The Heart of Valour (47 page)

It was the farthest point from the door. And the tank. She should have had him left there.

“Yes, Gunnery Sergeant. Your leg…”

“Not the time to get on me about lifting with my back, Flint. Stevens, Bynum, throw your good arms under Vega and get her in there, too.”

“Gunny, we can…”

“You can go down fighting if the drones get that far. Until then, move!”

* * *

Bonninski squinted through her sights, the bulk of the tank just visible between the buildings. They had maybe ten minutes before it maneuvered itself around to get a clear shot. “Sergeant, without the scanners, how are we supposed to hit anything crippling?”

“We’re taking out the targeting array.”

“Sergeant, we can’t see the targeting array!”

“This is where you prove you were paying attention to the lectures on artillery specs, Bonninski. You see the tank?”

She blinked a large snowflake off her lashes. “Yes, Sergeant.”

“Well, you should know
serley
well where the targeting array is without having to see it, shouldn’t you? Ready 9s! Fire!”

* * *

The major safely stowed in the kitchen, Torin and Flint headed for McGuinty.

His eyes were closed, one hand lying palm up at his side, the other still clutching the major’s slate.

Flint dropped and pushed two fingers carefully against the skin at the edge of the seal on his throat. “He’s under, Gunny.”

“I can see that.” She kicked the canteen. Still mostly full. If they survived this, she was going to have words with Private McGuinty.

“Gunny!”

She turned to see Iful gracefully leap the waist-high barricade of stacked packs.

“I think I’ve got something that’ll work. For the aliens,” he added when she stared at him a moment too long.

* * *

“Sevens, don’t waste ammo on drones you can’t see!”
Annatahwee’s voice cracked out over the Group Channel.
“If they get into the anchor, we’ll need every round.”

* * *

Taking the cobbled-together voice box from Iful, Torin tossed him her slate and snapped, “Record this!” as she bent to open the body bag. The seal had barely cracked when the aliens surged out and then back again through the larger opening, like fluid under pressure. Setting the bits of electrical flotsam down, she snatched her hand back as they engulfed it.

Not the time to wonder if they could hear her. “Tell us how to turn the drones off!”

“That’s a speaker,” Iful whispered as the gray blob rearranged itself.

“Still. Collecting. Data.”

The voice reminded Torin of an ancient midi file at one of the precontact museums. Then, almost too fast to see, the bag held a small jumble of assorted electronics, a severed arm, and…

“What is that, Gunny?”

“It’s exactly what it looks like,” Torin snarled. The aliens had re-formed themselves into a skeletal hand and a set of truncated lower arm bones.
Aliens? What aliens?
it was saying.
Nothing in here but some polyhydroxide alcoholydes used for medical purposes. No idea how we got out of the arm.
Okay, maybe she was reading a bit much into it, but they were clearly not planning on saying anything else. She resealed the bag with a vicious emphasis she wished she could use on the alien. “Grab the major’s slate and see if you can figure out how far McGuinty got on that uplink while Flint and I drag his ass out of here.”

* * *

“We do what Gunnery Sergeant Kerr did!”

Sakur turned to stare at Kichar, a little startled by the sudden outburst. “We what?”

“She used the tank to stop the tank! The second night by the lake,” Kichar added when Sakur and Hisht stared at her blankly. “She had it shoot through the ice so it sank!”

“Solid ground out there, genius,” Sakur snorted, hair flicking toward the window. “Not ice.”

“So we change the specifics!” Her eyes were gleaming. “Hisht, your people use nets, right?”

“Yes, but…”

“We weight the corners of a shelter half, you throw it like a net over the tank, the camo in the half scrambles the tank’s internal sensors, an HE missle goes off in the tube. Bang. No more tank.”

The 9s took another shot, their combined firepower having no effect at all.

“That might just work,” Sakur admitted.

Kichar rolled her eyes. “Thanks for sounding so surprised! Get a half from the east windows. Stay low, don’t get shot. Hisht, come on, we’ll tell the sergeant.”

* * *

“What do you plan to weight the half with?” Torin asked.

“Boots,”
Jiir told her.
“Hisht’s and Piroj’s.”

The liners would keep their feet warm, and they’d be happier without the boots. Given the situation, they might be the only happy Marines in the area. Well, them and Staff Sergeant Beyhn.

“That’s a pretty big distance to cover horizontally.”

“We use the wind, Gunny, it’s what we do. And we’re stronger than we look.”

She couldn’t do it, but since she wasn’t doing it, that didn’t matter. “You have a go. Good luck. And Kichar?”

“Yes, Gunnery Sergeant?”

“Good idea.”

“Thank you, Gunnery Sergeant!”

“Gunny?” Iful appeared suddenly at her left shoulder. “I think McGuinty was done. Looks like he was running a final diagnostic.”

“And?”

“It’s not one hundred percent, there’s still corrupted files in the program, but if I’m reading this right, it should run. We just need to work out how to execute. Maybe if I turn the slate off and…”

Torin grabbed his wrist before he could follow through. “Do we know when McGuinty saved last?”

Iful’s eyes paled. “No, Gunny.”

“Don’t close anything. Don’t turn anything off. Just find the program.”

* * *

“Tank will be in position to fire on the door in less than ten seconds.”

“That’s not really helping, Kichar.”

She flushed. “Sorry, Sergeant.”

“7s! Covering fire! Keep their heads down! Hisht! Go!”

Wearing only his bodyliner, Hisht surged up onto his feet a little west of the tank, the angle allowing for the wind. There were a lot of rounds in the air and while ninety percent of the firing was at the drones, ten percent wasn’t, and a few of the rounds buzzed by uncomfortably close. He thought about home, wondered for a moment why he’d ever left it, gratefully stretched out his toes, and imagined throwing his
jerkeen’s
heavy hunting net over a passing flock of
vertak.

The shelter half opened up, then the weighted corners began to drop as Hisht toppled forward off the edge of the roof. No branches to grab, nothing but a straight drop…

Then the rope around his waist jerked him back.

By the time he untangled himself from Sakur’s grip and smacked the di’Taykan’s hands away from his crotch, the shelter half had landed, covering about two thirds of the tank.

“I don’t know, Gunny…”

He could hear Sergeant Annatahwee talking.

“…between the snow and the dark and the camo function, it’s damned hard to see. We may have enough coverage or…”

The explosion was everything the vids said a tank exploding at close range should be. Only louder. Ears ringing, Hisht shoved Sakur off him and crawled to the edge of the roof.

The top third of the tank had split open like a fungus throwing spores.

The bottom third, damaged servos howling loud enough to be heard even by the half deafened, continued grinding toward the double doors.

“Oh, fuk.” He felt Sakur’s hand close over his shoulder. “It’s going to crash straight through the door. You think it’s got enough left?”

Hisht pointed toward the drones massed in and between the buildings. “They think so.”

* * *

Plastic casing of the major’s slate creaking in her grip, Torin would have rather charged through the air lock and tossed a bag of grenades under the tank than allow an alien program to bounce into orbit by way of her skull. Unfortunately, it wasn’t an either/or scenario.

She took a deep breath, tapped transmit into her implant with the tip of her tongue, and started the program.

* * *

“Number three squad, down to the barricade. Everyone else—stop as many drones as you can before they get to the building.”

An uncomfortable vibration in her teeth, a buzz in her jaw, told Torin the interface was working. She almost thought she could feel bits of the code going by, but that was ludicrous. All she could feel was…

Pain.

The buzz had become a buzz saw.

Since she hadn’t noticed the major screaming at any time in the last five days, it had to be the corrupted files. Corrupted files fukking hurt. Who knew?

It took her a moment to realize that the shriek of metal separating and the crash of the air lock doors slamming back into the anchor was not actually happening inside her head.

Although, at the moment, putting her head under the tank seemed like a wonderful idea.

The sound of KC-7s firing at close quarters got her attention. When had she fallen to her knees? Both knees. And, holy fukking hell, that hurt!

And then it didn’t because there was only enough wetware space available to handle the pain in her jaw.

“
Ablin gon savit
, Gunny! Your face!”

Heat. Burning.

“Iful! Turn it off!”

Torin curled her body around the slate. They’d have to go through her to get it. She’d see this out.

* * *

She noticed the quiet first. Well, the relative quiet—there were boots and voices and the slamming about of metal and plastic. Probably the drones being mistreated. She tried to say something about misuse of Corps property, but her mouth didn’t seem to work. It didn’t seem to hurt either, so she wasn’t exactly complaining.

At some point during the upload, she’d fallen onto her side. Her face was in a puddle. Not slush. Too warm to be slush.

Oh.

Blood.

There seemed to be a lot of it pouring out of her mouth.

“Gunny? Gunny, can you hear me? Fuk! How do I seal this without blocking her throat?”

She wondered who Flint was asking, Dr. Sloan being dead and all and the rest of the platoon having no more idea than a litter of kittens. She liked kittens. Well, she liked cats, but there needed to be kittens first.

Then it wasn’t so quiet; something roared past the anchor and someone yelled it was more fliers.

“Whoever just ID’d that as a flier is redoing their vehicle recognition course!” Annatahwee bellowed close by.

VTA,
Torin thought and let go.

* * *

“We will not allow Big Yellow to win by changing our lives to suit its invasion!”

“One escape pod,” Torin snorted at the
Promise
’s main vid screen. “Hardly an invasion.”

Arm thrown over her waist, Craig gave her a quick squeeze and said, “Shut up.”

On the screen, the Confederation Premier, a Dornagain female currently named Listens and Considers, unfolded to her full height and stared gravely at Presit, her golden fur almost red under the studio lighting. “While we do not at this point know if Big Yellow was working alone or as part of a planned act of aggression by the Others…”

“Not very aggressive,” Craig muttered.

Torin snorted. “Maybe not where you were.”

“…we will continue as we have. We will be vigilant, but we will take up our lives again.”

“Off!”

The screen went dark before Presit could ask her next question.

“I was watching that!” Torin protested.

Craig stopped her before she could get an elbow back into a sensitive spot. “You’ve seen it before.”

“Yeah, but I still had tank head.”

“The posturing was the fun part. From here on, it devolves into politics. Presit’s in fine form, and at least twice it looks like she’s about to bite the premier on the ankle.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

Settling back against Craig’s chest, Torin snickered.

“I remember that, but I thought it was the tank talking.”

“Yeah, well, you were lucky you missed the live action version.”

Not a lot of people would consider having the lower half of their face rebuilt as lucky, but Torin agreed with him. By the time she came out of the tank—its surface scribbled over by every surviving member of Platoon 71 before they were posted away from Ventris Station—the hysteria had essentially played itself out.

Not to say there hadn’t been a few loose ends to tie up.

* * *

“Do you realize, Gunnery Sergeant Kerr, the scope of the diplomatic incident you could have created between the Taykan home world and the Corps? At the time of the incident, Staff Sergeant Beyhn was qui.”

Hands tucked behind her back, Torin’s right index finger twitched. “Yes, sir. So I was told.”

The colonel standing to the right of High Tekamal Louden’s desk frowned, searching for insubordination, but Torin’s delivery had been letter perfect.

“Fortunately,” the Commandant of the Corps continued, “qui’Allak Beyhn spoke for you. He said that as he was a Marine at the time of the incident that made it a Marine problem not a Taykan concern, and it therefore required a Marine solution.” She paused, waiting.

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you usually consider sex to be a Marine Corps solution, Gunnery Sergeant?”

“That would depend on the problem, sir.”

The colonel sputtered but remained essentially silent. “The six Marines who were part of your solution are refusing to say which of them administered the lifesaving action, as it were. You seem to have had an influence on them.”

“Thank you, sir.”

The colonel sputtered a bit more, but the high tekamal said only, “I’m recommending you never be allowed near a recruit platoon again.”

Gunnery sergeants did not smile at the Commandant of the Corps, but, at this point, Torin thought she could probably get away with allowing honest feelings to show in her voice. “
Thank
you, sir.”

* * *

“You are indeed carrying the same protein marker as Civilian Salvage Operator Craig Ryder and the reporter Presit a Tur durValintrisy.”

Torin bit back a weary,
no shit.

Nose ridges flaring, the major/doctor stopped by the edge of the examination table and leaned in close. “I saw your interrogation of the alien.
Still. Collecting. Data.
What do you think that means, Gunnery Sergeant.”