Valor's Trial (31 page)

The living taken care of, she turned her attention back to the dead.

Ninety-seven.

Werst was chewing. “
Cree arac
,” he said shortly.
Cousin,
Torin translated. Or as near as made no difference. “On my father's side. Went MIA about twenty-four maybe twenty-five tendays ago.”

The dead were the main course at Krai burial rituals. As a rule, Marines gave that sort of thing up, but then, as a rule, Marines weren't left to lie where they'd fallen.

“There's almost a hundred of them,” she said when Kichar expected to start carrying them off to the disposal pit. “We haven't the time. Nor for that,” she added as Kyster opened his mouth. The last thing she wanted to cope with right now was the reaction to him suggesting the three Krai act like a memorial unit by eating a finger off each of the dead. Then she turned her attention back to Werst.

“You took off your filter.” Carelessness she wouldn't have expected from Werst.

He swallowed. “Heeirc and I were close, Gunnery Sergeant.”

He expected to be reamed out for it, but Torin couldn't see much point. The filters were significantly more uncomfortable for the Krai than they were for the other two species, and that likely had as much significance in his choice as his
cree arac
did. That and the additive in the food wearing away his ability to care. “You're our canary, then.”

“Your what?”

“Just let me know if you start dying.” She scratched at the edge of her filter—damned thing was pulling at the skin of her cheek. “You, Kyster, and Watura start pulling the biscuits out of that kibble on the floor. Grab only the ones that smell like a Human or di'Taykan system could handle them. Jiyuu, Kichar—refill the canteens. You'll need to slam the contact with the club and the water won't stay on for long. Mashona, Darlys—the extras that came in with the Marines have to be in here somewhere. There's definitely going to be something we can use. Ressk, help the sergeant. I want that slate working sooner rather than later.”

“When do we get to take the filters off, Gunny?” Ressk shot a resentful glare at Werst.

“If Werst's alive in half an hour, it should be safe.” She took a deep breath, closed her eyes for a heartbeat, and opened them again to see all eight Marines watching her. “Don't just stand there with your thumbs up your collective asses! You have your orders; move!”

The question was, what did they do next? Torin had never wanted an officer around quite so much. Good, bad, indifferent, it didn't matter—just someone to deal with the big picture while she handled the details. It was shortsighted of her not to arrange it so that Colonel Mariner sent Major Ohi along. He'd come in with Mashona, he was still functional. He could have functioned for her so that she could function for everyone else.

Sagging back against the pipe, she let it hold her weight as she slid to the floor.

The floor?

Crap.

The pipe rang as she slammed her head back against it. Eyes watering, she forced herself up onto her feet. First Watura, then Werst, now her. The additive in the kibble was definitely beginning to work. She couldn't tell if the pain helped her focus on anything but the pain, but even that was something.

“Gunny?”

“What?”

Mashona was smart enough to take her cue from Torin, wiping the obvious question off her face. “The stuff was all together wrapped in a piece of the smart fabric. Six more filters, another tube of sealant, some leather ties like they used to hold the rocks on the clubs, and some rope.”

“Rope?”

There were loops of pale gray draped over Mashona's outstretched hand. “There's about thirty meters.”

Wondering why the hell she thought giving herself a concussion was a good idea, Torin nodded. “Good work.” A quick glance down at her sleeve and she raised her voice. “Eleven minutes to lights out, people.”

“We staying here tonight, Gunny?”

Torin looked past Mashona, past the bodies, out at tunnels. Was there another pipe after this one? And another one after that? Were they right, everyone who'd said there was nothing out there but more tunnels? Mariner and Braudy and Kenoton and Pole . . . More tunnels and no way out?

She didn't, couldn't believe that.

“Yeah, we'll bunk down close to the pipe for the night.” Most of the dead Marines, struggling toward the tunnels when they died, were closer to the node's outer curve. “Take advantage of the water, make sure we're all good and hydrated before we start out at first light. We might not get this lucky again. Let's pull some pallets over while we can see clearly.”

Crouched by the spill of kibble, separating out the biscuits, Kyster watched the gunny and Mashona pull pallets around to the side of the pipe where the crushed bodies weren't. He wasn't thrilled about staying the night, but there was enough of the food from the pipe that the smell of decaying meat shouldn't be too much of a temptation.

“Gran used to make a killer
greetani krii
,” Werst muttered, tossing another biscuit in the sleeve.

“Mine, too,” Kyster admitted. It was tricky getting the meat to rot without insects finding it even with technology that tried to guarantee it. The effort was part of what made it taste so good. He turned a biscuit over, didn't like the blotch of color on the back and tossed it in the dubious pile, finding it hard to believe he was actually discarding food.

“This is what she asked for.”

He turned to see Darlys standing by Watura holding a pallet, the lower half of her face weirdly out of focus behind the shimmer of the filter. “Who?”

“Gunnery Sergeant Kerr.”

“She asked for a pallet?” Watura wondered, standing.

“She said,” Darlys told him quietly, “that she wanted to find a pipe with working water that had delivered biscuits before it quit. She asked for this . . .” Balancing the pallet on one edge, she waved a hand at the sleeve Kyster had just filled. “. . . and she received it.”

Werst snorted. “She also wanted the pipe to have fallen out of the ceiling leaving us an easy exit. And I don't see that . . .”

The lights cut him off, and Kyster slapped at his cuff.

“She asked for a way out.” In the darkness, Daryls sounded as though her faith had been justified.

“What the fuk are you talking about?” Werst demanded.

With the light from Watura's cuff shining up into her face, Darlys' eyes were solid ocher lid to lid. “Look up. The gunnery sergeant asked for a way out.” One hand reached out and grabbed the other di'Taykan's wrist, pushing his light down toward the floor. “Just look up.”

“Son of a . . .”

Kyster exchanged a confused look with Werst, who shrugged. They both stood, walked to Watura's side, and looked up.

“I don't see . . .”

“Follow the line of the pipe,” Darlys told them.

“In case you're missing the point of the exercise, genius, it's too
serley
dark to see anything without . . .”

When Werst's voice trailed off, Kyster frowned and tipped his head back. “But it's just . . . Oh.”

At the top of the pipe, where a chunk of the ceiling had fallen, there was light.

“IT'S LIGHT,” MIKE SAID DEFINITIVELY.
“It's not
a
light.” “So it's a way out?”

They were standing close enough, necks craned back to stare up at the pale pinprick of illumination high above them in the dark, that Torin could feel him shrug. “It's a way into someplace else. Can't promise out.”

“Good enough. Werst . . .”

“Not in the dark, Gunny. Not if we don't have to.”

“Stop reading my mind, you're still a distance from that sergeant's hook.” She frowned, hands flat against the pipe. The smooth surface, even crumpled by the collapse would be a bitch to climb. If Werst said he'd rather not attempt it in the dark, well, it was her choice still on whether it was worth it to try. If their need to haul ass was greater than the risk to the Krai. If waiting until they had light was the best thing to do or merely the easiest.

“Gunny . . .”

“No, you won't either, kid.” Werst cut Kyster off cold. “Not unless she orders it. Then all three of us go.”

“Stop reading his mind, too,” Torin muttered absently, reaching as far as she could and feeling the faint ridge of buckled metal. She gripped it as hard as she could, fingertips only, and tried to lift herself off the floor. No real surprise when there wasn't enough resistance to hold her; she'd need suction cups. “Odds that your patch will hold come morning, Sergeant?”

Mike shrugged again. “It's a sleeve, Gunny. Probably shouldn't have worked at all.”

That was helpful.
Make a decision, Torin. Do your fukking job.
“All right. We sleep. Kyster, Werst, and Ressk are excused watch and ready to climb at first light. Sergeant, do what you have to in order to get that slate working, remembering you'll eventually be climbing that bastard of a pipe and that, at least, is one thing the slate can't help with.”

She dreamed that night that the pipe led into the shuttle bay of a Navy cruiser. It might have been the
Berganitan
, she didn't see enough of the ship to know for certain. Haysole was there, and Guimond, and Sergeant Glicksohn, and a dozen other Marines she knew were dead. Dead Marines were a part of her life, but Craig was there, too, and when she woke, half an hour before light with the dream still in her head and the edges of the salvage tag cutting into her palm, she had every intention of blaming the fukking kibble for the soppy state of her subconscious.

“Did you sleep at all?” she asked crouching by Mike's side, one hand on a broad shoulder for balance.

“No.”

“You sure that's wise?”

He slipped a hand into his vest and pulled out a stim. “If we were always wise, would they give us these?”

Torin touched her vest over the inner pocket where her two remaining stims waited for inevitability. She'd forgotten about them. Another malfunction to blame on the kibble.

“Operating system's up and running.” He turned the screen just enough for her to see a familiar pattern. She could practically hear him filtering what he was about to say, dumbing it down for the nontech-inclined. “Another hour, maybe less, and I'll have recovered the first program.”

“Which is?”

The shoulder under her fingers lifted and fell even as he continued to stroke data off the screen. “Damned if I know. Could be solitaire. Could be long-distance communications. Could be CMC Mapping.”

“I vote for option two or three.” She tightened her grip for a moment,then stood. “Good work, Sergeant. All right, people wakey, wakey. Welcome to another glorious day in the Corps.”

“Does it count as day when it's still too fukking dark to find your ass with both hands,” Mashona grumbled as half a dozen pale circles sprang up on the ceiling, indicating where Marines had hit their cuff lights.

“I'll find your ass,” one of the di'Taykan offered. Male. Probably Jiyuu.

“As happy as I am that you're offering to help a fellow Marine,” Torin told him, “Mashona's lost ass is her problem. I want us fed and watered when the lights come back on, so let's move.”

The pale circles slid down the walls and spilled in darker circles on the floor—a game of connect the dots and find the Marines.

“I thought that was an
if
not a when, Gunny.”

“I am applying the power of positive thinking, Mashona.”

“If you will it . . .”

No mistaking Darlys' quiet murmur.

“I'm going to will my boot in your butt in a minute, Private. Let's move!”

The water still ran at the pipe although the contact point had stiffened further.

“No surprise, given the abuse it's already taken,” Torin grunted, smacking it hard with the side of her fist. With her bowl full, she switched it for Mike's and moved out of the way so Watura could fill his and Jiyuu's.

“One minute to light.”

They'd make the climb regardless.

“Ten seconds.”

Eleven.

Twelve.

“Maybe we're in a different time zone?” From anyone but Kichar, it would have sounded sarcastic.

Thirteen.

Fourteen.

And then Torin realized she could see the pale slash of the pipe stretching up toward the distant ceiling.

“Could be rerouting within the sleeve to handle the load,” Mike said thoughtfully.

“You design the hookup to do that, Sarge?” Ressk sounded impressed.

He snorted. “Not intentionally.”

It grew light enough to see faces and then expressions. Shadows lingered out among the dead, but by the pipe it had clearly gotten as light as it was going to get. “All right, then, let's . . .”

The vibration was slight. If Torin hadn't had one hand flat against the pipe, she might have denied she felt it. “Technical Sergeant?”

“I don't know, Gunny . . .”

“It feels like standing at the perimeter of the spaceport, watching the ships take off,” Kichar said quietly.

“Like the ground is shaking?”

“Yeah.”

At some point the ground had shaken enough to bring down a section of the tunnels. Not to mention partially collapse the pipe they were standing by.

Mike nodded. “Small earthquake.” He gestured toward the hunks of rock that had fallen from the ceiling, the parts of dead Marines protruding from under them adding emphasis. “I suggest we get the hell out of here.”