Valour's Choice

by Tanya Huff

  Mandibles clacking, it bumped hard against the back of Sergeant Glicksohn’s leg.

  Half off the stretcher, fingers still inches from his weapon strap, Ressk watched Glicksohn turn.

  Nearly trip over the Mictok.

  Deflect the first spear thrust with the barrel of his KC.

  Bend, get both hands under the body of the giant spider.

  “Every time I see one, this little voice inside my head keeps screaming, Get it off me! Get it off me!”

  Flip it back onto its feet.

  Straighten.

  Die.

  The second spear went up in under the edge of his combat vest, slicing through soft tissue, up under the ribs, and into the heart.

  He looked down at the rough wooden shaft angling out of his body.

  His weapon fell from nerveless fingers.

  His knees buckled, and he hit the ground.

  * * *

  “MIKE!”

  Halfway across the compound, Torin saw him fall. Her first shot took out the Silsviss who’d speared him. The second Silsviss fell before she could get off her second shot.

  * * *

  As the world went black, Ressk closed his fingers around the KC. This time, he wasn’t letting go.

  * * *

  By the time, Torin reached Glicksohn’s side, the Mictok were clustered together and beginning to spin webbing around themselves. She didn’t need his med-alert to tell her he was dead. Only the dead fell with that boneless disregard for gravity. She dropped to one knee and laid two fingers against his throat anyway.

  No pulse.

  But Ressk was still alive.

  Lifting his upper body back onto the stretcher, she pulled her knife from her boot. Mictok webbing was supposed to be uncuttable. Torin got through it.

  “You!” She grabbed an eyestalk below the bulge and turned it to face her. “Get the ambassador inside to the doctor. Now!” The loss of the leg had sent the whole collective into shock. She used her voice to bludgeon it aside. “And you!” Releasing the first eyestalk, she grabbed another. “Pick up that end of the stretcher!”

  “We don’t think...”

  “Don’t think! Do what you’re told!”

  Once they started moving, they moved fast. Even with only seven limbs. Torin had to run full out to keep up. Ressk wasn’t getting the smoothest ride in, but at least he wasn’t lying bleeding to death on the ground beside the dead sergeant.

  They were almost to the med station when the largest Silsviss Torin had ever seen landed in front of them.

  Landed?

  He came off the roof!

  The Mictok froze again. The end of the stretcher caught Torin in the stomach but she managed to stop. Unfortunately, the immobile Mictok on the other end continued to hold Ressk’s feet up in the air.

  The Silsviss throbbed out a challenge, throat pouch fully inflated. Torin was about ready to drop Ressk on his head and bring her weapon around when Strength of Arm rose up from the depths of the well. And kept rising.

  At her full height, she towered over the Silsviss.

  Her fur gleamed brilliantly gold in the sun.

  A sharp, musky smell bludgeoned aside the smells of the battle.

  Long, muscular arms spread out to their full extension, making her look even larger. Then she roared.

  The sound echoed off the surrounding hills.

  A moment of stunned silence followed from Marines and Silsviss both. Someone sneezed. Before the Silsviss in front of her could turn, Strength of Arm reached down, grabbed his tail, and flung him nearly six meters over the north wall.

  Roaring again, she started for the next closest tail.

  For a nonviolent species, she seemed to have caught on quickly.

  A third Silsviss flew past about four meters off the ground.

  Torin appreciated the help, but they had bigger problems.

  There were Silsviss on the roof of the eastern building, the building holding the med station and the injured. And the thatch was on fire.

  FIFTEEN

  “There’s hundreds of them out there!”

  Haysole tossed Hollice his reload and caught the empty KC one-handed, labored breathing rising and falling around every movement. “You hitting... any of them?”

  “A few.” Blinking sweat out of his eyes, Hollice squeezed off three more rounds. “Doesn’t seem to be making any difference, though. Hit one and two more take his place.”

  A deep breath in and out; Haysole’s voice steadied as he snapped in a new clip. “Sooner or later one’ll get through.”

  “Not on my watch.”

  “Oh, yeah, I forgot. You’re Corporal Hollice, super Mar...” He broke off and stared up at the line of falling dust, gleaming in a stray ray of light. His eyes darkened. “Hear that?”

  Hollice snorted. They were less than a meter apart and shouting to hear each other. “You mean the shrieking?” he asked sarcastically.

  “No.” The line of dust broadened. Thickened. His hair spread, each end straining up toward the thatch. He drew air in slowly through his open mouth. “I smell smoke.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Useless Human noses.” The di’Taykan changed his grip on the KC, sliding a finger in through the guard. “I hear something on the roof.”

  “The pitter and patter of each tiny hoof?”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.”

  “You’re weird, Hollice, even for a Human.”

  A spear point drove through the thatch, and the line of dust became a sudden fall of debris. Haysole smiled and fired nearly straight up.

  The Silsviss that landed beside him, narrowly missing the stretcher, was dead.

  The two who followed were uninjured.

  Haysole shot one as he drove his spear into the back of the Marine on the east wall and winged the other as he turned. The thrown spear took him in the leg. Unable to do more than point the KC in the right direction, he fired again and again until the Silsviss danced backward and died.

  Knocking the spear free of nerve-dead muscle, he had a whole heartbeat to enjoy his victory when the northeast corner of the roof fell in, spraying the room with pieces of burning thatch.

  * * *

  “Bloody great!” Hollice spun around and wished he hadn’t as the world tilted. Teeth clenched, he forced it straight. “The roof! It’s on fire!”

  Haysole used the KC to knock an ember off his ankle. “No shit!”

  “The wounded!” Including the di’Taykan, there were six occupied stretchers in the room. “We’ve got to get the wounded out!”

  Haysole fired two short bursts as a Silsviss came up the unguarded east wall and in through the hole in the roof. “So do it! I’ll cover you!”

  “Dream on.” Remembering how Staff Sergeant Kerr had moved both stretcher and occupant, Hollice reached for the same grip with his good hand but had it knocked aside. “Don’t argue! Your legs...”

  Another Silsviss appeared, wreathed in more burning thatch.

  “Get the others out first!” Haysole fired two quick rounds and then a third for insurance as the body pitched forward. “You said it yourself, I don’t need my legs to shoot!”

  Given that the others couldn’t shoot at all, couldn’t do anything but lie there and die, it was a convincing argument. Coughing in the rising smoke, Hollice tossed his weapon onto Captain Daniels, grabbed the end of her stretcher and began dragging her toward the door, yelling at the Marine on the south wall to help.

  “But my post...”

  “Is on fire, jackass!”

  At the door to the second room, someone grabbed the stretcher from him, but before they could grab him, he dove back into the smoke. There were four more stretchers in there. And Haysole. And the Silsviss were still attacking the compound. He’d have fallen over and let someone else deal with it, but there wasn’t anyone else available.

  A quick look around showed the corpsman dragging his injured partner clear and no sign of the Marine from the south
wall, but as only two of the wounded remained, he hadn’t gone empty-handed. Both stretchers were closer to the door than Haysole.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Moving you!” The protests wouldn’t have stopped him, but as he got the di’Taykan even with the others, a Silsviss emerged suddenly out of the smoke at the far end of the room. “Have it your way! Shoot from here!” He transferred his grip to the next stretcher without actually stopping his backward shuffle toward the door, sucking air heavy with smoke in through his teeth. His chest felt as though it were being ripped apart by jagged lines of pain. Apparently the blockers extended only to the edge of his injured shoulder. Eyes streaming, he got the stretcher to the door, but this time the waiting hands grabbed him first.

  “Are you insane?” the corpsman yelled, trying to hold him without doing more damage to his injured side. “The whole end of the roof’s about to go!”

  On cue, chunks of falling thatch drew lines of flame though the smoke.

  Coughing too hard to argue, Hollice ripped himself free of the corpsman’s grip and threw himself down on the floor. Where it wasn’t a whole lot better.

  Either the pain blockers had given up or his brain had figured out a way around them, but since everything hurt with equal intensity, he figured it couldn’t get any worse. On his knees and good elbow, he scuttled forward, aiming for the sounds of di’Taykan profanity he could hear coming out of the smoke.

  Hands closed around both his ankles.

  He sprawled, full length, arm stretched out. As he began moving backward, his outstretched hand touched fingers. Then the fingers closed around his.

  “Taking... too long,” Haysole gasped. “Thought I’d... meet you... halfway.”

  Blood dribbled in two dark lines from the corners of his eyes, and his lips were nearly blue. Whatever he’d done to get this far had clearly added to the damage he’d taken in the crash.

  Hollice felt as though his arm was about to come out of his socket when Haysole started moving as well. He couldn’t have crawled more than three meters from the door; they’d be out of it soon.

  The sudden stop forced a cry out through cracked lips. He’d been wrong about the pain not getting any worse. The pull intensified. Haysole didn’t move.

  “Something... on my legs.” A falling line of sparks raised a blister along one cheek. He looked up. Looked down and smiled a charming di’Taykan smile. “Fuk it,” he said clearly. Then he let go.

  Hollice couldn’t maintain the grip alone. His fingers were ripped free and he was hauled backward so fast only his outstretched hand was burned by the collapse of the roof.

  * * *

  The thatch had been over a meter thick on closely laid wooden beams. It burned with an intensity that ignited the fibers used as binding within the thick mud walls.

  Perhaps the fire had been more than the Silsviss had bargained for.

  Or perhaps Strength of Arm’s sudden decision to get involved in the battle had turned the tide.

  Torin didn’t know and she didn’t care. The Silsviss had withdrawn behind their boulders and that was good enough for her. As the fire roared unchecked and Strength of Arm returned, shaking and whimpering, to the astounded Dornagain, she started a bucket brigade to soak the western wall of the burning building, the wall that she needed to keep her perimeter whole. She made sure the med station got set up again, that the injured were tended. That the rest of her people got fed and watered and that they remained alert. That the bodies, Mike’s and two others, were bagged and reduced. She was the calm that anchored every other emotion in the compound—regardless of how she herself felt—because that, too, was part of her job.

  When the sun went down, the fire...

  The pyre.

  ...was still so high there was no need to send up any of the few remaining flares.

  * * *

  As the sun rose, Torin splashed water on her face and bit into the second of the three stims all ranks above sergeant carried. Three, because they only delayed the need for sleep, they didn’t replace it, and someone who’d never spent their nights trying to keep the remnants of a platoon alive against overwhelming odds had determined three was all that was safe.

  Safe was a relative term.

  She swallowed the bitter gel—purposefully bitter to keep them from becoming a habit—and walked dripping over to the remains of the eastern building. They’d saved the bottom three feet of the wall and enough rubble had fallen into the doorway to keep the line more or less unbroken. The grain bags the doctor had been using in the first room had exploded in the heat, leaving behind a smell reminiscent of burned toast. Compared to the stink of rotting bodies that surrounded them, it was almost pleasant.

  Her stomach growled, and she ripped the strip off a food pouch, pushing the contents up into her mouth and swallowing without actually tasting.

  “How many?”

  “Three. Privates Eislor, Stovak, and Haysole. Two di’Taykan and a Human if you’re keeping score.”

  “Staff.”

  She swallowed the last of the paste. “I’m sorry, sir. That was completely uncalled for.”

  Lieutenant Jarret tested the temperature of the wall with the palm of his hand, then leaned his forearms on it. “It’s all right,” he said after a long moment. “I understand where it’s coming from.”

  It had come from places he’d never been, from battles he’d never fought. Torin turned, ready to challenge his assumptions, but his profile—carved out of the morning, too tight, too unmoving to be flesh—convinced her to hold her tongue. He couldn’t understand it all, not at his age, not his first time out, but, unfortunately, he was on his way.

  “Twenty-eight of us left; plus Lieutenant Ghard, two aircrew, and an unconscious Captain Daniels, and still hundreds of them.” He sounded as though he were discussing the weather. Not good weather perhaps, but his voice held neither the self-pity nor the despair that Torin expected. That anyone might expect under the circumstances. “If we don’t get out of here, do you think this’ll be considered one of those legendary last stands like Carajys or Dalfour?” he wondered, crushing a rough pellet of baked mud under his thumb.

  “Very probably, sir.” Every military organization needed heroes; tragic heroes if they were the only type available. “But if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather this became one of those amazing last-minute rescues, like Laysalifis.”

  “You were there.”

  She’d been on her first combat drop and so scared she’d tested just how waterproof combat uniforms were. “You checked my records.”

  “I checked everyone’s records, Staff. General Morris insisted this mission was vital to signing the Silsviss, and I wanted everything to go well, to justify his trust in me.” Without moving his head more than a fraction of an inch, he indicated the ring of bodies. “If the Silsviss aren’t impressed, they should be.” Then, pausing no more than a heartbeat, he added, “I don’t want to die here.”

  “I don’t want to die anywhere, sir.”

  The corner of his mouth moved toward a smile. “That’s the trick, isn’t it, Staff? Do you ever regret leaving the farm?”

  She stared down into the ashes. “Every now and then, sir. Every now and...” Squinting into the rising sun, she let the words trail off. Something glittered out by the outline of the doorway that had led to the third room.

  Something glittered.

  Heart pounding, she took a step back and vaulted over the wall.

  “Staff!”

  Her boots and legs were covered in a fine coat of gray by the time she reached it.

  A masker. Partially melted, covered in char, but unmistakable for all that.

  Eislor had died by the far wall. It couldn’t have been hers.

  “If I die, take off the masker before you bag me.”

  She weighed it on her palm for a moment, then turned and threw it as hard as she could toward the Silsviss. It very nearly reached the rocks. Breathing heavily through her nose, she wiped her fa
ce clear before she turned back toward the perimeter.

  Lieutenant Jarret said nothing until she was back on the other side of the wall. Then, as if she were another di’Taykan, he touched her lightly on the back of the wrist, fingers cool against her skin, and said, “Don’t ever do that again.”

  “I won’t, sir.”

  “If you died...”

  “You’d manage without me, sir.” She took a deep breath and straightened. “And it isn’t every second lieutenant I’d say that of.”

  He was young enough that he couldn’t help looking pleased, but he quickly sobered. “We won’t survive another attack like yesterday’s, will we?”

  Mike Glicksohn was dead, so was Haysole. Ressk had taken a blow that would have removed the leg of anyone but a Krai. There couldn’t be another attack like yesterday’s. But that wasn’t what he meant. “No, sir.”

  “They could have overwhelmed us then, but they didn’t. Why?”

  They turned together toward the ruin, and when he met her eyes a moment later, Torin knew they were thinking the same thing.

  “Survival at what cost?” Jarret murmured.

  She had no answer. She wouldn’t be the one giving the order.

  He looked away first. “Come on, we’ll talk to the Dornagain.”

  * * *

  “No.”

  “But, Ambassador, yesterday...”

  “Yesterday was a terrible and unique situation, Lieutenant. Terrible and unique.”

  “And that same situation is likely to be repeated today.”

  The Dornagain ambassador cocked his head, a gentle breeze ruffling the fringe of fur along the curve of each ear. “I hear nothing from the Silsviss.”

  “Yet,” Torin told him, shortly.

  “Ah. Yes. Yet. And if they come, you would like the Dornagain to join your Marines in defense, Staff Sergeant?”

  “In answer, Ambassador, I ask you what you once asked me, do you not think it would be better if you learned to fight your own battles?”

  He sighed. “And I must answer what you answered me; it is a little late for that.”

  “So you won’t help?”

  He raised a hand and she noticed that the pad under the broken claw was red and inflamed. “Not won’t. I’m afraid, can’t.” When he saw where her scowl was directed, he used the hand to brush his whiskers back. “No, not because of so minor an injury; we would literally not be able. Strength of Arm reacted without thought, impulsively if you would, and that is not a reaction we can replicate on command. As a species, we weigh everything we do, considering all possibilities. If we were to weigh our own death against the taking of another sentient life, I’m afraid we would die.”