Valor's Trial (30 page)

The Marine, a male di'Taykan, lay with one leg bent to the side and his hands crossed one on top of the other on his chest. Pale blue hair had fallen away from a pebbled scalp and surrounded his head like long, discolored, conifer needles. His eyes were closed, but in death they'd have gone pale blue from lid to lid. The skin that clung to the bones as though it had been vaccum sealed had a deep blue tint and the stain under the body looked black.

“Keep your light on his chest, Watura.” Dropping to one knee, Torin gently moved the dead Marine's hands.

He'd died of his wounds. Been scooped up away from his fireteam, his squad, his platoon, and dropped here where he'd died. Undiscovered. No way of knowing exactly how long he'd been here, but Torin had seen plenty of dead di'Taykan and that kind of desiccation didn't happen overnight.

Thumb rubbing lightly against the raised crest of his collar tab, she silently filled in what it told her: Corporal, 1st Division, 2nd Recar'ta, 1st Battalion, 4th Armored. No way of knowing his name with his tech off. His vest surrendered a tube of sealant and two filters. If he'd had three sheets of supplement tucked away, they'd have arrived with the same baggage. Almost the same baggage. She snapped the pheromone masker off his throat and straightened.

“Gunnery Sergeant?”

“Had a di'Taykan in my platoon once, di'Stenjic Haysole,” she said quietly, eyes on the tech, dialing it back to zero. “He asked me . . .

“. . . he said, if I die, take the masker off before you bag me.”

“Did he? Die?” Kyster added when she turned to face him.

“He did.”

“Did you . . . ?” Watura finished the question with a noise that could have meant any number of things.

Torin tucked the masker into her vest and smiled. Kyster wouldn't have asked because it would never have occurred to Kyster that she might fail. “There wasn't enough left to bag,” she told Watura bluntly. “Just like we can't bag the corporal.” Wishing she could spare a mouthful of water, she looked down at the body. “We will not forget. We will not fail you.”

Easy odds that neither of them had ever stood in those positions before. But every Marine knew the words.

“All right, let's go; we're on the clock.”

“We can't just leave him.”

She felt her lip curl as she turned toward the living di'Taykan. “That's rich coming from you, Private. How many did you drop down the disposal? Leave to die in a cave just like this one? Leave to die, alone?” As a Marine, Watura had seen plenty of death. As a di'Taykan, there were few things worse than being alone. “We'll remember this Marine and take that memory with us because it's all we've got. How many have you forgotten?”

Beside her, Kyster snapped his teeth together.

Hair flat against his head, his lime-green eyes nearly black, Watura stood for a moment, light on the dead di'Taykan's face; then his legs folded and he sat. “I'm staying with him. I only came because I thought if we got out you'd put in a good word if I helped with the escape, but there's no fukking point. It's just more tunnels, and he's been alone long enough.”

Torin actually considered leaving him there. Then she sighed. “And Jiyuu?”

“What?”

“Don't even try to tell me that was the only reason you came. You came because Jiyuu came.”

“He'll be fine with Darlys. Me, her—it doesn't matter to him.”

“Evidence suggests it does.”

Watura shrugged.

Fine. So much for the compassionate approach. Plan B. She leaned forward until their faces were so close the air between them began to warm and she could feel her body responding—the near contact overwhelming Watura's masker—but she wasn't planning on holding the position long enough for it to be a problem. “Look at me.”

His eyes had started to pale as the light receptors closed.

He'd be reacting to
her
arousal in a minute, so she had to make this fast before it spiraled out of control. Voice too low to be overheard out in the tunnel, she said, “I'd really rather you hadn't come along, but since you did, and since in a moment of temporary insanity I didn't send your ass back to Staff Sergeant Pole, your ass is my responsibility. That means your ass is getting out of here with the rest of us, so stand up and get out in that tunnel and try to convince me that you're worth being considered a Marine.”

He leaned back, unable to look away, and tried to focus on her face. “We don't leave our people alone.”

“No.
We
don't leave our people behind.” Still holding his gaze, she stretched out an arm and picked up one of the pale blue hairs, tucking it into Watura's vest. “Remember this. Now . . .” She straightened. “If the Others catch up because you decided to park your ass, I'm going to be more than just a little pissed! On your feet!”

At the edge of her peripheral vision, she saw Kyster glance down at the body as though he expected it to respond. Hell, she was a gunnery sergeant in the Confederation Marine Corps and if she wanted the dead to rise, they'd damned well do it, but right now she'd settle for getting one pain-in-the-ass di'Taykan moving.

On his feet, Watura looked like he couldn't remember standing.

Torin jerked her head toward the exit, and he moved with the motion,as though a string connected her desires and his actions. Which was, bottom line, the way it worked in the Corps with or without complacency-causing kibble.

As he began to push his way back through the crack toward the tunnel, Kyster closed his hand around her wrist.

Knowing what was coming, Torin dropped back to her knee, one hand resting lightly on the dead Marine's shoulder.

“I can take a part of him out as a part of me,” Kyster said quietly, mouth up against her ear.

She'd given him this, a way of making right what he'd had to do to stay alive. She couldn't take it away again. This wasn't about food— although the Krai could get food value out of anything organic—this was about giving meaning to death.

“Do it,” she said, picked up another pale blue hair, and stood. She waited until she heard the first crunch, then she worked her way back out into the tunnel, her boots making as much noise as possible against the rock.

Slate held in his feet, Ressk worked the screen with both hands, freeing Mike to lean against the opposite wall of the tunnel and watch her as she emerged. When both brows lifted slightly, she wondered what he saw, wondered if he'd expected more than the carefully blank expression she knew she wore.

The three di'Taykan stood together, bodies touching shoulder to hip, heads bowed, lime-green, fuchsia, and ocher hair interweaving as they studied the line of pale blue crossing Watura's palm.

The weight of Torin's regard pulled Darlys' attention up off the hair. “We didn't know him,” she said.

“Yes, you did,” Torin told her as Kyster slipped out into the tunnel. “He was a Marine.”

A single whistle got Werst and Kichar moving again.

“Ressk.”

“Just one more . . .”

Mike reached down before she could reply and pulled the slate from Ressk's grip. “When we stop again, Corporal. Let's get out of here.”

They were no more than three meters from the cave when he fell into step beside her and said, “At least we definitely know we're heading toward a pipe.”

“I thought the geography told us that.”

“They wouldn't have dropped that Marine here if they hadn't expected him to be picked up by the Marines at the pipe.”

Torin frowned. “So they're not watching all the time. There've been no other bodies, so they knew to stop using this section of tunnels.” Too late for the dead corporal.

“Makes me think the delivery system is automatic.”

“Or they were in too much of a hurry to check the situation at the pipe when they left him.”

“However they left him.”

“Matter transmitter ray?”

“They used a matter transmitter ray in
Pirates of the Back Belt,
” Jiyuu offered. “When they needed to get the captain out of the brig.”

Mike held out his hands. “That's what I'm saying.”

Torin almost smiled. “For shame, Technical Sergeant, pulling a theory from bad vids.”

“It wasn't a bad vid, Gunny!”

She did smile at the indignant protest. Her cheeks felt funny.

“Don't the Others just bring the Marines in under cover of darkness, Gunny?” Darlys asked, moving closer. “That's what we always assumed.”

“Your lot made a number of incorrect assumptions,” Torin reminded her.

“And I am sorry for what I was a part of, but still, there'd be no one in the tunnels at night to hear them,” Darlys insisted. “Not with everyone gathered around the pipes.”

“Kyster?”

His teeth snapped together. “Never heard them.”

“You couldn't be in every tunnel, every night.”

“Next cave to the gunny's when she came in. Didn't hear them.”

“But if you were in a cave, you might not have heard them.”

“Would have.”

“But . . .”

“He says he would have, Darlys. That's the end of it.”

“Yes, Gunnery Sergeant.”

Contrary to expectations, there was more damage in the tunnels the closer the pattern told them they were to the pipe. Cracks and fissures widened, and at one point the lights hung no more than a meter and a half from the floor, dangling on their cables.

“Solid workmanship.” Mike reached out, fingers not quite touching the twisted metal. “I'm impressed they're still on.”

“I'm impressed you repaired them with a sleeve,” Torin told him, stepping over a pile of loose rock. “I'm less impressed by the workmanship of an enemy holding Marines captive.”

“Holding a grudge, Gunny?”

“Hasn't been long enough to be considered a grudge, Sergeant.” She noted the recon marks on the wall and waved her people over to the right, where Werst had determined the floor was more stable. “Check back in a couple of days.”

They caught up to Werst and Kichar at the turn just before the last straight ten meters into the pipe. Werst's nose ridges were slowly opening and closing, and his lips were drawn up off his teeth.

They could all smell it this time, not just the Krai.

Torin shifted her grip on the club and deliberately drew in a couple of deep breaths, letting the smell of rot coat the inside of her mouth and nose. No point in ignoring it, it wasn't going away. Best to get used to it quickly so that it wasn't a distraction. “We go in like we're expecting survivors,” she said. “If we're attacked, and it's at all possible, we disable, we don't kill.”

“What if it's not Marines we're attacked by, Gunnery Sergeant?” Kichar's dark eyes seemed enormous.

“Disable,” Torin told her. “I want some fukking answers.”

She wouldn't have allowed an officer to physically lead a team into an area so potentially deadly, but not only wasn't she an officer, she had the most combat experience of the group and would be best able to threat assess the situation. And that put her out front.

Not that it really mattered.

They all knew what the smell meant. Preparing for a threat was the military version of wishful thinking.

The first body lay across the tunnel exit, one hand stretched out toward them. Human, male, his skin as dark as Mashona's, his face haloed by a stain on the stone. Torin held the others in place and carefully, gently, turned his head with the toe of her boot.

“Looks like the blood came out of his nose,” Darlys murmured.

“Filters!” Torin snapped.

Whatever it was had killed quickly. With any luck, they weren't slapping on protection just a little too late.

Almost all the bodies were sprawled facing the tunnels, but there was no way of knowing whether they'd started to run because they'd known there was something in the air or because the pipe had buckled. It hadn't pulled out of the ceiling though it had exposed approximately six meters more length disappearing into a jagged hole. Half a dozen of the dead Marines closest to the pipe had been crushed under falling rock.

“All right.” Torin let the club hang by her side. “Technical Sergeant Gucciard, get that slate up and running. The rest of you, by twos and by tunnel sections, get me a head count. And stay sharp; at least some of that rock has fallen since the pipe came down.”

When the pipe broke, a flood of kibble had spewed out across the node. The edge closest to the water outlet had clearly been turned to mush and then allowed to dry. The five-by-two-meter slab looked like the crust that formed on the top of the manure pile in high summer back on her family's farm, but Torin figured she'd keep that observation to herself. The speed at which the kibble absorbed water had probably kept it from destroying the entire spill—a good half meter of the far edge remained loose and mixed with the occasional biscuit. Given the pervasive smell of rot, she couldn't tell if they'd gone bad, but the Krai would know. And not much care.

The water chute had kinked, but the area around the contact point was damp. Torin pressed it in with her thumb, pressed harder when it refused to give, and finally slammed it with the club. A trickle of water ran over her wrist. She cupped her hands and nearly filled them before the pressure behind the contact pushed it out again. Unable to drink it through the filter, she let it splash against the floor, turning the pale gray dark. It'd be a pain in the ass, but they could fill the canteens.