by Tanya Huff
“What . . .”
“Wait.” The screens disappeared, half a dozen sections of the board in front of Craig lit up, and Alamber returned most of his attention to his slate. “I sent a surge into the docking clamp and froze it. Reads like an overload, sort of thing that happens when someone’s a little too anxious to blow and it’s set so anyone leaning on the controls’ll think it was them. Best part, the clamp’ll have to be manually released.”
“One of Big Bill’s?” Craig asked, releasing Torin’s hand.
“One of mine for Big Bill. He liked people to leave on his schedule, not theirs.”
“And you had it preloaded in my ship?”
Craig’s growl flattened Alamber’s hair. “Look, I’m kind of busy . . .”
Torin tugged Craig back down into his chair and nudged him toward the board. “Discuss it later. Right now, you need to call the station master and let zir know how you feel about being held hostage by poor maintenance. They won’t see coordinates until their incompetence allows us to leave. Go big.”
He frowned. “Won’t that get the clamp fixed faster?”
“Not if you’re obnoxiously clear that’s what you want. They already think we’re violent and inferior; they won’t want to do us any favors.”
“No one said inferior, Torin.”
“Not out loud.”
Three coffees later with Werst and Binti back in the control room and the station master refusing further contact from anyone on the Commitment—Torin counted that a win—Ressk stiffened and said, “Alamber.”
“Unclench. I can stay out front of security. Get the data.”
“If they . . .”
“I know. Just snatch and grab, I’m right behind you.”
“Commitment, you are clear to go.”
“Just snatch and grab?” Ressk snapped his teeth together. “They haven’t cleared their fukking caches for years.”
“We require that you upload your destination coordinates . . .”
“Got it!”
“. . . immediately.”
“Fukking hell.” Craig lurched for the board as the ship jerked away from the docking arm, all clamps releasing at once. “I’ve been asked to leave a few places, once or twice, but I’ve never had an entire ship thrown off a station before.”
“We are terrible ambassadors for the Younger Races,” Binti snickered.
Torin could think of worse.
“I’m out clean.” Alamber slid his slate into a pocket and rolled his shoulders. “Ow.”
“Come on.” Binti stood and moved up behind him. “I’ll rub the stiffness out.”
He sighed and sagged against her. “Can we just pretend I made the expected response?”
“Sure.”
“Good work, Alamber.”
He paused at the hatch, Binti’s arm around his waist and flashed a wide smile at Torin. “Short and bristly couldn’t have done it without me.”
“We know.”
We needed you. You were useful. Your place here is secure.
He made a small, pleased noise and let Binti lead him away.
“Kid’s got more issues than the Marine Corps News,” Ressk said softly.
“How long have you been waiting to use that line?” Werst demanded, helping him out of the chair.
“A while,” Ressk admitted. “Doesn’t make it wrong.” He stretched. “I’m for food and sleep in that order, unless someone objects. Fuk it, I just solved the mystery, owned a traffic buoy, saved the day for the good guys, I don’t care if anyone objects.” His nostril ridges suddenly snapped halfway closed. “You, uh, you don’t object, do you, Gunny?”
“No reason I should,” Torin told him as Werst rolled his eyes and hustled the other Krai toward the hatch. “Good work, Ressk.”
“You know it, Gunny.”
“Do you have any idea how impressive that was?” Craig asked when they were alone in the control room, watching the proximity pings as the docking computer maneuvered them through traffic out to what passed for open space in the Core.
“Absolutely.” She settled in the other chair, the seat still warmed by Ressk’s body heat. “On a theoretical basis anyway. It was boring as fuk to watch, but no one got killed, and I’m all in favor of no one getting killed on my watch a . . .”
“Torin?”
She frowned at the board where the last of the proximity pings were fading.
“Commitment, you are cleared for independent control in three, two, one.”
“Return acknowledged. Have to admire how much that sounded like don’t let the door hit you on the ass on the way out,” Craig muttered as he checked that they were locked on the buoy.
Torin made a noncommittal noise and tried to identify the pattern she’d seen in the pings.
Not troops on the ground.
Not ships in space.
Not defensive.
Not offensive.
But familiar . . .
FIVE
“NOW THAT’S SOMETHING YOU DON’T SEE every day.”
Torin turned and frowned at the side of Craig’s face—he continued to stare out the front port. “It’s the same type of net as at the end of our last jump,” she said. “Mictok constructed, absorbs the Susumi energy wave, stores it until . . .”
He reached out, laid two fingers against her jaw with an aim Binti would’ve envied, given that he still wasn’t looking at her, and pushed her head until she faced forward again. “Not the net. The line of red giants, port side.”
Even in the brilliance of the core, even through the polarized port, the red giants stood out, although only the smallest star of those Torin could see looked red. The rest were yellow-orange to orangey-red at best.
“Do you think it’s one of those?”
Gaze locked on the stars, she could hear the shrug in Craig’s voice. “We’re looking for a red giant and we’re looking at eight. Odds of success are better than they were at Abalae.”
They’d followed the jump Ressk and Alamber had pulled off the buoy to a trinary system; two hydrogen/helium stars designated Nuvivic Ah and Nuvivic Se as well as a more distant and fainter red star, Bru Nuvivic. The system had eleven planets, two inhabited by a mix of the Elder Races, five by mining colonies and science stations—mostly Mictok—and the other four long stripped of anything useful. It wasn’t the system they were searching for. They’d have to follow her again.
First they’d have to find out where she went.
“The exit buoy is two days away. We couldn’t get there much faster than that even if we hadn’t dumped momentum, there’s a couple of big ass ore carriers out in front of us. Good news is, the buoy’ll won’t ping us for coordinates until we’re eight . . .”
“Are we there yet?”
Torin turned away from the red giants in time to see Alamber sweep into the control room on a wave of wine-dark ribbons and pheromones. “Masker.”
“It’s at seven.”
“Turn it to nine. And no, we have to jump again. You and Ressk have forty hours to crack the next buoy.” She expected a protest, a declaration of how, having done it once already, he’d need only a small fraction of that even if he were working on his own.
To her surprise, he nodded, one hand rising to his masker. “Forty’s good. Before we start, we want to check and make sure we didn’t leave any litter strewn about behind us. Cracking code at that speed means there could possibly have been a few ones and zeros left lying around,” he explained when Torin raised a brow. “If the wrong people find them, it’d be like identifying burn marks on the smoking debris left behind after a boarding party.”
“Thank you for clarifying.” She couldn’t help but return his grin, glad in this instance to have left the Corps behind so she didn’t have to. Standing, she beckoned Craig up from the pilot’s chair. “Come on, l
et’s get something to eat.”
“Binti’s cooking.” Alamber slid gracefully past Craig and into the chair the instant it was vacated, fingers spread and already on the board.
“What’s she made?” Craig asked, joining Torin at the hatch.
Alamber’s hair flicked back. “Does it matter?”
“It only matters that it’s not Werst,” Torin answered, stepping over the lip. Werst in the galley resulted in unique food combinations at best, fond memories of field rations at worst.
Craig crowded through behind her, close enough she could feel his warmth against her back, his breath against her ear as he murmured too low to be overheard, “What was all over Alamber?”
She leaned back far enough to enjoy a moment’s contact. “Confidence.”
“Fuk, Ryder, you’re like a Taykan with your need for heat.”
“Flattering.” Craig grinned, stirring the hot sauce into his chili. “But even I can’t wrestle down pure Taykan tucker.” He tossed the pouch to Torin, who caught it one-handed, added about half as much, tasted and added a bit more—Binti’s spice baseline kicking less than her mother’s curry. “And the things they say about Taykan food are true,” he continued. “You think it burns going in? It’ll take the hair off your ass going out.”
Binti snickered. “Got a classy guy there, Gunny.”
“Don’t I know it.” Torin crumbled a piece of hardtack into her bowl, ankle hooked around Craig’s under the table. Most of their food came in preprocessed packs, but every now and then one of them would make something from scratch. It was usually a nice change.
“Remember Alyx, Gunny?” Binti asked, spoon scraping the bottom of her bowl. “He carried a dozen kinds of spice packets in his gear. I had to take Myrin to the ground to get a couple after he died.”
“I don’t remember that.” She remembered pink hair and eyes and repeated orders for him to keep his damned helmet on. She remembered the weight of his cylinder tucked into her vest.
“Why would you? You were busy single-handedly bringing the Silsviss into the Confederation.” Pushing her empty bowl away, she added, “Alyx used to wonder if field rations had been designed to make everyone equally miserable. You know anything about that?”
“Above your pay grade, Corporal.”
“Not getting paid by the Corps anymore, Gunny.”
Torin saluted her with a spoonful of chili. The Corps’ field rations had been designed to be equally palatable to all three species. They defined lowest common denominator, and bland was the polite description.
“I don’t get people who sound off about the food in the Corps,” Werst grumbled, dipping a slab of hardtack into his bowl and watching the line of sauce rise, absorbed into the pressed carbs. “I liked it.”
“You ate a piece of a sentient, plastic, hive mind disguised as a big, yellow spaceship,” Torin reminded him.
“Your point?”
Her mouth full, Craig answered for her. “You’re not exactly discriminating, mate.”
Werst shrugged his acceptance, Binti laughed, and Craig grinned, pointing his spoon at Torin as if to say, you go ahead and eat, I’m on this.
So she did. Because he was. She ate her food and noticed that over the last year, forms of address aside, most of the military had been rubbed off the team’s interlocking relationships. They were comrades, friends, lovers. They hadn’t been assigned to this duty and were making the best of things; they were all there because they wanted to be.
For the length of the bowl of chili, she switched off the paranoia that came with the need to keep everyone safe. Switched off the feeling of vulnerability fueled by the missing weight of a KC-7. Switched off the heightened awareness that maintained a background threat assessment and decided to be aware instead of the taste of her food and the way Craig’s eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled and the warmth of Binti’s elbow brushing against hers and the sudden huff of air and flap of nostril ridges that meant Werst was trying not to laugh.
Because if she didn’t switch it off occasionally, one day she wouldn’t be able to.
“We backtracked our buddy Jamers on the traffic buoys and according to the entrance codes, she’s jumped in from all four of the locations Intell knew she’d used.” Ressk drummed his toes against the edge of the board, clearly annoyed by what they’d found. “The buoys have her jumping out to those same locations.”
“Only those locations,” Alamber added. “As far as this system’s traffic is concerned, anyway. She’s jumping into this system, but she’s not jumping out.”
“Only explanation we can come up with . . .” Ressk took over. “. . . is that she’s making unregistered jumps. Probably going out simultaneously with ore carriers or freighters so they mask the energy wave of her Susumi engines coming on. When she jumps back in, she probably skims one of the mined-out planets. There’s little chance of slamming into other ships and the emergent wave slaps against rock.”
“She’d have to come in dangerously close for that to work.” Craig waved Ressk up out of the pilot’s chair. One hand resting on the upper curve, ready to take her place behind it, Torin answered Ressk’s silent request for intervention with a raised brow. The ship had few rules—they were all adults and expected to behave as such—but when Craig was in the control room, the pilot’s seat was his.
Nostril ridges opening and closing in a put-upon sigh, Ressk stood, muttering, “A life of crime is not without risk.”
From the mix of expressions around the room, Torin wasn’t the only one who’d needed a moment to realize he’d been replying to Craig’s comment, not the seating change. He dropped down into the chair beside Werst who asked, “If we find the point she’s jumped out from, can we work out where she’s going?”
“No,” Craig said simply before either Ressk or Alamber could respond.
Torin shot Alamber a look that snapped his mouth shut. Craig had been making solo jumps for about as long as the young di’Taykan had been alive.
“Even if we had a magic way to track a ship through Susumi, we can’t find the point she jumps from because we’re in the Core.” Ressk slouched low, arms crossed, toes curled in close to his soles. “There’s layers of energy trails out there, frequent enough that each new one burns through the old ones before they dissipate.”
“Big corporate freighter came through a while ago, heading in-system.” Alamber nodded toward the screen. “Days out in front, but still burning bright enough that’s all we can track along that vector.”
“And if a tracker exists that can sift through multiple layers and rapidly dissipating energy signatures,” Ressk added, “Justice hasn’t given one to us.”
“All right.” Torin swept her gaze around the room. “Options?”
Alamber spread his hands, the chair complaining about being tipped back as far as it would go. “We can track her if she comes through on a supply run while we’re sitting here. Maximum wait, three tendays, likely a day or two less.”
“Why so often?” Binti asked.
“Water. Eighty percent of what she picked up from the Trun was water.”
Promise had a converter; they snagged ice when they needed it. On a dead planet, a converter’s constant and specific energy signature would be like sending up a flare, pinpointing its location to any ships in orbit. But Humans needed two to three liters of water per day. Di’Taykan a little more. Krai a little less. A small ship, trail obliterated by the traffic in the Core, would definitely be a low impact way to deal with that.
“So, there’s no water on this planet?” Binti shook her head. “Gotta say, when the H’san bang a planet, they do a thorough job.”
“Red giant, no water . . . Look at us narrowing it down.” Alamber slid down until his tailbone was barely balanced on the edge of his seat.
They were looking for a single planet with no real idea of where the hel
l it was and no apparent way to find it short of capturing some H’san and forcing them to talk. Torin missed clear orders to follow so badly that, at this point in time, she’d welcome a shiny new second lieutenant just to have a point of reference she could work against. Stop a war, Colonel Hurrs told her. Well, thank you very fukking much. There was always the chance the bastard had been setting them up to fail.
“I’ve eyeballed plenty of jumps.” Craig swept the screen clear and began scrolling new data. “I can do it again. We need a red giant and there’s eight front and center if you want to give them a burl.”
“Eleven,” Alamber corrected. “We ran the numbers. Angle’s bad for the other three.”
“Eleven. Eight.” Torin ripped a thread from a fraying edge of the duct tape holding the front of the chair to the frame. “We haven’t time to search . . .”
The first four bars of a Krai pop song that Ressk had been warbling for the last three months rang out, the volume loud enough to echo off the back wall. Loud enough to yank Ressk up onto his feet as a line of red light bisected the board.
“Ryder! Don’t touch!”
Craig jerked both hands away, the same motion curling them into fists.
“We’ve maintained a ghost link to the traffic buoy,” Ressk explained, glared Alamber out of the second’s seat, and brought up a new screen before his ass had fully settled. “There’s a ship coming in.”
“Not the first since we arrived,” Werst snarled, straightened out of a crouch and slid his knife back into the sheath strapped to his thigh.
Ressk moved a foot to the board as Alamber answered, “Yeah, but this one, this one’s using coordinates identical to ours.”
“They’re jumping out at the same buoy,” Torin began.
He cut her off. “They’re jumping from the same buoy, Gunny. Out from Abalae, using the first open slot after ours.”
And Torin remembered the pattern she’d seen.
Not defensive.
Not offensive.
Familiar.