The Better Part of Valor (36 page)

*
Staff Sergeant Kerr?
*

Torin jerked back, pulling her arm from Ryder’s grip, trying unsuccessfully not to feel like her father had just caught her making out on the couch. “Sir?” She mouthed,
General Morris
, at Ryder who seemed to be trying not to laugh. The bastard.

*
One of Captain Carveg’s pilots has reported a sphere extruded from the ship near your position.
*

Extruded? “Yes; sir. It’s an…General? General Morris? Sir?” The implant remained unresponsive.

*   *   *

“So the booster unit is gone?”

“Yes, Captain. Engulfed by the alien ship.”

“Engulfed?” When the communications officer nodded, the captain sighed and rubbed a hand across the back of her neck. That wasn’t good. “And we still don’t know what that sphere was or if we can expect more of them.”

“No, ma’am. We lost contact before the staff sergeant could pass on that information.”

“But it could have been a mine?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She stared down at the screen where Big Yellow blotted out twenty kilometers of stars and tiny red and white lights zipping back and forth represented the fighters from both
sides. “Mines are definitely just what we need floating around out there. Flight Commander?”

He shrugged, the movement worn down to almost nothing by the last few hours. “It might be smarter to blow them while they’re still attached to the ship.”

The captain sighed again. “It very well might.”

*   *   *

“But you don’t know
why
General Morris stopped transmitting.”

“No, I don’t.” Her arms folded, Torin watched Ryder pace. “Maybe the
Berganitan
blew up. Maybe the galaxy got sucked into the ass end of a black hole, and we’re all that’s left. I do know that if we sit here with our thumbs in our mouths we
will
die, and I will
not
allow that. You give me a retina on a stick, and I’ll get in the escape pod myself but otherwise…”

He stopped pacing in what had become a familiar position; face-to-face and too close for comfort. “I never said I wasn’t going.”

“Good.”

“I wouldn’t trust one of those ham-handed Navy pilots to fly the
Promise
anyway.”

“Okay, this time, I’ve got it.”

Torin turned gratefully toward her engineer. In another moment they were going to start smiling at each other again, and she honestly didn’t think she was up to it. The subtext was rapidly becoming a distraction. “Show me.”

Heer pushed his thumb against the contact pad three times.

“And how was that different from the last time?” she asked, one eyebrow rising as the pod’s hatch sighed open.

“This time, I pressurized it.” Arm stuck into the pod, he checked the readout on the sleeve. “Pod has the same atmosphere as the ship, which had the same atmosphere as the shuttle—a compromise mix for all species present. Which means,” he continued, removing his arm and turning to the CSO, “you won’t freeze or asphyxiate before they blow you up.”

“That’s a big help,” Ryder muttered.

“Hey, look at the bright side. If you’d been stuffed into a di’Taykan’s HE suit you’d be humping the first sailor you saw at the end of the trip. Not necessarily a bad thing but…”

“Heer.”

“Right.” The Krai engineer twisted around until his feet were on the deck, both hands holding the upper lip of the opening, and his body arced back, allowing him to examine the pod without putting any weight inside. “There appears to be a self-contained air supply and a scrubber, but other than that, there’re only two controls. Logically, the big button launches the pod, and the T-bar unlocks the hatch when you get where you’re going.”

“You’re assuming one fuk of a lot.”

“Not much choice.” Heer straightened. “He can go any time, Staff.”

Ryder looked from the pod to Torin. “You know, if you’d say, ‘Don’t go,’ then I could say something like, ‘A man has to do what a man has to do,’ and leave a hero.”

“Or there’s always that retina on a stick option.”

“I might have known she’d get all mushy on me,” he muttered to Heer as he folded himself through the hatch. “It’s not exactly roomy in here.”

“You won’t be in there long.”

When he reached for the hatch, Torin was already there. She wanted to say something as she closed it but couldn’t think of anything that wouldn’t sound trite—he knew he was their only chance to live, he knew he might die—but she watched him through the window as the walls around the hatch folded in. And stood there until she heard the distant popping sound of the pod being extruded from the ship.

“Staff, we’re getting a little more action from the bugs.”

“On my way.” Spinning around, she glared down at Heer. “What are you grinning about?”

“Not a thing, Staff Sergeant.”

All the way up the ladder, Torin listened for pieces of an escape pod impacting against the hull.

B
ouncing against the padded interior of the pod, Ryder looked for straps and couldn’t find any. He didn’t mind the bouncing; he worked in zero gee most of the time and, to save money, ran the artificial gravity generator in the
Promise
only enough to maintain muscle tone and bone mass. Considering he was floating out to an uncertain fate, as likely to be blown up by a vacuum jockey supposedly protecting his way of life as he was to reach the
Berganitan
and save the day, he had to admit he felt remarkably relaxed.

Probably because he was on his own.

Granted, Big Yellow was the size of most stations but deep down, he’d always known it was still a ship. He turned a slow somersault. He did better on his own. No big deal.

But the trip back…

“…as the first tiny Katrien foot stepped into your space, you’d freak and run away.”

The muscles across his shoulders knotted as tension returned.

Being blown up on the way to the
Berganitan
would almost be preferable.

Almost.

His fingers sank deep into the padding, and he felt something give.

“I think this definitely proves it,” he muttered, pulling his hand away from the five impressions he’d gouged into the wall. “Some guys’ll do anything to impress a girl.”

And some girls were pretty damned hard to impress.

*   *   *

Torin threw herself up the last few rungs of the ladder and out onto the upper deck. “Talk to me, Harrop!”

“The good news is, they haven’t thrown any ordnance. Either they’re afraid they’ll damage the lock, or they’re out. Bad news, they’re doing a lot more firing. I think they’re getting ready for a charge.”

“I agree. Heads up, people. Bugs incoming. The packs aren’t much of a barrier, but we can’t let them get by. Jynett, Frii, join the others at the barrier. Johnston, Werst, get the captain off his stretcher and add it to the barrier. Heer, help me with Tsui.”

The injured Marine was up on his elbows fumbling for his returned benny.

Torin took a quick look into his eyes. His irises were so dark a brown it was difficult to tell, but his pupils appeared to be at a normal dilation. “Neural blockers working?”

“I hope so; I can’t feel my whole fukkin’ leg.”

“Good.” She grabbed one end of the stretcher and motioned Heer to the other. “Let’s get him down by the tank room. He can guard the hatch.”

“It’s sealed!” Heer protested as they ran crouched over, trying to stay under stray energy bursts coming from the bugs.

“Now,” Torin amended. They slid to a stop by Nivry and set the stretcher down. “Sitting or lying, Tsui?”

“Sitting.”

She slipped her hands into his armpits. “Heer, get his legs. Mind the stump. Nivry, the stretcher. On three.”

A quick glanced showed Johnston and Werst were being a lot less careful with Captain Travik. Johnston hoisted the top end, Werst the bottom, and they both kicked the stretcher clear. The captain didn’t quite bounce as he hit the deck.

Torin sent Nivry forward with Tsui’s stretcher.

“You hear anything coming through, you let me know!” she told him as Heer propped his stump up and he checked the charge on his benny. “You see anything, you shoot it
and
you let me know!”

His teeth were a brilliant white arc, slightly chipped on the right side. “You worry too much, Staff.”

“Yeah, it’s what I do. Heer…” She grabbed the engineer by the arm and dragged him to the edge of the open hatch leading to the lower level. “You and Johnston are in charge of
the civilians.” Three quick strides took her across the corridor; half a dozen shorter ones brought her back with the Katrien who clung silently to each other. As much as she’d come to hate the sound of their voices, the silence was disconcerting. Johnston crossed behind her, one arm half guiding, half carrying
Harveer
Niirantapajee.

“The bugs break through, you get them down below and into an escape pod.”

“What if they come up from below?”

“If they could, they’d be there now, flanking us. No one charges a fixed position, even a piss poor one if they have an option. Once the pods are launched…”

“We’re back up here to help kick bug butts.”

Torin looked from the Human to the Krai and saw identical expressions. “Your choice,” she told them. “But don’t spend your lives stupidly or you’ll answer to me—if not in this life then the next.”

“Staff Sergeant Kerr, I are not…are not…” Presit stared down toward the barricade, now stronger by the stretchers but still a fragile bulwark.

“It’ll be okay.” Torin pulled the reporter’s attention back to her. “We do this for a living.”

“I are not wanting to die.”

“Well, I are not intending to.”

Presit bristled at Torin’s mocking tone and looked better than she had in hours.

Some people just prefer being annoyed.
And annoying civilians seemed to be a big part of her job. “Stay low,” Torin reminded the two Marines, as she turned. “The bugs seem fixated on this whole brain in the head thing and keep shooting high.”

As she reached the barricade, a flurry of shots slapped into the packs and sizzled overhead.

“Here they come!”

*   *   *

“Command, this is
B7.
We have another extrusion out of Big Yellow.”

“Roger
, B7.
Is this second extrusion identical to the first?”

“Shy?”

“Not exactly.” The lieutenant bent over her screens, cadmium hair flicking back and forth. “But until you stop flinging us around, I won’t be able to identify the difference.”

He dropped the Jade fifteen meters, forty-five degrees to the Y-axis. “When I stop flinging us around, we go boom.”

The yellow coating slid off the sphere and back into the ship.

“B7,
we repeat, is the second extrusion identical to the first?”

“That’s a good question, Command.” Straight up. Full port thrusters for six seconds. “And as soon as we know, we’ll let you know. Shy!”

“I’ve got her.”

The bug fighter went spinning out of control and as the other fighters concentrated on getting out of her way, Sibley brought his Jade in for a tight swoop around the sphere.

“I’m reading life signs inside!”

“You catch that, Command?”

“Roger
, B7.
What species?”

“Insufficient data.”

“Get the data!”

“Oh, yeah, easy for you to say,” Sibley muttered, slipping his Jade under the arc of two incoming bugs. “It’s getting a little crowded out here.”

His maneuver threw one bug off enough that her shot merely skimmed the sphere.

*   *   *

“Oh, crap!” Ryder spit the words out through clenched teeth. His inner ear told him he was spinning and damned fast, too, given the pressure pushing him into the walls.

*   *   *

Sibley locked onto the tail of the second bug swinging into the attack and she broke it off before they could get a lock.

“Command, this is
B7.
I don’t know who’s inside, but the bugs don’t seem to like them much.”

“The bugs are shooting at the sphere?”

“Well, duh.”

“B7,
we didn’t copy that last transmission.”

Grinning, Sibley spun his Jade one-eighty to give Shylin a clear shot at an enemy fighter. “I said, that’s an affirmative. The bugs are shooting at the sphere.”

“Lieutenant Commander Sibley, this is Captain Carveg.”

“Now you’re in for it,” Shylin muttered.

“If the bugs want that sphere destroyed, I want it picked up and brought in.”

“Aye, aye, Captain.” He burned upper thrusters for three seconds, dropping straight down out of a missile lock. “Uh, got any ideas how we can do that without getting our asses burned?”

“B7,
this is
Red Mace One.
We’re moving in to cover you.”

“Does that answer your question, Mr. Sibley?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Maneuvering over the sphere wasn’t the problem. Canceling its spin, however, was a little trickier.

“Equal and opposite force?”

Shylin shook her head. “Given the way the first one went up, I wouldn’t want to risk a shot.”

“Okay, we extend an energy field, let it transfer momentum, and I correct our spin.”

“We’ll be sitting
rinchas
while we’re spinning,” Shylin reminded him. “I won’t be able to get a shot off, and the Maces’ll have our lives in their hands.”

Sibley barely touched the starboard thrusters, then goosed portside to bring them into position. “What’s the point of having friends if you can’t take advantage of them? Right,
Red One
?”

“Don’t worry about it, Shy. We’ll keep you in one piece; your bastard pilot owes me money.”

“Extending field…”

*   *   *

Double impact against opposite sides of the pod.

Ryder rubbed at a dribble of sweat running into his beard. All of a sudden, he desperately had to piss.

*   *   *

“Round and round and round she goes.” Stars, bug fighters, Jades, and Big Yellow circled by; once, twice, three times. Sibley’s fingers danced over the controls canceling the spin without sending them around the other way. “Where she stops nobody knows—but me.”