by Huff, Tanya
“Good for him,” Doc said absently as he examined the place Craig’s toe had been. “I don’t approve of you removing the dressing, but the seal’s holding. Edges look good.” Strong thumbs barely skimmed along Craig’s instep. “There’s a lot of bruising . . .”
“It’s not bruising, mate. My foot’s always been purple.” He frowned. “And green.”
“Well, I apologize for the inadvertent damage caused by my grip.”
“You what? You cut off my fukking toe and you’re apologizing for inadvertent damage?”
“I intended to cut off your toe—Captain’s orders. I didn’t intend to bruise the rest of your foot.” Setting Craig’s foot carefully back on the deck, Doc straightened, tucking a strand of hair back behind his ear. “If there’s time, I’ll replace the sealant.”
“If there’s time? You going somewhere?” It had to be Doc leaving; there was no point in replacing the sealant if they intended to dump him out an air lock. Craig had seen the condition Rogelio Page had been left in.
“I don’t know. Hope so.” His mouth twisted into something that didn’t exactly resemble a smile, and as he turned, he said quietly, “It’s funny.”
Craig couldn’t stop himself. “What is?”
For a moment, it seemed Doc wasn’t going to answer, then he stopped and shrugged, the why the fuk not almost audible. “It’s funny where you find the things you’ve lost. Always the last place you think to look.”
“Well, yeah. Because then you stop looking.”
Doc stiffened, pivoted on one heel, his pale blue eyes flashing a more familiar, crazy-ass expression in Craig’s direction. But all he said was, “Good point.”
Craig watched until the air lock door closed behind the other man and the telltales were red again, then he drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Okay,” he muttered. “That was weird.”
“That was Doc. He’ll lovingly heal you so that you’re in good enough shape for him to beat to death.”
Leaning around the edge of the hatch, Craig found Nadayki kneeling in front of the seal to give his back a break. “You don’t even know what I was talking about.”
“Doesn’t matter.” The young di’Taykan twisted just far enough to sneer at Craig, his eyes light. “It’s Doc, so weird only ever means one thing; it’s the point where medic and maniac overlap. Either/or, that’s one thing, but both . . .” His hair flicked out. “Both at one time is too fukking weird. Too weird for fukking,” Nadayki added with a snort. “I don’t think he’s gotten laid since me and my thytrins joined the crew. That explains a lot.”
It would to a di’Taykan, that was for sure. “Don’t you have work to do?”
Nadayki flipped him a very Human gesture and bent back over the seal.
The sound of the hatch opening pulled Craig out of the storage pod. He didn’t recognize the two Krai swaggering across the ore dock toward him, but he’d definitely got the impression this area wasn’t open to all and sundry, so they had to be down here for a reason. Something about them pinged, but they were almost to the pod before he realized what it was.
Doc moved like danger, barely contained. Like he had nothing to prove.
These two moved like they were more than willing to prove how dangerous they were. Doc’s movements blown large.
Craig grinned. Torin would say it was like the difference between an NCO and an officer.
When they stopped in front of him, he realized that not all the mottling on their faces was natural. He resisted the need to touch the purpling on his own face and waited. They looked at him. They looked around. One of them went around him and looked into the storage pod while the other seemed to be deciding how he’d taste with a nice red sauce.
Then Thing Two called Thing One away from the pod, pointed at Craig, and said something in Krai. Craig knew the same Krai most non-Krai did—the profanity—and recognized none of what had just been said.
Or any part of the reply. Although he knew better than to generalize with other species, it sounded like Thing One disagreed.
Thing Two reiterated.
Thing One stared at Craig for a long moment, nose ridges opening and closing slowly, and said something that sounded very much like a solid maybe.
And then they both gave him a look that involved red sauce.
Fuk it.
“Can I help you, mate?”
“Big Bill sent us,” smirked one.
“To keep an eye on things,” sneered the other.
And apparently, that was all they felt had to be said.
Given the choke hold Big Bill had on the station, it probably was. Either the captain’s paranoia was justified and Big Bill was up to something, or Big Bill suspected Cho was up to something. At first glance, the second option seemed more likely if only because Craig knew Cho was up to something. Upon reflection, the first was just as likely if less absolute.
Honor among thieves was a myth.
Apparently satisfied that Nadayki was doing what he was supposed to, they wandered off to examine the head and the storage lockers. They snapped the sink down out of the bulkhead then back up again. They opened every door, every drawer, stared at the HE suits, turned to stare at Craig.
Craig leaned back against the pod. He didn’t have to explain. Captain Cho had ordered the suits out onto the dock. They could take it up with him if they didn’t like it.
Then Thing One, looking right at him, lifted the sleeve of one of the suits and bared his teeth. Thing Two laughed. Wouldn’t it be funny if I took a bite out of this?
“Be funny if you fukking choked on it,” Craig muttered, then nearly jumped out of his skin as Nadayki closed a hand around his arm and leaned in close.
“Shut up, you ass. You don’t know who they are.”
Barely audible in spite of proximity, he sounded truly freaked, the ends of his hair tracing short, jerky arcs against Craig’s cheek. Craig bit back his initial reaction and said at the same volume, “So tell me.”
“The Grr brothers.”
“The Grr brothers? You’re shitting me, right?”
“I wish. If Big Bill wants somebody eaten, and not in a fun way, they’re the ones who do it.”
“Eaten?”
“Yeah.” Craig felt as much as heard Nadayki swallow. “And I heard they like it better if the food’s still screaming.”
“That’s . . . unpleasant.” And over the top. And, frankly, trying way too hard. Maybe they were scary to a station full of losers who couldn’t live within the broad parameters of the law, but Craig had seen Torin’s face when she’d learned the polynumerous plastic aliens were using war as a social laboratory, and these two, they didn’t know shit about being scary.
“Big Bill’s sent them down here to keep an eye on things. He must know I’m going to be done early.”
“How?”
“What?”
“How would he know?” Craig brushed an agitated lime-green veil away from his face. “Who’s going to tell him?”
“He could be listening in.”
Craig thought about the captain voicing his suspicions about Big Bill’s plans. “He’d have a bigger reaction than just those two if he’s been listening in. Besides, no signal in the pod.”
“Hardwired.”
“It’s a storage pod for explosives, kid. It’s a big box with reinforced walls.”
“Okay, you’re so fukking smart, why are they here?”
Still messing about the storage cabinets, the Grr brothers—and Craig had trouble even thinking that with a straight face—had found the abandoned tools. One of them was swinging the broken pipe wrench in lazy circles while the other sorted through the screwdrivers and ignored him. “Best guess, Big Bill’s a paranoid s.o.b. That, and there’s fuk all honor among thieves.”
“Honor and a credit will buy you a bowl of seesu,” Nadayki snarled. “We’re coming out on top of this, not Big Bill.”
“Hadn’t you better get back to work, then?”
“Har vena ser shetinan!”
“Not after what happened the last time, kid.” Any other di’Taykan standing that close would have grabbed his ass before heading back into the storage pod. It would have been instinctive, expected even given their positions. Watching Thing One toss the wrench aside while Thing Two bitched about wasting time in the ass end of the station, Craig wondered if maybe this time it wasn’t the di’Taykan but the situation. These two really had the kid freaked. His mouth went dry as he remembered Huirre crunching down on his toe. On the other hand, maybe the kid had reason to be freaked.
He should give the captain a heads-up.
His hand was actually on his slate before he realized what he was doing.
He wasn’t really crew. He didn’t owe Captain Cho shit.
“I have to admit, I was expecting something more complicated.” Big Bill folded his arms and stared at the plans for the smelter up on the big screen. “This is . . . basic. Except for the range, it looks more like a classroom than a place to train warriors.”
Warriors? Torin took a moment to temper her response. And then another moment, just to be on the safe side. “They won’t be learning how to charge in, guns blazing. Any idiot can do that and get themselves trapped between decompression hatches breathing vacuum.”
“HE suits . . .”
“Because multiple crews emerging from docking arms all suited up won’t look at all suspicious.”
“I don’t think I like your tone.”
Torin tried to look like she cared. “If you want to take over a station, you have to realize that the weapons in the hands are incidental to the weapons between the ears.”
He shook his head and blanked the screen. “We don’t want them too well armed, Gunnery Sergeant. They’ll point their weapons where they’re told.”
“You still don’t understand. When I’m done with them, they’ll be weapons—head and hand. You’ll be pointing them. What they want won’t matter.”
He stared at her for a long moment. “You can do that?” he said at last.
“I can.” She could. She wasn’t going to, but she could.
“And they just let you wander around loose?” He started with a snicker, then his response evolved into a full-out laugh.
Torin fought down another urge to punch him in the throat. And then considered the implication. The Grr brothers were down in the ore docks about as far away from Big Bill as they could get and still be on the station. If she killed him, what would they do? Would they know? Could she show up and send them away, passing on Big Bill’s orders because of a sudden glitch in his implant? No, the paranoid bastard would have put contingency plans in place if the Grr brothers couldn’t reach him. Given the Grr brothers, that plan would likely be violent, and Craig was in the ore dock.
She couldn’t risk making things more complicated than they already were.
“Gunnery Sergeant, I am very glad you found your way to my corner of known space.” Big Bill wiped his eyes with one hand and activated his desk with the other. “But now, if you don’t mind, I have work of my own to do. Why don’t you wander around and get to know the place a little better.”
“I’d like to go down to the ore dock and check the security.”
“Why?”
“We have a perfectly good armory. During training, it can be used to secure the weapons.”
“I think you forget, Gunnery Sergeant, these are not Marines. They’ll have bought their weapons from Captain Cho.”
Torin frowned as she worked through the variables. William Ponner was too smart to let his Free Merchants loose on his station, armed. He had to have come up with a way to control them because his fifteen percent of the armory’s contents wouldn’t be enough to . . .
“They’ll own their weapons,” she told him. “But you’ll own the ammunition.”
She thought he was going to deny it for a moment, then he bared his teeth in what wasn’t a smile. “You’re right. The ammunition won’t be remaining in the ore docks, but here, where I can personally keep an eye on it.”
“You think Cho will agree to that particular fifteen percent.”
“Mackenzie Cho, Gunnery Sergeant, is ambitious. Too ambitious for the Navy. He wants to make the decisions. He wants to command and I can give him what he wants. He’ll be at the forefront of big changes, or he’ll be a sad remnant of a system that didn’t work. I think he’ll come to see things my way.”
“What if he’s too ambitious for you?”
“Then he can leave. The way he left the Navy. But if you’re that set on not trusting him, go to the ore docks by all means. I’ll tell the Grr brothers you’re relieving them. They do have other work. Supporting social change is all very well, but accounts won’t collect themselves.”
For a change, there wasn’t so much as an argument in the Hub as Torin crossed through on her way to the ore docks. The dead were gone. The injured from crews without their own medics were no doubt off paying through broken noses to use Big Bill’s staff and facilities. A couple of the kiosk owners had their heads together, probably complaining about damages, and two of the smaller cleaners were working their way around the deck doing an inadequate job of dealing with blood splatter, but otherwise things were quiet.
As Torin moved into the first corridor past the decompression doors, she tongued her implant. “Report.”
*Werst and I are bruised but back on board, Gunny.* Mashona sounded tired. Given how little sleep she’d gotten, no surprise. *Ressk says he’s nearly got control of the subroutines.*
“I’m on my way to the ore docks. I need a value for nearly.”
*Soon, Gunny.* Ressk’s teeth snapped together, the closest he could get to telling her to leave him the hell alone.
“Hour and forty-one minutes and they’ll have the fukker open,” Torin growled. “Make it sooner.”
Craig was sitting on something low by the open storage pod. One of the Grr brothers sat beside him, slate out, the other she couldn’t see, so he was either in the head or the pod. It was unlikely he’d go any farther away from what Big Bill had sent them to keep an eye on.
She could feel Craig’s gaze on her as she crossed toward him, but she split her attention between noting the exact location of the HE suits, the distance from the storage pod to the exterior hatch, the red lights on the air lock plate leading to the Heart of Stone, and the one Grr brother she could see.
The second emerged from the pod as she reached it. Craig stood, moving carefully—not so much in pain as in anticipation of pain. He’d been sitting on an overturned bucket.
“The great thing about low tech,” she said, nodding toward the bucket. “Multiple uses.”
“So I’ve discovered.”
His eyes were still bloodshot, but they were bright and focused. With no chance for sleep, he had to have taken a stim. Good. His exhaustion was one less thing for her to deal with. Moving so she could see both Grr brothers put her well within Craig’s personal space, but it was a minor thing and a minor comfort and fuk it.
“What?” she demanded as one of them stared up at her, nose ridges flared. “Big Bill told you I was coming down.”
“Yeah.” He blinked and turned to his brother, nose ridges closing. “You were right.”
“Told you.” The second Grr put his slate away. When he closed his nose ridges as well, Torin shifted her weight forward onto the balls of her feet. Things were not looking good.
“Apart, it’s not so obvious.”
“Together, though . . .”
“Yeah.”
“He had hair then.”
“True.”
“What are the odds that Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr would show up on the station where the salvage operator who went outside of known space to find her has been taken?”
It was the longest statement Torin had heard from either of them.
*That’s a very good question, Gunnery Sergeant.* Big Bill’s voice boomed in her head. One or both of the Grr brothers must have pinged him. *Care to answer it?*
“Is your name Gunnery Sergeant Kerr?” Torin snapped.
They blinked in unison and stepped back, squaring their shoulders. They’d been Corps, for however short a time, conditioned to respond to that tone.
*I’m waiting.* Big Bill had not.
“They’re wrong.” They were moving forward again, although looking more embarrassed by their response than particularly fierce. “I’ve never seen him before in my life.”
*Kill him.*
She must have reacted because Craig started to reach for her. When she shook her head, he let his arm fall back down by his side. “I don’t kill on your command.”
*You might not.*
The Grr brothers jumped for Craig; one aiming high, one low. As they passed, Torin grabbed a handful of their tunics, shifted her weight to her left leg, and spun around it, throwing them across the ore dock. In spite of their previous interactions, they hadn’t expected her to react so quickly, but with one in each hand, she couldn’t get a lot of distance. They hit, rolled . . .
*Get your souls back, boys.*
. . . and charged.
*Gunny! I’ve got control!*
“Cut the gravity!” As the gravity cut out, she folded into a crouch, then snapped her legs down, pushing straight up from the deck as the Grr brothers’ momentum kept them moving toward where she’d been. Big Bill’s last order had made this personal, so she had no worries they’d go after Craig while she was still alive. “Ressk! Secure the Heart’s air lock!” She didn’t need any more players in the game, and the last thing she wanted right now was to have her speculation about the possibility of the Heart having weapons on board to prove prophetic.
Both Krai recovered quickly. Torin waited until they’d committed to a trajectory, then pushed off one of the overhead railings and shot past them.
Except there were two of them. Using his brother as a launch pad, the other one headed right for her . . .
The gravity came back on.
Torin heard Ressk swear just before impact. Big Bill had regained control.