The Truth of Valor (50 page)

Huirre’s nose ridges flared. He grinned and danced the fingers of both hands and the toes of his foot across the board.

Instinct had Torin duck her head down in her helmet as the first energy burst flashed by. “I hate being shot at when I can’t shoot back!”

“Good thing they’re crap shots!”

“They’re trying too hard not to hit the station.” Well, Big Bill’s ships were, she amended as a shot from the
Heart
left an elderly cargo vessel floating dead in space and another sent a di’Taykan design tumbling sideways. Problem was, no matter how good the gunner on the
Heart
might be, more and more ships were pulling away from Vrijheid and, in the end, numbers would tell.

Now she had more points of reference, Torin could see that they were moving toward the
Star
too quickly to be depending on Craig’s pulling them in hand over hand. “The line . . . ?”

“Is being rewound, yeah.”

Unable to look back over her shoulder because of the suit, or twist because of her ribs, Torin searched for other lines coming from the ship, other lines that should be hauling in the armory, and couldn’t see them.

“Brace for impact!”

“Holy fukking shit, Cap! I got it! I got the fukking armory! First try!”

Cho’s lip curled. It was a little fukking big to miss. “Roll it into the cargo bay while we move! Dysun, take the helm and get us out of here! Huirre, keep firing!” he yelled over his helmsman’s protests. “Do not let those sons of bitches line up to get a shot at us!”

“Because I was a little busy trying to keep this ship in one piece.” Hands still working the board, Mashona glanced toward the air lock just long enough for Torin to see she wasn’t going to apologize for not grappling the armory. “I could get you or the armory, Gunny. I chose you.”

“Thank you.” Craig already had his helmet down, lying against his tanks while Torin was still unsealing hers one-handed.

When it finally dropped, she shuffled toward the board, gravity making the suit one hell of a lot harder to drag around.

“There goes the
Heart of Stone
.” His suit abandoned on the deck, Craig slid into the pilot’s chair as Werst slid out, his hands dropping automatically to the controls. “They’ve got the armory.”

Torin had seen Craig pilot the
Promise
through a swarm of enemy vacuum jockeys with pens extended and full of Marines. Seeing him at the controls now made her believe they still had a chance. “Go after them.”

“Captain! In another hundred meters, we’ll be far enough out for them to target us with the station’s gun!”

The station only had one gun, but it was a big one. Originally from a battleship, rumor was Firrg had taken it from a salvage operator in Krai territory and sold it to Big Bill for enough to rebuild her engines and supply her ship for a year. Cho didn’t give a fuk about the rumor, but he’d seen a battleship’s guns in action and a ship the size of the
Heart
would be vaporized by that kind of firepower. “Nat!”

“I’d like to not slam a big metal box full of weapons through the fukking ship, Cap!”

“Captain!” Dysun’s voice had sharpened to near hysteria. “Fifty meters!”

“Speed it up, Nat. We can survive a few dents!” He dropped back into his chair and pulled up the Susumi equations. “Get ready,” he snarled at Dysun and Huirre. “You’ll lock your boards on my signal. The moment the armory is on board, we’ll fold.”

And if the Susumi vortex pulled apart the nearer half of Big Bill’s fleet, then that would teach the son of a bitch to try and bring down Mackenzie Cho.

“He’s got his Susumi engines on-line!” Craig’s fingers danced over the board and, under the touch of an experienced pilot, the
Star
responded by leaping forward and closing the distance to the
Heart
.

“Gunny!” Mashona shifted the aft screen up where everyone could see it. “We’re in range of the station’s guns . . . right . . . now!”

Torin stepped out of the HE suit, leaving it lying on the deck like another body. “Fortunately, in order to hit us, they’d have to shoot through a crowd of their own ships.”

One of the ships directly between them and the station’s guns flared and disappeared.

“I think they’re good with that, Gunny,” Ressk pointed out.

Star fields tipped as Craig took evasive action. “We need to get out of here.”

“Not without the armory.” Teeth clenched, Torin shouldered her way into the crowd around the board and pulled up the long-range scanners. “The
Heart
’s grapples have pulled the armory to the cargo doors.” She slid her thumb across the board, shifting programs between the dedicated stations. “I’ve slaved the scanners to the cutter. Mashona, can you hit it?” Mashona had been the best sniper Sh’quo Company had ever seen.

“Hit the armory with a cutter this size? Gunny, it’ll . . .”

“I know.” Torin met Mashona’s eyes. “Can you hit it?”

“Yes, Gunny.”

“Do it!” She snapped the order out with all the force of Gunnery Sergeant Kerr behind it. Her responsibility.

Lower lip caught between her teeth, Mashona bent over the controls. Training had her draw in a deep breath and hold it, settling into a moment of perfect stillness before she fired.

“Cargo doors are closing, Cap!”

“Ha!” Cho entered the Susumi equation and sat back. “We . . .”

The front port polarized as the
Heart of Stone
exploded, but it wasn’t quite fast enough to keep the sudden blast of light, white in the center and blue around the edges, from burning into Torin’s retinas. Hand gripping the back of Craig’s chair, she blinked away afterimages and tried to keep from feeling triumphant.

Because the feeling had very little to do with keeping the armory out of the hands of pirates and a great deal to do with the knowledge that Mackenzie Cho had just been reduced to his component parts.

“I’m not reading debris!”

“There is no debris!”

“What the fuk was in that thing?”

Mackenzie Cho had just been reduced to his component parts on a subatomic level.

Torin felt Craig’s hand cover hers and squeeze. He thought he understood. Maybe he did. One more thing on the list of things they should probably talk about.

He snatched his hand away as the view suddenly went completely opaque. Before he could get his hand back on the board, the radiation wave hit.

And the board died.

“On the bright side,” he muttered, hooking his thumbnails under the inert edging and popping it off. “There’s no debris. Torin, my . . .”

“Tools.” She nodded her thanks to Werst and passed them forward.

“What are the odds the blast took out the ships behind us?” Werst growled.

The
Star
bucked forward.

“Fuk!” Craig spat the word out. “Feels like we just lost one of the lateral port thrusters!”

“You can tell that from the feel?” Mashona had her hands in place to turn the cutter and fire the moment the board came back.

Craig twisted far enough to grin up at Torin. “Not the first port thruster I’ve lost in a firefight.”

“At least Werst and I are inside this time.”

“View was better outside,” Werst muttered.

“And you’re insane. Move,” Ressk added to Mashona. He shoved her out of her seat and slapped his slate down on the board.