The Truth of Valor (24 page)

Torin shrugged. “I could have driven my elbow into his nose ridges and assumed someone would keep him from drowning in his own blood.”

“You could have,” Firrg agreed, her nod throwing the jagged scar zigzagging across her forehead into relief. The edges looked too even to be accidental and Torin had a suspicion she knew the source of at least some of the pirate captain’s hatred. Scars being easy enough to remove, that was a statement. It said,
Hi, I’m completely bugfuk!
among other things. “And you’re right,” Firrg continued, her expression holding the rest of her companions in place. “Humans killing Humans makes me very happy. But you’re Human, and I don’t do favors for Humans.” She spread her hands. “So I can’t help you.”

“Last word on the matter?”

“Yes.” Firrg looked happy to be turning her down. Her crew laughed.

Torin had really hoped they could do this the quick way. She didn’t have time to fuk around and no choice but to take the time. Leaning forward, she said in thickly accented Krai, “I’ve heard that the reason you hate Humans is because it was a Human who laughed as you ran like a coward from a fair fight.” Then she stood and walked out of the bar, trailing her fingers over the gray plastic frame around the big menu screen on her way by. Behind her, chairs scraped against the floor as they were shoved back, and there was a lot of loud swearing that Torin would bet serious money came from everyone but Firrg.

Hating Humans—or any other species as a whole—wasn’t that unusual, no matter how often the H’san sent out slightly sad messages insisting that the member species of the Confederation were one big happy family. Everyone knew someone who hated their family, but no one seemed willing to clue in the H’san. Had Firrg just hated Humans, the odds were good, given that it had been established Firrg was a pirate and pirates were violent and unscrupulous thieves, she’d give the order to have Torin killed before Torin made it back to the
Second Star
.

“Captain Firrg hates Humans, I mean, really, really hates them. Don’t know what she thinks about di’Taykan, but Humans, Humans she obsessively hates.”

Obsession meant she’d do Torin herself. Obsessive hate meant she’d get up close and personal to do it. Rational people were a lot harder to manipulate.

Just past the
Dargonar
, about twenty meters from the
Second Star,
Torin stepped into a large storage alcove, half filled with replacement parts for ore processors unloaded from the fourth ship on the docking arm—the ship that didn’t belong to the Silsviss, pirates, or an ex-Marine hunting pirates. When it came down to it, it was a wonder the station got any work done. The alcove wasn’t entirely private, but the angles would interfere with the security cameras. The two Krai already using it took one look at her face, grabbed their clothes, and ran.

Then she waited.

But not for long.

Firrg hadn’t come alone. The five males from the bar moved into a semicircle behind her, eyes locked on Torin, lips drawn back off their teeth, their presence clearly saying that if a random hell should happen to freeze over and Torin should just happen to win, she’d still lose. Had Firrg stopped to pick up reinforcements, that might have been a problem, but five was doable.

Firrg’s scar drew an angry red line against the mottled green of her scalp. Her nose ridges flared once, twice, then clamped shut. “I am going to kill you,” she snarled and charged forward

Torin took half a step out to meet her, then slammed her as hard as she could in the side of the head with the iron pipe she’d been hiding behind her leg. Craig didn’t have time for her to fight fair.

Krai teeth were among the hardest substances in known space, and Krai bone came a very close second. Firrg was unconscious and bleeding when she hit the floor but probably not badly hurt. By the time Torin had her boot on the captain’s throat, the three Silsviss males—who’d arrived about the time the pipe made contact—had taken care of the crew.

“I need one conscious,” she snapped, and the claws stopped just on the surface of the Krai’s eyeballs.

It took the pirate’s brain a few seconds to catch up to his situation, then he pissed himself and sagged in the Silsviss’ grip.

“We were there,” one of the others said, using the metal ring on his tail to smack down a bleeding pirate trying to rise, “when you accepted the pack’s defeat.”

Given the way they’d been looking at her, Torin had figured as much. If they’d learned Federate before their trip, they weren’t bothering with it. The cylindrical comm units on their harness translated simultaneously with her implant. And thank tech support that her new translation program had lost the extra sibilants.

“These little ones were not very good fighters,” another said. Like the two reptilian species already part of the Confederation, they flicked their tongues around an impressive array of pointed teeth when they spoke. “The little ones you had with you in the preserve were better.”

“They’re called Krai, not little ones, and these Krai aren’t used to fighting for their lives,” Torin told him. When male Silsviss reached the age that their body chemistry required them to challenge for position, they were sent to wilderness preserves where they formed packs and fought it out—pack to pack as well as within the pack for position. It was as much population control as training. If these three had been there on the hill when Torin accepted the pack surrender and had become, for all intents and purposes, their pack leader, then they were only just off the preserve. Fighting for survival was still very close to being their default setting.

She figured they’d been brought on this trip, not only because of the flexibility of youth, but because they’d had at least some contact with other species even if that contact had consisted primarily of trying to kill them.

Switching her attention to the only conscious pirate—although she suspected one of the others of faking—Torin leaned in until the watering eyes behind the points of the four-centimeter-long claws focused on her face. “Tell me where I can find the
Heart of Stone
, or I’ll kill your captain.”

“You are inedible!”

“It’s ruder in Krai,” Torin explained as the Silsviss looked confused by the translation. “Tell me where I can find the
Heart of Stone
, or I’ll kill your captain and have your eyes gouged out slowly.”

At Torin’s nod, the Silsviss tightened his grip slightly.

Nose ridges flapping so quickly they sounded like crumpling paper, he gasped. “Vrijheid!”

“Coordinates?”

“I don’t know where it is exactly! I’m not helm! The government thinks it was destroyed during the war, but it wasn’t!”

“Was the name changed?”

“Why the fuk would they change the name? I told you, the government thinks it did a crash and burn!”

That was enough information to find it.

“Big Bill Ponner runs it now! He’ll fukking kill you!”

“You can drop him.”

As he hit the floor, Torin took her foot from Firrg’s throat and pulled her slate off her belt. “Presit, I’ve got it. Head back.”

“There are still being more to the story here. Those accidents . . .

“Can wait. Craig can’t.”

“On our way.”

“What do you want
us
to do?” Given positioning, this was the dominant male of the three. They were all a little twitchy. The instinct to fight her for control had only barely been overlaid with more adult socialization.

“Wait with this lot until security arrives.” Firrg groaned as Torin rolled her out into the camera’s line of sight. “Tell them to check the load of ore that just came in with the
Dargonar
. The numbers on the sled will match the numbers on a drone that recently went missing during a fold. Someone in the station is accepting stolen goods.”

“When they ask how we know this?”

“Tell them you heard it from Presit a Tur durValintrisy’s pilot. If you convince them, you’ll all gain status for bringing it to their attention.”

“Then why do you leave this opportunity with us?” the dominant male hissed.

Torin smiled as she passed them. “I have a bigger enemy to take down.”

Three tails tapped against the floor in unison. To the Silsviss mind-set, that made perfect sense. And they were another species who recognized the baring of teeth for what it was.

The exposure of someone on the station dealing in stolen goods, not to mention the capture of the thief, her crew, and her ship, would bring in the Wardens, and when Torin’s involvement came to light—if not through the Silsviss then through the payment she’d made in the bar—it might actually light a fire under the ass of the law, given the finding of Page’s body and the attack on the
Promise
that the Wardens already had on record. The problem was Torin no longer wanted the Wardens suddenly going all gung ho—enthusiasm from that quarter could easily provoke the pirates into killing Craig. Involving the Silsviss—who were not yet members of the Confederation—would slow things back down to diplomatic speeds.

“Strategy and tactics,” she muttered, stepping into the
Star
’s air lock. “Your tax dollars at work.”

“There are being a lot of shouting happening down the docking arm,” Presit said, leading Ceelin back into the ship. “I are being hustled past it at full speed. Apparently this station are not wanting what could be a diplomatic incident on the news. You are being responsible?”

“I am.” Torin sealed the air lock doors behind the Katrien.

“I are suspecting as much. The Silsviss are seeming to be very involved, and I are seeing how they are watching you in the bar. Rumors are saying that with your platoon being pinned down and outnumbered, you are challenging the lizard leader to mortal combat and are having been ripped off his head.”

“Not quite what happened,” Torin told her, sending a request to disengage from the docking arm. But, given that she had a Silsviss skull in her quarters, she could at least see how that rumor had gotten started.

“I are really wanting to hear that story someday.” Presit pulled herself up onto the other chair and added her codes to the request. “They are not locking down the press, no matter how many unconscious pirates they are having at the feet of large lizards. Not if they are not wanting a world of trouble.”

Torin had hoped they’d get clear before any lockdown happened. Maybe they had, she acknowledged as the clamps released, but it was equally possible Presit had just kept them moving. “Thank you.”

Feet tucked up under her, Presit lowered the light levels in the cabin and took off her glasses. “Thank me by telling me what the story of the Torin Kerr and the Silsviss are being. But later,” she added, raising a hand to wave off Torin’s protest. “Right now, you are first telling me that we are having a location?”

“We are. Do. Have. Vrijheid. The government thinks it was destroyed by the Primacy during the war. Crash and burn, my informant said, so it’s a station.”

“The government thinks?” Presit snorted. “That are being unlikely. Still, that are being enough information even for you to be finding it. Fortunately, you are not having to. Ceelin! Run a search.”

Because Confederation law stipulated that all recording equipment must be large enough to be seen by the general public and carry obvious network identification, Ceelin’s camera also included as much or more data storage than the
Second Star,
an ability to hook into any nearby network, as well as, he’d confided to Torin on the trip out, every game made by Kwin Industries. That was one hell of a lot of games.

“So when we are finding Vrijheid Station,” Presit continued, “you are having a plan? Or are you just docking and telling murdering pirates they are giving you back Craig Ryder now.”

“Yes,” Torin told her, frowning down at the Susumi charts.

“Well, which is it being?”

“Both.”

The crew of the
Heart of Stone
had moved the armory to a heavily reinforced storage pod near the station’s old shuttle bays. If Craig had to bet, he’d say the pod had been designed to hold explosives of one kind or another. Stations usually stored explosives in support of mining facilities on the planet they orbited and that told him absolutely sweet fuk all about where he was. There were enough uninhabitable planets being mined that most of them didn’t even have names and, even if this one did, he sure as shit wouldn’t find it written on the wall in a storage pod.

As large as the armory was, the pod was just enough larger that Craig could walk all the way around it.

“The seal is on the front,” Cho snapped.

“On the front of a locker potentially containing enough explosives to fracture this pod, hole the station, and kill us all,” Craig reminded him, reaching out to brace himself against the metal as his vertigo returned. “I’ve lived most of my life in vacuum and I have no intention of dying in it because I didn’t take a couple of minutes to make sure I knew what was I doing.”

“Why would salvage operators even need a seal this complicated?” Nadayki sniffed. He hadn’t been happy hearing about the possibility of fusing the lock and exploding the armory. Although Craig suspected he was less happy about not being able to hook in his slate than he was about blowing up. The youngest of the ship’s di’Taykan had lime-green hair and eyes and an attitude Craig wanted to smack off his pale face. Where the di’Taykan default leaned toward elegantly slender, Nadayki bordered on skinny and that, combined with the not entirely healed leg, made him appear as close to awkward as one of his species ever got. “It’s like you’re expecting to be robbed,” he added sulkily.