[Confederation 04] Valor's Trial

by Huff, Tanya

  He didn’t quite believe her.

  “If I’d died,” she said, reaching out and gently grasping his shoulder, “I’d have been honored to have you eat me.”

  Kyster made a noise somewhere between a whimper and a wail and, shaking like a leaf in a high wind, began to slide off his rock.

  Torin caught him before he hit the ground, held him while he sobbed, and murmured what Krai words of comfort she knew. He was very young, and he’d been through one hell of a lot, and they needed to get this breakdown out of the way so that she could get on with kicking Colonel Harnett’s ass—currently holding top position on her to do list.

  Kick Harnett’s ass.

  Escape.

  Let the relevant parties know that the Others fukking well did take prisoners.

  It wasn’t a long list.

  Kyster was too worn out to be embarrassed when he managed to hiccup his way to quiet, and Torin would have loved to have given him time to recover, but they’d barely touched on the information she needed.

  “Let’s go back a bit,” she said as he rubbed his nose ridges up and down either side of his bent knee. “Who’s running this place?”

  He looked up at that. “Harnett.”

  “No, who’s running the prison? If we’re prisoners,” she continued when he frowned, “then this is a prison and someone has to be running it.”

  “Stuff comes down the pipe.”

  No point in asking who put the stuff into the pipe; the poor kid had been stuck out away from things trying to survive. He wouldn’t know if all twenty-eight species of Others showed up every afternoon at 1730 and led an hour’s PT.

  “All right, then. How did you get here?”

  The story emerged in bits and pieces. Sometimes he had to be gently prodded to speak out loud. In the end, what he knew was that he’d been pinned down with his platoon on Sa’tall Three, defending a mining station from a snatch and grab by the Others—“Sometimes want raw materials, you know?” His squad had taken a hit from one of their fliers, and a chunk of the big mine bore they’d been sheltering behind had come down on his foot. He thought he’d maybe passed out for a minute. Next thing he knew, he’d woken up in one of the little caves just the way Torin had, although he’d been a lot closer to the pipe, so one of the colonel’s hunting parties had found him almost immediately. “We’re way far out here. Almost to the end. Safer. Hunting parties don’t come this far.”

  “Glad to hear that. Tell me about them.”

  There wasn’t much to tell she hadn’t already assumed. A goon squad was a goon squad no matter what it was called. They “hunted” the Marines that landed in the little caves. Stripped them of whatever gear they’d kept before they’d recovered enough to defend themselves. The injured were left to die or helped on the way. The healthy were taken to the pipe and assimilated into Harnett’s fiefdom.

  Years of practice kept her feelings from her voice. Kyster didn’t need to deal with that on top of everything else. When she saw him staring at her hands, she managed to uncurl both fists. “And the pipe, what’s that?”

  The pipe was an actual pipe in the middle of the big open area where a number of the tunnels met. The food chute was there, and water, sometimes even hot water. The colonel and his staff lived right up beside it.

  Control the food, control the population.

  Kyster had no idea how many people Harnett controlled, but he knew there were at least four hunting parties of three Marines each. “No Krai.” He was proud of that.

  Torin didn’t explain that the Krai were good fighters and good Marinesbut, at a meter high, not exactly physically imposing. “He keeps at least some of people he trusts around him at all times, doesn’t he?”

  “His staff.”

  “A goon’s a goon, Private. Is the colonel’s . . . group, the only group down here?”

  He was pretty sure there were others; the tunnels extended for kilometers in every direction—Kyster had no idea how far—and once he’d watched a hunting party returning after having clearly been in some kind of a fight. If they’d found something that could beat them, he wasn’t going anywhere near it. Besides, it was safest to avoid the places the hunting parties went.

  “Never come out here. Never been a Marine dropped out here since I came.”

  “Then why are you out this far?”

  “Water.”

  The moment he said it, the inside of her throat felt as though it had been lightly sanded.

  She stood, stiffly, and stretched, bracing her hands against the rough rock of the ceiling. “Lead on, Private. The day I’ve had, I could do with a drink.”

  He turned to the right once out of what she’d come to think of as her cave. Just before the rockfall, he turned right again and slipped through what had probably once been the entrance to another small cave. The spill of rock had turned it into a dark, rough-edge wedge in the tunnel wall.

  Brows up, Torin took a mental measurement, turned sideways and slid her right arm through. She was in shoulder-deep before her reaching fingers felt the other side. The spread-eagled crouch required to distribute height and bulk wasn’t going to be fun, but she could do it.

  Breasts and buttocks compress, but skulls don’t, and she was bleeding from a scrape along her right cheek before she popped out into a space that from the sound—and the closeness of Private Kyster—was about a quarter the size of the one she’d originally appeared in. With the spill of light from the tunnel cut off, it was too dark for even di’Taykan eyesight.

  “Don’t stand.” Kyster’s fingers closed around her arm as she began to straighten. “Low ceiling, Gunny.”

  She went to one knee instead.

  “Water’s . . .”

  She could almost hear him thinking in the pause. Trying to dredge up words he hadn’t used in all the long days he’d been alone.

  “Water’s forty-five degrees to your zero,” he continued, swallowed, and added, “about a meter five away. Dribbles from a crack in the wall. Pools at the floor.”

  Torin shuffled forward cautiously. Her outstretched fingers touched moisture. The actual dribble was a little to the right. She followed it down to a shallow pool that seemed no bigger than her two cupped hands. “There’s not much here.”

  “It’s steady. Been here lots of times and always water there.” The water was his, and he was proud of it. “You can drink.”

  She’d feel a little better if she could have put it in her canteen first—any parasite or bacteria that survived the protections the Corps built into their canteens deserved a chance at the inside of a Marine— but her canteen had disappeared along with ninety percent of the rest of her gear. One hand braced against the wall, she lowered her head toward the ground, pursed her lips, and touched them to the water.

  It was lukewarm.

  And tasted slightly metallic.

  Odds were high it was a cracked pipe rather than a natural spring.

  The tunnels clearly continued on beyond the rockfall. Torin wondered if the Corps did.

  Kyster was right; it didn’t take long for the puddle—pool, she decided, was too grand a description—to refill. She emptied it three times and then moved back out of the way.

  “How far to Colonel Harnett’s pipe,” she asked as Kyster drank.

  His swallow sounded unnaturally loud. “Day.”

  “And this is the closest water?”

  “Only other water, Gunny. This. His at the pipe.”

  She settled with her back against a relatively smooth rock. “How did you find it?”

  “Running from hunting party . . .”

  Running and hiding, Torin filled into the pause. She could hear the detail in the way his voice had quavered slightly, in the sound of his hands rubbing together in the dark. Terrified and alone, you panicked and ran until you couldn’t run any farther. In this case, the tunnels ended before your strength and, still panicked, you threw yourself into a hole in the rock to hide.

  “I saw the cave,” he went on after
a moment. “Knew they couldn’t follow me—too big.”

  Of course they were. Harnett had recruited for an ability to intimidate.

  If we band together, we’ll make sure we get our fair share.

  If we control the access to the food, we control the tunnels.

  Make an example of anyone who stands against us.

  If you want food and water, you have to do what we say.

  What I say . . .

  Torin could understand how it had happened, the strong banding together to rule the weak. The strongest, the most ruthless rising to rule. That it had happened within the Corps, however . . .

  Hidden in the dark, her hands curled back into fists.

  “Time is against us,” she said calmly. “We have water but no food. Recon would mean nearly two days without food, and I need to be at full strength when I confront that bastard. I’d rather have a little more information before going in, but we’re going to have to play this by ear.”

  She heard Kyster turn, then felt him grab handfuls of her uniform. “You can’t go there. You can’t! They’ll take you, and they’ll . . . they’ll . . .”

  “They won’t,” she told him, cutting off the rising panic.

  After a moment, he released her, slowly, and she knew that because she believed it completely, he’d started to.

  “He kills you if you try to stop him,” he said so quietly she could hear the trickle of water behind his voice. “Killed everyone who tried.”

  “He won’t kill me.” Privates did not question that tone. The whole purpose of the tone was to keep the junior ranks from questioning.

  The sound of his breathing changed as his nose ridges flared. “Promise?”

  Promise you won’t leave me.

  “I promise.” Reaching out, she wrapped a hand around his ankle— he’d moved as far from her as the cave allowed—and gentled her voice. “We’ll sleep here tonight and start for the pipe at your best speed first thing tomorrow.”

  “Me? With you?”

  “Yes.”

  Wiry muscle tensed in her grip. “He threw me away.”

  “His mistake. Now, he pays for it.”

  If Harnett killed her on sight, he won, but Torin was willing to play the odds that power had made him cocky. It was a good thing Kyster couldn’t see her smile. He was Krai and he’d know a show of teeth for what it was.

  THREE

  THE TUNNEL COMPLEX SEEMED TO have been laid out completely randomly. The pattern of turns and cross tunnels leading toward the pipe made no logical sense and more than explained Kyster’s difficulty in sketching her a map, rock against rock, on the tunnel floor.

  It was alien.

  Random, therefore, was no real surprise. One species’ random was another species’ logical progression.

  Any contact the Confederation had managed to have with the Others over the long years of the war had resulted in either dead diplomats or combat situations. Neither allowed for the kind of familiarity that would give Torin any insight into how they built prisons. Particularly since, until yesterday, she’d believed they didn’t take prisoners.

  That belief was either a lie by politicians who didn’t want to commit the resources necessary to retrieve said prisoners—for varying values of retrieve—or the Others were a lot slicker than anyone in either branch of the military had ever given them credit for. Following Kyster through the tunnels toward the pipe, Torin decided that the second option was the better choice. She had no emotional investment in the enemy being smarter than anticipated, but believing her own government had thoroughly screwed over their military would make her so furious she wouldn’t be able to think straight, and dealing with Colonel Harnett would require a clear head.

  If things went well, she’d have a go at cursing the government later.

  Kyster paused at the next corner, and Torin dropped to one knee, putting her head by his—a necessary move given the height difference. “Hunting parties come out this far,” he whispered pointing across the t-junction.

  Recon glyphs. Torin’s lip curled. The last hunting party had passed this point two days before. Nothing found.

  “They don’t go careful,” Kyster continued, looking up and locking his gaze on hers, trying to convince her of the importance of his words. “You hear them, you get into the closest cave and climb up. Be out of sight.”

  The small caves had been dug out of the tunnel walls at random intervals—or the pattern was too large for her to recognize it. “Don’t they check all the caves for incomers?”

  “Yeah.” The edges of his mouth curled up. “But they never look up.” On a Krai, what looked like a happy smile added the stupid serley fukkers to the statement.

  Torin’s answering smile said much the same thing.

  She’d woken that morning just before he had. The cave remained dark, but something told her the lights were back on in the tunnels—a subliminal hum of power, perhaps. Although planetborn, she’d spent enough of her adult life on stations and ships that she found comfort in the background noise of things actually working—things like lights and air scrubbers. During the night, Kyster had moved close, tucking his hand up under the edge of her vest and hanging on, his grip desperate enough she couldn’t break it without waking him. Young as he was, he was still a Marine and being caught exhibiting that kind of need, no matter how justifiable given what he’d been through, would embarrass any of the three species in the Corps. So she waited, her own comfort the salvage tag clutched so tightly that the edges pressed into her palm on the edge of pain.

  Pain was good. It meant she was alive.

  Craig would have been told she was dead.

  Her family had always believed the Corps would kill her—but not Craig. In spite of what he’d said about everyone being easy to kill, he expected her to come back to him.

  He’d react the same way she’d react if she got the news he’d been killed on a salvage run. He wouldn’t believe. Couldn’t believe. Not at first. He’d demand answers from the Corps, and they’d give him the only one they had: The Others didn’t take prisoners. If there was no body, it was because there was no body. Both sides had weapons big enough to vaporize rock let alone flesh. They’d tell him she was dead again and again until eventually he believed it.

  She’d just have to get out before eventually happened.

  The tag cracked inside her fist and she eased off slightly as Kyster stirred, feigning sleep until he reassured himself she was still there and then for a few minutes more while he pulled himself together.

  They drank until their bellies sloshed with liquid, then set out for the pipe. Torin had paused a moment at the rockfall, strangely certain, with absolutely nothing but instinct to back that certainty up, that this was the way out. She’d lifted a rock a little larger than her fist off the pile and set it to one side, a promise to return after she’d dealt with Harnett and his shit, then she’d turned, nodded, and they’d started walking. Kyster had limited mobility in his bad foot—Krai feet were damned near hands—but by rolling his weight along the outside edge, he set an impressively quick pace.

  The unchanging light in the tunnels made it hard to judge time, but Torin doubted they were more than an hour away from the hunting party’s glyphs when the unmistakable sound of an argument stopped them two strides from one of the cross tunnels. Kyster scrambled into one of the small caves so quickly an impartial observer wouldn’t have believed he had a crippled foot. Torin lingered in the tunnel for a moment, sifting sound.

  Three of them. A di’Taykan and two Humans.

  Just around the corner. Just having crawled out of one of the small caves.

  “Fukking bleeders,” one of the Humans snarled. “Fukking hate them. Blood all over his fukking gear.”

  “And if we’d been ten minutes later,” the second Human snorted, “he’d have been fukking dead already, and I wouldn’t have gotten sprayed when I took off his vest.”

  “Looks good on you!”

  “Ass!”


  “Bastard!”

  The muffled thud of a fist against muscle. “Don’t fukking talk about my parents like that, you fukker.”

  Boots rang against stone as they headed for the corner.

  Kyster was right; they didn’t go careful.

  Torin slipped into the cave, bending nearly double to fit through the entrance, and calmed Kyster’s panicked grab for her arm with a touch. After everything he’d been through, he had the right to be twitchy for a little while longer. When the voices made it clear the hunting party was nearly right outside, the two of them climbed up into the rough arch of the ceiling. Even with only three working appendages, there were plenty of edges for Kyster to hold and Torin’s height made bracing herself nearly effortless.

  A silhouette halved the spill of light and a tousled head poked in through the low opening. Both Marines froze, breathing shallowly through their teeth. Di’Taykan hair was fully capable of feeling a change in the small cave’s air currents. After a long moment, which probably lasted no more than five or six seconds in real time, the head withdrew.

  “Nothing.”

  “Could be worse,” one of the Human’s answered as they moved away. “Could be another fukking bleeder.”

  They were making more than enough noise to cover Torin and Kyster returning to the ground. Making more than enough noise riffing about how they’d left a Marine to die.

  Torin indicated that Kyster should remain where he was. His eyes wide, his nose ridges open as far as possible, he covered his teeth and took a step away from her, his reaction to her expression better than a mirror.

  The hunting party had their backs to her as she slipped out of the cave and headed for the cross tunnel, moving quickly rather than silently, counting on their overconfidence to cover any sound she might make as she followed the bloody bootprints back to where they’d left the Marine.

  The prints overlapped at the entrance to the cave, devolving to a sticky smear of red brown.