The Truth of Valor (30 page)

“I’m considering the best use of our talents.”

“Which are?”

“We’re trained killers.” It was the tone Marines learned not to argue with.

Big Bill made a noncommittal noise and dropped his hands to the shoulders of his Krai companions, moving them closer together. “The people who use this station call these guys the Grr brothers.”

Behind her, Werst snorted.

Torin ignored him when Big Bill did. “Think you can take them?” he asked.

“Yes.”

Both brows rose. “You’re that sure.”

Torin looked at them. They looked amused. They won as much on reputation as skill, then. She didn’t give a flying fuk about their reputation. “One at a time or both together?”

“Always together.” When she returned her gaze to Big Bill, he looked amused as well. “And you alone.”

Of course. “I’m that sure.”

“They’ve never lost a fight, and they prefer to eat my enemies alive. Around here, people believe they devour souls with the flesh.”

Torin heard both Werst and Ressk shift in place, but they held their position. Before receiving her third chevron, Torin’d had to learn a number of obscure details about the three species who made up the Confederation Marine Corps. Belief systems, philosophies, religions—if people believed the Grr brothers were eating souls with the flesh, then it was because the Grr brothers had told them they were.

“Still think you can take them?”

Crackpot religious beliefs further warped by a pair of amoral believers didn’t frighten her. “Are you asking me to prove it?”

“You have no gun. No blade. None of the means to kill that Marines are so fond of.” Under Big Bill’s hands, the Krai shifted, ready to prove a point. “I think you overestimate your ...”

Eyes still locked on Big Bill’s, Torin put a hand behind each of the Grr brothers’ heads, twisted, and slammed their faces together as hard as she could, glad of the chance to spend some of the anger she’d carried since Craig had been taken. Krai bone was one of the hardest materials in known space. Krai faces, without warning enough to get their nose ridges closed, were a weak point.

Taking them on one at a time, she might have had a problem.

She didn’t—Craig didn’t—have time for extended posturing.

As expected, they pushed away from the source of the pain first.

By the time they turned to her, gasping for breath through the blood, blinking it out of their eyes—and, noted for later encounters, it was a short time—Torin grabbed the brother reaching for her and dug into the bundle of nerves at the base of his thumb. As he hit the deck, arm stretched up over his head, his brother wrapped a foot around her ankle and a hand around her arm just as she drove her fingertips in under the edges of the nose ridges he couldn’t close.

He froze.

“Your choice how this finishes,” Torin said quietly. The Krai could do Big Bill’s dirty work with half his nose ridges destroyed, the scarring would add visual intimidation, but he couldn’t win this fight.

Big Bill considered it long enough, she felt the grip on her arm tighten just a little. Finally, he sighed. “Stand down.”

When the standing Grr released her, she pulled her hand away, stepping back as he did, freeing his brother. Stepping back until she felt a warm, solid body against her left side. Werst; the other unarmed combat specialist in the group, had moved to a support position.

Both Krai flashed bloody teeth as they moved to flank Big Bill.

Torin bit through the back of her left index finger, showed them the drop of blood, and rubbed it against her own teeth, saying in Federate because she didn’t know the Krai, “Your defeat feeds me.”

Part of the catechism.

When their eyes widened, she knew she’d gotten lucky. They were true believers, not crazy fuks using an unpopular religion to spread terror. Or, at least, not
only
crazy fuks using an unpopular religion to spread terror.

They clearly didn’t like it, but they nodded and said in unison,
“Zer ginyk satalmerik.”

Based on the article Torin had studied, “We are tree-down” was the correct reply to her statement. For an arboreal species, it meant, “We are finished.” If the cultural xenologist had it right, she’d symbolically just eaten their souls, and they wouldn’t move on her or hers—an insurance policy against a random attack.

Unless Big Bill gave a direct order, in which case all bets were off. Commerce trumped religion nine times out of ten.

“So are we welcome here or not?”

Big Bill glanced down at the Krai and back up again, this smile purely Human. “If you can afford to breathe.”

The rates were murderous, but they wouldn’t be there long enough for anyone to discover the account Ressk had set up was imaginary.

“We can afford it.”

“Good.” He should have been furious that his bully boys had been defeated, but, if anything, he looked speculative. Behind the smile, he was clearly making plans. “All right. What are your immediate needs?”

I need to know if the
Heart of Stone
is docked here. If it is, I need you to stay out of my way while I take back what’s mine.

Torin bit back the words, kept them from showing on her face. The price for Big Bill’s cooperation would be far too high. She’d pay it if she had to, sell herself to save Craig, buy him and her people passage away from Vrijheid, but not until she’d spent everything else.

“Ship could use restocking,” she said.

“Then let me escort you to the Hub. I’m going that way.”

No one spoke during the sixty-meter walk down the arm to the Hub. Torin walked at Big Bill’s right, the two Krai, still bleeding from their nose ridges, followed on their heels, Werst, Ressk, and Mashona behind them.

The arm was narrow, clearly a later addition to the station, and although there were other ships docked between the
Second Star
and the Hub, none of their crews were out and about. Either Big Bill preferred not to be approached in a confined space, or people preferred not to approach him—Torin didn’t plan on being around long enough for the difference to matter.

A wave of sound hit as they stepped out through the decompression doors into the central cylinder on the lowest level. Torin could see four bars and half a dozen small businesses around the outer curve. Two large screens on either end showed sports and what looked like music vids—play-by-play and instruments competing for ears. There were people in the concourse—Human, di’Taykan, and Krai—talking, conducting business at small kiosks, moving from one place in the station to another. Torin thought she saw the bottom segment of a Ciptran disappearing into a vertical. A few people were drunk, and a couple of voices were raised in an argument heading for a fight, but they could have been in any one of a thousand stations.

Heads turned as they emerged, and although no one seemed to be overtly watching them, suddenly everyone was. Even the drunks.

No, not watching them. Watching Big Bill.

The ambient noise level dropped further when the Grr brothers emerged, still spattered with blood. Even the volume of the big screens seemed lower.

For a moment, Torin thought Big Bill was going to clap her on the shoulder. When she turned to face him, he thought better of it and let his hand fall back to his side. He made it look like it had been his decision. “If you need anything, Gunnery Sergeant, Mashona, Werst, Ressk,” he said jovially, his voice carrying, “let me know. Good luck finding work.”

“Good luck finding work?” Mashona repeated, coming in closer as Big Bill and his companions moved out of eavesdropping range. “What the hell does that mean?”

Torin watched people watching Big Bill and the injured Krai as they passed. “It means he’s identified us, all of us, as his. No one will hire us, the cost of being here will put us dangerously into debt, and we’ll have no recourse but to go to work for him.”

“He wants us for something specific. You, anyway, Gunny,” Werst amended.

“And that means no one will question us being here, so it works in our favor.” As Big Bill moved off the concourse, all eyes turned on them. Lip curled, Torin swept her gaze around the space and noted reactions. Not as many ex-Corps as she’d feared.

“Gunny, about the . . . them.” Ressk sounded worried, so she turned. “You ate their souls?”

“They believe, Ressk, I don’t.” Glancing between the two Krai, she exchanged raised eyebrows with Mashona and said, “And?”

“And they’re lovers,” Werst snorted. “Not brothers.”

“Actually . . .” Ressk’s nose ridges opened and closed. “They might also be brothers. Their scents are so tangled.”

“Yeah, well ...” Werst waved that off. “. . . consenting adults. Who the fuk cares. More to the point, no one smells like that living on protein patties and vat steak. Big Bill, he wasn’t kidding about them eating his enemies.”

“I doubt Big Bill kids about much,” Torin pointed out. “Now, let’s find the
Heart of Stone
, find Craig, and haul ass out of here before it matters.”

EIGHT

“SO WHERE DO WE START,
Gunny?” “With the bars. Drunks aren’t known for their discretion. The
Heart of Stone
scored big with Jan and Sirin’s salvage. People brag. They got hit with a Susumi wave. People talk. And I’m betting . . .” Torin remembered the look on the gray-haired woman’s face as she pushed past her toward the game. “. . . that
Nat
owes money to more than one person on this station.”

Mashona snickered. “Interesting emphasis, Gunny. I like how you make her name sound like a target.”

The four of them had taken half a dozen steps away from the docking arm hatch when the hatch of the bar directly opposite them opened and a roar of laughter spilled out onto the concourse, closely followed by a flailing Human—traveling about a meter and a half off the deck and covering an impressive distance before landing.

“Gravity always wins,” Ressk observed as the middle-aged man hit the deck, rolled twice, and finished flat on his back.

Arms and legs splayed out, breathing heavily, the man waved a stained finger in the general direction of the bar while a turquoise-haired di’Taykan yelled, “And don’t come back!” out the open hatch. He jerked as the hatch slammed shut, announced with the overly precise diction of the very drunk that it had totally been worth it, flopped over onto his left side, and went to sleep.

“We’ll start there,” Torin said.

The
Vritan Kayti
was a di’Taykan bar, and the trick with di’Taykan bars was to take a good long look into the corners, realize that sex was not a spectator sport, and get on with things.

Not a spectator sport for
most
people, Torin amended, dropping into a chair at an empty table and ordering a beer from the center screen. Took all kinds. Werst was at the bar, Mashona had disappeared behind a drape of multicolored gauze, and Ressk had joined a game of darts. Torin doubted she had any subtle left, and since the last thing they wanted to do was give the game away and spook the bastards into killing Craig, it seemed like a better idea to let people come to her.

She ran her thumb around the inert plastic edge of the screen.

As more of them recognized her, someone would.

It was merely a matter of time.

Or would have been if she’d had any time to spare. Not counting time spent in Susumi space, Craig had been with the pirates for approximately twenty-eight hours. If they’d folded directly here after scooping him out of the debris field, he’d spent anywhere from three-and-a-half-to-five days in Susumi—couldn’t be more precise without the exact equations but three-and-a-half days minimum.

The militaries of oldEarth had a saying:
Everyone breaks on the third day.

But Craig had information they needed. Page’s death had been an accident, an accident that said they’d wanted him alive more than they’d wanted him dead. They’d take their time with Craig.

Three-and-a-half days minimum in Susumi. Another day in real space.

Four days.

If it was true that everyone broke on the third day—and Torin had no way of judging because the Primacy hadn’t taken prisoners—what happened on day four? Did they keep him around, keep him alive, in case they had other questions?

What if she was wrong?

What if he was dead?

What did she do then?

Destroy the people who killed him. Easy answer. But what happened after?

“. . . think you’re too fukking good to pay attention?”

The voice had been a constant background drone for a few minutes, but that last bit had volume enough to break through her thoughts. The grip on her shoulder snapped her the rest of the way back to the here and now.

The slam of bone against the table brought a moment’s silence, a roar of laughter, then the business of the bar carried on.

He was Human, Torin’s height, and his bare arms were heavily muscled. He might have been attractive, but the blood running down his face from above one eyebrow made it hard to tell.

Torin grabbed a fistful of vest and hauled him up onto his feet. Looking past him, she spotted three di’Taykan and a Human who were still finding the situation funny. “He with you?” she asked, raising her voice slightly. When one of the di’Taykan indicated he was, she shoved him in their general direction, sat down, and accepted a fresh beer from Werst.

“Price of these things is fukking proof piracy isn’t confined to space,” he said, as she took a drink. They sat silently, watching an orange-haired server clean up the blood with practiced efficiency. “Seems like you’ve solidified your more badass than thou reputation, though,” he continued once they were essentially alone again. “Nicely done, Gunny. I know how you did it and barely saw you move. You okay?”

“Thought you said you were watching?”

“Not what I meant.”

“I’m fine.”

“Really? Because I’d be willing to bet you haven’t bothered doing anything since Ryder was taken but try to get him back.”

“Your point?”

“I’d be willing to bet,” he repeated, “you haven’t ranted or raged or used any of time you spent in Susumi to fall apart for a few minutes.”