by Tanya Huff
Fortunately, Ressk, just as frustrated but less likely to end up imprisoned for it, had spotted the hack.
Which brought her back around to Werst’s point about bullshit assignments. It might be time to take another look at the parameters of their arrangement as independent contractors with the Justice Department.
A twitch in her peripheral vision caught her attention, and she swung out into the level nine corridor before Werst had entirely released the handhold.
“Could’ve sworn you weren’t paying attention,” he grumbled as he dropped to the deck beside her. “Should’ve known better.”
In too much of a hurry to say anything, a pair of captains settled for glaring disapprovingly at their civilian clothing as they pushed past and into the lift. Four meters down the corridor, a di’Taykan second lieutenant opened her mouth and snapped it shut again as Torin met her eyes. Bright green hair flattened against her head, and she nearly slammed her elbow into the bulkhead, putting distance between them as she passed.
Werst snickered.
In Torin’s opinion, it was never too early to start training officers to recognize senior NCOs out of uniform. Or out of the Corps entirely. After a certain point, the rank and its ramifications remained.
The waiting room outside Dr. Ito’s office was empty. As far as Torin knew, it was always empty. Over the last year, she’d never seen anyone sit in one of the three admittedly uncomfortable looking chairs. Never seen anyone pick up the slate on the small, round table. Never seen anyone put eyes on the vid screen that always showed the star field outside the station like it was a badly situated window.
When she mentioned the lack of any other patients to Werst, his shoulders lifted and fell in what was almost a shrug. The Krai had picked the motion up from Humans, but had never been able to entirely duplicate it. “Yeah, because you’d be such pleasant company sharing this shithole.”
He had a point, Torin allowed as Master Corporal Tresk, Dr. Ito’s current admin, looked up from her desk and stroked a document closed as she acknowledged them. “Gunnery Sergeant Kerr. Master Corporal Werst.”
Torin had stopped reminding Tresk they were civilians three appointments ago. She had two brothers; the Corps hadn’t needed to teach her to pick her battles.
Nostril ridges open, Werst spread his arms. “Sorry, Tresk, still happily taken.”
“Sorry, Werst, still not interested.”
Torin wouldn’t have known Tresk was female had Werst not mentioned it. The Krai had so few secondary sexual characteristics, it was difficult for a Human to determine their gender. Torin liked to think that once she knew, she could spot the difference in the way the bristles grew on the mostly bare scalp or the subtle distinctions in the mottling, but the odds were high she was fooling herself. The di’Taykans, who relied on scent, had no difficulty telling male and female Krai apart—which was amusing as di’Taykans probably cared less about gender than any species in Confederation space.
“We’ll be in Sutton’s when you’re done, Gunny.”
“What, you’re not going to wait here to escort me down?” Torin touched her slate to the desk with one hand and ran the fingertips of the other along the plastic trim.
“Yeah, funny thing, you never disappear on your way to the bar.”
“Miss one appointment,” Torin muttered as he went out the hatch.
“Seven,” Tresk corrected. “Over the last six months. The doctor will see you now, Gunnery Sergeant Kerr.”
Werst waited in the corridor outside Dr. Ito’s until he heard Torin go into the inner office and the hatch close behind her. Then he exhaled, allowing his nostril ridges to flutter in relief. She’d never walked away from an appointment once she was in the office, and she always had a reason when she missed one—it wasn’t like they kept to a regular schedule—but he preferred to be sure before he walked away.
And not only because of the “court appointed” part of the sessions. They all joked about it, sure, but Werst had seen the changes in Torin after Vrijheid Station, had seen the shadows behind her eyes, and, since she wouldn’t talk about it with the team, Dr. Ito became a necessary evil.
Gunnery Sergeant Kerr had been one of the best Marines Werst had ever served with. With the weight of the Corps behind her, she’d been able to be as practical and as ruthless as needed to bring her people home alive. Leaving the Corps hadn’t worked out quite the way she’d expected; the life she’d tried to build with Ryder had been kicked apart by some Grade A assholes—currently space particulate thanks to Mashona’s aim. Without the weight of the Corps behind her, Torin had been searching for definition, and whatever had happened in the shuttle bay on Vrijheid, whatever made that fight, that death different, had skewed the way she saw herself.
Werst knew not quite right when he saw it.
The others didn’t see it. Ryder, for all Werst generally approved of him, didn’t have the context to see the differences. Mashona saw better from a distance. Ressk was better with code than people.
Gunny said she was fine.
For fuk’s sake, she was Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr. Of course she was fine.
“She’s fine,” echoed Ryder and Binti and Ressk.
Alamber . . .
To give the little shit credit, Werst acknowledged, heading back toward the vertical, Alamber had noticed something was off. He was probably trying to take advantage of it, but at least he’d seen it.
“And you don’t think it might be better if you made a clean break from the Corps?”
“And what exactly might be better, Doctor?” Torin raised a brow and the doctor smiled. Her first court appointed psychologist—after the exploded pirates and the destroyed station—had been brand new to the job and that had been a disaster. Dr. Ito, however, had a streak of cynicism Torin could relate to and he almost understood. About the war with the Primacy. About how the war had more or less ended once she’d discovered it had been a lab experiment run by sentient, polynumerous molecular polyhydroxide alcoholydes—hive-mind organic plastic. Granted, the war had “ended” more on some days, less on others. About what she’d done and what she’d been willing to do when Craig had been taken and tortured by pirates. About the weight of all the small metal cylinders she still carried, the ashes of all the Marines she hadn’t been able to bring home alive, although the cylinders themselves had long since been returned to family and friends.
When she got around to mentioning it, he might even understand how it had felt as though she’d been fighting herself in that explosives locker.
“You haven’t actually been a Gunnery Sergeant for some time now, Torin.”
“You never stop being a Gunnery Sergeant, Major.”
Dr. Ito’s left eye twitched. He’d made it clear from the beginning that he preferred to be addressed by the medical honorific. “I think you’ve just made my point for me.”
“I notice you don’t have any visible plastic in your office.” Torin smiled. In the year since the hyper-intelligent shape-shifting organic plastic had been exposed and had admitted to manipulating both the Confederation and the Primacy into a centuries-long war, natural fibers had started to make a comeback. “Is that for my benefit or for yours?”
“Are you still angry that you haven’t been sent out to hunt for the plastic aliens?”
Torin stared across the room at the psychiatrist. Dr. Ito stared back at her. They’d spent one whole session like that, Dr. Ito silently waiting for Torin to answer, Torin wondering how long he’d wait. This time, they kept the dance short.
“Yes,” she said. “I am still angry that we haven’t been sent out to hunt for the plastic aliens. I am fully aware that no one has any idea of where to start looking. I know while the cellular marker they stuck in our heads means they occasionally respond to my touch or to Craig’s, that means shit in the end given that I carried a plastic bowl for days without them giving themse
lves away. But I also know that people died—good people, mediocre people, bad people, people—because they were using us, all of us, Confederation and Primacy both, as subjects in a social science experiment. The war was their laboratory, our deaths were data, and they don’t get to do that without consequences.”
“And yet, because they’ve disappeared from known space, it appears they have indeed escaped without consequences.”
Torin pushed both hands back through her hair and sighed. “Why do I think the word displacement is going to show up any minute now . . .”
On OutSector stations, the lowest two or three levels of the central core were set aside for off-duty and civilian personnel. On a MidSector station the size of Ventris, five broad concourses had been set aside for stores, bars, and cantinas. Although Sutton’s on Concourse Two was a civilian bar, it seldom saw civilians; both officers and enlisted personnel gravitating there for the excellent beer, the first-class kitchen, and the enormous vid screen that showed a steady stream of the Confederation’s more obscure sports. In spite of three solid days of cricket annually, it had been Torin’s favorite bar when she’d served on Ventris and she saw no reason to find another just because she no longer wore a uniform.
The first time she’d sat down with her team in Sutton’s after a Justice Department debrief—the debrief where Torin had picked up another dozen visits to the Corps psychologist for what the Wardens had called excessive violence while closing an orbital factory turning Katrien into coats—a brand new second lieutenant had made a comment about certain people not knowing where they were unwelcome. The comment had been intended to be overheard. Before Werst could do more than threaten further excessive violence, the lieutenant had been set straight by two captains, three NCOs, and Elliot Westbrook, the grandson of the original owners.
Staff Sergeant Kerr had fought a thousand Silsviss to a standstill, ripped off their leader’s head, and brought the vicious reptilian race into the Confederation.
Staff Sergeant Kerr had outwitted a sentient alien ship and, unarmed and with only an HE suit between her and vacuum, stood between her people and enemy fighters.
Gunnery Sergeant Kerr had brought down Crucible when it turned against the Marines it was supposed to teach and by defeating it—with nothing more than a platoon of trainee Marines—had discovered the hyper-intelligent shape-shifting plastic aliens who’d been collecting data on the Confederation.
Gunnery Sergeant Kerr had survived the destruction of Sho’quo Company, escaped from an alien prison, and threatened the hyper-intelligent shape-shifting plastic until they admitted they’d nurtured the fight between the Primacy and the Confederation as a sort of social experiment, and then she’d ended the war.
The poor kid’s hands had still been shaking when she downed the beer Torin had bought her as an apology for the exaggerations.
Unfortunately, although the war was over, the fighting had become a centuries-long habit and it hadn’t entirely ended. The plastic aliens had been happy to explain; she hadn’t had to threaten them. Much. The Crucible thing was essentially true, but, in all honesty, it had been an accident of placement as much as intent that had put her between her Marines and the enemy after leaving the alien ship in Craig’s salvage pen. And she certainly hadn’t fought a thousand Silsviss to a standstill by herself. There’d been a platoon of Marines with her. She did, however, acknowledge that the Silsviss skull in her old quarters had probably been how the “ripped off their leader’s head” rumor had gotten started.
Because she’d been out of the Corps at the time, the destruction of a pirate fleet and the station they’d used as their base with three ex-Marines, a civilian salvage operator, and a morally flexible di’Taykan seldom got mentioned on military stations although it was the first topic of conversation on the small OutSector stations where they often ended up in the course of their deployments by the Justice Department.
“They’re jobs, Torin,” Craig had sighed. “Can you try to call them jobs? For me?”
They hadn’t been back to Ventris in nearly two months, having bounced from their previous deploy . . . job to the takedown of Human’s First, without a break. As you are no longer a part of the military had been explicitly mentioned in every Justice Department briefing they’d been to over the last year, the department sending them in to meet with Major di’Uninat Alie had come as a surprise. Major Alie had been Torin’s Intelligence Service contact before Crucible, back when she’d been the Corps’ best resource on the Silsviss. Fortunately for all concerned, her battle observations had been quickly replaced by a battery of reports from xeno-ists. Biologists. Psychologists. Sociologists. Hell, maybe even xenoherpetologists; the Silsviss were one of the Confederation’s few reptilian races.
Given that the summons had been for the entire team, not for her alone, odds were the meeting had nothing to do with the Silsviss. Unless a few of the big lizards had gone rogue.
“Yeah, that’d be fun,” Torin muttered, pausing just inside the door of Sutton’s while her eyes adjusted to the lower light levels. She turned toward the sound of Craig’s voice and spotted the team tucked back in the far corner near the doors to the kitchen. Exiting through the kitchen and out the staff entrance would take them to the service corridors and from the service corridors, they could get anywhere in the station. More importantly, they could get back to the Promise. Alamber and Ressk had hacked through the lowest levels of station security, pulled the schematics, and uploaded them to everyone’s slate under a mask of false directories.
Back in the day, Ressk had made a game of getting through at least the basic security of every ship Sho’quo Company had been deployed on. Had Military Intelligence found proof, they’d have used that leverage to poach him from the infantry, but he’d always been able to cover his tracks—at least to the point of plausible deniability. Alamber, who’d spent his formative years learning how to cripple code for shits and giggles and profit, knew a number of very nasty tricks he was more than willing to apply. Torin had cut them off before they could go any deeper and had made it clear she expected Ressk to police the young di’Taykan.
“Because, in this, you’re the only one who can,” she’d snapped when he’d protested. She didn’t know how, she didn’t need to know how, but he’d stopped Alamber before they crossed the line between too smart for their own good and treason.
Back in the day, when she’d had the weight of the Confederation Marine Corps behind her, she hadn’t needed to know the alternative exits from her favorite bar. Times had changed.
She passed a table of three di’Taykan corporals in the midst of settling their bill and arguing about whose quarters had the largest bed; passed a table holding two glasses of wine where a lone Krai lieutenant sat watching the clock; passed an empty table—although a bowl holding the dregs of congealing curry suggested it hadn’t been empty long—and finally dropped into the seat left for her, one hand on Craig’s arm, the other reaching for a beer, muscles she hadn’t realized were tense, relaxing.
“It wasn’t my fault!” Alamber protested, acknowledging her arrival with a spear of pineapple, pale blue hair flying about his head as though it were being directed by the waving fruit. It wasn’t actually hair, but protein-based sensors similar to cat whiskers that grew a uniform eight-to-ten–centimeters long, its motion a fairly good indication of a di’Taykan’s emotional state. Given the flourishes, it looked like Alamber’d been impressed by whatever it was that hadn’t been his fault—although it was more likely he was using those flourishes to draw attention and control his companions’ reaction to him. He also looked like he’d had a few of his more obvious emotional edges blunted so he’d likely found a few di’Taykan and gotten laid. “If you’d seen it,” he continued, with heavy emphasis on the pronoun, “you’d have asked if it was real, too.”
“I wouldn’t have been looking,” Ressk muttered, eyes on his slate. “Some people like to piss in peace.”
“I’d have looked,” Werst said thoughtfully.
Alamber’s eyes darkened as light receptors opened, and he snickered, one hand rising to the masker at his throat. “Not getting enough at home?”
Torin tapped her bottle on the table. His lower lip went out and he tossed his head dismissively, but he lowered his hand. When the di’Taykans discovered that their pheromones worked on all mammals and some nonmammals more powerfully than they worked on other di’Taykans, they took that to mean the universe intended them to have sex with most of known space. The maskers were Parliament’s solution to the problem of biological consent. They could still have sex with most of known space, but now known space had a choice.
Under cover of Werst’s snarled protest that he was getting quite enough at home and Alamber’s insisting he be more specific about what exactly enough meant, Craig leaned in until his shoulder touched Torin’s. “So, still sane?”