Valor's Trial (7 page)

Impossible to read his collar tabs while she had him flat on his face on the . . .

Floor of the cave?

Looked like a natural pocket in the rock off what was definitely a constructed tunnel if the lights she could see hanging from the rough curve of the ceiling were any indication.

The Marine under her knee had neither the leverage nor the strength to move her, but he gave it his best shot.

Torin appreciated that even as she blinked away new pain from where the side of his fist had connected with her cheekbone, impact creating a counterpoint to the pounding that continued in her skull. “That is
enough,
” she snarled, at the end of her patience. She was not surprised when he stilled. There were theories that a senior NCO could stop artillery fire using that tone. Shifting her weight back onto her heels, she stood, dragging him to his feet and spinning him in place to face her.

He tensed to bolt.

“Don't.”

He didn't.

Private first class. Not surprising given his youth. In spite of the smell, he didn't actually look too bad. Combats were designed to repel dirt and, given the filth of his exposed skin, his had obviously been fully tested. The fit of his uniform suggested he'd been eating, if not frequently at least regularly. He stood with his weight almost entirely on his left foot, only the outside edge of his right touching the rock.

Physically, she'd seen a lot worse. Emotionally, though . . .

There was desperation in his eyes that made her think of a whipped dog. He wanted to move toward her, he wanted her to make it all better, but pain and terror kept him away.

Torin arranged her face into its best
every Marine in the Corps is mine
expression. “Name, rank, and unit number, Private!”

Muscle memory attempted to bring him to attention. “Kyster . . .”

The Krai had family names that went on for hours and could not be shortened.

“. . . Private First Class . . .”

Not surprising given his youth.

“. . . 6th Division, 2nd Recar'ta, 1st Battalion, Tango Company!”

Name, rank, and unit number spilled out as one long word—a drilled response rather than a conscious reply, his voice rough as though he hadn't been using it enough over the last little while to wear down the edges. Years of practice slotted the breaks in, and Torin frowned. Sixth Division? Interesting. Same Defensive Sector as Torin's 7th Division but, given the distances involved, not exactly right next door. They'd never fought together, that was for damned sure. “How long have you been here, Kyster?”

“Don't . . . can't . . .” He frowned, struggling to find the right the word. “. . . remember . . .” His gaze flicked to her sleeve, as he struggled to stand straight. “. . . Gunnery Sergeant.”

“Kerr. Gunnery Sergeant Kerr. Sit down before you fall down.” She nodded toward a reasonably flat-topped chunk of rock. “There.”

The downside of Krai bones was that if they broke they took a long time to heal. Kyster had broken at least one bone in his foot—maybe two; she'd need a closer look to be sure. They'd healed unset, but they were healed. Given that he'd clearly been on short rations and just as clearly had been using the foot, Torin figured it had been at least twenty-five tendays since the break. Minimum.

As he settled, his gaze never leaving her face, she checked herself for injuries and found nothing more than the bruising she'd already been made aware of and the headache that was beginning to fade. Atmosphere was clear breathable. Gravity . . . She flexed her knees. Gravity was approximately Human norm. Maybe a little less. Station norm, not dirtside. With muscle and bone developed in Paradise's heavier gravity, that gave her a slight advantage although against what was still to be determined. She was in her combats with vest and boots, but her helmet and her slate were missing. She still had two filters— she remembered using one just before all hell broke loose—all three stims, a packet of wet wipes, and a tube of sealant. Her KC-7 and grenades were gone as was the knife from the sheath in her boot—no big surprise that her weapons had been removed. Both sleeves were blank, so she had to assume that the tech in her uniform was dead.

Unsealing her vest, she slipped a hand inside and smiled.

Kyster bolted.

“Not a threat,” she snapped, grabbing the back of his collar and reapplying his ass to the rock as carefully as circumstances allowed. “Just happy they missed something.” Two somethings actually, but she wasn't going to think about the salvage tag still hanging between her breasts, not right now. Not until she knew she could control her reaction. “Hold out your hand.”

There were pinkish-gray scars on his palm and a half-healed sore between thumb and forefinger. His weight hadn't dropped much, but nutrition levels were low enough his body wasn't diverting much to nonessentials like minor wounds. That, at least, she could do something about.

Part of an organization with the best support system in known space, Marines carried everything they needed into combat, fully aware that supply lines could be cut. A burden in the beginning, eventually, and sooner rather than later, the pack—food, first aid, coffee, dry socks, porn—became another appendage like an arm or a leg or a KC-7. But packs could be lost or destroyed, and everyone kept something tucked into his or her vest.

Torin, responsible since her promotion to staff sergeant for a minimum of forty Marines, kept three strips of food tabs—one for Humans, one for di'Taykan, one for Krai. They were supplements only, but since living off the land meant sweet fuk all if even one essential amino acid went missing, they could easily mean the difference between strong-enough-to-fight and roll-over-and-play-dead.

When she dropped a tab on Kyster's palm, he stared at it as though he'd never seen it before.

He probably hadn't. Given the impressive parameters of the Krai digestive system, supplements for their species were considered almost an oxymoron. Torin carried them because of that
almost
. If she had to guess, given that they were clearly underground, she'd say the odds were good Kyster's diet had been limited as to selection.

“Eat it,” she said.

Air whistling past the mucus plugs in his nose ridges, Kyster obediently licked the tab off his palm.

Torin nodded once in approval and took a look out into the constructed tunnel. At some point, and not recently given the way the edges had lost the look of raw stone, there'd been a rockfall about three hundred meters to her right. The broken pile plugged the tunnel, spilled out about nine meters and left the last light dangling in pieces although the wire apparently continued unbroken. To the left, the tunnel ran about half a kilometer and then curved. No more than two meters at their widest point, the walls were rough and rounded, floor and ceiling only barely flattened. It looked like the work of a mining bore—an access shaft to the work face. Darker shadows suggested other natural alcoves like the one she found herself in.

It smelled too much of Kyster for her to identify any other scents, and the absolute silence told her nothing at all.

In a war that spanned both centuries and galaxies, time and space, there were three absolutes: the Navy had better food, the Corps left no one behind, and the Others didn't take prisoners.

When she turned, Kyster was staring up at her as if he expected her to have all the answers.

Good thing that was part of her job description.

“All right.” Moving back inside, she sat facing the young Marine and gentled her voice to keep him from trying to bolt again. “What the hell is going on here?”

“Here, here?” His gesture included her and the small cave.

“Start here.”

“Must've been a battle.”

He paused, so she nodded. Heerik and number three squad and 744s dropping by eye and the brilliant white light . . .

“After battles, people in little caves. Marines. Sometimes.”

Torin forced herself back to the here and now, filling in the missing words. “Marines show up in the little caves? How?” she demanded when he nodded.

“Don't know.”

She looked around the cave, stood, ran her hands over all of the rock she could reach, and methodically moved everything that could be moved. With her sleeve light out and only the dim spill from the tunnel, it was possible she missed a hatch or some other entrance, but she didn't think so. Kyster stayed where she'd put him, never taking his eyes off her.

“All right. Fine.” She sat down again. “Where are we?”

“Underground.”

Succinct, but a bit obvious. “Where?”

“Don't know.”

An underground POW camp, then. All right, she could work with that—she didn't like it, but she could work with it. “Where're the other Marines who've shown up in the caves?”

“By the pipe.”

“Why aren't you by the pipe?”

“Didn't want me.” He thrust his right foot forward and took a deep breath. “Said I was a waste of food 'cause I came with my foot busted.”

Some of the words ran together, and some of the pauses between them went on a little too long, but it was an actual sentence.

“Who said?” Torin asked, pleased to see Kyster's lips curl back off his teeth. The kid had taken the rejection as a challenge. That attitude had likely kept him alive.

“Calls himself Colonel Harnett. Not!” His nostril ridges flared wide. “More like a . . . a
beranitac
!”

A large predator on the Krai home world. They formed packs, and the alpha male ruled by tooth and claw—both of which they had in abundance. There were theories that the
beranitacs
were one of the main reasons that the Krai hadn't bothered coming down out of the trees until they'd developed the necessary weapons tech to deal with them. There were very few wild
beranitacs
left.

“Is he a Marine?”

He nodded. “All Marines here.”

And this Marine had said Kyster was a waste of food because of his injury. And other Marines had allowed it. Corps structure didn't break down that rapidly on its own. It had been broken.

“Dumped in the tunnels, away from food. I . . .” He seemed to fold in on himself and wouldn't look at her.

“You survived,” Torin told him, struggling to keep her growing rage from her voice. The last thing she wanted right at this moment was for Kyster to think she was angry with him. He'd survived. Alone. All those tendays while his foot was healing. No wonder he was having trouble talking. “I suspect only a Krai could have.”

“Marines don't eat other Marines.”

And that answered the question of
how
he'd survived. A limited diet indeed. “Were they dead?”

“
Chrick
. . .”

When he didn't go on, when he stared down at his misshapen foot, lips still off his teeth, his whole bearing a combination of abject misery and defiance, she nodded and said, “But one of them was very badly injured.” Kyster had been scooped injured off a battlefield; it didn't take a genius to figure it wasn't the only time it had ever happened. “So you sat with them until they died, and then you ate them. They were
chrick
. Edible. Is that what happened?”

“Yes, Gunnery Sergeant.”

“Well done, Private.”

The words jerked his gaze up onto her face.

“Under these circumstances,” she continued in a tone that left no room for argument, “those Marines would be proud to have kept you alive. And when we haul ass out of here, they'll be going with you because they're a part of you now. You've seen to it that we don't leave them behind.”

He didn't quite believe her.

“If I'd died,” she said, reaching out and gently grasping his shoulder, “I'd have been honored to have you eat me.”

Kyster made a noise somewhere between a whimper and a wail and, shaking like a leaf in a high wind, began to slide off his rock.

Torin caught him before he hit the ground, held him while he sobbed, and murmured what Krai words of comfort she knew. He was very young, and he'd been through one hell of a lot, and they needed to get this breakdown out of the way so that she could get on with kicking Colonel Harnett's ass—currently holding top position on her to do list.

Kick Harnett's ass.

Escape.

Let the relevant parties know that the Others fukking well
did
take prisoners.

It wasn't a long list.

Kyster was too worn out to be embarrassed when he managed to hiccup his way to quiet, and Torin would have loved to have given him time to recover, but they'd barely touched on the information she needed.

“Let's go back a bit,” she said as he rubbed his nose ridges up and down either side of his bent knee. “Who's running this place?”

He looked up at that. “Harnett.”

“No, who's running the prison? If we're prisoners,” she continued when he frowned, “then this is a prison and someone has to be running it.”

“Stuff comes down the pipe.”

No point in asking who put the stuff into the pipe; the poor kid had been stuck out away from things trying to survive. He wouldn't know if all twenty-eight species of Others showed up every afternoon at 1730 and led an hour's PT.

“All right, then. How did
you
get here?”

The story emerged in bits and pieces. Sometimes he had to be gently prodded to speak out loud. In the end, what he knew was that he'd been pinned down with his platoon on Sa'tall Three, defending a mining station from a snatch and grab by the Others—“Sometimes want raw materials, you know?” His squad had taken a hit from one of their fliers, and a chunk of the big mine bore they'd been sheltering behind had come down on his foot. He thought he'd maybe passed out for a minute. Next thing he knew, he'd woken up in one of the little caves just the way Torin had, although he'd been a lot closer to the pipe, so one of the colonel's hunting parties had found him almost immediately. “We're way far out here. Almost to the end. Safer. Hunting parties don't come this far.”