An Ancient Peace (38 page)

She still couldn't tell if the square enclosed six symbols or seven. “So you said earlier. And?”

“And what? This is entirely new text in ancient H'san, Major. It took me five years to translate the guide to the weapons; you can't expect an instruction manual for the guardians in less than two days. We're just lucky these pages are also in what we in preConfederate languages call storytelling mode, which was dialectically stable for centuries or the vocabulary I have stored would be entirely worthless. And,” he glared up at the gunnery sergeant, “no one was murdered. While you can certainly argue that they didn't perform them to a high standard, the dead members of the expedition died performing the duties they were hired to perform.”

Going out in front so you don't have to.
Sujuno could see the words cross Kerr's face and dug her nails in deeper to keep from saying them aloud. To keep from marching in step with the gunnery sergeant. But all Kerr said was, “Jamers a Tur fenYenstrakin.”

“The smelly Katrien? You had her killed, Major?” Dion pointed a red stylus up at her, the tip wobbling.

Sujuno sighed. “The grave goods the Katrien sold alerted the Justice Department to our presence here. I realized that was a possibility from the moment I discovered she'd taken them. Given the progress we were making, I assumed we'd be out of here before the wheels of justice made one of their
oh, so slow
revolutions.”

“Yet, in spite of that assumption,” Kerr said, “she's still dead.”

“To prevent her from doing further damage. And, in the end . . .” She waved a hand toward the doors out of the common room. Five downed H'san beyond one. Six beyond the other. Through the storerooms and over the threshold, countless dead H'san. “In the end,” she repeated, “we're all dead, Gunnery Sergeant.”

“Not yet.”

Sujuno watched Kerr turn away and cross to join Werst. The Krai, in turn watched her until Kerr was close enough to speak quietly with him.

“If they're here to arrest us, why are you welcoming them?”

“Why am I . . . ?” She shook her head. “You weren't lying about ignoring popular media. Gunnery Sergeant Kerr, by her own admission, does one thing well. She gets her people out alive.”

“You want us to become her people? Fine. But I can't see what she can do in this situation. Even with the four of them—and, yes, they're Marines, oh my, I'm so excited . . .” Sweat rolled down the side of Dion's face. “. . . we're vastly outnumbered and surrounded by an enemy that's not easy to kill.”

“That hasn't stopped her in the past.”

“Why does the major hate you?” Werst asked, eyes locked on the di'Taykan who continued talking to the infected Human. “When you're not looking at her, she looks ready to crack your bones for marrow.”

Torin gave it a moment's thought. If Werst had noticed, the major wasn't trying to hide it from anyone but her. “If it's not about exposing the gray aliens, I have no idea why she'd hate me.”

“It's not about the aliens. It's personal.”

“I personally exposed them.”

“It's not that. There's something off about her.”

“Besides wanting to crack my bones for marrow?”

The corners of his mouth curled up. “Not everyone has to love you, Gunny.” And curled back down again. “We're not here to make friends. It would've been easier if they'd been loading the weapons on their shuttle when we arrived.”

Judge. Jury. And executioner.

“It's not supposed to be easy.”

“The more time we spend with them, the harder it'll get. We work together to get out of this trap and . . .”

“Thank you, Master Corporal Obvious.”

They watched the major shift through Dion's notes. “She says she saw my brief on the Silsviss. We've never met.”

“It's not all about you. I've been around di'Taykans every day since I joined and almost every day after we got out, and she . . .” Werst shook his head. “You ever see a di'Taykan with hair that still?”

While not entirely motionless, Sujuno's hair moved significantly less than most di'Taykan, and Torin had seen her force it down at least once. More noticeably, she hadn't touched any of her people—not the two Krai as she passed them and not Dion, even though Dion's head was at hand height. He was clearly suffering, and among the Taykan, a touch for comfort only required the need for comfort. “I'd wish Alamber was here to figure it out, but there's enough of us chin-deep in shit already.”

“You worried about them?”

“Alamber's a survivor, and Craig's almost as paranoid as I am.” Of course she was worried about them. With the comms useless, she'd already given half a thought to testing the acoustics of the tunnels. Hard surfaces, straight lines, di'Taykan hearing—if sergeants and above wanted to be heard, they were heard. “Besides,” she said, weight back on her heels, hands crossed over her KC, “it's Craig's turn to rescue me.”

“I admire the equality in your relationship.”

“Thank you. And speaking of relationships . . .”

Gripping a double handful of blanket, Ressk backed into the big
common room dragging the H'san body into the light. Binti, Lieutenant Verr, and Wen, Verr's bonded, had the other three corners, Binti towering over the three Krai. Even desiccated, the H'san probably outweighed all four of them, but the blanket slid easily over the ubiquitous polished stone.

“. . . how did you get out of helping with that?”

“If you were going in here with the major, someone had to stay with you, given the potential bone cracking and marrow eating. The Human have anything to say?”

“He's positive that one of those sheets says
guardian
on it.”

“
Guardian
like dead H'san being called guardian or what?”

“No idea. Also, the infection in his arm is killing him and he's in so much denial about that, he's pretty stress free about the bigger problem.”

Werst made a noncommittal noise.

“What does that mean?”

“Our orders are to execute these people.”

“To stop a war, I know.” Four lives against millions.

“Just saying. Denial.”

“Delay. Until we deal with the . . . zombie H'san keeping us in this bunker.” She squared her shoulders and watched the major talk to Dion. “I'll complete the mission, Werst.”

“You're not alone, Gunny.”

They'd talked about that, the two of them in Susumi space, sharing a watch while the others slept.

“All right.” Ressk straightened and headed over to join them, Binti right behind him. “If there's no saws down here, I need a heavy knife with a serrated edge.”

“We didn't see any saws, but there's a shitload of blades,” Wen said as he and Vree caught up. “There's got to be something that'll work.”

“Heavy ax?” Verr touched the small ax on her belt. Torin had seen new recruits wearing them. Visible religious icons were against regulation, so she'd never had the opportunity to see how useful they were as a weapon.

“I haven't done any ax work in years,” Ressk said thoughtfully.

“A
ser tyrin plee kerstirin
like you with an ax?” Wen scoffed.

Werst growled and showed teeth. “What did you call him?”

“Enough.” Torin's voice cracked out and four sets of nostril ridges snapped closed, lips quickly covering teeth. “Insults in Federate only. If there's going to be blood spilled, it is not going to be over a misunderstanding.”

Verr remembered her rank in time to not answer,
Yes, Gunnery Sergeant,
with the rest.

Binti leaned in close. “Admit it, Gunny, two days of keeping it quiet—you missed the yelling.”

“Corporal, if I'd wanted to yell, I'd have reflected those security beams back off my shining personality.”

Grinning, Binti stared across the room at the food prep area. As her grin slipped, Torin realized she was actually staring back toward the stairs and the ship and the two people they'd left behind. “We've got to get out of here.”

“I know.” If Craig came after her, they'd be trapped together and she wouldn't be distracted by worry about a patrol stumbling over him. On the other hand, if he didn't come into the bunker, they'd still have a potential front outside the perimeter. On yet another hand, Alamber and Ressk's complementary skills hadn't yet hit code they couldn't crack. If Ressk was right about the H'san, he could use Alamber beside him.

“Situation means a truce until we get out?”

“It does.” Given the numbers, she suspected that having the major's people on their side meant sweet fuk all, but it was a legitimate reason to delay the inevitable.

“And after?” Binti's expression said,
I trust you to do the right thing
.

Torin would've preferred her expression to say,
I trust in our orders.
But, in the end, that was Torin's job. “Let's get out of here first.”

The weapon cache was huge. Torin had expected an oversized Marine armory and not crowded shelves and vaults following a spiral both up and down—like Bufush's junk shop made deadly and rearranged inside a giant snail shell. The architecture was entirely different from anything else they'd passed although, granted, taking the shortcuts through the catacombs on the weapon's trail meant they'd likely missed
a few chambers. The structure looked to have been built of polished concrete and the same brassy metal as the guardians' doors.

The section nearest the entrance held blades. Curved, straight, short, long; apparently every culture went through a phase where they jabbed holes in each other. Torin doubted the H'san had been using them at the same time as the planet busters, but, for all she knew, they might have.

“I assume the blades weren't going with you, Major?” The mercs' ship had a decent-sized cargo hold as well as expandable pens—most of the weapons would be fine riding out the trip in vacuum. The shuttle, however, had significantly less space. Either they were after something specific, or the reward was great enough to risk multiple trips in spite of the satellite defenses.

“
Aren't
going with me,” the major corrected. “I won't be paid for weapons a decent blacksmith can re-create.”

“So you're working for someone. Not Dion, or you'd care that he was dying.”

If the major had been Human, Torin might've been able to read the expressions chasing each other across her face, but the physiognomy was just different enough they moved too fast for her to translate. Anger. Pain. Maybe resentment? With only four letters in her family name, Sujuno di'Kail had definitely come out of the Taykan upper class. Had her family cut her off? If she was willing to dump the seeds of another war and millions more dead out into the Confederation, the bar had been set pretty damned low when Torin considered what else she might have been willing to do.

The clash of steel and Ressk's voice cut off her response. “It's big enough, but it's too flexible.”

Torin half expected a comment from the major, but she only huffed out a disapproving breath. Fair enough. Alamber had been the only di'Taykan Torin had spent time with lately and he'd never have let that go, but officers were taught to be more circumspect.

“Hey, Major!” Wen's voice bounced down from an upper level. “We might've found another whatchathing.”

“Might have?”

“Not sure. It's got attachments.”

Alamber wouldn't have let that go either. The major only headed up the spiral, long legs taking her quickly out of sight. The Taykan were, as a species, effortlessly graceful—it had to do with the way their joints were connected according to a bored tech during one of Torin's lengthier stays in Med-op—but the major moved as though she were holding pieces of herself in place. Torin made a mental note to ask about injuries when she reappeared.