Valor's Trial (15 page)

“All right . . .” She ran a hand back through her hair. “. . . that's thirteen taken care of, fourteen counting Harnett. Three to go.”

“Like you said, Gunny, busy day.”

“Not over yet. Kyster!”

He limped over so quickly he'd clearly been waiting for her call. A quick flash of his teeth at Werst, then he moved between them. “Major's sleeping, Gunny.”

It seemed that most of the prisoners were. Given their condition, the extra food and shuffling about into platoons had been enough to exhaust almost everyone. A quick sweep over the pallets showed mostly Krai sitting up, more or less alert. Had the Krai been supplementing? If it was even partially organic, they could digest it. The pallets of the dead, maybe?

She'd work it out later. “Who was in the hunting party that got attacked?”

Kyster glanced toward the tunnel then back at her. “Don't know, Gunny.”

It took her a moment to realize that he was confused about which hunting party she meant. “The one you saw out in the tunnels. Before I arrived.”

“Edwards.” His teeth snapped together. “Dark pink di'Taykan.”

“Jiyuu.”

“And a di'Taykan with pale blue hair. Male.”

There were no di'Taykan with pale blue hair among the surviving goons. “He was in the hunting party we ran into this morning?”

Kyster frowned, considering it. Finally, he said, “Yes, Gunnery Sergeant.”

That left Jiyuu the only one still alive.

“Go get Private Jiyuu, Kyster. Bring him here.”

“Yes, Gunnery Sergeant.”

“Fuk, Gunny, good thing your body count wasn't one higher,” Werst snorted as the younger Krai scurried off.

Torin raised an eyebrow in his general direction.

“If you'd offed Jiyuu, too, we'd be facing tunnel trolls with our heads up our butts.”

“Tunnel trolls?”

He shrugged. “Good a name as any.”

Jiyuu's eyes, when he looked at her, were so dark they'd lost nearly all their fuchsia. With all the fallen di'Taykan together, Darlys had clearly used the opportunity to pass on her
thrytin's
opinion. Jiyuu was staring at her the way the H'san stared at cheddar.

She snapped her fingers in front of her face and his focus slid in. “I need to know what attacked you out in tunnel seven, Private. What's that guard post watching for?”

“It was Edwards' fault we got beat!” Both hands rose to defensive positions. “He was an idiot. He thought they'd crawled out of the caves and come together.”

“What had come together?” Jiyuu was going to need that defensive position if he didn't start making sense.

“Incomers.”

She didn't need to turn, she felt Werst's expression change. Not tunnel trolls, then. “Marines?”

“Yeah, Marines. But these weren't incomers.” Hair flipping back and forth in choppy fuchsia arcs, he leaned closer and lowered his voice. “They were exploring from another pipe.”

Torin raised both brows, experience adjusting astonishment to look like disbelief. “Another pipe?”

“They were going to do us, Gunny!”

“Why?” Then she realized there could be only one reason. “They came on you just as you left one of the small caves. Just after you stripped a Marine of anything useful and left him to die.”

“Would have died anyway.” Jiyuu muttered the protest as he slid quickly back out of reach, then took two quick steps to the left as both Werst and Kyster snapped their teeth.

Forcing her fingers to uncurl, Torin took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Have they ever come back?”

“They tried once, but we drove them off.” Fingers clasped together up by his chest, Jiyuu sidled another step left. “They never came back since.”

Why the hell not? Torin wondered. The Marines had to have reported what they'd seen. Their CO knew something was wrong on the other side of the barricade—how could they have allowed it to continue? “So there're three people out there, standing guard?”

“Yes, Gunnery Sergeant.”

Why hadn't the other Marines attacked the barricade in force? Overwhelmed the guards, continued through the tunnels to take out Harnett? Why hadn't they dealt with this mess so that she didn't have to?

“It's about a day's walk away,” Jiyuu continued ingratiatingly. “We take enough food for five days, eat one day's on the way, then we're relieved after three and have food for the walk back.”

So the barricade was out about as far as Kyster's water hole and the collapsed tunnel. Since Kyster had seen the aftermath of the attack and had clearly not cut back through the node to return to the area he claimed as his, there were cross tunnels and, somewhere out in the deranged nonpattern, there was a way to get from point A to point B. Either Harnett knew the tunnels well enough to put the barricade on the far side of the cross tunnel or he'd been one lucky s.o.b. Evidence suggested the latter.

“How long before the three out there now are relieved?”

“Relief team needs to leave tomorrow morning, Gunnery Sergeant. Team that's there now, they'll be back here evening after that.”

Very little time to decide what to do about it and not her decision anyway. She wished she'd had time to learn how Major Kenoton thought before presenting him with something quite so far up the scale of
could turn into a situation that's totally fukked.

“Gunnery Sergeant Kerr? Darlys said, you were
der heen sa verniticna sa vey
.”

“What of it?”

“I've never . . . It's just you have . . . Well, it explains . . .” He took a deep breath. “What are you going to do now?”

“I'm going to send you back to your platoon and then, not that it's any of your business, I'm going to take this information to Major Kenoton.”

“No. We need to maintain the barricade.”

“Sir?”

“What if the other node is run by someone like Harnett, Gunnery Sergeant? Granted, you descended on this place like an avenging
nartar,
but should they attack us, there's no guarantee your luck will hold a second time.”

Nartars
were spirits that in Taykan mythology watched over the righteous. Translated into Human terms, the major had just referred to her as an avenging angel. Torin wasn't entirely certain how she felt about that. Kind of depended on whether
nartars
ranked gunnery sergeants.

“My luck, sir?”

“Gunnery Sergeant Kerr, you have killed eight armed insurgents today, survived a coup attempt and killed a ninth by throwing him into the disposal pit, and been proclaimed
sa verniticna sa vey,
which allowed you to take the weapons from the remaining three armed insurgents without a fight. Luck had to have something to do with that.”

“Luck is nothing more than taking advantage of a situation, sir. Although, I will grant that, as I had nothing to do with it, Private Darlys' declaration was lucky.”

“Indeed.”

However the rank and file reacted, Major Kenoton seemed less than impressed, his eyes still not changing tone. Lieutenant Myshai, on the other hand, kept glancing over at her as if Torin were about to start a family right then and there.

“Yes, sir. However, given the reaction of those behind the barricade to Edwards and his hunting party stripping a Marine and leaving him to die, I doubt we'll have another Harnett to deal with.”

“And if they were merely upset that Edwards stripped the incomer before they could?”

Torin had to admit that was a possibility.

“As I have no wish to trade the attentions of one psycho for another . . .”

It took Torin a moment to realize she was neither of the two psychos referenced.

“. . . we will, for now at least, maintain the barricade.”

“Yes, sir.” The major had a point; it wouldn't hurt to leave the barricade staffed until they were sure. On the other hand, there was only one way to be sure. “Request permission to be part of the relief party, sir. I can do a little recon and . . .”

“No. Until we are all stronger, you're needed here.”

“Sir . . .”

“No, Gunnery Sergeant. Remember, you'll have to subdue the three out there now when they arrive. Make sure they don't connect with the rest of the survivors. Make sure it doesn't . . .” His voice trailed off.

Make sure it doesn't happen again.

“Yes, sir.” Once again, he had a point, and more, she should have thought of it. She wanted out so badly—and she was going nowhere until the Marines at the other pipe were dealt with one way or another—that she was losing sight of the job. “If we send three out, sir, then fifteen servings of the extra food will have to be sent with them.”

Lieutenant Myshai looked a little panicked at the thought, but the major merely shrugged. “Take the loss out of every bowl. No one will notice.”

“Doesn't mean fit to start a family, it means you've been named a progenitor.”

Shifting through the odds and ends Harnett had tucked away in his storeroom—inventory was a time-honored military way of avoiding hard decisions—Torin snorted. “Same thing, Corporal.”

“Matter of degree, Gunny. While you were getting your orders from the major . . .” Werst's tone stayed just close enough to the edge of sarcasm that Torin could ignore it. “. . . I had a little chat with Jiyuu, and I learned that being named a progenitor is the highest honor a Taykan can get.”

To be able to begin a new family had sociopolitical implications that cut to the heart of the Taykan culture.

“Don't know if you noticed Werst, but I'm not a Taykan.”

“They don't seem to care. And here I thought that with Private Kichar nowhere around only Kyster thought the sun shone out of your ass.”

“Illumination is just part of the job, Corporal.” She lifted a stack of pale blue felted paper and saw it wasn't blue all the way to the bottom. It was a third pale blue, a third pale pink, and a third pale yellow. Something about those colors . . .

“So, Gunny . . .” He squatted beside her and rubbed at the cuff of bruises around one wrist. “Harnett's asswipes aren't prisoners?”

“No. You and I are the only two Marines in here not likely to fall on our asses if attacked, so we'd be doing the guarding and we've got other things to do.”

“Yeah, but if they're not prisoners, the rest'll see there's no punishment for being general all-around bastards and general all-around bastardness will increase.”

“That's the major's problem.”

Werst snorted.

Torin raised her head just far enough to glare at him. “Do not do that again.”

“Sorry, Gunnery Sergeant.” He sounded like he meant it. “You should've killed them all when you had the chance.”

It would have simplified things. But she'd never admit that out loud.

Among the supplies, Harnett had managed to put together a fairly extensive first aid kit. He'd probably convinced the prisoners to hand over the few things that had come through with them for the good of the group—where convinced meant took it regardless and the good of the group referred to him and his goons. Even if every Marine in the node had only come through with one or two bits of kit, it added up.

Torin had her filters and . . .

She pulled the supplements from inside her vest. Human supplements were pale blue, di'Taykan pale pink, Krai pale yellow. She ripped off a small square of the pale blue paper, about the size of the tab she carried and let it dissolve on her tongue.

“Uh, Gunny, isn't unsupervised tasting dangerous for you lot? I mean, Humans?”

“It's supplements.”

“What is?”

She flapped the paper in his general direction. “This is. That's why everyone's in such bad shape. There isn't quite enough food, but there's more than physiological deterioration seems to indicate. The Krai are in the best shape on the same amount of food, but your gut's the most adaptable.”

“Harnett was hoarding.”

“Yes, but the numbers don't add up. He wasn't keeping everyone weak through lack of food but through the absence of trace nutrients the food didn't have. He was denying everyone but his supporters the supplements. Add some of this to everyone's food and, provided the Others keep supplying it, they'll be back up on their feet in no time.”

Werst looked around at the surrounding gray on gray of Marines on pallets and snorted. “Yay.”

THE SOUND FILLED THE NODE.
It wasn't loud or unpleasant, it was just . . . omnipresent. For the approximately twenty seconds it sounded, it was impossible to think about anything but the sound.

“It's the warning for the evening meal,” Staff Sergeant Pole told her in the sudden, welcome silence. Torin hadn't heard him approach. “Same sound as the morning meal. You'll get used to it after a while.”

“If you say so,” she muttered, resisting the urge to rub at her temples. Behind him, the sergeants had pulled two Marines from each squad and sent them to line up at the pipe. Two lines: one with two jugs to a Marine for water, one with a single jug for kibble.

It hadn't taken much to reinstate the structure of the Corps. Torin would have been happier about that if the structure hadn't crumbled so completely in the first place.

A closer look and she could see that each of the three newly formed platoons had sent one of Harnett's survivors toward the pipe.

“They're the only ones who know what to do,” Pole said when she pointed it out. “Harnett's people brought the jugs out to the edge of the DMZ. No one ever went into his tent.” His gaze flicked over to one of the young Marines who Harnett had been using as a plaything. “Not voluntarily anyway.”