Valor's Trial (43 page)

“External hatch closed and sealed, Gunnery Sergeant.”

It was an assumption, of course, but it seemed a valid one. “Open it up, Corporal.”

“Understood, Gunnery Sergeant.”

The durlin rolled her eyes and Torin smiled, the way she'd smile at one of the Krai, her teeth covered. If Ressk was laying it on thick enough for an alien species to notice, it was thick on the ground indeed.

“Convenient you have two tech among you, Gunnery Sergeant.”

“Yes, Durlin, it is.” She responded to the words alone, the way she would with any officer. “I had noticed, Durlin, that when your species goes into battle you go with another.”

“We do.” A muscle jumped in Vertic's right arm as she went to reach back, then stopped herself.

“The Krai use their feet as extra hands.” Inexact, but Torin needed to use words the slate could translate correctly. “They have no boots and . . .”

Vertic cut her off. “And you want to know if we will carry them to the landing site as we would carry the Ner.”

“Yes, Durlin.”

“Perhaps it would be more sense if they stayed here. Without boots.”

“We don't leave our people behind, Durlin.”

“We are both leaving a great many people behind, Gunnery Sergeant.”

Torin inclined her head to acknowledge the point, to acknowledge the three-hundred-odd Marines still down in the tunnels eating their kibble and filling their time and not caring they were prisoners. And, hopefully, there still were three hundred Marines—the quake that had opened the way to the surface had wiped out an entire node and the last quake had definitely done some damage.

“As you said, Gunnery Sergeant, we need to get all our people out.” She glanced at Ressk, working on the locking mechanism. “But we both start small. We will carry your Krai.”

“Thank you, Durlin. They aren't light.”

The durlin dismissed that observation with a cutting motion. “Neither
freetay
nor
ryrin
. . .”

Mount nor rider, Torin translated silently when the program didn't try.

“. . . wears body armor or carries weapons or ammunition or even much in the way of supplies. And, we are strong.”

“Under these conditions . . .” A glance toward the window where a firestorm close to the building painted the glass with lurid bands of color. “. . . the extra weight on your feet . . .”

“Our feet are also strong.”

“Yes, Durlin.” The durlin had been emphatic enough that Torin no longer believed she'd agreed purely for the benefit of the Krai. Sometime, when she had the time, she'd like to have the relationship between the Polina and the Ner explained.

The lights over the hatch stopped blinking, burning a steady blue and yellow. Ressk spun the handle and pushed the hatch open.

“Filter works,” Mike said stepping out into the control room. Looking directly at Torin, he slapped at the readout on his sleeve. “Seventy-four point two percent nitrogen, twenty-two point three nine percent oxygen, carbon dioxide six point two percent and neon point zero seven percent. Everything else, and there's a lot of it, reads trace.” The Krai would be happy with the CO2 levels. The di'Taykan would not. “Precipitants are mostly ash, but there's other shit this thing's too basic to read.” He sounded personally insulted by the failings of his uniform tech. “Temperature's up to 39.7 degrees C and that's in the shade of the building. Closer to the fires, well, it'll be hotter.”

At those temperatures, with only basic environmental controls working, the di'Taykan were going to be very uncomfortable. If Torin was reading Freenim's expression correctly, the Druin weren't too happy about it either.

“We can reach the landing site, then, Technical Sergeant Gucciard?”

Mike shifted his gaze to the durlin, one scorched eyebrow raised, and repeated, in a tone that wondered why she asked, “The filter works.”

She scraped her rear claws against the floor. “Gunnery Sergeant, Durlave Kan—get everyone into the air lock. Helic'tin, Bertecnic— we will carry the Krai.”

Torin felt a hand grip her sleeve. “What is it, Kyster?”

“They will carry the Krai?”

“That's what the durlin said, Private.”

“On who . . . uh, which, Gunny?”

“Not for me to say.”

Teeth carefully covered, the durlin pointed at each Krai in turn. “You, on Helic'tin. You, on Bertecnic. You, on me.”

When Torin looked down, Kyster didn't look happy about getting to ride an officer across a lava field. “Gunnery Sergeant?”

“You can't walk through a lava field, Private. Say thank you and mount up.” She raised her voice slightly, more for impact than need. “Filters on everyone.” A quick round of the room to check the seals. Hairless, the Druin and the Krai needed only minor adjustments, the press of her finger along the band to ease it down the last bit. Other species took a little more tweaking. Given that the di'Taykan hair were sense organs—the Corps used hoods for that very reason—Watura and Darlys both kept fussing until she glared their hands down.

“Is it painful?”

“No, Gunny, but it feels . . .”

“Like crap,” Watura finished, the ends of his unconfined hair flipping up and down.

“Lung burn feels worse,” Torin reminded them. Their uncovered hair was going to take damage, no way around it. Her own hair was about the same length, and the band settled uncomfortably, sealant seeping through and around it. Her scalp itched. Although, since she hadn't washed her hair for days, there could have been other reasons for that.

Kyster looked unhappy perched on the durlin's withers, clutching the straps on her vest. Ressk looked intrigued. Werst looked bored. They could maintain their hold on a tree in a high wind, Torin had every confidence they'd stay on board. All three Polina seemed . . . not exactly happy, but significantly more
settled
.

The floor bucked once, the whip end of a wave motion, tumbling them together but not actually knocking anyone down.

“Watch your fukking elbows,” Mashona growled as she steadied Kichar.

Freenim snarled something the program missed as the Artek charged through the hatch. The last bug into the air lock clicked something back.

Torin understood their need for speed. “Marines, we are leaving!”

“THEY MUST HAVE BEEN KNOWING WE WERE BEING
behind them!” Presit paced the width of the tiny cabin, her legs short enough it was actually worth the effort. “I are still saying they are having deliberately ditched us!”

“Not so much
still
saying as
continuously,
” Craig muttered, bending over the board. And Presit was delusional. If the Others had been aware of the small salvage ship locked onto their Susumi tail, they'd have destroyed it rather than risk a message with any kind of usable equation getting back to the enemy. No, they'd been ditched out here beyond the black stump because trusting to the Susumi modification had been a fukked idea from the get go—where nothing else was certain that much stood out like a dog's balls. But he'd given up arguing with Presit some time ago, allowing her to monologue uninterrupted.

Her small hand grabbed his forearm, lacquered claws digging in just enough to keep him from jerking free. “Why are we not going back already?” she asked suddenly, suspiciously. “You are working that board since we are being left here, and nothing are happening.”

“We can't go back until we know where we are,” he reminded her, plucking her hand from his flesh. “Destination equations are dependent on the start point, and I don't have a start point.”

“There are being your start point!” She poked an imperious finger toward the view screen and the scattered points of light. “It are not hiding!”

“It's also not in the damned computer!” Sighing, he sagged back in the chair, unable to look at his reflection in her glasses. He'd found one possible reference point—deep space telemetry had picked up what it thought might be the Colvin-Habbes Nebulae—but that was it. Not nearly enough information to anchor a Susumi equation.

“You are saying before it are only a matter of time.”

“I lied.”

“So you are saying now?”

“That we are totally screwed. Fukked royally. Up the proverbial shit creek without the proverbial pa . . . Ow!”

Presit released the piece of his thigh she'd pinched and stepped closer, peering up into his face, her teeth very sharp and very white between the black lines of her lips. “I are not believing that.”

He snorted. “It doesn't matter what you believe. Believe the porky if you want to, but screwed, fukked, shit creek—that sums things up.”

“Then we are looking for why we are here.”

“Here?”

“Here. Why are they dumping us here?”

“They didn't . . .” Craig stared out at unfamiliar star fields, back at Presit, and sighed. Why not. It wasn't like they had anything useful they could be doing. “Okay, fine, I'll bite. Why did they dump us here?”

She swatted him on the thigh, right where the bruise was rising. “I are not knowing that! But I are suggesting we be looking for real estate with atmosphere we are able to be breathing, then the Others are able to be breathing it, too.”

He spent a moment working over the syntax, then said, “How do you figure?”

“Their known space are overlapping our known space, thus we are being at war.” She waggled linked fingers at him, claws gleaming. “But that are only happening if we are wanting the same spaces and that are meaning breathable air. The same breathable air. We are not fighting the Methane Alliance!”

She had a point. “So I look for planets around here with breathable air. And then what?”

“And then we are at least not dying up here when the air are being too contaminated for the air scrubbers!” The additional
you idiot
came through loud and clear.

“No drama about that.” A fond pat on the edge of the control panel; breathable air he could deal with. “As long as I can find ice, I can keep the O2 levels up.”

“Ice?”

“Not exactly rare.”

“And food?”

“Eventually, that may be more of a problem,” he admitted.

Head cocked to one side, she folded her arms and raked a speculative gaze over him, the points of her teeth showing. “You are being good for many meals.”

And he had no doubt that if it came to it, she'd kill him in his sleep and mourn the lack of condiments. Presit took care of number one. “Okay, then, why don't I look for some planets?”

From the outside, the prison looked like a single-story bunker, the walls stained and pitted by the particles on the wind, the single window and hatch the only breaks in the visible sixty meters.

What kind of idiot built an underground prison in an area so geo-logically unstable?
Torin wondered. Just one more thing that made no sense to add to the mental list of
what the fuk
she'd been keeping since she woke up in that cave.

Tucked to one side, in a metal cup that had to be another sixty meters across, was an equally enormous chunk of ice.

“Berg or asteroid,” Freenim wondered, eyes squinted against the glare.

Torin shook her head. “No fukking idea.”

Just because this part of the planet was on fire didn't mean all of it was. It could, and likely did, have ice fields extending around both poles. But berg or asteroid, the cup explained where the water for the prison came from.

Directly outside the hatch was a covered platform clearly—given the burn marks and the tie-downs—used for skimmers. Unfortunately, there were no skimmers on the platform.

Still in the air lock, Torin had laid out the order of the march.
“The Artek'll head out first, then the Polina—given the environment, there's no reason for them to be held to the pace of the bipeds and a lot of reasons for them to get the fuk out of this mess as soon as possible. Ressk, when you get to the landing site, get the hatch open. Durlin?”
She'd paused, and the durlin had nodded, approving the order. And thank fukking God for that; Torin had been half afraid she'd argue.
“The rest of us will stay together. We will not survive out there in a firestorm, so let's make sure we don't have to.”

He'd glanced over at Darlys, then, who was once again staring at Torin like she had all the answers and then some. It was the
and then some
that made Torin want to say,
“Don't be praying to me, dumbass, I'll be out there with you!”
but she decided not to waste her breath.

“That's not very low, Gunny,”
Mashona had murmured watching both di'Taykan fiddling with their cuffs.

It wasn't. Regular combats weren't designed for the kind of heat they'd be facing. But it'd be better than nothing. Not much better but a little.

The Artek had taken off running the moment Mike reopened the outer hatch, looking like nothing so much as giant cockroaches scuttling for safety. Which, technically, they sort of were although no one—and Torin could see more than one set of lips pressed close behind the filters' shimmer—had the bad taste to make the observation aloud.

The Polina had paused for a moment, the males holding back only because they were tucked in behind the durlin.