by Tanya Huff
“Is he dead?” Varga had trusted these three with weapons at his back, so she’d be willing to bet they’d been among those who’d attacked the stations and killed noncombatants. Torin wouldn’t mourn if she’d taken one out when taking him down, although the Wardens would be pissed. Again.
“No. But . . .”
“If he’s alive, secure him. There’s three of us against everyone else on this moon; if we sideline someone, I want them to stay out.” She rolled Bearded Guard up onto his side so he could breathe, cracked ribs topside. Then, avoiding the spreading puddle of vomit, she got out the zip-ties.
A few moments later, after elevating Dipshit’s leg on Bearded Guard’s hip, they ran side by side up the tunnel, the extra gun slung across Torin’s back and the knife filling the empty sheath in Mashona’s boot. Retracing Torin’s approach, they passed the first guard. She’d regained consciousness . . .
“You going to let her say that about your mother, Gunny?”
“I thought she was talking about your mother, Mashona.” . . . went through a hatch and up a level, boots ringing against metal treads. As they reached the top of the stairs, the upper hatch flew open and they came face-to-face with one of Varga’s men heading down.
The anarchy symbol tattooed on his forehead dipped in and out of his frown, deep purple against the kind of pale, pink skin that could only have come from time spent behind insufficient shielding. His gaze locked on their weapons, not their faces. “What the hell . . . ?”
“Big hatch is jammed,” Torin yelled without slowing. “We need the tools from the mechanic’s locker.”
“But that’s empty.”
“Let’s hope not!”
As he turned to lead the way, Torin took him down and held him as Mashona applied the zip-ties.
“Okay, that . . .” She crossed his wrists and yanked the tie tight. “ . . . was definitely about your mother.”
“Next time, we bring gags.” Torin led the way topside, guarding Mashona’s back as she dogged the hatch shut behind them. Varga’s increasingly hysterical orders blasted out of speakers at both ends of the corridor, the actual content lost under the fight going on in the background. “If I had to guess, I’d say Craig . . .”
Binti was Mashona on the job. Craig was always Craig. But then Craig hadn’t been Corps.
“. . . hasn’t found the override for the inter . . .”
Silence.
Broken by a snicker.
Torin shrugged. “Never mind.” She could see the door to the control room and could hear . . . Boots. Pounding up metal stairs.
There were two open hatches between them and the control room and two beyond. With Varga quieted, the sound of the boots bounced off multiple hard surfaces, their source impossible to pinpoint.
The first hatch they passed had rusted open.
“We’re in sealed tunnels under the desiccated surface of the dark side of an uninhabitable moon. How the hell is there enough moisture for all this rust?” Mashona snarled, misstepped, and lengthened her stride to catch up. “Gunny, that sounds like . . .”
“Like a benny charging.” The bennies, BN-4s, were tight-band lasers that also contained a molecular disruption charge and, although they were susceptible to enemy EMPs while the KC-7s were not, they were a Marine’s weapon of choice in places where a projectile weapon would be a bad idea. Places like stations and ships, where smart people thought twice about blowing a hole into vacuum. Or rock tunnels where ricochets were a given if the round fired didn’t immediately hit a soft target. Given the presence of black-market KC-7s, it came as no surprise that Human’s First had gotten hold of at least one benny. Torin tongued her implant and didn’t bother subvocalizing. “Craig, we’re five meters out. We’re coming in hot.”
The control room hatch unlocked as they reached it.
Mashona shouldered it open and Torin stepped through on her heels, slamming it behind them. Her hand still on the metal, she felt the buzz of an MDC impact. And then another, and another. “Idiot.”
“Oh, yeah, and you’re so smart. You’re locked in here now, too.”
Torin turned her head to see a young woman in her mid-twenties sitting on the floor in the corner, wrists and ankles secured. She wore a pair of deep green coveralls over a striped sweater and had shaved her head so a single ten-centimeter tuft of dark curly hair waved over her crown. She looked unharmed, but very pissed.
“The MDCs only work against organic material,” Mashona snorted. “Your buddy’s just decontaminated the other side of the hatch.”
The next impact felt like a heavy body slamming against metal.
Torin exchanged a long look with Mashona that contained all the contempt she felt for anyone who felt they could shoulder their way through a pressure door, then she leaned both KC-7s she carried against the wall. “When I give the word, unlock the hatch and open it.”
Two. Three.
Another slam.
“Now.”
Two. Three.
Unable to stop in time, a middle-aged man with a red ponytail and a tiny silver ring in one nostril stumbled over the lip and right into Torin’s hands. She dragged him clear and slammed him to the floor as Mashona re-secured the hatch. He whimpered continuously as she secured him and she fought the urge to ask him what he thought would happen when he joined a group that killed to support speciesist bullshit. He couldn’t possibly have believed the Confederation would allow them to exist unopposed.
“You didn’t have to hit him!” Tuft-girl protested, sliding her ass along the floor until she could support Whimpering-guy’s head on her leg.
“Technically, the floor hit him.” Torin straightened and walked over to the control panel where she leaned over the back of a chair so close to collapse that it made the duct taped pilot’s chair in Promise look shiny and new. She dragged her thumb along the plastic trim. “So, how did you subdue Tufty over there?”
“Smiled.” Craig grunted without taking his eyes off the board. “Flashed a bit of arm.”
Both were admirable, Torin had to admit. The smile came with dimples and pale gray eyes that crinkled at the corners, and while she considered herself hard to distract, the heavily muscled arms had caught and held her attention more than once.
Craig’s hands skimmed over the touch screen and froze in place. His left hand moved two centimeters to the right. His thumb tapped the screen twice, and he let out the lungful of air Torin hadn’t been aware he’d been holding. “Okay. I think I’ve got control of the base sysop.”
“You think?”
He snorted. “You want definite, you should’ve brought Ressk or Alamber.”
“Because short and green or tall and blue would pass as Human.”
“I’ve seen both.”
“You’ve gotten around.”
“I have that.” He glanced back over his shoulder at her and narrowed his eyes. “You’re hurt.”
She rubbed at her hands “It’s rust.”
“And the split lip?”
“Right.” Torin touched her tongue to it, then bit his probing fingertip, ignoring Binti’s comment about where the finger had likely been. “Forgot about that. It’s nothing.”
“Don’t rubbish me. You’re slurring your sibilants and there’s blood on your boot.”
“It’s not mine. What about you?” She couldn’t see any damage. They both knew that meant nothing.
“I got the drop on the kid Varga had standing security. She . . .” He nodded toward the corner without taking his eyes off Torin’s face. “ . . . didn’t touch me.”
“I wouldn’t touch you if you were the last Human male in known space!” Tuft-girl sneered.
Craig rolled his eyes. Torin ignored her. “Are you okay? Not physically,” she added before he could protest. She’d have never asked him for violence if they hadn’t needed all three Huma
ns on the team to complete the mission.
“Aces.” His brows dipped in. “You?”
“Me?”
“You telling me you didn’t enjoy yourself?”
She could see the concern, knew where it came from. He’d seen the way war twisted the survivors, seen the way surviving twisted the survivors. He’d seen what happened when someone got twisted all the way around until they broke. This time, though, he was seeing something that wasn’t there. “Maybe I enjoyed myself a little,” Torin admitted, licking blood off her lip. “These guys were just so straight line, fukking easy to beat. It’s refreshing.” When he looked dubious, she flicked her gaze past him to the board. “Should that light be red?”
“No, it should not.” Facing the board again, he dragged the red light left until it shifted to green. “Okay. If Ressk’s patch worked, and I’m reading this right, everything’s locked down. Ships and shuttles both are nailed in until I release them. And, yeah, I can’t believe they handed over their codes when the sysop asked,” he added as the communications panel lit up. “I suppose mockery would be out of order?”
“They’re spelling Human’s with an apostrophe,” Torin sighed. “They’ve gone past mockery and straight into derision.”
“Maybe it’s not a declaration. Maybe it’s descriptive.” The control chair screeched a protest as Craig spun it around. “Like baby’s first solid food.”
“Human’s first post-Confederation revolution,” Binti offered.
“Well, we’re millennia late for it to be Human’s first dumbass idea.” Torin put her boot on the chair between Craig’s legs and stopped both spin and screech.
Binti dropped into the other chair and nodded toward the speaker on the wall. “We should probably make sure they haven’t gone anywhere.”
They hadn’t.
“What are they using against the doors?” she wondered over the clang of intermittent percussion.
“Each other?” Torin offered.
“Sounds like they’ve broken up the dais,” Craig said thoughtfully. “They’re using the structural pipes. Morons.”
“Di’Taykan lovers!”
All three turned to look at their prisoners. “Well, duh,” Binti responded.
Craig wrapped his hand around Torin’s ankle, thumbnail flicking at the fasteners of the boot not sticky with blood. “So what do we do now?”
“We wait for the Navy.”
The second chair screeched as Binti rocked back, propped her heels on the edge of the control panel, and sighed. “Who’d have thought going freelance would be so much like being in the Corps . . .”
“The boss wants to see you.”
Jamers a Tur fenYenstrakin hunched her shoulders and kept her eyes on the cargo bay doors. “I are being busy . . .”
“You are being seen if she wants you to be seen. Come on.”
She flinched as one of the Krai unloading water from the pen snickered, but fell in behind the big Human as he are leading the way down the cliff and into the structure. The light are being dim enough her lenses are lightening until they are being nearly clear.
“Given the speed we clocked you at, I’m impressed you got down without getting your ass kicked by the satellites.”
He didn’t expect her to answer and that was good, because at half his height she had to run to keep up and she was needing what air she had for breathing. She wasn’t being young—as the graying skin on her hands and feet kept reminding her. Maybe that are being all it was. Maybe the boss are wanting to be giving her a bonus for landing the supplies in one piece. Maybe the boss are realizing she are having negotiated a better price for supplies so are having added an extra tenday before she are having to go out again.
Maybe.
She was panting by the time they are having reached the crypt the boss are using for an office. Panting and shedding, great clouds of underfur are being visible in her peripheral vision as she are stopping far enough away to leave an angle she are able to sight along. The boss, like all her species, are being too damned tall.
The boss’ turquoise hair are lying flat against her head. The boss’ hair are always flat. Motionless. Jamers are not having thought that possible with her species.
“You took something from a sarcophagus, Jamers. Several somethings. I want them back.”
She are having thought the others were being busy searching at the long wall, but apparently not all the others and she are having been seen. Her luck are always being like that. Always. “You are having said your people are not to be taking them. You are making them be putting them back. You are having said you are only being interested in the weapons because that are what you are being paid for.”
“I know what I said.”
The boss’ teeth were not being as pointed as Jamers’ own, but her smile are being much more deadly. Jamers sighed. “I are not having them now.”
“You destroyed them?”
Jamers wanted to say yes, but she are knowing that the boss are knowing it would be a lie. There are being many things this boss are not tolerating. Touching. Lying.
“You sold them, didn’t you?”
She scratched at her arm where the fur are being so thin she are seeing the mottled pattern of the skin beneath. “Yes.”
“Did you tell your buyers where you found them?”
“No!” She’d been hired to bring in the water because she are being able to buy in nearby systems unnoted if not unseen. Because she are not Younger Races. She are knowing better than to give away the compound’s location. “I are being careful. There are being nothing to be connecting them to here.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing,” Jamers repeated, willing the boss to believe it. Her mouth are being dry and she swallowed.
The boss’ hair are remaining perfectly still. “Nothing but you.”
“Yeah, yeah, it all worked out and the Navy actually came when they were called, but I don’t like the kind of bullshit missions where half the team faces a bunch of crazy, militant fukwads and the other half sits on their collective asses doing sweet fuk all.” Werst’s bare feet slapped against the station floor, adding a fleshy emphasis to his words. “Look, we’re good at what we do because of the way our strengths combine. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts and all that crap. And, yeah, it worked, fine, and these guys gave dumbasses a bad name, but they had live ammo they were willing to use and you got lucky. You shouldn’t be facing those kinds of odds without me, Gunny. Mashona’s learned a little meat to meat, but Ryder’s fukking hopeless.”
Torin grinned at Werst’s disgruntled tone, secure in the knowledge that the significant difference in their height meant he wouldn’t see it. “You’re a meter two and greenish brown. You wouldn’t have passed.”
“Didn’t say I would or that I wanted to, only that I’d rather you had better backup when it’s three to however many serley idiots Human’s First had managed to round up.”
“They weren’t exactly hard to beat.”
“You didn’t know that going in.” Werst stepped into the vertical and grabbed a passing handhold. By the time Torin stepped in behind him, it had risen far enough that they hung eye to eye in the zero gravity. “And if you mention that fukking apostrophe, like it’s the reason they were so easy to take down,” he added, nostril ridges flared, “I’m going to inform your court-appointed therapist about your sudden grammar fixation.”
“One apostrophe is not a fixation.”
His lips pulled back off his teeth in what would have been a smile had he not been Krai. When Krai showed teeth, they weren’t smiling. “You keep telling yourself that, Gunny.”
Pointedly ignoring him, Torin exchanged a nod with a staff sergeant descending down the other side the vertical—he’d pulled three jacks to her trip tens on their last visit to Ventris Station—and silently acknowledged that Werst
wasn’t wrong. They had gotten lucky.
Binti had been a sniper back in the Corps and while she hadn’t had the specialist training in unarmed combat both Torin and Werst had received, she at least had basic hand to hand to build on. Craig, however, had been a civilian salvage operator, arriving after the fight was over to mine the debris field. He was a big man with a heavy layer of working muscle, but like most people outside the military, he had no training in violence and little amateur experience. Occasionally, over the last year of dealing with messes the Justice Department couldn’t—or wouldn’t—clean up, he’d had to expand his skill set. Truth be told, Torin didn’t like it when Craig was in the thick of the fight any more than Werst did. She wanted Craig safe on board ship, hands on the controls, ready to swoop in to save them using his training and experience rather than trying to fake hers. Or Werst’s. Or Binti’s. Or even Ressk’s—who’d proven even more resistant to learning the dirtier tricks of unarmed combat than Craig. They were all ex-Corps, or as ex-Corps as anyone ever got, and her concerns for and about them were familiar—she’d had years of practice separating legitimate concern from speculation. But she didn’t think she’d ever get used to the feeling of Craig in danger even if she had gotten good at repressing it.
If the guard on the hatch hadn’t been young and stupid . . . although his youth and stupidity had been why she’d sent Craig to that particular hatch. If Craig hadn’t been able to bluff his way into the control room . . . although he’d bought a new converter for the Promise bluffing out a pair of eights so she didn’t want to sell his skills short. Neither did she want to make him into something he wasn’t. Nor did she want to insist he never change. She just wanted to keep him safe.
Without, of course, making her concern for his safety so blatant that he was insulted, hurt, or angered by it.
She worried about the team’s young di’Taykan as well, but Alamber was an entirely different problem. Had the vantru who’d fukked him over still been alive, Torin would have happily put the boots to her. The relationship carried a lot more emotional weight than the translation of primary sex partner implied and Alamber had been almost obscenely young when she’d dragged him with her to Vrijheid Station and not significantly older when she’d gotten herself killed, abandoning him there. Unfortunately, while it helped that they all knew why he defaulted to manipulative self-centered shit under stress, it didn’t change the fact he did it. Alamber’s response to being left behind while the three Humans infiltrated Human’s First had made Werst’s look calm and measured. A lone di’Taykan among other species became the definition of codependent, and Torin needed to either find another di’Taykan for the team—and where the hell she’d find one who’d fit she had no idea—or cut Alamber loose. To do what? He’d been a career criminal, albeit a junior one when they’d adopted him—Craig’s words and not entirely inaccurate even given that Alamber was legally an adult—and their position in the shadows where the law couldn’t reach suited him perfectly. Or it did when he wasn’t left behind to take out his frustration by rerouting drone shipping.