An Ancient Peace (28 page)

“It's probably the Susumi off Jamers' ship. She unhooked so she could land, hooked it to the larger ship to take advantage of their block. There's a shuttle missing off the big ship as well.”

So Jamers was dirtside with their grave robbers. “Looks like we're in the right place.”

“Looks like you owe Presit an apology for doubting her.”

“Not if she doesn't know about it. Besides, I didn't doubt her, I doubted the H'san. All right, while you work out how they got down without being shredded . . .”

“Odds are they put the same blocker on their shuttles.”

“. . . and duplicate it, let's cut off their escape route. Mashona, to the control room.”

“On my way, Gunny.”

“You figure we can fit the grave robbers and Jamers in here?” Craig asked in the silence that followed Binti's response.

Judge. Jury. And executioner.

If they worked out a way to get past the satellites and down to the planet, they'd be the only ones leaving.

“They'll fit in the gym.” Werst wouldn't meet Torin's eyes when she turned. “We can slack off for a while.”

She assumed Alamber would redirect the conversation. He didn't. Like Ressk, he kept his eyes on his screens, but they were both listening.

Craig folded his arms. “We don't know how many there are.”

“So they'll be crammed in.”

Or they might not.

Judge. Jury. And executioner.

Just before the silence stretched to the point where Torin would have to remind them of what their orders had been, Alamber sighed and said, “Won't a dead ship in orbit eventually get noticed by the H'san? I thought we weren't supposed to be noticed.”

“We aren't,” Torin began.

Craig cut her off. “Once we get her Susumi equation, I can tow her. I've towed bigger wrecks.” The fingers of his left hand dug deep dimples into his thigh. “Salvage I can deal with.”

Judge. Jury. And executioner.

What couldn't he deal with?
Torin wondered.

Binti stared at the grave robbers' ship. “If I hit it right . . .” She pointed at something no else in the control room could see. “. . . there, I can disable it.”

“And if you don't?”

“Then boom.”

“Boom is bad.” Craig reminded them, although none of them, singly or collectively, needed reminding. “If any debris heads dirtside, the satellites could backtrack the shot and decide we need to be dealt with.”

“Not to mention the radiation wave from the Susumi engines,” Ressk added dryly.

“And that.” That uncontained Susumi radiation only affected organics at the cellular level wasn't particularly comforting. Torin had always been fond of her cellular levels. That said, she trusted Binti to make the shot. She'd trusted her to make harder shots. “Since sweet fuk all about this has been under our control, let's at least stop them from running. Do it.”

Binti took over Ressk's chair. Rolled the tension out of her shoulders. Pulled up the cutting laser. Set it on pulse.

“Wait!” Eyes still locked on his screens, left hand dancing over numbers, Alamber waved his right, hair waving in time. “I've cracked the satellite system!”

“Hairline crack,” Ressk snorted, ducking the di'Taykan's flailing arm and leaning in over his lap to check the scrolling code.

“Got further than you got, old man.”

Ressk snapped his teeth together.

Alamber murmured, “Promises, promises.” And then continued. “The block they used that's keeping instrumentation from spotting the ship? It's not just on the ship. It extends into the lower atmosphere—it's why they bothered setting up a geostationary orbit. If we stay inside that narrow corridor, it'll not only keep the satellites from spotting us but take us right to where they landed.”

Binti lifted her hands away from the laser controls and glanced up at Torin.

“You're sure?” Torin wouldn't have asked any of the others—her ex-Marines, Craig—if they weren't sure, they wouldn't have spoken. Alamber's more flexible world view made his definitives surprisingly malleable.

He opened his mouth. Closed it. And finally said, “Eighty percent sure, Boss. I can't get any further into the satellites without being spotted.”

“Ressk?”

Ressk backed away, shaking his head. “If he can't get in, I can't get in, Gunny.”

Twenty percent chance of dying, then. “Everyone gear up. Shuttle in fifteen.” She could live with twenty percent.

“I'll lock the board.” Craig moved Alamber out of his seat. “How narrow a corridor?”

“Please,” Alamber blew out a dismissive puff of air. “There's plenty of room. It's four meters, six centimeters wider than the shuttle.”

Two meters, three centimeters on each side. For all Craig owned vacuum, he didn't have the hours in on VTA. Torin shifted the odds to a twenty-four, maybe twenty-five percent chance of dying. Still doable. “Marines, meet me at the galley in ten.”

Halfway out the hatch, Binti glanced over at Werst before asking, “For snacks?”

“For weapons.”

“
Chrick!
Not,” Werst added hurriedly, “that I want to shoot someone, I'm just tired of feeling naked.”

Torin thought of how she'd felt before the drop to Abalae. “I understand.”

Alamber grinned. “I like feeling naked. I like feeling you na . . .”

“Gunny?”

“And that's why we keep the guns locked up.”

It didn't look like secure weapons storage. It looked like a drawer for storing perishables. Enemies boarding the
Promise
would first have to find where the weapons were being kept, and then get it open without Torin's DNA.

“Look, if anyone gets as far as this drawer, they're already well armed and my DNA has been spread out over a few parsecs of space.”

While acknowledging that the entire point of using Torin's team was that some people couldn't be stopped by the Justice Department's current methods, the Wardens still hadn't been happy about it.

Torin winced as the needles jabbed into the fingers wrapped around the drawer's handle. Prints weren't enough, the security system required living blood and, once disengaged, more paperwork than Torin had ever seen, and she'd filled in as Sho'quo Company's First Sergeant for a while before the drop to Silsvah. She assumed the paperwork was Justice's guarantee that she'd open the drawer only when absolutely necessary. They weren't wrong.

“What are we going to tell them?”

She turned to Ressk. He was already in the modified version of combats Justice allowed them, minus the boots, and he didn't look happy.

“I can't scrub the lock report without scrubbing the ship's entire memory.” He squatted beside her as the drawer opened, her identity confirmed. “Alamber thought he could corrupt the file, insert joke here, but after about thirty-six hours, he had to admit defeat.” When Torin raised a brow, his nostril ridges closed slightly. “We heard Colonel Hurrs' orders the same time you did, Gunny, and we had time in Susumi to fill.”

The first KC-7 was Werst's, but Ressk was there, he could help. Hers next. Then Binti's.

“Gunny?” His tone was a worried poke. “What are we going to tell the Justice Department when they ask why?”

“I . . .” Torin emphasized the pronoun as she reached up and set Binti's scope on the counter. “. . . don't know why, not yet. When I'm sure, that's what I'll tell them.”

“Yeah but, that's . . .” He stared at her for a long moment, then nodded. “Okay.”

She pulled out an ammo pack and wondered what he saw.

The shuttle cabin looked a lot like
Promise
's control room—six chairs instead of five, three rows of two; pilot, second, four passengers. Behind, a small cargo hold. The biggest differences were the weapons stations to both port and starboard—the weapons removed before decommissioning. Every now and then over the last year, particularly when Justice could give them no definitive answer on the firepower they'd be facing, Torin considered using Alamber's contacts to pull a couple of missile launchers off the black market. It wasn't the law that stopped her—she wasn't sure how she felt about discovering that—it was that, in the end, with a fairly good idea of how those “contacts” would respond, she refused to add herself to the list of those who used Alamber.

Discolored patches in the gray paint and empty sections behind unlabeled panels indicated that the weapons weren't the only things missing. Torin figured if the Navy wanted to clean and shine before they designated the shuttle as surplus, she was all for it. Werst had pointed out that no one had wanted the Navy's porn stores anyway. Alamber had begged to differ. Which had led to a conversation about begging and differing Torin was still trying to forget.

“I'm not reading surface water.” Torin, a fan of knowing what kind of shit they were likely to land in, had no problem giving up the second seat so Ressk could work the scanners. “Looks like we were right about what supplies Jamers was bringing in.”

They'd loaded water enough for five days. Two and a half days in, Torin would have to make a decision about whether or not they continued the hunt. She could only hope that people who didn't give a
shit about the death that would come with another war would give an equal lack of shit to covering their tracks.

“Didn't someone say this planet was inside the edge of the old habitable zone?” Binti asked, securing the knives in her boot sheaths. “Doesn't habitable require water?”

“Variable definitions of habitable?” Werst offered.

“Surface water probably burned off when the star went red. It's a good thing there wasn't more oxygen in the atmosphere or we'd have lost that also and would have to spend our entire time dirtside in HE suits.” As it was, the Humans wouldn't be running any marathons, and the Krai were likely to get headachy and cranky. Crankier. Alamber would be happy about the air quality and unhappy about the heat, although the environmental tech in his clothes would deal with most of it. She made a mental note to prod Justice once again about getting them actual combats. Half the people they faced had managed to find sets, and it pissed her off that while her team had to wear biometric cuffs to synchronize their medical data, the bad guys got to take advantage of embedded tech significantly better than that provided by civilian wear.

The snicker slipped out before she could stop it.

“Gunny?”

“Just thinking about choices.” She'd agreed to work behind Justice's back. To lie to every person in known space except two Intelligence officers and the five people on the shuttle with her. But she drew the line at buying black market combats. There was something very fukked up about . . .

The shuttle jerked. Torin slammed up against her webbing. She heard swearing, boots leaving the floor and banging back down. A hundred drops had her teeth clamped together and her tongue safely out from between them. It sounded like Alamber hadn't been so prepared.