Valor's Trial (50 page)

She could hear another break. Hear it hastily repaired. “Understandable mistake. We always believed the Primacy didn't take prisoners.”

“The Primacy, it's what the Others call themselves. We always believed they didn't take prisoners.”

“We do not,” Freenim pointed out. Interesting that a “what the fuk” expression remained so similar regardless of facial features.

“Gunny's listening to her jaw implant,” Ressk said slowly, nose ridges snapping open and snapping closed. “There's a ship in orbit.”

“A ship?”

“A ship.” He blinked, and his nose ridges stayed open. “Holy fuk! There's a ship in orbit! We're saved! We've got to . . .”

Torin reached out, grabbed a handful of his combats, and jerked him to a stop, shaking her head. When things seemed too good to be true, in her experience they usually were.

“No. The Primacy doesn't take prisoners. We're in a prison with the Primacy. Some of the members of the Primacy. Soldiers. Like us.”

“No idea.”

“Space is big.” She should probably stand, but she wasn't sure she could trust her knees. “What the hell are you doing here, Craig?”

“We?”

Fukking great. She was on an open com. “You went to the planet where they said I died,” she prodded.

Glass? “How much glass?”

And just like that, Torin realized that she'd assumed the rest of Sh'quo company was alive. That Mashona and Ressk had been scooped up with her, but the rest were still on Estee, still fighting. “How many dead?”

The pause went on a little too long.

“Craig?”

Her turn to sit silently. The others in the control room hadn't heard Craig's answer, but they'd heard her question. They knew what her reaction meant.

Time enough to mourn later. Always time enough to mourn no matter how little time there was. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You were on Estee. How did you get here?”

Presit sounded sulky, and Torin had to close her teeth on a laugh that would have sounded hysterical.

“Are you out of your fukking mind?”

She heard him snicker; pictured him sitting back in that ratty, old control chair, heels up on the edge of the board.
*Possibly.*

“So it's you and Presit in the
Promise
?”

Even if they could get to the
Promise
, two people in the cabin had to be more than a little friendly. Eighteen people, seven species, became a dirty joke.

The edge of the salvage tag cut into her palm. “You have to go get help, Craig.”

She was almost glad to hear that. One small corner of her mind had played with the suspicion that the Elder Races were somehow involved and the prison was tucked away in an unfrequented corner of the Confederation. “There's no matching star charts in
Promise
's memory?”

“No!” That brought her up onto her feet so quickly abused joints screamed a protest and one of the blisters on her calf made a sucking sound as it detached from the floor. Grounding
Promise,
a ship with Susumi but no VTA capability would end everything. “We have a shuttle!”

She felt his smile against her skin.

They had an alien VTA locked behind a force field. Their only pilot was a comatose giant bug. In orbit was a two-person vessel, already holding two people, lost and unable to return to known space. “Not exactly,” she agreed dryly. “Presit, do you have your camera?”

“Good. Because, if nothing else, we have a story to tell.”

“Craig can pulse it on
Promise
's emergency beacon.”

*If you are wanting just anyone to hear it,*
Presit snorted.

“I am.” She wanted the whole fukking universe to hear it. “Freenim, get Durlin Vertic.”

“You hear him in your jaw implant?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Are you sure you hear him?”

“Yes, sir. If I were imagining his voice,” Torin added when the durlin indicated she needed more convincing, “he'd be in a battleship and he wouldn't be lost.” Nor would he be traveling with a reporter, particularly not Presit a Tur durValintrisy, the recurring fuzzy burr in Torin's butt.

“Then I believe you, Gunnery Sergeant.” Eyes on Torin, vertical pupils nearly closed, Vertic's right hand worked the fur under the front edge of her vest. “Do you know what the odds are?”

“Sir?”

“The odds of this male arriving here, out of all the places he could have been in a vast universe, arriving with one who can record our last words. We have a saying among my people, space is big.”

“We have the same saying, Durlin.”

“We also say coincidence should be left to poets.” She shifted her weight to scrape her claws against the deck, sucked a breath in through her teeth as she remembered the injury just a little too late. “He said the battlefield was glass?”

“Yes, sir.”

“My people dead as well as yours.”

Thirty square kilometers of glass made that likely.

“There was rumor of a weapon, untested, that . . .” A glance at the slate made it clear the pause was a search for a translatable term. “. . . unmade matter. The result was very like glass. The rumor was that a high number of the council were against ever using it.”

“Seems like it got used.”

“Yes.”

“Your people dead as well as mine.”

“Yes.”

“It's past time this war ended.”

Lips drawn back off her teeth, the durlin nodded. “Long past.”

The lights flickered.

“Gunnery Sergeant Kerr! Durlin Vertic! We have the force field . . . Oh, fuk!”

The lights flickered again, then steadied.

“Down! We have the force field down!”

“Well done.” The durlin moved slowly back out into the corridor, still on three legs. “Now, we need a pilot.”

Firiv'vrak rose unsteadily onto her feet and swayed in place for a moment struggling to lift her antennae up off her body. She shuffled forward a few steps, got tangled in her own legs, and toppled into Sanati's arms. After Sanati, clicking sympathetically, set her back on her feet, she turned and swept the feathered tips of her antennae slowly just under the edge of the upper chitin plates of the other two Artek. One of them kicked out and made a noise like a malfunctioning pressure suit. The other didn't move.

Grief smelled like burning spices—pungent and unpleasant. Species with nictitating membranes used them, the rest wiped watering eyes and watched as the two living Artek dragged the third into the stairwell, away from prying eyes, and devoured her.

“They shouldn't get to eat it all,” Kyster muttered, clenched fist rubbing at his stomach as Kichar handed around the last pieces of biscuit and everyone but the Krai tried not to hear the faint crack of chewed chitin.

“It is how the Artek honor their dead,” the durlin told him.

“It's how the Krai honor our dead, too. If Darlys dies, can I eat her?”

“She is not Krai.”

“It doesn't matter,” Torin answered before Kyster could. “We do what we must to stay alive.”

Head cocked, the durlin looked from Torin to the Marines sitting beside her. “Is that what your Corps believes?”

“It's what I believe.”

Kyster stared down at half a biscuit. “I don't want to be last, Gunny. I don't want to be alone again.”

Torin had nothing left to give him.

“Don't worry about it, kid.” Werst dropped a chunk of biscuit into his bowl of water and glared at it until it began to dissolve. “I have every intention of being too fukking tough to die.”

Kyster seemed to find that comforting.

“That was then. She's the only pilot we've got.”

“In orbit.”

*Right.*
She listened to him breathe for a few minutes, the sound inside her head like it was a part of her.
*They told me you were dead.*

Torin wiped blood off on her vest from where the edge of the tag had cut into her palm. “I know.”

“Who is he?”

“Jealous, kid?”

Kyster showed teeth.

“Thought so,” Werst snorted. “He's a Civilian Salvage Operator. Guy who found Big Yellow by screwing up a Susumi equation.”

“And now he's here.”

“Gunny says he is.” Werst's tone suggested that was good enough for him.

“You don't find that weird?”

“Bit.”

“Maybe it's love.”

They glanced up at Mashona together. “Love finds a way,” she said as she passed. “That's what the songs say.”

“What songs?” Confused, Kyster turned his attention back to Werst.

Who snorted again. “Humans. Who the fuk knows?”

Firiv'vrak seemed neither impressed nor particularly intimidated by the VTA. She wedged her abdomen between the two stools and began tapping her upper four limbs and both antennae over the screens. Once or twice she flicked a switch and just as quickly flicked it off again.

Either determination smelled like singed insulation, or one of the switches hadn't been shut off quite quickly enough.

When she finally got the pilot's console on-line, it gave Ressk and Sanati access to whole new sections of the control panel.

“If Firiv'vrak can get it off the ground, we can reverse those equations and use them to dock her again.”

Down in the docking bay, the VTA roared, rose up about a half a meter, and dropped again. Torin could feel the vibration through the soles of her feet.

“If she can get it off the ground,” Ressk repeated, picking at the flaking skin on his jaw.

“How far can she drop that thing before she does some actual damage?”

“No idea, Gunny.” They winced in unison as the bow rose, fell, and the whole ship rocked. “But it seems pretty sturdy. She says the design's damned near idiot proof.”

The stern rose and fell.

“Did something just go
poink
?” Torin asked. “Because, generally, that's not a good sound.”

Torin thought about that for a minute. Tried to imagine the meeting. “You get along?”

Of course he didn't.

They were completely out of food by the time Firiv'vrak got the VTA up into the air. Where completely meant they'd fed the handles of the stone clubs to the Krai, remembering finally that Harnett's people had made them out of the kibble

Torin fought the urge to yell over the roar of the VTA's main engines kicking the cloud cover around about a hundred meters above the building. “She's on her way.”

“Just get Presit and her equipment down here. This is important.”

“We need
Promise
's emergency pulse to broadcast.”

Torin could hear his grin. He thought she was kidding, but sex was the last thing on her mind. Presit, she expected to show up uninvited, but Craig—that was still a bit surreal.

“I know what you're doing, Gunny.” The whites of Mashona's eyes had gone yellow. Torin couldn't remember when it had happened. “You're sending out our last will and testament, aren't you? Letting the Corps know how we died.”

“We're not dead yet, Corporal.”

But they both knew it was only a matter of time. Only Darlys continued to watch Torin with hope. Even Kichar had decided her time was better spent scowling at Everim.