The Truth of Valor (34 page)

Nadayki slapped his palm against the locker, his hair standing out around his head in a lime-green aurora. “The last eight digits are a fukking date!”

It hurt to laugh; the vibrations felt like glass ground into the stump of his toe. Craig didn’t let that stop him. All his delaying had been completely fukking pointless.

Patterns could be sussed out and, once found, broken, but finding a random date without hooking up a slate, with no way to tell if the first seven numbers were correct until the last number was in—time to pack a lunch. Not all CSOs added that extra layer of protection, but it wasn’t uncommon. Birthdays. Anniversaries. He’d changed his to the day he’d walked late into the briefing room on the
Berganitan
and first saw Torin staring down at him like he’d just crawled out of a H’san’s ass. Those who knew him had a chance of figuring it out. A stranger? No fukking way.

It was the digital version of a steel bar across the door.

“You’re a salvage operator, this is a salvage operator’s seal. Did you know them?”

Craig actually had his mouth open to answer when he realized Nadayki didn’t know that Jan and Sirin had been friends. No one knew. Up until now the crew of the
Heart
had gone by the old truism that space was big and hadn’t asked. “Sure I did, kid. You know di’Akusi Sirin? You’re di’Taykan, they’re di’ . . .”

“Fuk you. And if you think the captain’ll stop at a toe, you’re wrong. If he thinks you’re screwing him over, he’ll have Doc take out organs. And sell them.”

Lovely. Craig shifted, trying to ease the burn in his left leg. “Why would you crew under someone who’d allow that?”

“Are you kidding?” Fingers paused on his slate, Nadayki grinned down at him. “That’s hardcore. No one fuks with the captain.”

What kind of upbringing did the kid have, Craig wondered, that he was impressed by casual cruelty? Looked like the Taykan were just as capable of fukking up their kids as every other species in known space. “Seems to me,” he said, grabbing his thigh and shifting his leg, “that it’s more like no one fuks with Doc.”

Nadayki shook his head, hair flipping in counterpoint. “Yeah, but Doc signed on with Captain Cho, so ...”

Craig missed the rest. He could see Nadayki’s mouth moving, so the kid was still talking, but all he could hear was the
ping
of his implant coming on-line.

Torin.

Had to be Torin.

She was close. She’d found him.

He couldn’t answer, not with Nadayki staring right at him, eyes dark, as he laid out all the reasons he admired a thief and murderer. His hands were shaking, so he dug his fingers into the leg of his overalls and hung on. Hung on so tightly to the bunched fabric that his knuckles were white.

He couldn’t answer, but he could listen.

His throat was dry. He swallowed. Waited.

Except Torin never spoke.

Just the ping.

One small noise

One small noise that could have been caused by the damage the
tasik
had done. A random firing of neurons that just happened to sound like an implant coming on-line. A familiar noise created by hope and applied current.

“. . . and when I get this thing open—because I fukking will . . .” Nadayki half turned and slapped the side the of the weapons locker. “. . . the captain will lead us as we take back what’s rightfully ours!”

“What’s rightfully yours?” Craig repeated when the pause seemed to indicate he was expected to respond. “What’s been taken from you?”

“The universe! I am meant for more than this crap,” Nadayki continued, arms and hair spread. “I’m smarter than all of those
tregradiates
who said my attitude wasn’t right for their academy, and the captain’ll help me prove it. They’re going to pay!”

“Yeah, okay.” Craig smoothed down the two handfuls of crumpled overall. “How old are you, kid?”

“Stop calling me kid! And I’m old enough to know who has the power and that’s more than you can say.”

“You have a ...”

A hatch clanged in the distance. Too far away to be at the ship, so it had to be the point where the ore docks joined the station.

Nadayki’s ear points swiveled toward the sound, his hair following the movement. “Sounds like two pairs of boots.”

“Probably people in them, too,” Craig grunted, shifting around so his back was against the wall and a corner of the armory stood as bulwark between him and the storage pod’s open hatch.

“Captain’s on board, so it’s got to be Big Bill. He’s the only one allowed down here.”

“Big Bill? You’re bullshitting me, right?”

“What? No. It’s what they call him.” He fumbled with his slate. “I need to tell the cap . . .
Ablin gon savit!
Lost the last fukking screen. Good thing I can . . . Captain? Big Bill’s on the dock.”

Craig couldn’t quite catch the captain’s answer. It was just another layer of sound.

“Yeah, but . . . I know, but . . . Yes. Okay, I will.” Forefingers and thumbs tapping on the screen, Nadayki kept his eyes locked on his slate as he said, “Captain’s on his way.”

“Joy.” Craig let his head fall back against the bulkhead. He could hear a man’s voice, a deep burr of monologue growing louder and ending in a question eliciting a monosyllabic answer from his companion.

He knew that grunt.

He knew the tone and the timbre.

He knew the feel of the lips and the taste of the mouth.

Torin.

Torin.

Torin.

It hurt to breathe.

Torin had never seen the docking bay of an ore processing facility, but she assumed they were all much the same. Large enough for loading and unloading ore carriers and probably a lot more interesting when they hadn’t been left unused for years. These ore docks weren’t that large, the ore wasn’t stored but passed through to the smelters while supplies went the other way onto the ships, but it was empty enough that their footsteps all but echoed.

She’d just spotted the air lock where the
Heart
was docked—visible lights were green—when Big Bill pointed toward an open hatch.

“I’ve had the armory moved into that pod. Originally designed for storing explosives until they were needed dirtside, it’s the best place to both control access and minimize damage to the station. If it blows, any force the pod can’t contain will be blown out along fault lines here and here.” His gesture followed shadows that moved out to the outer hull. “Depressurizing this part of the station and possibly damaging any ship at the lock, but it’s an allowable risk given the payoff, don’t you agree?”

Torin made a noncommittal noise. The hatch on the pod needed to be closed in order for it to contain anything, but since she’d be perfectly happy watching this station broken up into its component parts and everyone on it sucking vacuum, it seemed hypocritical to point out the problem.

When she picked up the pace, he said, “Must be strange going unarmed after all that time in the Corps. Bet you can’t wait to get your hands on a weapon.”

He thought he knew her, and she could use that. Was using that to hide the truth.
If I didn’t need you to get to Craig, I’d kill you with my bare hands
wouldn’t get her far. When they reached the open hatch, Big Bill waved her on ahead.

Torin stepped over the lip into the pod and froze.

It was one thing to be told that Cho, and by extension Big Bill, had a sealed armory. It was another thing entirely to stand in front of it. A sealed armory meant people she wouldn’t trust as far as she could spit a H’san were in possession of enough firepower to do significant damage. The kind of death and destruction she’d spent her adult life trying to prevent, the only difference being the Primacy’s forces had been made up of soldiers, just like her, not amoral assholes

Torin ignored the green-haired di’Taykan and stepped closer. She couldn’t walk away from this. She had to . . .

Craig.

He was sitting on the floor, wearing a pair of ugly navy blue overalls, his eyes bloodshot and darkly shadowed, his lips chapped, his face bruised, his hair looking like it hadn’t been brushed in days.

Alive.

His lips were pressed together, and he was breathing fast and shallow.

Torin had seen enough pain over the years to recognize it now.

He was in pain.

But alive.

He didn’t seem surprised to see her.

There wasn’t enough air in the pod.

Torin locked her leg muscles and braced one hand against the armory to keep from throwing herself into Craig’s arms. Both Big Bill and the di’Taykan were behind her by the hatch. There were footsteps approaching.

There were a thousand things she wanted to say in the seconds she had. Craig would know that whatever it looked like, she was there to get him out. He’d know she couldn’t just leave the armory. He had to be told the implants were tapped before he tried to contact her. He’d know they were live, he must’ve heard the ping.

So out of all the thousand things she wanted to say, she mouthed,
Implant tapped.

He swallowed, she watched his Adam’s apple rise and fall. He nodded; a small, careful movement.

And that was all the time they had.

“Captain Cho, excellent timing.” Big Bill was smiling his Krai smile, Torin could hear it in his voice. “I hope there’s been some progress made.”

Captain Cho.

Captain of the
Heart of Stone
.

The captain who’d given the order to take Craig.

Torin began to turn. Paused. Craig wore a standard soft-soled boot on his right foot, but his left was bare of everything but a bandage folded over . . .

... the empty place where the smallest toe should be.

Craig felt as though his heart had stopped when Torin came into the pod. It stopped again as she looked up from the bandage and turned toward the hatch.

He knew that expression.

Last time he’d seen it, Doc had been wearing it.

NINE

“WHO’S SHE?” CAPTAIN CHO
frowned up at Torin, obviously trying to remember where he recognized her from.

Hands locked together behind her back, her body between Craig and the pirate captain, Torin tried to work out what would happen if she locked them around Cho’s throat instead. Craig was in pain. The injury could have been accidental, but allowing the pain, that was something else entirely. That was purposeful. That was torture. That was the reason she should kill son of a bitch right now.

Except . . .

If she killed him . . .

“
She
is the H’san’s mother,” Big Bill said. “This is Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr.”

The roaring in her ears made it sound as though Big Bill had answered the captain from the bottom of a vertical.

“The one who discovered the gray plastic aliens?” Cho’s eyes narrowed. “I thought she left the Corps.”

“She did.”

“Doesn’t that make her an
ex
-gunnery sergeant?”

“Not possible.”

“What’s she doing here?”

Torin could snap Cho’s neck before Big Bill realized she’d moved.

Then . . .

She tried to shift the flood of pros and cons into some kind of order, into some kind of strategy, but the anger kept getting in the way. She couldn’t kill Cho, no matter how much she wanted to, until she knew she could get Craig off the station. And she couldn’t plan a way to get Craig off the station when the need to make Cho pay pushed everything else aside. It was almost funny how, temporarily, the anger was the only thing keeping Cho alive.

“
She
is going to teach the free merchants how to use the weapons in the locker as
I
have no intention of allowing untrained persons to carry weapons inside my station. Projectile weapons,” Big Bill added, “in case you’ve forgotten what the Corps carries.”

Even while speaking to Big Bill, Torin noted Cho kept part of his attention on her; although he very deliberately didn’t look her in the eye. “She works for you?”

“She will. When your people finally get this thing open.” Arms folded, Big Bill half turned toward the locker. “About that, Captain; do we have a time frame or am I giving you access to my station indefinitely for no apparent reason?”

“Nadayki!”

The young di’Taykan was unarmed, Torin noted as he stepped forward, adding a fourth point, shifting their triangle. He favored his left leg and moved as though he were uncomfortable in his body—unusually graceless for a di’Taykan. If it came to a fight, he couldn’t protect his captain.

Depending on how he got the wound, he might not
want
to protect his captain. Nothing said Craig had been the only one taken and tortured.

“We’re down to the last section, Captain, but ...” Nadayki’s hair lay flat against his head. “. . . it’s a date.”

Cho blinked. His attention split three ways between Torin, Big Bill, and Nadayki and unable to watch all three of them at once, he couldn’t seem to get a handle on the information he’d just been given. “A date?”

“Yeah, a date. Eight numbers, two sets of two and a set of four. And I can’t run a number from a slate without slagging the seal, and slagging the seal will set off the Marine seal and that’ll blow the armory.”

“We know all that.” Cho made the statement a threat. Torin barely stopped herself from a fatal reaction. She shifted her weight forward, back muscles knotting when she didn’t throw the blow. Craig moved behind her, she could hear him breathing heavily through his nose, but she didn’t dare turn. It helped that the movement sounded deliberate not involuntary. Not controlled by the pain. Hopefully, he’d remained sitting on the deck to conserve his strength because if it turned out he was unable to stand, she’d have to . . .

Have to . . .

She bit through the inside of her lip. Focused on the taste of iron and Nadayki’s voice as he said, “Without the slate hooked in, coming up with a specific combination of eight numbers, that’s impossible. Well, technically, not
impossible,
but the time I’ll need to . . .”

Big Bill cut him off with a raised hand. “Dates are relevant to the people who set them, are they not?”