by Tanya Huff
She dug her toes back into his thigh. “We have the watch in the control room until we jump.”
“We used to have sex in the control room.”
“It used to be the only room on the ship.”
Back before the refit, when it was just him and Torin on the Promise, they’d have only had to cover four meters to make it to the bunk. If they’d bothered. Both pilot’s chairs were a lot sturdier than they looked. Now, a row of suit lockers filled the bulkhead where the bunk had been and four other seats had been bolted into what had been open floor—albeit not a lot of it. The payout from the mining cartels for taking down the pirate fleet had attached an actual galley and a full-sized head as well as crew quarters and a small gym. From the outside, the added units looked like miniature versions of the Marine packets the Corps attached to Navy cruisers; boxes grouped around an engine, aerodynamics irrelevant in vacuum. Their Navy surplus shuttle was small and heavy and dropped through atmosphere like a rock, but, so far, the heat shields had held and the way she threw herself back up into the air—seemed the Navy disliked being dirtside as much as he did—had endeared her to him. He’d called her Glee and, in spite of protests, it had stuck.
He still had the occasional moment where the thought of sharing his ship and her limited resources with five other people tightened his sphincter and backed the shit up to his brain, but they had room enough he could convince himself during those occasional moments that it was still just him and Torin.
“Private vessel Commitment, this is Ventris perimeter. Control will be returned to your board in three, two, one. You have control.”
“Roger, Ventris perimeter, I have control. Pr . . . Commitment, out.” A two-second burst from one of the port lateral thrusters moved them onto the correct heading. Jumping OutSector was point and shoot and pray the math had been dummied out to the necessary decimal point. Jumping toward the Core meant a three-hour registered burn from Ventris and an assigned jump time issued from the traffic buoy. He double-checked the numbers to the buoy, locked them in, and sat back working the tension out of his shoulders.
“This isn’t the life you expected to be living.”
It wasn’t and Torin knew that as well as he did; thus the complete lack of a question in that statement. He’d assumed . . . he’d expected that the two of them would make a success of salvage, build a home on one of the salvage stations, have a family. “True that. But then who actually expects they’ll end up buzzing around known space doing the Justice Department’s dirty work?”
“Or the Corps’?”
“No, that you expected.”
He laughed when she shrugged. Of course she had. Stopped laughing when she asked, “Do you mind?”
“Honestly?”
“Please.”
He turned, looked her in the eye, and said, “I don’t really care what I’m doing as long as I’m doing it with you.”
Her gaze sharpened, looking for the lie.
After a long moment, as she relaxed, he added, “There’s things we do that I hate, not denying it, but they’re necessary and, truth, I hate that they’re necessary, but as long as we’re doing it together, I don’t mind.”
The corners of Torin’s mouth lifted in the soft almost-smile only he got to see. “Good.”
“Yeah.” As there were now rules about having sex in the control room and he was an adult, God damn it, he tapped down the rising heat. “Tell you what I do mind. I mind the nasty feeling that we’re making this job up as we go because the Intelligence Service has fuk all in the way of intelligence and hey—surprise, surprise—we’re making it up as we go.”
Her smile twisted into the more familiar, weaponized curve. “Doesn’t matter. What matters is that a lot of people who might die, don’t.”
“It’s that simple?”
“Sure.” She dug her toes into his thigh. “Simple’s best. Just don’t mistake it for easy.”
“I can’t decide whether to be flattered at Intell’s opinion of our ability to make mertain out of a single leaf or astounded at their tenuous grasp on reality.” Ressk set his slate down on the galley’s small round table and sat back, reaching for his half-empty pouch of sah. “We’ve got the name of the Rakva who sold the artifacts to the collector. We’ve got the names of the planets where he bought them and the names of the intermediaries he bought them from, but we don’t have anything on who sold them to the intermediaries, which is, of course, the information we actually need because that’s who knows where the fuk the dig site is because everything they sent us about the H’san is myth or hyperbole and in the entire visual history of dead H’san and the planet they destroyed and the system of origin they buggered off from, there isn’t one single record of the night sky we could match to current star charts.”
“After sifting through two millennia of variables,” Werst grumbled, eyes half closed.
Forehead on the table, Alamber poked at an empty pouch without looking up. “Data crunching. We just set up the parameters.”
“Except . . .” Ressk raised his sah in a derisive salute. “. . . we don’t have the parameters.”
“We know that almost immediately after they’d formed the Confederation, the H’san abandoned their world of origin before it was engulfed by the spreading photosphere of a star phasing red.” Torin’s shoulders cracked as she rolled them back. Three days of combing the Intell upload had left her stiffer than three days of combat. “The timing confirms the cemetery planet was in that same system, only orbiting far enough out to have avoided destruction.”
“No offense, Gunny, but do you know how many red giants there are in known space?”
“Not a clue.”
“And there we have it. Where it stands for nothing at all.”
“Yeah, because it’s not like we were fighting a war or anything.” Binti tossed her own slate down. “Where a shitload of buried weapons might’ve come in handy.”
Alamber poked at the empty pouch again. “I’ve got a question . . .”
“I’ve got nothing but questions,” Ressk muttered.
“. . . How do we know it’s the Younger Races doing the grave robbing?”
“The colonel said . . .”
“Yeah, but how does he know?” Alamber sat up and slid immediately into a boneless slouch, the graceful transition as much age as species. “I mean, we’ve spent three days establishing that the Intelligence Service of the Confederation Marine Corps knows sweet fuk all. Why blame the Younger Races for stealing a biscuit warmer? Because we’re violently antisocial? Isn’t that why Parliament wants to lock us away? And it’s a bad thing when Parliament believes it, but it’s business as usual when it’s all the Corps’ got? Or is because the Elder Races fart rainbows? Because I’ve got to tell you, there was a Ciptran on Vrijheid and that bug was a total senak. Elder Race.” One hand rose, one fell, sketching out a scale. “Total senak. Not mutually exclusive.”
Torin ignored the argument—the staccato spill of words coming from five different sides with the sides in constant flux—and went over everything Major Alie and Colonel Hurrs had said at the briefing. H’san grave goods had been found, the trail leading toward a weapon cache. Clearly the Younger Races were responsible. Because the Younger Races were inherently violent? And if they believed that, what was the difference between them—the major, the colonel, and the ex-gunnery sergeant who’d accepted every word out of their mouths without question for no better reason than rank and a uniform—and those members of the Elder Races who declaimed they should be locked up until they become better socialized?
Was there a difference?
Yes.
“He has a point.” Torin pitched her voice to cut through the shouting. Finished her coffee as it died down, then let the silence settle for a moment before continuing. “Members of the Elder Races can be assholes. They can be pompous, greedy, self-righteous pains in the co
llective ass, but they’d moved far enough away from institutionalized violence that when it was fight back or die, they couldn’t figure out how to fight back. They had to come to us.”
“Could be they’ve learned from us,” Craig offered.
All three ex-Marines looked a little sick at the thought. Even Alamber who, for all the violence in his life had never seen a battlefield, was slowly shaking his head in denial.
“Do of any of you honestly believe that the Elder Races took a look at the shitstorm we got called in to deal with, looked at the dead and the damaged, and thought, damn, we were wrong, looks like war is the answer after all? Because I don’t.” She crushed her empty coffee pouch. “Cards on the table: the H’san weapons are weapons of war. Place your bets on who you think would want to put them back into play, us or them.”
“Us,” Werst growled. Four nods of agreement.
“Assumption,” Alamber began.
Torin cut him off. “There’s nothing wrong with the assumption. The assumption’s justified.”
“And the difference?”
“Is them assuming we’re incapable of policing ourselves. And assuming we’re incapable of learning from them. And assuming we won’t take a swing if they push us into a corner. You can assume they fart rainbows, I don’t care. I care about preventing a civil war. Which, by a happy coincidence, is also the job they’re paying us to do. So we talk to this . . .” She glanced down at her slate. “. . . Bufush on Abalae who sold the biscuit maker and we find out who sold it to them and . . . Did you have something to add, Alamber?”
He grinned. “I was just going to ask what we do when the dealer won’t talk to us.”
“When?”
“Strangers asking about the sale of illegal artifacts? Oh, yeah. That’ll lead to a happy discussion of provenance and origins over tea and cakes.”
“Patronizing serley chrika,” Werst muttered.
“They’ll shut up tighter than Werst’s asshole,” Alamber continued, ducking Werst’s swing. “Best we’ll get is an offer to exchange contact information in case something comes up and they’ll back run that to find out who’s asking. They don’t find what they like, they’ll drop a worm to scrub us or they’ll load incriminating data and tip the Wardens.”
The voice of experience, Torin acknowledged. Perhaps a little too experienced. “Ressk?”
He jerked, his gaze flicking up from his slate. “You asking about Werst’s ass . . . Chreen!”
Torin got another coffee during the digression. “Can you deal with a potential information hack?” she asked, when both Krai were back in their seats.
“When you say deal, you mean back hack it, right? Use their hack to slip into their system?”
She did now. “Yeah, that’s what I mean. If we can get a name on Abalae, we can get a ship. If we can’t get enough for a ship, we get what we can and head for the next dealer. But when we get a ship . . .” Because there was no point in assuming they wouldn’t, and fukking hell that word wouldn’t quit. “. . . Ressk and Alamber can trace how it came into the system through the traffic buoys.”
Ressk swept both hands back over the bristles on his skull and down to cup the back of his neck. “You know that’s illegal, right, Gunny? Not sliding through a battleship’s firewall to mock the feed from the Wardroom illegal but the kind of illegal the Wardens understand. This is . . .”
“What it’ll take to stop a war.”
Torin saluted Werst with her coffee . . . “That’s exactly what it is.” . . . and turned her attention back to Ressk. “Can you get in and out of the traffic buoys without getting caught?”
“Probably?” He leaned in to catch Alamber’s gaze. “This is more you.”
“I was working a program to crack the buoys for Big Bill, but I needed a working buoy to finish.” He glanced around the table and added, “You have to race the security resets.” When Ressk snorted, his hair flattened. “I was simplifying for my audience.”
“And your audience appreciates it,” Binti told him. “How far did you get?”
“I told you.” His shoulders began to rise. “I needed a buoy to finish. I didn’t have one.”
Torin could read Big Bill’s response in the lines of Alamber’s body. Worthless had probably been the kindest word used. She caught Craig’s eye, and the two of them had a silent conversation about how unfortunate it was that Justice had the former crime lord tucked away out of reach.
“Got it with you?” When Alamber nodded, Ressk pushed his slate over. “Share up.”
“Because you’re just that good?”
Ressk showed a bit of teeth. “No complaints so far.”
“Three more days in Susumi to work it out, gentlemen. Will that be long enough or should we have Craig jump us in and out of the Core a few more times?” Torin smiled as they turned identical expressions of pique on her, equally annoyed by her lack of faith in their combined abilities.
“In three days we’ll own those buoys,” Alamber declared.
“In three days,” Ressk snorted, “the horse might talk.”
Alamber’s eyes darkened so quickly he had to catch hold of the table as he turned. “Are you mocking me, trin?”
“It’s an oldEarth saying he got off a guy we used to serve with,” Binti explained, wrapping a hand around Alamber’s forearm, loose enough he could pull away easily if he wanted to, her thumb stroking small circles on the soft inner skin of his wrist. “Guy named Hollice. He had a million of them. Half of them made no sense and the other half were too stupid to repeat.”
Sergeant Adrian Hollice had died with the rest of the Sh’quo Company on ST7/45T2. His remains, and the remains of most of a ground expeditionary force had been fused permanently into the planet’s surface by a Primacy weapon. The toes of Ressk’s right foot drummed against the table until Werst, who’d been Recon with Bravo Company—also lost in the glass—reached out and gripped the back of his neck. Teeth gritted against the sudden spill of hot liquid over her hand, Torin set her coffee carefully down on the table. Hollice had been in her squad when she was a sergeant and then, when she made staff sergeant, her platoon. She’d fast tracked him for his SLC, but had been tanked, regrowing her jaw, when he got his third chevron.
“Torin?” Tipping his chair back, Craig snagged a damp cloth from the galley’s half meter of counter.
“It’s okay.” She pulled the cloth out of his grip before he could clean either the table or her. “Sometimes,” she said, eyes locked on the skim of moisture trailing behind the cloth, “talking to Hollice was like talking to a Katrien. It was definitely Federate and, given the context, you thought you knew what he was saying, but I never did find out what a rubber stamp was.”
“Or how shit got on the stick,” Ressk added.
As she listened to the other two surviving members of Sh’quo Company dig out what they remembered from Hollice’s love of oldEarth idioms, Torin realized she was smiling. She tossed the cloth over her shoulder into the tiny sink.
“Two points!” Binti and Ressk called together, slapping palms over the table.
“No idea,” Torin admitted when Craig’s brows rose. “Hollice used to yell it. He yelled it once when the artillery actually nailed the coordinates we called in.”
Binti took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I heard he aced his sergeant’s exam.”
“Yeah.” Ressk raised his pouch of sah. “I heard that, too.”
Alamber turned from rummaging through one of the upper cupboards. “My yasha told me that when you remember someone they never really die.”
“Yeah?” Werst snorted. “My jernil said my jernine repeated on her for days.”
“Touching.” Binti beckoned Alamber over and plunged a hand into the bag of cookies he’d found. “My grandmother never talked about eating dead people because in her house, that would have been a fukking creepy dinner
table conversation.”
“Yeah, well I find it shonky that the H’san bury their dead with biscuit warmers,” Craig said. “Why waste gear on the dead that the living can use?”
Ressk’s nostril ridges opened and shut. “Like a biscuit warmer and enough weapons to rebang the big one?”
“Given how long it’s taking the grave robbers to find the weapons, seems the H’san object to coordinates in general,” Alamber pointed out, reclaiming the bag, the cookies, and his seat.
Werst rolled his eyes. “Yeah. Well, when we find the planet, it won’t be hard to find the only living people on it.” With both hands wrapped around his sah, he grabbed the bag with a foot.
“Ablin gon savit!” Alamber grabbed it back. “How many times do I have to tell you, no feet in the communal food! I don’t care what they let you do in the Marines!”
“He was Recon,” Binti sighed, as though that explained everything.
“Then he can go find the planet.” Alamber held the bag over his head. “We’ll find a mirin with deep baths and large beds and wait.”
Torin figured Werst was about half a second away from climbing the much taller di’Taykan like a tree—which was exactly what Alamber wanted. She caught Alamber’s gaze and he sighed, set the bag on the table, reached into it, and, their eyes still locked, licked the icing out from between two wafers. Torin maintained zero reaction until Alamber looked away, his hair flattening, as he ate the damned cookie.
“Look, most people are shit at keeping secrets.” She finished the dregs of her coffee. “The odds are in our favor that the grave robber who’s been selling the artifacts will be most people. Odds are higher they’re not using more than the four Susumi equations we have evidence of. Every new jump’s a chance to drop a decimal and die horribly, so why risk it? Alamber’s right, it’s taking them time to find the weapons; they’ll be picking up supplies for the dig on those jumps, not just selling grave goods. The dealers won’t be our only source.”