The Heart of Valor

by Huff, Tanya

  “You are believing? But you are not having proof?”

  He slapped at his ear again, turned, and saw only an expanse of pale gray wall broken by an ugly, darker gray plaque. The Corps didn’t waste Confederation money on decorating, that was for sure. Still, it made sense to have the vid screen on the wall opposite the desk; no point in simulating a window the room’s occupant couldn’t see.

  “As your audience is well aware, you can’t prove a negative.”

  “You are being able to prove negative charges, negative balances, negative space . . .”

  Paying minimal attention to the discussion being recorded, he tried to focus on what the damned plaque was actually for. Although the citation was definitely in Federate, individual letters were strangely unreadable. Craig reached out and rubbed his thumb over one corner. Plastic. And a little greasy.

  “Fine. Then why, if you are not mistaken, if this alleged escape pod is real, do I not remember it?”

  “You are having had your memory adjusted.”

  “By who?”

  “Who are able?”

  “I assure you that neither branch of the military is . . .”

  “I are not speaking of the military,” Presit interrupted.

  General Morris’ snort sounded almost relaxed. “Now, you’re being ridiculous. There is no way that any of the Elder Races would use mind adjustment techniques on any member of the Confederation. That would be like asking the H’san to . . . to water-ski.”

  “I are not knowing what . . .”

  “Actually, I think he’s right.” Craig turned in time to catch a pair of nearly identical glares shot his way. He ignored them and indicated the plaque. “Where’d you get this, General?”

  “It was presented by . . .” The general stopped, flushed, and snarled. “What does that have to do with any of this?”

  “Well, you’re missing an escape pod and, while we were on board, Big Yellow shuffled itself around into any number of ace shapes, and this . . .” He pressed one finger to the plaque. As he pulled it away, a fine line of gray plastic followed, the end of the tendril reaching out to stroke his fingertip. “. . . knows me.”

  “Sergeant Annatahwee.”

  The sergeant turned, covering a yawn. “Gunny?”

  “Two days ago, after the minefield when I went out on point, did Major Svensson leave the platoon at any time?”

  “Why? Doc Sloan wants to know if he took a leak?”

  Torin waited, her expression designed to stop further questions.

  Annatahwee straightened, unaware she was doing it. “The major stayed within the bulk of the platoon the entire time you were gone.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Gunnery Sergeant Kerr! Stone on the south wall. We’ve got movement!”

  “Don’t tell me the damned drones are charging the fukking air lock again.” The sergeant fell into step beside Torin as they ran for the stairs. “They may have minimal self-programming capability, but you’d think they’d learn they can’t get in.”

  Torin snorted. “There’s more of them now. They may be trying to overwhelm that specific defense with numbers.”

  The main room on the south wall had been a barracks, originally for the builders of the settlement and later for—actually, Torin neither knew nor cared.

  Crouched below the window, Stone grimaced as the two NCOs pounded through the door. “Drones on the roof keeping us pinned, Gunny!”

  “Thank you, Private. I’d noticed.” Torin dropped to one knee as half a dozen rounds smacked into the wall behind her, provoking an answering volley from the fireteams on the roof of the anchor. “Sergeant Jiir?”

  “We’re on them, Gunny, but for every one we blow, another one moves in.”

  “There’s a dozen—no, sixteen! heading for the . . . Holy shit!” Carson flattened as a round clipped her helmet. “. . . doors!”

  After the last attack the drones had made on the air lock, Iful had loudly pointed out that grenades and flying bits of drone debris also damaged the doors, and he’d thank them to lay the fuk off with exploding things right next to his repairs.

  A ricochet pinged off the room’s door with a familiar metallic sound, scraping off a layer of blue paint. Torin tapped it with the butt of her KC-7 and grinned across the space at Anatahwee. “I think we just found two of this room’s window seals, Sergeant.”

  Mitten off, Annatahwee scraped at the blue in the joint between the two pieces that made up the door. “I can’t believe they bothered to paint them.”

  “Pin hinges.” Torin pointed at the hinges in question. “Easy to take apart.”

  “A little hard to reinstall the window shields right now, Gunny!”

  “Don’t install them.” Torin mimed lifting the door and shoving it out the window. Like the other parts of the spaceship hull, it would be damned heavy. “Drop the door on the drones.”

  “Gunnery Sergeant Kerr! Kichar on the west wall. We’ve got movement, too.”

  “Go ahead.” Annatahwee’s eyes gleamed at a chance to do some serious damage. “I’ve got this.” Torin nodded and headed for the west wall as she yelled, “Three/one, get your collective butts over here and help me with this door.”

  “Uh, Sergeant, that’ll leave no one at the window.”

  “So? It’s not like you’re shooting out it!”

  There were drones on the roofs to the west as well.

  “Could use some more shooters up here, Gunny!”

  “On their way, Sergeant.” Staying low as she crossed, Torin put her back against the wall between the two windows. “Two/three, get to the roof now!”

  “On our way, Gunnery Sergeant!”

  Four pairs of boots pounded past outside the room.

  “Are they trying for what’s left of the debris ramp again?” Torin asked as she joined one/one.

  “Not this time, Gunnery Sergeant. There’s thirty, maybe forty drones at the base of the building!” Kichar had her helmet scope up and over the sill. “It looks they’re trying to get the sections out of the windows!”

  Hisht leaned out far enough to stare at her. “I thought that needed special tools?”

  “They’re drones, you ass!” Sakur punched him in the arm. “They are special tools!”

  “Iful! Can we drop grenades to the west?”

  “Yes, Gunnery Sergeant! It’s likely that any damage you do to the building will only cram those window sections in tighter.”

  Likely? “How likely?”

  “I’d put serious money on it.”

  “Good enough.” Torin gripped Bonninski’s shoulder as the private began to rise up, grenade in hand. “Don’t waste them. One per window, then get new intell. Bonninski, since you’re so eager. Sakur.” One/two held the other west room. “Ioeyn!”

  “On it, Gunny!”

  “Ready grenades, drop—do not throw, drop on my mark. One, two . . .”

  In the pause there was a large explosion and some cheers from the south end of the anchor.

  “. . . three, mark.”

  No way of telling right off how much the snow amplified the red flare that still came off destroyed drones.

  Kichar frowned at her scanner, one hand twisting her scope first left then right. “They’ve taken damage, Gunnery Sergeant.”

  “We dropped three fukking grenades on them. I sure as fuk hope they’ve taken damage!”

  Torin agreed with Sakur’s sentiment.

  “They’re still massing at the window sections.”

  “One more time, Bonninski, Sakur, Ioeyn, on my mark.”

  The explosions sounded louder. It was possible drones that had taken damage the first time took fatal damage this time.

  Kichar pumped a fist in the air. “They’re pulling back!”

  “Drones are leaving the surrounding roofs, Gunny. Whatever they were trying, it’s over.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant Jiir. Good work, Marines.”

  “Gunnery Sergeant Kerr?”

  She paused in the d
oorway—wishing she could lean against it, knowing she couldn’t. She didn’t get to be tired until this was over. “What is it, Kichar?”

  “I was thinking that if we secured the shelter halves over the windows, artillery might have a more difficult time targeting them.”

  The wall over the window was perfectly smooth. “And how do we secure them?”

  “I have bonding materials in my pack, Gunnery Sergeant.”

  “Bonding materials?”

  “Glue. And duct tape.”

  Glue and duct tape. Okay. “It’s a good idea, Kichar. See that it’s done.”

  She flushed. “Me, Gunnery Sergeant?”

  “It’s your glue and duct tape.”

  On her way down to report to the major, Torin met Annatahwee half carrying Stevens out of the south room toward the stairs, the private’s left arm red and wet, a hole in her combats just under the shoulder.

  “She took a round,” the sergeant explained. “Missed the bone.” Sealant glistened through the hole. “I told her that Doc Sloan’ll patch her up as good as new.”

  “First I get shot in the butt and now this.” Tears that all three of them ignored rolled down Stevens’ cheeks. “Why me?”

  “Roll of the dice, Marine,” Annatahwee told her cheerfully. “And look at the bright side, you’ve got a real doctor. Usually, on Crucible, we make do with the cheat sheets you lot downloaded onto your slates from your first aid course.”

  Stevens’ expression suggested she didn’t find the sergeant’s comment even a little comforting. “Usually, on Crucible, the drones aren’t shooting to kill.”

  “No one ever died from getting shot in the arm, Stevens. Can you make it to the doc on your own?”

  “Yes, Sergeant.” Adding in an undertone as she started down the stairs. “I didn’t get shot in the fukking leg.”

  Torin grinned at the echo of Bynum’s protest leaving the roof and then stopped grinning when she caught the look on the sergeant’s face. “What?”

  “Telling Stevens about the first aid on the slates reminded me. I don’t know if it means anything, but that afternoon you were asking about, well, the major never left the bulk of the platoon, but he did have his slate out nearly every time I looked his way.”

  “While he was walking?”

  “Yeah. The doc had to grab his arm once; he nearly walked into a tree. I figured he was probably helping McGuinty with trying to get the program back from the Others.”

  Figured. Torin noted the past tense, knew she’d caused it with her question.

  Technically, Major Svensson was still on medical leave.

  And Torin had been the second most talked about Marine on Ventris.

  At what point did the pieces of the Marine put into the tank stop being a Marine and start being merely pieces?

  The question was right there in Sergeant Annatahwee’s eyes, and Torin didn’t bother pretending she couldn’t see it. “Major Svensson is one of the finest officers I’ve served under,” she said.

  Is.

  Sergeant Annatahwee nodded, waiting.

  “I have to talk to Dr. Sloan.”

  “And then?”

  And then, if she was right, then the situation was going to get complicated very fast in very messy ways.

  They were the only platoon under attack.

  Gunnery sergeants and above had implants that could reach ships in orbit. Majors were definitely covered in the and above. If the implants could reach ships, then one could certainly reach the much lower orbits of the observation satellites.

  “And then, we’ll talk.”

  “No, you’ve been scanning the major; I need you to scan the polyhydroxide alcoholyde as though it was the patient.”

  Dr. Sloan stared at Torin as though she’d grown a second head. “Because you think I’ve put a piece of an alien escape pod in Major Svensson’s arm?”

  It sounded a lot more possible coming from the doctor than it had in Torin’s head. “I think it’s plausible. Interneural connections aren’t built in a day. You’ll find the molecular activity and heat you’ve been reading are bits of the piece in his arm heading into his nervous system.”

  “Gunnery Sergeant Kerr, I think you need to sit down and let me . . .”

  “He’s been working the slate with his left hand. Major Svensson is right-handed.” When that gave the doctor pause, Torin continued. “You said it yourself. This feels . . .” Her gesture took in the anchor, the platoon, the surrounding drones. “. . . awfully familiar to me. But it’s not the Silsviss. Not just the Silsviss,” she amended because it was that, too, pulled from her memories when she’d been scanned. “Everything we’ve faced has been survivable—we just needed to find the way. It’s a test. And the last time a group of Marines were tested like this, I was on Big Yellow.”

  The doctor sighed and scrubbed a hand up over her face. “You’re sure it was Staff Sergeant Dhupam who contacted you? That it wasn’t some enemy trick.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “And we’re the only platoon under attack?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Torin didn’t know about Platoons 69 and 70. Nor did she care. “If I’m right, you can’t let the major know you’ve seen it in the scan.”

  “Really? Because I was planning on leaping backward, hand over my heart, and exclaiming in horror that he had a piece of alien tech taking over his body.” The doctor snorted. “Give me a little credit, would you; he won’t be the first patient I’ve kept the details of a diagnosis from. The odds are good I won’t even wake him up.” She pulled out her slate, fingers moving almost reluctantly over the pad. “If you’re wrong about this, Gunnery Sergeant, I’ll want to scan your brain wave patterns.”

  I’m not wrong. She was used to being right. She knew how it felt. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Twenty-seven percent of the polyhydroxide alcoholyde in the major’s arm has migrated—primarily to his nervous system.”

  It was Doctor Sloan’s turn to be stared at as though she had two heads—four, considering that both sergeants were involved in the expression.

  In the kitchen, as far from the door to the admin office and the sleeping major as they could get and keep it in sight, as far from any of the platoon as they could get and remain in the anchor, Torin had told Jiir and Annatahwee what she believed and then had Doctor Sloan back it up with fact. It had been an effective one/two punch, leaving their audience reeling and unable to back away from the truth.

  “You said primarily to his nervous system.” Sergeant Jiir’s nose ridges opened and closed and opened again. “Where else?”

  “His fingernails,” Torin answered. “They allowed Big Yellow to access the CPNs directly.”

  “So he’s been . . .” Jiir waved a hand, unable or unwilling to finish the sentence.

  “Yes. And he’s been using his implant to reach the ObSats and using the ObSats to beam down activation commands. Except for the rescheduled attack on day two, he’s been making it up as he goes along. That’s why everything’s been so . . .” Not easy. She searched for another word. “. . . basic. He probably started reworking that first attack the moment we got the scenario and only had to get to the CPN to upload it.”

  “Probably added some kind of an interference program to keep the Orbital Platform from checking in,” Annatahwee said slowly, running her thumb back and forth along the edge of the metal counter. “This time of the year, the weather’s always a bitch. He only had to put them off for a few hours because . . .”

  “Because that night, he shot them down.” Jiir raised his head, his expression bleak. “Gunny, the major killed seventeen marines!”

  “Eighteen.” Torin touched the cylinder in her vest. “But it wasn’t the major.”

  “There were times when he wasn’t Major Svensson,” Doctor Sloan explained hurriedly before Jiir could speak again. “Times when his consciousness was—let’s say sleeping, for lack of a better word—and the alien was in control.”

  “So the alien tech . . .”
<
br />   The doctor held up her hand, and all three Marines ignored the tremble. “You don’t understand.”

  “That’s for damned sure,” Annatahwee muttered.

  “It’s not alien tech. It’s the actual alien. The polyhydroxide alcoholydes are alive; each molecule is a separate entity. My theory is that working together they create a kind of hive mind within whatever shape they take. And the shape they’re in now is inside Major Svensson.”

  According to the doctor’s theory, Big Yellow hadn’t been an unidentified alien spaceship, it had been an unidentified alien. Torin had to admit she wasn’t exactly surprised.

  “There’s an alien inside Major Svensson!”

  “Technically, a whole lot of aliens,” Doctor Sloan amended. “But only one consciousness. I suspect they’re—it’s . . .” Her brows drew in. “Oh, great, it’s fun with pronouns time again.” She sighed. “I suspect the alien entity is probably observing the major, from the inside.”

  They all thought about that for a moment. Torin stared at her reflection in the brushed steel of the cabinets and wondered what the aliens would see.

  “If there’s not many of them,” Annatahwee asked suddenly, “why aren’t they all in his brain?”

  The doctor rolled her eyes. “I like to think I’d have noticed if the lower bones in his left arm and his hand up and disappeared, Sergeant. As long as I continued scanning the major, they could hide what they were doing. It wasn’t until Gunnery Sergeant Kerr had me scan them . . .”

  Three pairs of eyes turned to Torin. She waited. It didn’t take long.

  “What do we do now, Gunny?”

  “We shut the aliens down, and we get the major back.” No doubt, no question. Statement of fact.

  “Even if I had the facilities, I doubt I could remove the alien from his arm.” Doctor Sloan glanced toward the admin office and lowered her voice. “The moment I began, it would know it had been discovered. And from his head . . .”

  “It’s in his brain!” Jiir pointed out.

  “That’s not a problem.” She waved off the sergeant’s protest. “You’d be amazed at how much of your brain you can manage without. I’m more concerned with how much of it is in his spinal column. It might be easier just to keep the major sedated.”