The Truth of Valor (4 page)

“There’s always a free lock,” he muttered.
Promise
twitched as he gave the upper aft thrusters a bit of juice. “But it looks like we’ll have to hook in a little far from where I usually dock.”

“And that means? Other than the obvious?”

“We’re going to need a native guide once we get inside.”

“Craig! Hombre! Empezabamos a pensar que no quisiste que los de mas te ven con nosotros, you son of a bitch!”

Torin moved back half a step as a tall man with four-centimeter dreads and three white stars tattooed on his left cheek swept Craig up into a hug that looked painful. She didn’t recognize the language—although it sounded Human—and she didn’t know their relationship—although since no one had started throwing punches, she assumed they were at least friends. It seemed safest to give herself some maneuvering room.

“Pedro!” Craig locked his arms around the other man and lifted him off his feet. “Too long, mate! Too long!”

“Had to let the bruises fade,” Pedro snickered as they released each other at exactly the same time. He leaned out around Craig’s shoulders. “And you must be Torin.”

She nodded, expression neutral. He’d had to have spent the last year without a comm hookup of any kind not to recognize her face. The vid Presit a Tur durValintrisy had shot of her conversation with the polynumerous, shape-shifting, organic plastic alien hive mind who’d been responsible for a war that had taken millions, if not hundreds of millions of lives had been played 28/10 on some stations.

Pedro grinned at her. “All that publicity and you couldn’t do any better than this asshole?”

Craig dodged the punch aimed at his arm. “Torin Kerr, meet Pedro Buckner. Best mate I ever made.”

He wanted them to like each other; she could hear it in his voice. That meant he wasn’t bothering to hide it since he had one of the most unreadable poker faces/voices she’d ever played against. Which meant it was important to him. Torin locked eyes with Pedro and held out her hand. “Pleased to meet you.”

To her surprise—because he in no way telegraphed the move—he grabbed it and pulled her into a hug. “I, too, have spent time locked into a small ship with that man. You have my sympathy,
chica
.”

Torin had no real problem with physical greetings from vetted sources, so she hugged him back and only barely stopped herself from turning it into a pissing contest like the one he’d had with Craig.

Who was smiling when they parted like he’d known how close it had come.

And, of course, he had.

She was weighing a couple of responses when the communications implant in her jaw pinged and she tongued it without thinking.

*Salvage Station 24 requests access codes.*

“You can tell it to piss up a rope,” Pedro told her, as she frowned. He’d probably recognized the common expression of someone listening to a voice in their head. “But if we lose hull integrity, responses are faster if the OS can coordinate the implanted beyond the emergency frequency.” He tapped his jaw.

According to Craig, many CSOs got basic implants the moment they could afford it. Torin had assumed it was to remain in contact with their ships while loading cargo but, as all Hazardous Environment suits had comm units, it now seemed more likely it was for the times they were unsuited. When she glanced over at him, Craig nodded. Since Craig had refused to allow the
Berganitan
access to either his implant or his ship while on the Navy battleship, that said something.

Mostly about Craig.

Torin tongued in her codes. It bothered her more to be unconnected. Being able to instantly reach the station sysop could mean the difference between trying to breathe vacuum and not. The construction of this particular station only reinforced that belief.

The inside of the station was as much of a rabbit warren as it looked to be from the outside. No point in actually making that observation aloud, though; the odds were good neither man knew what a rabbit was. Falling into step behind Pedro, Torin could see wear—everything from scuff marks to hard use—but no oxidizations. She was encouraged by the lack of actual decay but would have liked to have the scuff marks dealt with. Polishing made an excellent punishment for minor disciplinary . . .

Shaking her head, she dragged her finger in and out of a dent. Not her problem anymore. Sometimes, she forgot.

Creating a mental map of the path back to the
Promise
missed being the most difficult bit of orienteering she’d ever done only because no one was shooting at her.

The familiar smell of a few too many people for the air scrubbers ghosted along beside them, seasoned by something enough like curry to make her stomach growl. Their path seemed to be leading them toward the center of the station and although she could hear people—Krai and Human definitely, di’Taykan and Katrien probably—they didn’t actually run into anyone.

Given the number of ships attached to the station, that seemed strange.

“What’s up with the ghost ship effect?” Apparently Craig thought so too.

“Jan and Sirin were supposed to be in four days ago,” Pedro explained, ducking as he stepped through an interior hatch. “Got cut off in the middle of a transmission. Brian Larson—you remember him, damn near lost his fukking arm when a tangle blew—he’s heading out to check their last coordinates. Chloe Badawi’s checking out the other end of their intended Susumi fold, and most folk are sticking pretty close to home until word comes in.”

“Cut off in the middle of a transmission,” Craig repeated, touching the tips of his fingers to the gray plastic hatch numbers as he followed. “Mechanical problems?”

Pedro snorted. “On Jan’s ship? I don’t think so. Jan considered her ship a part of her body.” He tossed the information in Torin’s direction. “No way it would have the kind of mechanical problems that’d keep them from getting a message out for four days. Wouldn’t happen. Just, no. And,” he added darkly, “Sirin said they’d picked up a maker.”

“The kind of salvage that’ll make you,” Craig explained.

Torin nodded and filed the slang away as she also touched the hatch numbers. It was a habit they’d both picked up since discovering a marker left in their brains sometimes caused the plastic aliens to spontaneously react to their touch. Sometimes. But it was all they had. When the hatch numbers remained inert, she turned her attention back to the matter at hand. If the salvage ship had been military, she’d assume they’d been attacked.

“You think they were attacked?” Craig asked Pedro as though he’d been following Torin’s train of thought.

“Don’t like to think it, but ...” Pedro spread his hands and shrugged.

It was unlikely but possible, Torin acknowledged silently, that a CSO could get caught up and destroyed in a naval battle. Sometimes they came in a little close.

“Fukking pirates!”

She grabbed Craig’s arm and pulled him to a stop. “Pirates?”

He nodded. “They net your pen with buoys to keep you from folding to Susumi. Most people dump the pen at that point, give it up. Sirin wouldn’t.”

“Wait.” Torin shook her head, trying to settle the thought. “There are actually people in ships—criminals in ships—stealing lawfully acquired salvage?”

“You didn’t know?”

“There was a war on, I was busy.” The concept of criminal activity on the scale of bad vid programming was a little hard to absorb. This wasn’t an episode of
SpaceCops;
real people, people Craig knew, were being attacked. “What’s being done about it? Are the Wardens involved?” The Wardens dealt with crime outside the jurisdiction of planets—or systems depending on local resources—and answered directly to Parliament, specifically the Justice Minister.

“Wardens don’t do shit. They’re supposed to send the Navy out to chase them down, but ...” Pedro shrugged again. “. . . there’s a war on. They’re busy.”

“War’s over.” Although, given the scale of the conflict and the geography of space, not to mention pure bloody-mindedness of some participants, battles continued to be fought.

“And I’m sure they’ll get around to us eventually.” Pedro’s tone had moved past dry to desiccated.

Torin’s hand dropped to her slate at the same time Craig wrapped callused fingers around her wrist. She was impressed he knew her that well.

“Okay, your first instinct is to fix it, I get that,” he said quietly, “but who are you going to tell who doesn’t already know?”

“Presit.”

She tried not to laugh as Craig opened his mouth and closed it a few times.

“Presit?” he managed at last. “Are you shitting me? You never liked her.”

“Liking her has nothing to do with it.” Presit a Tur durValintrisy had been a furry little pain in Torin’s ass from the moment she’d appeared on the alien ship, Big Yellow, determined to get the story in spite of its highly classified nature. While true that the reporter had far too high an opinion of her own importance, Torin had come to realize that media could be used as a powerful weapon and pointing powerful weapons had made up a large part of her previous career.

“The pirates are going after salvage operators now because you’re . . . we’re,” she corrected when Craig’s grip tightened, “in small ships working independently. If they get away with it unopposed long enough, they’ll up their game and start going after more lucrative targets. Ore carriers, say.”

“There’s a rumor unmanned ore carriers are going missing in statistically relevant numbers,” Pedro interrupted.

“There you go. Presit tells the story, the mining cartels see the danger, they put pressure on their representatives in Parliament, Parliament pressures the Navy, and the Navy finally gets its head out of its ass.”

“Just like that?” Pedro’s brows had risen nearly to his hairline.

“It’s a fairly simple cascade of cause and effect.” Torin shrugged. “No guarantee, but we won’t hit anything if we don’t pull the trigger.”

Pedro raised both hands in surrender. “I bow to your superior knowledge of violent responses.”

When she shot him a pointed glance, Craig released her wrist.

“Presit’s a big shot celebrity now,” he reminded her as she touched the screen of her slate. “You think she’ll even answer your call?”

“Probably not. That’s why I’m using your account. Presit
likes
him,” she added to Pedro who grinned wide and white at the emphasis. “If he’d been shorter and furrier, I’d have had a fight on my hands.”

Craig’s protests carried them the rest of the way into the center of the station and the large, open area Pedro called the market.

Torin had seen variations on every station she’d ever been on. Social species liked to congregate, to see and be seen, to take comfort in knowing they weren’t alone. This particular market had clearly once been the shuttle bay of a large transport. The four individual bays across the narrow, inboard end had been turned into two sizable shops bracketing what looked like a popular bar.

Torin exchanged a speaking glance with Craig about the amount of visible plastic, then stepped out of the way as half a dozen shouting kids—Human and Krai—charged past. The dominant scent seemed to be fried egg, and she wondered where the chickens were. Chickens had adapted remarkably well to space, and eggs provided a protein source that not even those Elder Races who professed to be appalled by the taking of life for food could get all more-evolved-than-thou about.

Small kiosks, selling what looked like everything from body parts to engine parts, dotted the actual docking area although very few people seemed interested in the merchandise on display. The twenty or so people Torin could see stood around in small groups. The di’Taykan’s hair lay flat, and everyone’s body language shouted waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Waiting to see if one of theirs had been attacked by pirates.

No. Waiting to see if one of
hers
had been attacked by pirates.

Because these were her people now.

Given that, Torin took another look around. Used to be, she could pick her people out of a mixed group because they were part of a whole. Marines, for all the physical differences inherent in three separate species, had a similarity of movement written on bone and muscle by training and experience. Even in a crowd of civilians, they were aware of each other and could be pulled into a unit with a word.

Their decision to take up the responsibility of defending the vast bulk of Confederation space and the nonaggressive species that lived there kept them a people apart.

These new people had decided to live apart, their only connection that decision.

As she followed Pedro across the docking area, she noted that Craig had been identified as one of them. A few greeted him by name, but as they were moving purposefully toward a destination, no one tried to pull him out of formation. In contrast, she had been identified as “other.” All of the children and most of the adults in the market stared openly at her. Most of the stares were speculative, those who recognized her passing the news on to those who didn’t. Some of the adults seemed openly hostile. Until they were in a position to open fire, Torin didn’t give a H’san’s ass about hostile. No one ever bled out as the result of a pissy expression.

Conversations ebbed and flowed as they passed and, in their wake, she could hear movement from group to group picking up.

Civilian salvage operators self-identified as individuals, accepted only the minimal government authority necessary for them to operate. Their obsessive need to be
unique
was what gave them their group identity, and the single word that would pull her Marines together would scatter this lot like a fragmentation round.

These new people she could identity because of their desire
not
to be part of a whole.

It was . . . different.

She heard her name, Silsviss, Big Yellow, Crucible, the di’Taykan phrase that meant progenitor, and the familiar sound of speculation.

Same old, same old.

As “individuals,” they were clearly not averse to gossip.

Pedro and his family lived in an old cargo ship built into the structure of the station. Torin followed Craig into the cargo bay and stared around at the piles of . . . salvage, she assumed, although junk would be as accurate. Seconds after they’d stepped through the hatch, half a dozen kids—ranging in age from early teens to just past toddler—threw themselves at Craig. As he didn’t seem to be in any danger, Torin turned her attention to the three adults descending the metal stairs from the living quarters on the upper levels.