuk, he was tired. As he bent to pull the dressing off—Marines used sealant alone in the field—small spikes tapped into his temples and, although Doc had bonded the ribs Almon had cracked, breathing became less an automatic function and more a painful chore.
But Torin was here. On the station.
It was almost over.
*Craig. We know how they got the armory in—they cut the gravity, floated it out of the Heart and in through the exterior hatch. We’ll take it out the same way.*
“Great.” He stepped over the lip into the shower and pressed hot/ strong. “You can take me out with it.”
He thought for a moment the hot water pounding down on his head and shoulders had drowned out her reply. Impossible given that the implant was jacked directly into his ear.
*Are you up to it?*
He didn’t know where his suit was, and he very much doubted Cho would just hand it over. Or allow him to unhook a suit from the Heart. “Are you serious?”
*Easier to get you out the exterior hatch than through the station. Craig, are you up to it?*
She didn’t think he was, or she wouldn’t have asked again. But she’d take his word for it, or she wouldn’t have asked the first time. One of the first things he’d learned about Torin was that when she asked a question, she wanted an actual answer to it.
Stepping out from the wall, changing the angle so the water could pound at the base of his spine, he took inventory. Everything hurt. But if he could walk out to the fukking storage pod right after Huirre ate his toe, he could do what he had to in order to get the hell away from the Heart.
“Yeah, I’m up to it.”
*Do you have access to a suit?*
“Not right now, I’m in the shower. Naked. Soapy.” Actually, he hadn’t even started soaping. So as not to be telling a lie, he pushed a little into his palm and began to carefully rub it around the bruising.
*Ressk says the schematics show a suit locker on the ore dock, by the head.* It sounded as though she was smiling and trying not to. He really hoped it was because she was thinking of him naked and not because of Ressk. That would just be . . . wrong.
“Yeah, I saw the hookups. No suits, though.”
*Shit.*
“At least some of the stations are live. Maybe I can get a couple suits out there.”
*How?*
“Captain Cho already thinks Big Bill is up to something. I’ll use that.”
*Don’t take any unnecessary risks. I need to know you’re . . . *
“Safe?” He regretted the word the moment it left his mouth. Okay, maybe not the word itself but the tone, the sarcasm, that he regretted. “Sorry, I’m tired. It’s been a long day.”
*Pain is tiring. Regrowing a toe req
uires only a small sleeve.* Worst of it was, she probably thought she was being comforting. Loss of body parts was no big deal in the Corps. Bam! Lose your head? Just regrow it. Pain? Pain was an inconvenience. Suck it up, Marine. You’ve got a job to do. Craig knew he was being unfair; he’d seen Torin’s reaction, but he was just too tired to care. Losing a body part, even a small insignificant one, might not be a big deal to Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr, but it was to him.
“Trust me, I won’t provoke the captain.”
*Good.* Her intent to make Cho bleed seeped out around the edges of the word. Craig wasn’t one hundred percent positive that if it came to it, he’d be able to stop her. He wasn’t one hundred percent positive he wanted to. *Ping me when you’ve got at least one HE suit moved out into the ore dock. Make it sooner rather than later.* She took it for granted he’d succeed. He liked that. Braced against the tiles, he bent to wash his legs. “You have a time frame?”
*Depends on Ressk.*
“He’s got to take control of the program.”
*Programs. Gravity, hatches, and the runners—the cables that’ll help control the armory.* “Zero G; it won’t weigh anything.”
*It’ll still mass one fuk of a lot.*
“Right.” They were talking just to hear each other now. Since he knew it, Craig assumed Torin knew it, too. “Well, give me a heads-up and I’ll go out with the armory. While you’re getting the grapples on it, I’ll hit Promise’s air lock and be inside before they even notice I’m gone.”
This new silence felt different.
“Torin?”
*I’m not on Promise. I’m on Pedro’s Second Star.”
“God fukking damn it, Torin!” So much for her just calling in the Marines. And how nice she didn’t mention it until now. “Pedro has kids!”
*Pedro’s not with us.* Her voice gave nothing away. Absolutely nothing. She never pulled that shit on him, never, so if the situation was so bad she couldn’t not . . . Craig shifted into a more stable position as she continued. *I bought the Star from him, from the family, because the Promise was too badly damaged to use.*
“What? Damaged?”
*Cho shot the shit out of it when he took you.*
His skin pebbled as a chill slid down his spine. Torin wasn’t hiding how she felt about the Promise—or Cho’s part in it at least. And she’d clearly gone back to the station if she had Pedro’s Star. What would Torin have done when . . .
“You tried to turn the salvage operators into a ragtag battle fleet, didn’t you? I could have told you that wouldn’t work.”
*You weren’t there.*
“They’re not Marines, Torin,” he said gently, turning the water off and reaching for a towel. “You can’t feel betrayed because they didn’t act like Marines.”
*Not the time to talk about it.*
“Granted.” He added it to his mental list of thing they needed to talk about after the rescue. The list, not exactly short before he’d needed rescuing, had grown to the point where whatever this was between them needed to last for a good long time or they’d never get to everything. He crumbled the towel between his hands and sagged back against the bulkhead. “Torin, where the fuk is my ship?”
*The Wardens have her. Evidence. The damage is external. Structural—not functional. I patched what I could in order to fold her back to the station . . . *
“You what? Never mind.” Not a story he needed to hear now. Even thinking of the possibilities had begun to knock sharp edges onto the throbbing in his skull. “We’re going to have to break her out, aren’t we?” At the speed the Wardens worked, both he and Torin would be dead of old age before they were ready to release the Promise back into his hands.
*I’ll add it to the list.*
Not a big surprise to discover that Torin also had a list. Hers probably involved a lot more hitting and a lot less talking.
*We need to break this off. Chance of random scans . . . *
“Right.”
*Three hours, forty-six minutes and it’ll all be over. One way or another.*
Craig stared down at the place his toe had been and wished she hadn’t added the qualifier.
“Fukking hell, Cap, I have no idea where Doc is.” Nat dropped into one of the eight chairs surrounding the big galley table and stared into a mug of coffee like she wasn’t entirely certain what it was. “I’m not his fukking mother, am I?”
Cho folded his arms and leaned back against the counter. “How drunk are you?” he growled.
“Not very. I took a party pooper pill on the way back to the ship. Be sober as a C’tron any minute now.”
“And while you were out there drinking, did you remember what I sent you out to do?”
“Sure.” The fingertips on the hand she waved were stained with fresh blood. “Find out what Big Bill’s up to without giving anything away. Shit, I couldn’t do that without drinking because me being in a bar without drinking would raise suspicions you don’t want raised. That last one, that was not the first party pooper pill I took and my stomach would like . . . oh, fuk.” Nat set the mug carefully on the table, stood, walked to the sink and puked up a thin stream of colorless bile.
Barely maintaining a fingernail grip on his temper, Cho sidestepped farther from the sink as she splashed water into her mouth. “And?”
“And there’s a lot more talk of that free merchant crap going on.” Nat spat and straightened. “How we’re going to change known space and won’t they be sorry they were mean to us and boo fukking hoo.” She downed a glass of water and belched. “High percentage of them talking that way. Too high to be random.”
Now that was information he could extrapolate from. “The people Big Bill has lined up to buy our weapons are gathering.”
“If I had to guess, I’d say, yeah.”
Cho paced the length of the galley and back, trying to work out Big Bill’s plans. He needed to compare the ships in dock to the ships on the list Big Bill had given him. “He’s putting together a fleet . . .”
“Nope. From the sound of it, and given that gunnery sergeant is definitely on the payroll, I’d say he’s putting together assault teams.” Hissing through her teeth, Nat pulled her fingers out of her hair and wiped them on her hip. “What do you figure he’s going to assault, Cap.”
Frowning, Cho juggled the pieces. Smiled as they finally snapped into place. “Stations. Like this one was. Stations with no planetary government, so they’re under the Wardens’ jurisdiction. The Navy can’t attack a station . . .”
“No way of separating the good guys from the bad guys.” Nat nodded, returning to her chair and picking up her mug.
“So they have to negotiate.” Cho leaned back against the counter, clutching the edge so tightly the plastic creaked. “It’s exactly what I was going to do. But if Big Bill takes enough stations, he’ll be negotiating from a position of power. And once he’s established, he’ll get rid of those ships who didn’t sign with him.”
“And we’re not signing with him, right? But he said you’d have a place in the forefront of the revolution,” Nat added before Cho could answer.
“His revolution.” Cho curled his lip at the thought of being under Big Bill’s command. “I don’t like being told what to do.”
“Okay, so we don’t sign with him, but why would he turn us in?”
“Turn us in? To the law? No, he won’t do that. Won’t risk pissing off his captains. But if we continue to use this station—and he knows there’s fuk all other stations we can use—he’ll put a surcharge on ships that didn’t play his game. We sign to serve under him, or we pay until he owns us anyway.”
“That’s . . .” Cho could all but see her ticking the list off in her head. “That sounds possible,” she admitted at last. “But, Cap, odds are the armory’s not holding the kind of weapons we can arm the ship with. In order to be of any use at all, they’ve got to be in someone’s hands. Someone who gives us money for them. Big Bill’s people’ll give us the most money because that means he g
ets the most money. You’re willing to make the hard choices, Cap, that’s why we ride with you. And because of those choices the paydays have been good so far, but none of us are going to give up this kind of a payday now on the chance, however possible, that Big Bill might screw us down the line.”
He should have known it would come down to the payout. He not only made the hard choices, but he was the only one who had any foresight. “If Big Bill controls the market, Big Bill controls the price.”
Nat opened her mouth in the pause, then closed it again without speaking, indicating that he should go on.
“The whole concept of the free merchants . . .” Cho sketched quotes around the words. “. . . means more to Big Bill than money, so he has to get the weapons into the right hands. The weapons change everything. This is the one time Big Bill is not going for the immediate payoff.” He cut Nat off with a raised hand. “Yes, he’ll get his fifteen percent, the fukking universe would be imploding before he gave that up, but he’ll get fifteen percent of one fuk of a lot more if his plan works. So Big Bill is screwing you out of part of your payoff because Big Bill is setting the prices.”
“Okay, so . . .” She stared into her mug as if it might have the answers, then up at him as if it actually had. “In order to get the payoff we’re entitled to, we need to set the prices.”
“Yes.” And because Nat had come to it herself, she’d sell it to the rest of the crew. As often as possible, Cho believed in giving orders he knew would be obeyed. Greased the way for those times the orders were less palatable.
“How?”
It all came back to the weapons. “We get the weapons off the station, out of the territory Big Bill controls—it’s hard to take a stand when the person you’re standing against can turn off the air—and we renegotiate based on how important we know the weapons are to Big Bill’s long-term plans.”
“Yeah, but if we set the prices, Big Bill can just suggest no one buys.”
“He won’t. The weapons change everything.”
“Okay.” She nodded slowly, forehead folding into well-defined lines. “I can see that. But we can’t get the armory off the station with the gravity on. Big Bill controls the gravity.”