The Truth of Valor (20 page)

Half the secondhand ships in known space were decommissioned Navy ships; weapons removed.

Of course where weapons had been, weapons could be again.
Promise
hadn’t been . . . wasn’t armed—
wasn’t
because he would get back to her and his injured lady would fly again. Not that a salvaged weapon had done Jan and Sirin any good. Probably got them killed. If they hadn’t had the weapon, they’d have cut and run.

Survived.

Let the Navy and the Corps play silly bugger with their lives.

Civilians were supposed to be smarter than that.

Stretched out on the bunk, Craig shifted his bad leg and noted with fuzzy appreciation that nothing hurt.

“I’m not going to bother with a healing sleeve until we know we’re keeping you, but there’s no reason you have to be in pain.”

Something in Doc’s voice gave Craig the impression that,
should
there be a reason, Doc had no problem at all with pain.

The bunk was surprisingly comfortable. Or he was remarkably stoned.

Either/or. Both.

He woke when the hatch slammed open. The thrum of the engines hadn’t changed; they were still traveling through Susumi space.

“Thought you’d like to know . . .” Nat grinned at him from the open hatch; her expression lecherous enough that he realized he was still naked, “. . . we’ve decided to keep you. Welcome aboard, gorgeous.”

But she relocked the hatch when she closed it.

It hadn’t occurred to Torin that the salvage station might not give a ship from Sector Central News permission to dock.

“Oh, for fuksake!” Her head still throbbed, but sleeping through most of the fold had done her good. “Are we within a hundred kilometers?”

“Yes.” Merik glanced down at his board. “But we are being ...”

Torin cut the pilot off. “Keep heading in. I’ve got this. My codes are on file.” She tongued her implant. This was the station’s business whether they wanted it to be or not.

Pedro met her at the air lock, arms open, cheeks wet. As soon as the docking beacon had locked, she’d contacted him directly and told him the story. No point in wasting travel time. “
Chica
, I’m so sorry!”

Because Torin had been afraid, in the pause before he’d answered her, that it had been his ship the pirates had destroyed at the debris field, she went into his arms and hugged him hard enough to feel his heart beating. Hard enough to feel he was alive. Then she pulled away and said, “I need everything you know about the pirates.”

“
Madre Deos
, why are you pink?” He lifted her hand to eye level.

“Suit sealant.” She twisted free. “Focus. I need a list of every pirate attack; I need sightings, rumors, hearsay. I need it all.”

“Torin . . .”

“And we need to get everyone on this station together in the market. I’ll need access to the internal comm. No . . .” She shook her head, editing as she headed for the center of the station,” . . . better you do it. They know you.

Pedro fell into step beside her. “Torin, what . . .”

“We’re going after Craig.”

“What?”

Before Torin could expand on her plan, a small hand grabbed the back of her tunic and yanked her to a stop. She turned far enough to see Presit glaring up at her.

When she saw she had Torin’s attention, Presit shifted her gaze to Pedro. “You are probably knowing me, Presit a Tur durValintrisy of Sector Central News. Torin are not exactly having manners. Mind you, I are not exactly happy about leaving my assistant behind, so things are balancing out.”

The salvage operators had agreed to Presit’s presence but had refused to allow her to record within the station. As the law stated recording devices had to be visible to most species at ten meters, regardless of the actual size of the device, Ceelin’s absence was considered a gesture of good faith.

Pedro frowned, scrubbing a hand over damp cheeks. “Torin, why is she here?”

Torin opened her mouth to say something about the story but realized that wasn’t actually the reason. Wouldn’t have been the reason even had Ceelin and the equipment been with them “Craig was her friend.”

Presit snorted. “For all he are having a patchy pelt and a dubious love life.”

“Dubious?”

“. . . and we know he’s on the
Heart of Stone.
The image
Promise
recorded matched on all points the ship docked at the station at the same time we were. The pirates have what they need now, so they’ll have gone to ground somewhere they feel safe. We find the
Heart of Stone
, we find Craig.”

“They’re fukking pirates!” someone yelled from the concourse. “They feel safe with other pirates.”

“That’s my point,” Torin told him. “You need to band together and create an opposing fleet. We not only rescue Craig but eliminate a good portion of the pirate threat.”

One of the overhead fans had a loose bearing and made a metal on metal
burr
with every rotation. The
people
on the concourse were silent. Faces that had been turned toward her turned toward the deck.

“Torin. Craig’s dead.” Over against the bulkhead, Alia waved her hands as though she thought she needed movement to attract Torin’s attention. As if her name and the declaration weren’t enough.

“We can’t know that.”

“They’ve had him ...” Her voice broke. “They’ve had him for hours.”

It had taken roughly four and a half hours for Torin to get back to the
Promise
. Seven hours spent unconscious. Forty minutes to walk from the medical facilities to Presit’s ship. Ninety minutes to get far enough away from the station to fold. Ninety minutes to get from the point where they’d emerged to the salvage station. Thirty-three minutes to gather the salvage operators and their families in the concourse. Torin had been up on the stage in the corner, talking for half an hour. Craig had been with the pirates for sixteen hours. Roughly.

Except . . .

She’d been used to living her life like time spent in Susumi didn’t count—ships emerged seconds after they folded regardless of how long they spent inside. Time in the Corps, time spent being ferried from battle to battle and home again, had probably aged her another five to seven years. Med-op kept records. She’d never checked.

But time in Susumi counted when time in Susumi was spent at the mercy of people who’d already killed three innocents. Torin hung onto the certain knowledge that they’d killed Rogelio Page very slowly. Craig was younger. Stronger.

“He’s not dead.”

“Torin . . .”

She wasn’t sure who’d said her name, but she thought it was Jenn. Craig had been the next thing to a part of their family and they wanted to mourn. Torin wasn’t going to let them.

“Two reasons he’s not dead. One . . .” She resisted the urge to raise a specific finger. They were wasting her time. Craig’s time. “The pirates need him alive, and they’ll have learned from their handling of Page.” Handling. A neutral way of saying tortured to death. Torin squared her shoulders and swept her gaze over the crowd. Craig had been well liked—they were listening, but she needed them to do more than that. “Taking salvage is one thing, but taking the salvage operators is something else entirely. Too much of that
will
get the Wardens moving and they won’t risk it.”

“You don’t even know it’s the same pirates!” shouted a di’Taykan, dark orange hair in constant movement.

“In the Corps, we called those kind of coincidences a reason for artillery.”

A woman in the front row shook her head. “You aren’t in the Corps now.”

“And we don’t have artillery,” added the man beside her.

Torin stared at him, brow up.

“Much artillery,” he amended, rubbing the back of his neck.

“You said there were two reasons.” One arm around Kevin’s waist, the other across Jenn’s shoulders, Pedro stared at her over Alia’s head. “What’s the second reason?”

Torin met his gaze. “He’ll do everything he can to stay alive because he knows I’m coming for him.”

“You also said there was an explosion. He probably thinks you’re dead.”

“He are not being so stupid,” Presit snorted, moving forward and answering before Torin could. “I was being with Craig Ryder the last time Torin was being thought dead and even when he are being told she are dead by the Commandant of the Corps, he are not believing it. When he are standing on the glass that are having been a battalion of Confederation Marines, he are still not believing it.” She stroked her claws through the silver fringe of her ruff and glanced up at Torin. “As it are happening, he are right.”

“And what are being your part in this?” a Katrien perched up on one of the kiosks called out, sounding suspicious. The reporter was a stranger. Even more than Torin.

Presit’s ears flicked, the Katrien equivalent of a shrug. “I are being brought in to expose the pirates so the Wardens will be getting the Navy involved. It are being for your benefit.”

“Oh, yeah, like you are doing us a favor!”

“I are benefiting you,” Presit responded dryly. “It are not the same thing. I are also planning to be benefiting from the story.”

“There is no story.” Pedro’s voice cracked. He swallowed and continued. “Craig is dead—just like Jan and Sirin. Just like Page. If we band together and go after him, if we go after the pirates, more of us will die.”

“Let the Navy do their job!” spat a dark-haired woman.

“The Navy has to be called in by the Wardens,” Torin snapped.

“So let it!” someone yelled from the back.

“Some of you have military experience ...”

“And we got the fuk out, didn’t we?” snarled a di’Taykan. Torin had met her at Sirin and Jan’s funeral. Kiku; served one contract in the Corps as a comm tech. She’d told a few “war” stories then. When it became obvious Torin wasn’t interested, they’d talked together about one of the guys in the band. “You think you can just waltz in here,” Kiku continued, “all I’m Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr and I survived a prison planet and I found the little gray aliens, and now we have to march in straight lines and do what you say? Fuk that. We don’t fight. We prefer to survive.”

“We have families,” Pedro added before Torin could respond.

They weren’t going to help, she realized. Her business was none of their business.

“You are losing them,” Presit murmured as people began to shuffle from the shuttle bay.

“I never had them,” Torin admitted, cutting her loses. She didn’t have time to convince them of the obvious. She raised her voice until it filled all the empty spaces. “I need to buy a ship. And I need it now.”

That got their attention. Every face turned back toward her. To her surprise, the first question was, “Why?”

“The
Promise
is damaged, and pirates aren’t likely to welcome reporters.”

“Everyone are playing to a camera,” Presit snorted quietly.

“You’re going after Craig alone?” Kiku again. When no one laughed with her, she flushed, her hair flattening, but she didn’t look away. “You don’t even know where the
Heart of Stone
is, do you?”

“I’ll find it.”

“Because you’re Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr?”

“Because they have Craig.” At least some of those in the room who were ex-military had served with combat troops in a time of war. Pulled a trigger and saw a distant body fall. Torin had killed up close and personal. People near the stage backed up as they heard that in her voice.

“How,” asked a narrow-eyed woman with three black lines tattooed down the center of her forehead, “are you planning on paying for this ship?”

Given the audience, that was the question Torin had expected to hear first. “I’ll cede my military pension.”

“How much of it?”

“All of it.”

“Oh, yeah. That’s just great.” A mocking voice rose above the murmur as the man with the ginger mustache who’d confronted her at the funeral moved to the front of the crowd. “You take that ship off to play hero against the pirates, and we’ll get sweet fuk all because you’ll be dead, and they don’t pay pensions to the dead.”

“I don’t plan on dying.”

“No one plans on dying.”

“You’d be surprised.”

He had his mouth open again, and Torin was seconds from putting her fist in it when Pedro called out. “You can have our small ship.”

He didn’t mean have as
have it to save Craig
, he meant have as in he’d take the pension. She could hear it in his voice. “I need a ship with a weapon mounted.”

“The
Second Star
has a recessed BN-344. We use it to cut debris apart.”

The BN-344 was the big half sister of the BN-4, the cellular disrupter /tight band laser the Corps carried in those places a projectile weapon would be unwise. Without the cellular disrupter attached, the big laser could
also
be used as a cutting tool. Her lip curled, but she nodded. His small ship was almost the same base model as the
Promise
. She could get it from point A to point B. “Deal.”

The crowd parted as she jumped off the stage. For a moment she wished they hadn’t—laying hands on even one of them would have helped her mood—then she ignored them. Their business wasn’t her business. The crowd stayed parted behind her, and she could hear Presit following. The reporter had sharp claws and no compunction about using them.