The Better Part of Valor (35 page)

Ressk’s voice rose out of memory.
“You know there isn’t a sys-op I can’t get into. I could be useful on this kind of a mission.”

Except he’d be trapped on Big Yellow with the rest of the team.

*
Staff Sergeant Kerr?
*

“Sorry, sir. I was trying to think of a way to get Ryder’s eye to you.”

*
Yes. Well. How’s Captain Travik?
*

The urge to ask “Who the fuk cares?” was intense. “He’s alive, sir.”

*
Good. We’ll let you know if anything changes at this end. Don’t worry, Staff Sergeant, I have complete faith in your ability to maintain discipline under these trying circumstances.
*

“Yes, sir.” Torin tongued off her implant and lifted an eyebrow in Ryder’s direction. “And they say I’m paranoid.” No point in mentioning that his paranoia had just got them killed; he knew it. She could see the realization on his face. “It’s not your fault; you couldn’t have anticipated this when you locked up.”

He shrugged and a corner of his mouth curled up in a self-mocking smile. “I just don’t like people touching my stuff.”

“Who does?”

“Staff, we got bugs!”

“On my way.” She hurried down the passage to the rhythm
of weapons’ fire, wondering why the perimeter pins they’d left at the corner hadn’t given them more warning. “Frii.”

He glanced up as she passed.

“What the hell are you singing?”

“It’s di’Taykan electro pop, Staff.”

“Well, pop it back where you found it.”

He grinned. “It sounds better with the music.”

“Let’s hope.” She dropped behind the left barricade with Harrop. “Hold your fire until you’re sure you can hit them,” she ordered, loud enough to be heard by Dursinski as well. “We’re going to need more than bad language to stop them when they make their try for the air lock.”

“So far they’re just keeping our heads down,” Harrop told her, checking the charge on his benny. “Letting us know they’re there.”

“How many?”

“Hard to say but two definitely; one shooting high, one low.”

“They took out the perimeter pin,” Dursinski added. “We had no warning.”

“They did or the ship did. It doesn’t much matter.” A sudden vision of a perimeter pin sinking into a previously solid deck flashed through Torin’s head. Lifting her hand, she rocked forward onto the balls of her feet, wishing she could lift those as well.

“How long are we going to have to hold them, Staff?”

“Good question.” Harrop shot her a questioning look and Torin switched to the group channel. “Listen up, people: Big Yellow has decided to prevent the
Berganitan
from launching her last shuttle. Which means they’re going to have to come up with another way to get us off this thing. Which means we’ll be here a while yet.”

“Goddamned Navy.”

“I doubt they’re happy about it either, Dursinski. Huilin, Orla; you two get up here and double our strength on the barricades. The rest of you, stay sharp.”

“Staff, we got something going on back here, too.”

“What is it, Nivry?” The other corporal was standing by the sealed hatch to the tank room. “We got bugs cutting through?”

“I can’t tell.”

Neither could Torin when she laid her hand against the hatch and felt the faint vibration. “Could be some kind of sonic cutter, I suppose. All we can do right now is keep an eye on it.”

“Staff…”

“Captain Carveg told me she wasn’t leaving without us,” Torin said, answering the question Nivry didn’t ask. “She’ll find a way.”

“Why do you think Big Yellow let one evac shuttle launch but not the other?”

“Probably took it that long to figure out how to jam the controls.”

Or both ships only got one chance and they blew it.
But although that felt more likely, she wasn’t planning to say it out loud.

And who said they only got one chance?

“Mr. Ryder, leave the benny and come with me.”

She walked past, assuming that he’d follow, and the strength of that assumption pulled him to his feet.

*   *   *

“They’re escape pods,” Ryder said, studying the interior.

“Yes, they are. And you’re going to get in one, get to the
Berganitan
, get into your ship, then come back and get us.”

He straightened so quickly, he had to reach out and steady himself against the hatch. “You’re insane.”

Torin folded her arms. “What makes you think so?”

“What makes me think so?” When she made it clear she was waiting for an answer, he sighed. “Okay, to begin, there’s two stretchers, eleven standing Marines and three civilians—I have a one-man operation. You’ve seen the inside of my ship.” One hand slapped his chest. “
I
barely fit inside.”

“You’re right, I saw inside your ship and there’s plenty of room for the stretchers and the three civilians.”

Which wasn’t the problem and they both knew it, but they had a way to go before they needed to pick at psychological scabs.

“And the eleven standing Marines?”

“Grab enough HE suits from the
Berg
and we’ll ride in the salvage pens.”

Ryder stared at her for a moment. Then he spun on one
heel, walked six paces out, spun again, walked six back. “Okay, I was just talking before, but you really are insane.”

“It’s one hundred and eighteen kilometers; a little under half an hour’s travel time in an STS. From what I saw of the
Promise
, you should be able to do it in an hour. We’ll be fine.”

“No inertial dampers.”

Torin shrugged. The space between Big Yellow and the
Berganitan
buzzed with enemy fighters; inertia would be the least of their problems. “You’ve got straps, don’t you? To keep the salvage from crashing around? We’ll strap in.”

Six out, six back. He wiped his hands on his thighs. “All right, given that we’ve established your lack of sanity, what makes you think Big Yellow will allow me to launch? I could easily be locked down, just like the shuttle.”

“Won’t happen.”

“What makes you so fukking sure? And, God help me, Torin, if you say it’s your job to be sure, I won’t be responsible for my actions.”

“You won’t be locked down because Big Yellow was in your head.” She kept talking as he walked away, and back, and away. “Based on that visit, the intelligence behind this ship wouldn’t assume for an instant that you’d do something like this. Even after you launch, it would never believe that you’d willingly share your cabin with five people. You could hook up to the air lock and open the doors and it would know that at the last minute, as the first tiny Katrien foot stepped into your space, you’d freak and run away.”

And back. “How the hell do you know that?”

“That you’d freak and run away?”

He opened his mouth. Closed it. Finally said, “No. How do you know what Big Yellow believes?”

A partial smile. “Because that’s what I’d believe if I’d gone into your head.”

“But you don’t believe it, or you wouldn’t be suggesting I ride to the rescue.” Six paces away, seven back. A step into her personal space. Not threatening, although Torin suspected that was how he’d intended it. “So what makes you think that I wouldn’t have done it then but I’ll do it now? I’m a civilian, remember. You can’t order me into that padded coffin. You think I’ll do it for you? Just because you’re asking me to?”

“No.” She locked her gaze on his and held it. He was
standing so close she could feel his breath on her face. “Because I expect you to.”

One corner of his mouth curved up in a mocking smile. “And you find people live up to your expectations?”

“Yes.”

She meant it. It wasn’t bullshit, it wasn’t bravado. Ryder found himself searching her face for any doubt, for the tiniest indication that she didn’t think he could pull this off.

All he saw was a frightening certainty. A complete faith. In him.

And he saw that she believed that would be enough.

“You know, you really have a fukking huge ego.” Seven paces away, six back. “I mean, you expect me to change a basic, intrinsic part of who I am…” Six away, six back. “…of who I’ve been for years—based on the strength of your personality alone and the vague possibility that when all this is over…”

Protests trailed off as one of Torin’s eyebrows slowly rose.

“Fine.” He threw up his hands in surrender and turned to the nearest escape pod, ignoring the voice of reason that kept asking what the hell he thought he was doing. “Do you know how to operate these things?”

“Actually,” she admitted, and he found himself wishing she’d smile like that more often, “I haven’t the faintest goddamned idea.”

*   *   *

Opening the pods turned out to be relatively simple.

“Fortunately,” Heer muttered, peering at the pressure pad running across the bottom of the control panel, “it defeats the purpose of escape pods if they’re too complicated to get into.”

“And to operate?” Ryder demanded.

“Usually you don’t operate them. You just pop out and drift until someone rescues you, or you lock onto the nearest planet you can exist on.”

“You mean live on.”

“Nope.” Heer punched a sequence into the pod’s control panel and didn’t elaborate.

Torin figured it was time she stepped in. “You’ll be picked up by one of the Jades and taken to the
Berganitan;
no drifting, no rescues, no planets.”

He shook his head, although what precisely he was denying
remained unclear. “We don’t even know if I can breathe in there.”

“We’ll know that as soon as Heer gets the hatch open. If you can’t, you’ll wear Huilin’s HE suit.”

“It’d never fit.”

“Or you can hold your breath until they pick you up. Your choice.” There’d be further argument; Torin could see it in Ryder’s eyes, but Heer postponed it.

“Got it.” Stepping aside, Heer pushed his thumb against the same place on the contact pad three times. With a wet, sucking noise, the walls around the hatch folded in. “Okay. Maybe not.”

“Maybe not,” Ryder repeated to Torin. “You hear that?”

“He’ll figure it out. Won’t you, Heer?”

“It’s
chrick.”
He flashed Ryder a broad smile. “Trust me.”

“Nice try, but I know what it means when you guys show teeth.”

The wall had closed entirely over the hatch. A faint shudder vibrated through boot soles, and Torin thought she heard a distant pop.

*   *   *

“Command, this is
Black Seven
; there’s something being extruded from Big Yellow not far from the air lock.”

“
Extruded
, Black Seven?”

“Roger, Command. Extruded. Popped out like a big yellow zit.” Sibley corkscrewed the Jade to avoid an enemy fighter and swung around for a closer look. “There’s a section of hull suddenly rising up in a half circle a little less than two meters across at the point where it joins the…Shit! Shylih!”

“I see it.” She counterfired to take out a PGM almost locked on their tail.

“B7,
does this half circle of hull appear to be a weapon?
”

He rolled his eyes. “It appears to be a half circle. That’s it. Nothi…Hang on, it’s still coming.”

“B7,
we repeat, does it appear to be a weapon?
”

“Not unless they’re setting up for a game of zero gee dodgeball.”

“
Say again
, B7.”

When the round section of hull remained attached to the ship with only a thin umbilical cord, the yellow coating suddenly
slid off a gray sphere and remerged with the ship. Floating freely, the sphere moved slowly out into space.

“It could be a mine,” Shylin said thoughtfully. “I’m reading energy but no life signs.”

“I need better than a ‘could be,’ Shy.”

“Then get me closer.”

They were moving in when an enemy fighter swooped in off their Y-axis and hit the sphere with two energy bolts at close range, destroying it.

There wasn’t so much an explosion as a sudden brilliant absence of sphere.

“B7,
are you hit?
”

“That’s a negative, Command.” Blinking rapidly to clear his vision, tears running from eyes still seeing a full spectrum of spots, Sibley managed to match course with the enemy fighter although he had no idea how.

“Target locked.”

“Let’s blow up a bug for Boom Boom.”

This time, the force of the explosion threw the debris field into the belly of the alien ship.

*   *   *

The impact was gentler than the last one had been, but there were more of them. The constant patter, patter of heavy items hitting the ship’s hull almost sounded like rain.

Working on the second pod, Heer ignored it, but Ryder grabbed Torin’s uninjured arm. “They blew it up.”

“Sounds like.”

“This may come as a surprise to you, but I don’t want to die.”

“No one does.” She dropped her voice to match his. “But we all will unless we get off this ship. The bugs’ll kill us quickly, or thirst will do it slowly, but we
will
die. You’re our only chance.”

“But no pressure, right? Torin, we don’t even know who blew up the pod. It could have been the vacuum jockeys from the
Berganitan.
”

“Yeah, it could have been, but that means they saw it and know it came from near our position. General Morris will contact me to find out what I know about it, and I’ll make sure that our side, at least, doesn’t blow you up.”

“That’s not very comforting.”

Torin shrugged.

“This is where you tell me I don’t
have
to go.”

“Waste of breath; you had to go from the moment I made it clear you were our only hope. You have to go because you couldn’t live with yourself if you didn’t.”

He stared at her for a long moment. “You actually believe that, don’t you?”

Smiling, Torin shrugged.

One corner of his mouth twitched. Then the other. “You know,” he said conversationally, “you’re very good at your job.”

“And which part of that job would you be referring to?”

“Inspiring the troops to get their collective asses blown off.”

He was still holding her left arm just above the elbow and a deep breath would be enough to bring their bodies together.