The Truth of Valor (27 page)

His toes curled under in his borrowed boots. She didn’t sound like she was kidding. “In what universe is that encouraging?”

“The one where you don’t want it to happen. So don’t dawdle. Keep him up to speed, kid.”

“Don’t call me kid,” Nadayki muttered.

“Oh, yeah. Put the larrkin in charge.” Craig rolled his eyes as he picked up the plastic shovel and headed for the hatch leading into the pod. The shovel remained inert. If the fukking plastic aliens were still around, they had no sense of timing. “Kid’s on the run for high-tech graffiti.”

“He told you that, eh?” Nat sounded amused. “He tell you those lasers sliced and diced three people who just happened to be on the Prime Progenitor’s lawn at the time?”

“No ...” Craig glanced over at Nadayki who shrugged. “. . . he didn’t skite about that.”

Taykan noses were much more sensitive than Human noses.

Nadayki’s reaction to the half-dried vomit nearly made the job worthwhile. The time he spent cleaning the chunky puddle off the deck was the longest Craig had ever spent with a di’Taykan without being propositioned.

“That wasn’t exactly fast,” he whined as Craig dumped the soiled water down the reclamation chute.

“Oh, yeah, because I like to take my time cleaning up puke.”

Hand over his mouth and nose, Nadayki muttered, “Whatever. Can we get the fukking seal open now?”

“Don’t get your panties in a knot, kid, I still have to wash the gear.”

“Wash the . . . What the fuk for?”

“You want the smell to linger?” Ignoring the muttered response, he did a thorough job. Unfortunately, there was a finite time he could spend cleaning a shovel, a mop, and a bucket, slotting them back into their places, and closing the maintenance area down. Because the ore docks would be open to vacuum every time a carrier came up from the planet and loose items were dangerous, the lockers were built to withstand accidental decompression. Beside the maintenance area was a tool locker holding only a broken pipe wrench and seven identical screwdrivers. Beside that, an empty suit locker with space for six although only three hookups were live. Tucked into the far corner by the rear bulkhead was a hatch that led to an actual head.

If maintenance reclamation worked, then the toilet should, so Craig used it. And took his time.

Finally, after increasingly sullen reminders that toes weren’t necessary to break code, Craig skirted the wet area of the deck and returned to the storage pod. Holding his borrowed slate up to the seal, he linked in. He gave half a thought to cutting the safeties in and blowing the armory, but he knew Torin was on her way and she’d be pissed if he died. His code opened the first level and slid them through the second. Then he watched the lines of new code scroll by and frowned.

“See!” Nadayki waved his own slate in front of Craig’s face. “It makes no sense!”

“Sure it does. You can hack a defense satellite and slaughter three people, but you can’t hack this seal.”

Nadayki’s eyes darkened as his lip curled. “What’s your point?”

“Given that the point of a seal is to keep people out, an unhackable seal makes perfect sense.”

After a long moment, the di’Taykan nodded. “Yeah, okay.”

“Yeah, okay?”

“Yeah, okay, you’re right,” he expanded reluctantly. “It does make perfect sense.” His eyes had lightened but he still sounded sulky when he asked, “
Can
you get in?”

It came down to pulling out recognizable bits and building on them. Craig shrugged. “Won’t be easy, but I know how CSOs think.”

“They think? Really? I can get through the Marine seal, no problem,” he muttered.

“Yeah, well . . .” Craig patted the dent in the armory. “. . . not to knock your code fu, kid, but in my experience, Marines are a lot less complex.”

“So we’re disillusioned and pretending to be pirates.” Werst took a long swallow of beer and shrugged. “Should work.”

Stretched out on the bunk in the cabin, one arm tucked up under her head, the other holding a beer of her own, Mashona asked, “How many of these pirates are you planning to kill, Gunny?”

Torin thought about the way Page had died. “As many as I have to.”

“I’m not sure I can kill other people. Not anymore,” Mashona added as Ressk glanced up from his slate and shot her a look. “War is different.”

“What if those people are trying to kill you?” Werst wondered, picking the label off the beer pouch.

“That’s different, too,” Mashona acknowledged.

Ressk nodded. “They try to kill me, all bets are off.”

“You three shouldn’t have to kill anyone,” Torin told them flatly. Ceelin had found her the original schematics of Vrijheid Station. They’d use Susumi time to commit as much of them to memory as possible. “If there’s any killing to be done, I’ll be doing it.”

The other three exchanged a glance that held a whole conversation.

Werst gave it a voice. “We’ve got your six, Gunny.”

“Why?” She hadn’t planned on asking, but now it was out there. “You had lives and now . . .”

“I wouldn’t say we had lives.” Mashona swung her legs off the bunk and sat up. “We were all kind of drifting. We’re used to being a part of something bigger, you know, and not having that anymore was . . . Well, it wasn’t. I guess what I’m trying to say is you give us ...” Mashona looked at Ressk. Ressk looked at Werst. Werst half shrugged, making the usual Krai cock-up of the movement. “. . . grounding. Direction.”

But Torin had heard,
Something to believe in
. . . in the pause.

“It’s difficult to make plans until we know what’s actually in the locker,” Big Bill said thoughtfully, indicating that Cho should sit. “But in order to expedite the eventual arming of the free merchants, I’ve made a list.” He slid a piece of paper across the desk.

“A list?” Visitors to Big Bill’s office deep in the center sphere of the station sat in chairs that were both closer to the ground than Big Bill’s own and deliberately uncomfortable. Already fuming at being summoned like an erring ensign called before the officer of the watch, this lack of subtlety pushed Cho’s mood further into the black, and he fought to keep his expression neutral.

“A list of who’ll be willing to pay top dollar and potentially for what; where
what
is based on the content of the armories my boys remember from while they were in.”

The Grr brothers had been in the Corps. Cho couldn’t say he was surprised.
“I’ve seen your type before, boy. You wanted Recon or Ranger, but you were too crazy even for those crazy fukkers.”
Page’s voice in memory.
“No one tried to convince you too hard to stay, after your first contract ran out, did they, boy? No, it was: so long, Private, have a nice life. Hell, have a shitty life, just have it away from us.”

He wondered if that was where they’d met, brought together by sanctioned violence. Their own brutal tendencies honed and refined.

Well, as refined as a fondness for eating people alive got.

Rather than think about the screaming, Cho picked up the list. Big Bill was a manipulative son of a bitch but vested self-interest would see to it that Cho got the best price for his weapons. He attempted to think of the list as helpful instead of as an attempt to wrest away control. A really fukking annoying attempt. He frowned down at it.

“You can’t hack paper,” Big Bill told him, misinterpreting the frown. “Some smartass will find a way into the tightest system but that right there, you need eyeballs for that and eyeballs can be controlled. You remember not to leave it lying around where any idiot can read it, and it’s about as secure as it gets. Helps, of course, that no one expects anything of import to be on paper these days. How much longer to get through the seals?”

Cho recognized the sudden change of subject as an attempt to throw him off his game. Yeah, like he’d let his guard down that much around a power-crazy fuk like Big Bill. “Ryder, the salvage op, is back at work.”

“Good.”

“Doc says his brain got a bit fried by the
tasik
when we brought him in.”

“Doc would know.” Even Big Bill was . . . maybe not cautious but definitely
aware
around Doc.

“It’s slowed him down some,” Cho continued, “but he’s functional, and Nadayki reports they’re making progress.” Nadayki had reported nothing of the sort, but Cho had no intention of showing weakness of any kind. Even secondhand.

“Again, good.” Big Bill’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. Didn’t even reach his cheeks. Or any other body part. “But I asked you,
how long
?”

“No way of knowing.”

“I see. As we have no idea what’s in the armory, we have no idea how much you’ll be paying me for the use of that storage pod. We don’t know the specifics of my fifteen percent,” he expanded when Cho frowned. “Given that, I’d like to know how long you plan on taking advantage of my generosity.”

Slouching back in the chair, Cho hoped he looked like he didn’t give a H’san’s ass about eye lines or the unfortunate fact that his own ass was going numb. “Allowing me to use that pod is you minimizing the risk of blowing a hole in your station while still maintaining a certain amount of control over the contents of an armory you have no responsibility for. Length of time spent is irrelevant.”

Big Bill stared across the deck at him, like he was actually seeing him for the first time in this conversation. “That’s a valid point.”

He made it sound like it was first valid point Cho had ever made in his hearing.

“Keep me informed.” Eyes narrowed, Big Bill nodded toward the piece of paper. “Take the list with you.”

Only a suicidal idiot would mistake that for anything but a dismissal.

By the time Cho had heaved himself up onto his feet, Big Bill had a channel open to what sounded like one of the shops in the Hub, enquiring about last quarter’s drop in profits, and therefore a drop in his fifteen percent. As far as he was concerned, Cho had already left the room.

In the outer office the Grr brothers lay tangled together on a leather sofa, drinking
sah
and watching news vids, the big screen split into the top four networks. They’d been watching news vids when Cho went in to talk to Big Bill. And sure, he hadn’t been in there long, but they’d been watching news vids every time he’d been called to the inner sanctum.

Could’ve been worse. Could’ve been a cooking show.

No surprise the little freaks didn’t watch porn like normal people.

Craig could see that as far as di’Taykan went, Nadayki was a lime-green geek-and-a-half, but he was still a di’Taykan and di’Taykan were hardwired to default to sex. Sex seemed to be an obvious tactic to delay the opening of the seal, with the potential to be a repeat performer. As his stomach had steadied and the red-hot spikes were not currently being driven into his temples, Craig figured it made sense to get the initial encounter out of the way

“The thing with CSO codes,” he said, looking up from his slate, “is that they’re hard to put in and even harder to take out.”

“Unless you know the sequence,” Nadayki snorted, eyes locked on his screen, ignoring the potential for innuendo.

Craig fired off a second attempt. “Give us time and we’ll get it off.”

“Fukking right. There’s no way some stupid scavenger is going to create a seal I can’t break.”

Any other di’Taykan would have made a proposition and started the foreplay by now. Raising his assessment of the kid to a geek-and-three-quarters, Craig upped his game.

The seal had been positioned in vacuum, which put it at an idiotically awkward angle with gravity applied. Upper body bent at about forty-five degrees, with the kid standing so close the movement of his hair kept Craig thinking of spiders and slapping at the back of his neck, it was easy enough to brush his ass to Nadayki’s groin with every position shift.

And yeah, they still hadn’t talked about where they stood with di’Taykan before the
Heart of Stone
had blown their lives apart, but Craig knew where Torin stood as far as staying alive went. She’d expect him to do what he had to. So, when Nadayki finally got with the program—and seriously, he had never expected to use the word
finally
when it came to a di’Taykan and sex—Craig responded with, if not enthusiasm, at least interest. First chance he got, he dialed the kid’s masker back a couple of levels and enthusiasm became moot.