Valor's Trial (38 page)

“It's possible,” Torin acknowledged.
Dumbass
described these latest tunnels—although pointless and annoying would also be pretty damned accurate. Given the number of turns and cross tunnels and blind ends, they weren't the shortest distance between two points. They just were—the turns, cross tunnels and blind ends leading nowhere. It was like negotiating a particularly futile maze.

“Could be more tunnels above these.”

“Could be.” She shone her cuff light up and squinted along the beam. “That looks like the upper end.” Leaning a little farther, Mike holding a fistful of her vest, she managed to make out two darker rectangles against the inside of the tube between them and the top. “Only two floors up. Eight meters max.”

“Might as well be twenty,” Durlin Vertic snarled after she'd had a look. “Even the Artek cannot hold a vertical surface so time.”

The correct translation should probably have been
for so long
rather than
so time,
but the meaning was clear.

“And there's nothing for the Krai to climb.”

Even the pebbled finish was gone.

“No hand grips. What if it's not a lift, but a link tube?” Ressk offered. “And that rock hit the top of a car not the bottom of the tube. All we need to do is call a link!”

Mike waved a hand at the featureless wall. “So call one.”

“There's got to be tech in here somewhere. Kyster! How'd you get the
serley
door open?”

Kyster rubbed at the back of his neck. “Was just banging the wall.”

All three di'Taykan snickered.

“Banging
on
the wall!”

More banging accomplished absolutely nothing. Kicking merely proved that in a game of rock versus boot, rock won.

“There must be tech!” Sanati almost wailed. Frustration seemed to be creating a bond between her and Ressk.

“Then find it,” Vertic snarled. “We cannot spend our lives here!”

Torin was starting to like the four-legged officer.

“Gunny, we have an idea.” Darlys moved closer, Jiyuu and Watura on her heels. “What about a low-tech way?”

“I am listening.”

“Two people make a base here, standing facing each other at the edge. Watura stands on their shoulders, then Jiyuu stands on his, then I stand on Jiyuu's. One of the Krai climbs us, gets the door open, and secures the rope.”

“Volunteering to commit suicide does not impress me, Darlys.”

“We're serious, Gunny.” She looked more than serious, she looked as if she were seconds away from begging for the chance to do something stupidly dangerous. “We can do it.”

“We'll brace ourselves against the side of the wall,” Jiyuu put in. The break he'd taken from sucking up seemed to be over. “We're the only ones who can do this.”

“Watura?”

He shrugged.

“You have something to say about this?” Torin asked.

Watura glanced over at Jiyuu and shrugged again. “Not really, Gunny.”

“It was Darlys' idea, but I came up with the two people bracing the whole thing at the bottom.” His eyes a pale pink, Jiyuu looked remarkably pleased with himself.

Torin shook her head. “There's got to be another way.”

There was no other way.

“They will not die themselves?” Vertic wondered.

“It's very dangerous,” Torin agreed, assuming the durlin had actuallymeant
kill themselves,
“but it was their idea and physically they're certainly capable of doing it.”

“I would not order it.”

Good for her. “They've volunteered.”

There was one small hitch.

“Are you out of your fukking mind?” Werst demanded. “I'm not climbing your unsupported bony asses to get anywhere.”

“It will please the gunny,” Darlys told him, eyes dark.

“No offense, Gunny . . .” Werst looked past the di'Taykan. “. . . but I don't give a flying fuk.”

“I'll do it. Besides,” Ressk added as attention turned to him, “if there's tech up there, and there will be, I've got the best chance to get the door open.”

Werst shook his head. “No.”

“Not your call,” Ressk reminded him.

“It's a fukking stupid idea.”

“Got a better one? That doesn't involve wandering around these fukking tunnels until we starve to death?”

“Hey, there's a lot of meat on . . .”

“Werst. And you,” Torin added nodding toward Darlys as Werst fell silent, “do not speak for me. Ever. I don't like this idea, but Ressk's right. No one's come up with a better one, no one's found anything else in the walls of these tunnels, and no one wants to sit here with our thumbs up our collective butts until we starve to death. It's Ressk's choice. He chooses to make the climb, we have a go.”

“I choose to make the climb.”

“I'll let the durlin know.”

Durlin Vertic stared at her for a long moment, and Torin, unable to read her expression, would have given half her pension to know what she was thinking. “It is a crazy plan,” she said at last.

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you understand it will work?” Again with the claws against the rock. The sound was moving from annoying to infuriating. Eventually it would become background, and that couldn't happen soon enough as far as Torin was concerned.

“Do I believe it will work? The Marines involved believe it'll work. I believe in them.”

The durlin's ears rotated slightly forward. “There is no better plan.”

“No, sir, there isn't.”

Widening her stance, she leaned her upper body out over the shaft, twisted, and indicated that Torin should shine her cuff light up toward the door. Twisted again, pointed Torin's arm down toward the bottom. When she straightened, she didn't look happy.

“My people . . .” A gesture toward the golden fur on her flank made it specific rather than general. “. . . do not climb well.”

“My people . . .” A matching gesture toward the Krai. “. . . make a kickass net.”

“And my people should trust your people in such a position?”

Such a position
—suspended in a net over a lethal drop. Torin wouldn't put Kichar alone on the rope that was for damned sure, but the rest had been in long enough that the personal had worn off the war. “Yes, sir.”

Vertic took another long look at Torin, another look out over the shaft, and finally said, “It is a crazy, dangerous plan. Perhaps the Artek secretions can help. Do it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We didn't need her permission,” Torin heard Darlys mutter as she climbed carefully up onto Watura's shoulders. “Not once Gunnery Sergeant Kerr said yes.”

Watura's response was too quiet for Torin to hear. She sucked air through her teeth as the di'Taykan shifted his bare foot on her shoulder.

“Remember what I said about inappropriate touching,” she growled as Darlys began her climb up Jiyuu. As a general rule there was no such thing as inappropriate touching where it concerned di'Taykan on di'Taykan, but climbing the side of a vertical shaft, held to the wall with the smeared secretions from a sentient insect's footpads was not the time to indulge.

Because they were of a height, she made up the base of the tower with Mashona. Mike, given a male's heavier build, would have made more sense, but he and Sanati were still working on finding tech. Durlin Vertic was all in favor of getting the antigravity turned on before she ended up in a net, hauled up eight meters like a load of laundry. Torin couldn't say she blamed her—and made a mental note that the Primacy collectively knew what an antigravity lift was and clearly used them at times other than when they were attempting to take over a Confederation station. It might be information Military Intelligence could use even given that Military Intelligence was historically held to be an oxymoron.

“I'm in place, Gunnery Sergeant!”

“How can you gain weight on kibble and biscuits and water?” Jiyuu grunted from the middle position.

“Like you've got reason to complain,” Watura sniped.

“Enough, people!” The di'Taykan may have been light as a species, but three of them, even with the weight divided between her and Mashona and the wall had her locking her knees and praying to any gods that might be listening in. Mashona's expression suggested she was doing the same. “Ressk! Move!”

He had his hand on her elbow when Mike yelled, “Got it!”

“Got it working?”

“Found the panel and got it open.”

Torin snorted. “Go, Ressk! Long odds on them ever getting it working.” Breathing shallowly through her nose, she hoped the secretions would be enough to keep the di'Taykan in contact with the wall as Ressk used them like a living ladder. Her right knee felt ready to buckle.

“I'm up. There's a ledge. It's no wider than Werst's dick, but it'll hold me. Door mech seems . . .”

The last word got lost. Darlys shrieked a warning. Torin grabbed Watura's legs. Jiyuu dropped past, arms and legs windmilling, mouth open, screaming. Torin felt something loop around her waist and haul her back as Watura's weight threatened to take them both over the edge.

Jiyuu's screaming stopped abruptly, cut off by a wet crack. Followed a moment later by a muffled thud. He'd clearly hit the side before he hit bottom.

Watura twisted as he fell, got his hands out, and managed to prevent his spine from impacting with the lip of the shaft. Mashona grabbed a handful of his combats and all three of them—four of them, Torin corrected as she identified the dark brown arm folded around her waist as belonging to one of the Artek, who were obviously a hell of a lot stronger than they looked—collapsed in a heap.

“Gunny!”

Surrounded by the scent of cherries, Torin crawled forward. “Darlys?” She was hanging from the lip Ressk balanced on. Torin fought the urge to tell Ressk to hurry, well aware he was moving as fast as he could. Twisting, she looked into Cherry Bug's face. “If I have to . . .” The motion for Darlys falling and Torin throwing herself forward wasn't very complicated. “. . . can you . . .”
Keep me from going over
was a little more complex but she managed it.

Cherry Bug clacked her mandibles together, and a second Artek rushed forward to grab Torin's other ankle.

“All right, then.”

Mashona yelled, “Hang on, Darlys!”

Darlys yelled, “Fuk you!” Pale feet scrabbled for something more than mere contact with the wall.

And Ressk yelled, “Got the door!”

“In a vid, we'd have turned the lift on at the last minute.” Mike pounded the side of his fist against the wall. “Jiyuu wouldn't have died.”

“If life was a vid,” Torin muttered, “it'd make more fukking sense.” The only bit of bright news she'd had lately was that Watura and Darlys both agreed that Jiyuu
was
dead, that the only scents coming up from the bottom of the shaft were shit and blood. No pheromones. And only death stopped that.

The odds were stacked high against anyone surviving that kind of a fall. Torin moved back to the edge of the shaft and shone her cuff light down into the depths. No surprise when it still wasn't up to the job.

“You want to go down there and make sure.” Durlin Vertic moved to stand beside her.

“Yes, sir.”

“Even though your own people tell you they are certain he is dead.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I order you not to.”

Torin turned then and looked at the durlin, who returned Torin's regard with a level stare of her own.

Torin drew in a long breath and let it out slowly. “Yes, sir.” Then she turned again and leaned out into the shaft. “What the hell's taking that net so long, Corporal?”

“Almost done, Gunny!”

Werst and then Kyster had gone effortlessly hand over hand over foot up the dangling rope as soon as Ressk and Darlys had found a way to tie it off, and Werst had bit off a piece of his arm and spat it down toward Jiyuu's body. The three Artek just needed a little of their weight held and had scrabbled up the wall, all four arms working the rope.

The Humans, Druin, and remaining di'Taykan could have gone up essentially the same way, but the Polina needed the net and assistance getting into it. As long as there was going to be a net, better safe than dead.

Like Jiyuu.

One of Harnett's goons and an annoying suck-up.

He was young. Not that youth excused what he'd done.

Watura sat braced against the tunnel wall about four meters from the entrance to the shaft, his knees drawn up and his hair a lime-green curtain over his face.

“It's weird,” Kichar murmured, arms wrapped around her torso. “You always think of the di'Taykan and sex, not actual feelings. I mean, not that I don't think they have feelings, it's just they have so much sex that something like a crush is just kind of a surprise.”

“Guys his age don't have crushes,” Mashona told her shortly.

“Yeah, but Jiyuu didn't . . .”

“Quit while you're ahead,” Torin advised as she passed. “And don't apologize to me,” she added when Kichar started to stammer.

Watura's hair gave a single flip as Torin dropped to one knee beside him. “She's right,” he said. “Jiyuu didn't like me more than he liked any other of us. I was just there for him. He liked that.”

“Doesn't change what you're feeling.” She laid two fingers against the back of his hand. Touch meant more to the di'Taykan than words.