An Ancient Peace

by Tanya Huff

  Dion ignored them, rubbing at a rough spot on his chin where the depilatory had visibly worn off. “I can roughly date this cavern by the absence of the Katrien and the Niln, but with only a little more time, I can precisely . . .”

  Broadbent had relaxed into glazed boredom, so Sujuno cut Dion off. “I don’t care. Will knowing the date of the cavern’s creation help get us out of it?”

  He stared at her for a long moment, then he blinked, twice, as though erasing the picture from his eyes. “I feel that history . . .”

  “Is irrelevant,” she snapped, “unless it leads us to an exit which, in turn, leads us to the weapons cache.” Arms folded, she kept her hair flat. “No one pays for history. While you were circling and searching, did you find the next mark?”

  “I would have mentioned it, Major, had I found . . .”

  She turned away before he could finish. “Sergeant?”

  Toporov shook his head. “No, sir. I looked for the new marker he showed us, but I didn’t see it either. And no sign of either a control panel or a closed door on the cavern walls.”

  “Because that would be too easy,” Keo sighed. She’d tried to open the door into the cavern before Sujuno had turned it over to Nadayki, but pushing hadn’t budged it and pulling had been impossible with nothing to grab.

  “Easy is irrelevant.” Sujuno swept a gaze around the remaining members of the team. None of this had been easy. The first marker within the catacombs had been right out in the open, but finding it had cost Timin his life. “The instructions tell us to go forward . . .”

  “Unless the professor fukked up the translation,” Nadayki drawled.

  Dion’s florid face flushed darker. “I know more about ancient H’san languages than anyone alive!”

  “Talk. Talk. Talk.” Nadayki waved a hand. “We’re still trapped.”

  “We’re not trapped,” Wenn snorted. “I have demo charges in my pack.” He grunted as Verr drove an elbow into his thigh and added, “Which I will not use until you give the order, Major. There will not be independent explosions.”

  Wenn liked demo charges. Five, no, six tendays ago, back while they were on their way through Susumi, Verr had informed her that a fondness for demo charges had contributed to Wenn leaving the Corps. Sujuno also had demo charges in her pack although, in her case, they had nothing to with her leaving the Corps. She hadn’t wanted Wenn, but she’d needed a pilot and Verr wouldn’t leave her bonded behind. Given that Dion hadn’t translated a way out, Wenn’s fondness for property damage could come in useful if they had to retrace their steps.

  “I brought us here,” Dion began, “to this cavern . . .” He tipped his head back and waved both hands at the ceiling. “. . . to this the H’san’s inverted bowl, so . . .”

  “So . . .” Sujuno cut him off before he could start in on yet another of his interchangeable, patronizing lectures on the H’san. “. . . there has to be a way out.”

  “Or the marks have been leading us on a wild H’san chase.” Keo shrugged, the bands of the exoskeleton catching the light as it smoothly followed the rise and fall of her shoulders. “I mean, when we get right down to shit and giggles, Major, we only have Dion’s word about the translation. None of us can read ancient . . .”

  “Or modern,” Verr added.

  “. . . or modern H’san, so we’d be totally lost if he got it wrong.”

  “Because we wouldn’t know if he got it wrong.”

  Keo snickered. “He wouldn’t know if he got it wrong.”

  “I don’t get things wrong,” Dion snapped.

  Sujuno glanced at Toporov. Although quick enough to damp Broadbent’s temper, the sergeant occasionally let the verbal sparring waste time for longer than she’d prefer.

  “Enough,” he growled.

  “But, Sarge . . .”

  He pinned her with a glare. “You forgot what enough means, Keo?”

  “No, Sarge.”

  Keo was wrong; they had more than only Dion’s word for the translation. They had the money their backer had been willing to put up. Money for a ship. Money for black market weapons and tech. Money to hire a crew that might stand a chance of succeeding. More money, a lot more money promised if they succeed.

  Enough money.

  Enough money when they delivered the weapons she’d be able to pay the price for progenitor. Dion had to be telling the truth.

  That much money didn’t lie.

  “If the mark isn’t on the walls . . .”

  “I said it wasn’t,” Dion muttered petulantly.

  Sujuno ignored him. “. . . then we search the floor, every inch of the plinths, the benches, and the trophies.”

  “I don’t believe they’re trophies as you understand trophies,” Dion began.

  “You want us to search the bodies, Major?” Verr ignored him, her nostril ridges so tightly shut, the pitch of her voice had changed.

  “Yes, I do. We can’t trust the H’san not to have trimmed the mark into the Trun’s fur or carved it into the Ciptran’s ass. If you see anything even remotely similar to what we’re looking for, you call the professor for confirmation. You do not press, push, twist, poke . . .” A preparatory inhale from the right. She pointed at Nadayki without turning. “You do not comment.” A beat of silence before she continued. “Search. Do not touch. Am I understood?”

  “Yes, Major.” A familiar chorus from the ex-Marines.

  The silence from Nadayki and Dion was sullen and supercilious in turn. Sujuno ignored them as well.

  She paired herself with Broadbent. Next to the sergeant—who continued shadowing Dion—he was the least likely to try and carry on a conversation during the search.

  The ancient H’san had not left their mark on the body of the Mictok. Or on the plinth under it. Or on the floor around it. Or on the bench beside it.

  “Hey, Major!” Keo stood with one hand on the Dornagain’s plinth while Nadayki rubbed his hands and a few other body parts over the nearest bench. “Do we look inside, too?”

  “The benches?” They sounded solid and their supports were definitely too narrow to hide an access to the next level. Although, she allowed, they could hold the tech that opened an access.

  “No, not the benches. The bodies.”

  In the sudden silence, everyone waited for her response.

  Extremities came off the insect species easily enough. Without the flexibility of life, a hard twist would crack the joints. For the mammals, the ex-Marines carried knives and both Krai had small axes on their belts—although she was fairly certain they had a religious more than a practical purpose. If it came to it, Keo’s exoskeleton would probably augment her strength enough for her to rip the bodies apart.

  Sujuno had seen a lot of bodies while she fought a senseless war, but she’d never given an order to dismember the dead.

  With any luck, it wouldn’t come to it now.

  “Leave the bodies for now. If we don’t find the mark anywhere else, we’ll take them apart.”

  “I don’t mind, Major.”

  They were standing close enough together she could see the heavy gunner’s smile. According to the records Sujuno had managed to access, there was strong suspicion although no proof that Keo hadn’t minded in the past. “Leave them.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  She was examining the side of the bench closest to the Trun when the lights went out, plunging the entire cavern into darkness and evoking a surge of whispered profanity. Turning her head away from the sudden, acrid scent of Broadbent’s fear, she kept one hand on the bench—contact with the slightly off-putting textures the H’san preferred was preferable to being unanchored in the darkness—and tapped her shoulder light with the other. “Sergeant.” The second light on, a third of the way around the pool, turned in her direction. “Set up camp by the stairs.”

  “You heard the major,
everyone back to the stairs.” Toporov had set off the decibel alarm three times in the first two days. It had taken Sujuno’s promise to gag him to finally lower his volume. Here, without the constraints he’d been under in the rest of the necropolis, he put his sergeant voice back on. “Stay back from the water. If you fall in, I will let you drown.”

  They didn’t eat communally, that would have implied community. They’d each claimed a fraction of the supplies, and it wasn’t only the Krai who guarded the pouches on the sled they considered theirs from companions they merely tolerated. Sujuno maintained a strict control of the water supply only because the mission would fail without it and she would not have the mission fail.

  Having pulled her pack off the sled, she leaned against it, pulled the tab on a pouch of field rations, topped the pouch up with the last of the water from off-site, and activated the heating unit. It smelled like tomagoras. Hardly surprising, as most Taykan field rations smelled like tomagoras. And tasted like rinchas until extra spices were added. No one knew why. It was a mystery that long predated her people’s entry into the Confederation. Spices were off the table thanks to the ancient H’san’s inane security protocols, so she flicked off her light—it was enough that scent and taste disagreed, why add a third differing sense—and settled to eat. Field rations had the comfort of familiarity if nothing else.

  As the temperature began its nightly four-to-five–degree drop, she allowed the ends of her hair to lift as she relaxed a little of her control. It helped she was far enough away from the others that they were shadow puppets in pools of light, barely more than voices in the dark.

  “I hate this,” Wenn whined. “Every night it’s fukking freezing!”

  “I know ways to warm you up,” Nadayki offered.

  She heard skin on skin as Verr snarled, “He’s bonded.”

  “I know ways to warm you both up.”

  “That’s different.”

  “Verr, Wenn, you’re on first watch.”

  “But, Sarge . . .”

  “Broadbent and Keo take second. I take third.”

  “Why don’t Nadayki and the professor ever stand watch, Sarge?”

  “Would you trust a Marine’s life to their piss uselessness?”

  “Hey!”

  Dion made no protest.

  Rank and privilege and the complete absence of any threat they could actually fight kept Sujuno from standing watch. If it came to it, she’d stand before the civilians did. If it didn’t, she’d lose no sleep over whining from those unwilling to perform their contracted jobs.

  Tucking the empty bag under a strap where she could find it later, she tugged her bedroll free, unrolled it, and, after checking that both her maskers were at their highest possible settings, lay down, closed her eyes, and got as comfortable as circumstances allowed. It would be light again in just under six hours; nights were short at this latitude at this time of the year.

  The rhythmic sound of flesh to flesh overlaid with quiet panting meant Nadayki had found a willing partner. The scent told her it was Broadbent. Better than Dion.

  She slid a hand under her clothes and touched the cylinder of ash hanging on a leather braid between her breasts. She had no guarantee it held any of her family’s remains, but she’d taken it from the ruins of their compound, from as close as she could get to the center, and she’d claimed it as family when security had tried to take it from her, so family it was. All the family she had.

  Sooner or later, they’d find the next mark the H’san had left to guide them. They’d empty the weapons’ cache. She’d receive her payment. She’d file the registration of progenitor and her name would live again. Until that time, she’d do the job she had to do, but nothing more.

  They finished searching the plinths, the benches, and the floor two hours before the lights were due to go out on the second day.

  They’d discovered that a third of the benches were hollow, but that was all.

  “Why a third of the benches?” Verr asked.

  “I’ve discovered that the H’san have an intrinsic attachment to the number three,” Dion told her. “An almost religious attachment to it.”

  Sujuno exchanged a glance with the sergeant. This was the first time they’d seen any evidence of such an attachment. Toporov’s expression openly called Dion a liar. She doubted hers was any subtler.

  “Do I take the benches apart, Major?” Keo asked. She smacked a fist-sized piece of broken stone against the underside of the nearest bench, punctuating the question with an echoing boom.

  “I find it hard to believe you’re even asking that,” Dion sneered. “Had only one bench been anomalous, than we could assume the ancient H’san were indicating that we should investigate it. However, given the number of hollow benches, we can draw no such conclusions.”

  Keo shifted enough to fix Dion with a flat, unfriendly stare. “What the fuk does anomalous mean?”

  His lip curled. “That basic education isn’t a requirement for violence.”

  “I could kill you with this rock.”

  “And you’ve just made my point.”

  She tossed the piece of broken stone into the air and caught it. “I could throw it with enough force it’d crush your skull. Throw it fast enough that you wouldn’t have time to point at it.”

  Dion snorted disdainfully.

  Sujuno found herself actually considering it for a moment; then she sighed. “Sergeant.”

  Toporov plucked the rock from Keo’s hand.

  “Once we’ve been paid for the weapons, you may kill each other with my blessing.” Suddenly realizing she’d twisted a handful of fabric so tightly her pants had begun to dig into the back of her leg, Sujuno forced her fingers open. “Until such time, play nice. And, no, we will not be taking the benches apart. Not until we’ve exhausted all other possibilities.”

  “Like after we dismember the dead guys?”

  “That would be one of the remaining possibilities, yes.”

  “I feel I should mention that the plinths, which none of you can read, makes it clear, although not overtly, that the bodies are important to the H’san.”

  “Cheese is important to the H’san,” Wenn pointed out to laughter.

  “I repeat, none of you know . . .”

  “And neither do you.” She was very close to ordering Toporov to give Keo back the rock, but it was less than two hours until lights out and they had no time for drama. “Everyone take fifteen, then we begin.”

  Verr tapped a finger against her slate. “If the fukking scanners worked, we’d have been out of here yesterday.”

  “Yeah, well, they don’t.” Wenn flicked a finger against her forehead. “Got to use your big, sexy brain, churick.”

  “Yeah, that’d be all adorable and shit if you didn’t just call her delicious,” Nadayki muttered, leaning against Keo, fingers of one hand rubbing the contact point between her exoskeleton and her hip. “And if you didn’t mean it literally.”

  “Not that finding the other stuff was a breeze or anything, but it was hard mostly because of the area we had to search. We’re all enclosed here; why would the H’san make finding this mark so difficult?” Keo smacked Nadayki’s hand away and crossed her arms.

  “Because they were seriously creepy. I mean, I’m not the only one who thinks this whole dead bodies on display thing is seriously creepy, am I?” Wenn reached up and tugged on the Mictok’s lowest leg. It came off in his hand. He stared at it for a moment—they all stared at it for a moment—then his nostril ridges slammed shut, his lips pulled back off his teeth, he made a high-pitched noise, and threw it into the water.

  “Well, Major, you were right about the water not staying pure,” Verr sighed. She smacked her bonded on the back of the head as she passed.

  Sujuno caught up with her at the edge of the pool and they stood together, staring at the leg floating ab
out a meter out.

  “Should we grab it?” Verr wondered.

  The three slender digits on the narrow end waved as the leg sank.

  “Or not.”

  Opening more light receptors in order to track the leg all the way to the bottom, Sujuno frowned. “There’s a pattern on the stone.” Dropping to one knee, she braced a hand and leaned out over the water, trying to ignore the way the light flickered as ripples from the impact returned from the other side of the pool. The stone on the bottom of the pool was darker than the stone that made up the rest of the cavern, but she could see lines that were darker still radiating out from the center. Or radiating into the center.

  “I don’t see anything,” Keo complained, behind her.

  “Of course you don’t.” Human eyes were useless. “We examine this before we start tearing things apart.” She ignored Keo’s huff of disappointment.

  Broadbent turned out to be the best swimmer. “Choice at school growing up was swimming or cross country,” he explained. “I hate running.”

  “And that’s why you went with boots on the ground,” Wenn mocked.

  After a moment’s consideration, Broadbent shrugged. “I never did much running in the Corps.” Stripped down, he ignored Keo’s whoop at the purpling bite mark on his right shoulder, and paused at the edge of the water. “Uh, Major? We still drinking this?”

  Keo snorted. “I’d rather lap up your manly musk than the essence of giant embalmed spider leg already dissolving in it.”

  “You get promoted to major, Keo?” Toporov asked.

  “No, Sarge.”

  “Ignoring her personal preferences, Keo has a point.” Sujuno snapped her fingers to get Broadbent’s attention and indicated the closest part of the pattern. “See that line? Follow it. Find out what’s at the other end of it.”

  “Yes, sir.” Broadbent waded in, clutching one of the extra lights. The Corps designed their gear to be Marine resistant; a little water would have no effect. Three steps in and the water lapped mid-thigh, the skin between his shoulder blades glistened with sweat.

  Nadayki hummed thoughtfully. “I remember him being bigger.” When Broadbent made no protest, he sighed. “Still, it’s probably cold in there. Who could leave a line like that dangling?” he asked when Verr snickered.