Valor's Choice

by Tanya Huff

  “A full platoon makes quite an honor guard, sir.”

  “It’s essential we make a strong impression, Sergeant.” For less than an instant, an honest emotion showed in the general’s eyes, but before Torin could identify it, he added, “Besides, it’ll give you a chance to break in your new second lieutenant.”

  “My new…” Unable to think of anything to say to the general that wouldn’t get her court-martialed, she turned to Captain Rose. “Sir?”

  “He arrived yesterday afternoon. I asked him to meet us here at 0900. The general thought you should receive your orders first and then he could give the lieutenant the overview.”

  Officers handled the big picture, NCOs handled the minutia. Part of a staff sergeant’s minutia was handling new officers in charge of their first platoon. This would be Torin’s third, staff sergeants having a slightly longer life expectancy than second lieutenants.

  The captain’s door announced an arrival just as her implant proclaimed 0900.

  “Open.”

  The door slid back into the wall and a di’Taykan wearing the uniform of a second lieutenant, Confederation Marine Corps, walked into the office, pheromone masker prominently displayed at his throat. It could have been any di’Taykan; Torin was no better than most Humans at telling them apart. Male and female, they were all tall, slender, and pointy and, even when heavily armed, moved like they were dancing. Their hair, which wasn’t really hair but a protein based sensor array, grew a uniform three inches long so they all looked as if they went to the same barber, and with their somewhat eclectic taste in clothing removed by the Corps…

  It could have been any di’Taykan, but it wasn’t.

  The lilac eyes, exactly one shade darker than his hair, widened slightly when he saw her and slightly more when he spotted the general. “Second Lieutenant di’Ka Jarret reporting as ordered, Captain.”

  “Welcome to Sh’quo Company, Lieutenant. General Morris will begin your briefing in a moment, but in the meantime, I’d like you to meet Staff Sergeant Kerr. She’ll be your senior NCO.”

  The corners of the wide mouth curled slightly. “Staff.”

  “Sir.” There were a number of things Torin figured she should be thinking about now, but all that came to mind was, so that explains why he folded his clothes so neatly, which wasn’t even remotely relevant. She only hoped she’d managed to control her expression by the time Captain Rose turned his too-perceptive attention her way.

  “Sergeant, if you could start forming that platoon…see if you can do it without splitting up any fireteams. The three of us…”

  She had to admire how that us definitively excluded the general.

  “…will go over what you’ve got this afternoon.”

  “Yes, sir.” Turning toward General Morris, she stiffened not quite to attention. “Begging the general’s pardon, but if I’m to cancel liberties, I need to know exactly how soon ASAP is.”

  “Forty-eight hours.”

  She should’ve known—a desk jockey’s version of as soon as possible, or in other words, no real rush. “Thank you, sir.” Retrieving her slate from the captain’s desk, she nodded at all three officers, turned on her heel, and left the room.

  The general’s hearty voice followed her out into the corridor.

  “Lieutenant, I’ve got a proposal I think you’ll…”

  Then she stepped beyond the proximity grid and the door slid shut.

  “Figures,” Torin sighed. “Officers get a proposal and the rest of us just get screwed.”

  Technically, she could’ve worked at the First’s desk in the small office right next to the captain’s. All Chigma’s personal files had been deleted, every trace of his occupancy removed—it was just a desk. Smarter than any other she’d have access to, but still, just a desk. Which was why she didn’t want to use it. Sometimes it was just too depressing to contemplate how quickly the Corps moved on.

  The verticals were crowded at this hour of the morning, so she grabbed the first available loop for the descent down to C deck, exchanging a disgusted look with a Navy Warrant one loop over; both of them in full agreement that their careful progress represented an irritating waste of time. By the time she finally swung out onto the deck, Torin was ready to kill the idiot in station programming who’d decided to inflict insipid music on trapped personnel.

  “’Morning, Staff.”

  The cheerful greeting brought her up short, and she turned toward the Marine kneeling by the edges of the lock with a degrimer, turquoise hair flattened by the vibrations. The grooves could have been scrubbed automatically, but on a station designed to house thousands of Marines, manual labor became a useful discipline. “Maintenance duties again, Haysole?”

  The di’Taykan grinned. “I was only cutting across the core. I figured I’d be there and back before anyone noticed I wasn’t wearing my masker.”

  “You crossed the core on a Fivesday evening unmasked—and you’re only on maintenance?”

  “I kept moving, it wasn’t too bad.” Turquoise eyes sparkled. “Unfortunately, Sergeant Glicksohn was also crossing the core. Uh, Staff…” He paused while a pair of Human engineers came through the lock, waiting until they’d moved beyond their ability to overhear. “…I heard you were seeing stars in the captain’s office.”

  Torin folded her arms around her slate. Many di’Taykan worked in Intelligence—most species had to make a conscious effort not to confide in them. She had no idea how need-to-know General Morris had intended to keep the status of his visit, but it was irrelevant now. “What else have you heard, Haysole?”

  He grinned, taking her lack of denial for confirmation. “I’ve heard that the general’s looking for a chance to be, oh, let’s say, more than he is.”

  “A promotion?”

  “No one used that exact word, but…” His voice trailed off suggestively.

  Torin ignored the suggestion. “That’s it?”

  “About the general. But I’ve also heard that the new trilinshy is a di’Ka.”

  She frowned, and his grin disappeared as he realized she’d translated trilinshy to something approximating its distinctly uncomplimentary meaning.

  “That is,” he corrected hastily, “the new second lieutenant is a di’Ka, Staff Sergeant. High family. Not going to be easy to work with.”

  “For me or for you?” Private First Class Haysole was a di’Stenjic. Five more letters in a Taykan family name made for a considerable difference in class.

  “You know me, Staff…” His gesture suggested she could know him better any time it was convenient. “…I try to get along with everybody.”

  “Staff Sergeant Kerr?”

  Torin started, suddenly aware she’d been staring at nothing for a few moments too long, the implications of shepherding an aristocratic second lieutenant and a combat platoon through a planetfall where no one got to shoot anything suddenly sinking in. And just in case that doesn’t seem like enough fun, let’s not forget you slept with said lieutenant. The one bright light in her morning was that that particular little tidbit hadn’t been picked up by the gossip net. “You missed a spot,” she said, pointing, and left him to it.

  * * *

  The desire for stimulants following hard on the heels of sentience, coffee had been one of Earth’s prime agricultural exports to the Confederation almost from the moment of contact. Most days, Torin appreciated the history of being able to drink exactly the same beverage that her several times great grandmother had back in the dark ages, but today she’d give her right arm for a cup of Krai sah and its highly illegal effect on the Human nervous system.

  “Staff? I got that download you wanted on the Silsviss.”

  Resisting the urge to yawn, she leaned into the video pickup. “Thank you, Corporal. Send it to the desk.”

  “Sending,” the tiny image of the Admin corporal acknowledged, and disappeared.

  There wasn’t much.

  In an effort to secure a section of the front, the Confederation planned to
lay a new pattern of defense satellites with the optimum pattern placing one satellite directly in the center of 7RG6 or what was now to be called the Silsviss System. Unfortunately, the Silsviss, a warm-blooded reptilian race, had developed a limited intrasystem space travel. Both their moon and the nearest neighboring planet had been reached and they were in the process of building an orbiting space station—although Torin wondered how they’d found room for it given the number of weapons platforms already in orbit. Their technology, while crude by Confederation standards, was more than sufficient to destroy anything put into place without their cooperation—making it essential to get their cooperation.

  “Thus the suck-up mission,” Torin muttered, refilling her mug from the dispenser in the desk. She didn’t know what General Morris had been drinking but spit and polish was not a high priority for a combat unit. If Haysole’s sources were right—which they usually were—and the general intended this mission to push him toward promotion, the man was a bigger idiot than she’d first thought.

  Unfortunately, he was a two star idiot.

  Not counting Lieutenant Jarret and herself, she needed to find thirty-nine Marines—nine four-person fireteams and three sergeants—who had not only been cleared by Med-op for planetfall but who wouldn’t inadvertently turn a diplomatic mission into a bloodbath. Even had Sh’quo Company’s three infantry platoons been at full strength, choosing nine from the twenty-seven fireteams wouldn’t have been easy. Choosing from among the seventeen teams Med-op had cleared was a nearly impossible task.

  It was a choice that didn’t involve the kind of parameters a computer could handle.

  First Sergeant Chigma would’ve called his three Staff Sergeants together. To pick our brains, Torin thought darkly. It wasn’t a phrase she could say aloud, given the Krai’s unfortunate taste for Human tissue. Unfortunately, with her acting as First that left only two platoon NCOs and Med-op had Greg Reghubir tanked for the foreseeable future. Down to one. After a moment’s thought, she keyed Sergeant Sagarha’s implant code into the desk. He’d taken over what was left of Reghubir’s platoon. While it was likely he only knew the fireteams in his own squad, he was still the best source she had. Then she leaned around the edge of the dividing wall and into the next Staff cubicle.

  “When you’ve got a moment, Amanda, I need you at my desk.”

  * * *

  “You’re running heavy on Humans here; there’s got to be another di’Taykan or two available somewhere.” Amanda tapped a fingertip against her screen until it protested. “What about Haysole?”

  “I’m a little concerned about the class difference with our new lieutenant.”

  Sh’quo Company’s other surviving staff sergeant raised an auburn brow. “You’d rather they worked it out in combat?”

  “I’d rather they didn’t work it out in front of a dozen diplomats and a species we’re trying to impress.” Leaning back in her chair, Torin turned toward the other person at the desk. “What do you think, Sagarha?”

  Sergeant di’Garn Sagarha frowned thoughtfully. “Might be trouble if di’Ka wasn’t an officer. Since he is, that shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll tell you what I would be concerned about, though: Haysole’s a fuk-up. He’s fine in combat, but the moment no one’s shooting at him, he gets bored, and the next thing you know, he’s got three days’ latrine duty.”

  “Nothing wrong with clean toilets,” Amanda pointed out.

  “Is there anyone else?”

  The three of them rechecked the lists.

  “Not in a complete fireteam, no.”

  “Then I guess Haysole’s going.” Torin moved the di’Taykan’s fireteam over to the platoon file. “If he gets too bored, I’ll shoot at him myself.”

  “You’re a little low on Krai.”

  “Only four of the six are available, and I’m taking one of them,” she pointed out.

  “Why not take Ressk?”

  “I’d love to. It’d be nice to have a few more brains along on this trip.” One of Sergeant Sagarha’s squad, Ressk had been known to make secure military programming sit up and beg. Intelligence wanted him, but fortunately for the company, he didn’t want Intelligence.

  “You take Ressk, you also get Binti Mashona. I’ve recommended her for sniper school twice, but we keep shipping out before Admin clears the file.”

  “Like I said, I’d love to, but isn’t their team leader still out?”

  Sagarha checked his slate. “My Med-op download has Corporal Hollice cleared for duty in thirty-six hours.”

  “I wonder why mine doesn’t,” Torin muttered, tracing a path through the icons. “Some idiot probably sent it to the First’s desk.”

  “Some idiot probably thought that’s where you’d be,” Amanda pointed out, adding, “I thought Hollice lost a thumb?”

  “He did, but Ressk dropped it in a cold box, and the corpsmen had it reattached before we got back to the station.”

  “Bet Ressk was pissed at losing his snack,” she snickered.

  “Marines do not eat other Marines,” Torin muttered absently. The eight teams they’d managed to come up with had used up all the “A” list and taken a few off the “B.” Pickings were getting slim. Finally, she sighed. “I don’t see any way around it. We’re going to have to use Corporal Conn’s team.”

  “No.” Amanda shook her head. “I promised him some time to see his daughter. He’s got leave coming.”

  “Point one, General Morris canceled all leaves. Point two, he’s all we’ve got left. It can’t be Algress, not with a reptilian life-form on the planet—not after Rarna IV.”

  “I thought Psych took care of that.”

  After a pregnant pause, the three NCOs snorted simultaneously.

  “It’ll have to be Conn,” Torin repeated.

  “But his daughter…”

  With life expectancy at around a hundred and twenty old Earth years, most Human Marines put off having kids until they were either out of the Corps or had decided to make it a career. Corporal Grad Conn had fallen in love, applied for married quarters on station, and started a family. His daughter Myrna Troi had become Sh’quo Company’s unofficial mascot and everyone took a turn at spoiling her. Even Torin, who usually found kids about as inexplicable as the H’san, thought she was pretty cute. And it was hard not to admire a four-year-old who could disassemble a hygiene unit into so many pieces it took three engineers most of a duty shift to put it back together.

  “Extend his liberty until we assemble for boarding.”

  “On whose authority?”

  “Mine.”

  Voice conspiratorially lowered, Amanda leaned toward the di’Taykan. “She’s even beginning to sound like a First Sergeant.”

  “Very dominant,” Sagarha agreed, smiling broadly.

  “Very in charge of your butts,” Torin reminded them.

  “Crap.” Amanda straightened, a sudden realization drawing her brows in over the bridge of her nose. “This means I’m going to be acting First while you’re gone. If I find out you’ve volunteered for this mission to get out of processing those new recruits…”

  “Shall I tell the captain you’re volunteering to go in my place?”

  “Not fukking likely.”

  “What about sergeants?” Sagarha wondered.

  “Are you volunteering?”

  He grinned. “Not fukking likely.”

  “I’d like to take Doctorow; he’s a pain in the ass, but he’s a socially apt pain in the ass and that could come in handy. Unfortunately, Med-op won’t release him until Psych has a chance to go in and do some dirty work.”

  “You should tell them he’s always like that.”

  “I did. They didn’t listen. That said, I want Glicksohn, Chou, and Trey.”

  “Two humans and a di’Taykan?”

  “The lieutenant’s di’Taykan. We’ll balance.”

  The three of them stared down at the final list of thirty-nine names. “You think the captain’ll rubber stamp this?” Amanda asked.


  “He’d better.”

  “Something I’ve always wondered…what’s a rubber stamp?”

  Torin shrugged, uploading the list into her slate. “Damned if I know.”

  * * *

  A short visit to the armory turned into over an hour of listening to complaints. I should’ve bailed when I heard “Hey, Kerr, aren’t you acting First?” I can’t believe Chig put up with that.

  Running late, Torin grabbed lunch at a species-neutral cantina in the core. Her day thus far called out for a big dish of poutine and a beer; unfortunately duty called out louder and she settled for a bowl of noodles garnished not very liberally with an indeterminate mix of greens and meat. There are times, she thought, deciding it might be best if the meat remained unidentified, when I almost wish I’d stayed on the farm.

  “Can I join you?”

  Then there were those times when there was no almost about it. “It’s a public cantina, sir.”

  Pulling up a stool, Lieutenant Jarret rested his elbows on the table and smiled. “And if it wasn’t?”

  “Fraternization between the ranks is discouraged for a good reason, Lieutenant—di’Taykan with di’Taykan excepted, of course. It undermines the structure of command and it can lead to distorted judgment in life-and-death situations.”

  “Are you telling me last night—you and I—never happened?”

  “No, sir, I’m telling you it won’t happen again.” She stared into her noodles. “Although it would certainly help my position with, oh, just about everyone, if we both pretend it never happened.”

  “Why?”

  “Because every time I look at you I’m going to think of…” Lilac eyes glittered, and she smiled in spite of herself. “Yeah, all right, it’s a pleasant memory, but…”

  “…you can’t have every Human in the platoon thinking about it every time you pass on one of my orders.” He returned the smile. “I understand the species parameters, Staff Sergeant Kerr, as regrettable as I may find them, which is what I actually sat down to tell you.”