Valor's Trial (35 page)

“Gut feeling?” Mike asked in the stunned silence that followed her declaration.

“Pretty much, yeah.”

Mashona's raised fist halted forward movement and conversation both. They'd come within three meters of their first t-junction—a cursive tee perhaps but a familiar intersection for all that. Passing it after Mashona had scouted ahead and returned with the all clear, Torin couldn't help but think that there were now three possible ways the enemy could use to come up behind them. And, logically, that they had to run into the enemy soon.

Although both tunnels remained empty as she brought up the rear of the squad, she thought she could smell something vaguely familiar. Sweet. Not rotten food, dying comrade sweet but truly sweet; like those horrible red candies given out on First Landing Day that were supposed to taste like cherries, but those who took the dare and ate them insisted there had never been such a flavor in nature.

“Hold up, people.” Their small column stopped dead. “You smell it, Ressk?”

His nose ridges slowly opened and just as slowly closed. “Like a bowl of jellied
aln
in the sun? But it's not close. In the distance.”

“Everyone back on me; we need some intell.”

Head cocked, Ressk's ridges opened again. “I'm not sure which tunnel it's coming from, Gunny.”

“Werst, Kichar—give me a quick two minutes each way.”

“Gunnery Sergeant Kerr, Kichar's injured,” Darlys began, but Torin cut her off.

“Kichar's Recon. Even juiced, she'd do it better than the rest of us.”

“Not better than you, Gunny!”

“I wasn't including me, Kichar, now move.”

The smell continued up
both
cross tunnels.

“Fine. Right it is, then. Mashona!”

“On point, Gunny.”

“Why right, Gunny.”

Torin shrugged. “I'm right handed.” Then she had to spend a few moments explaining to Ressk why right-handed people tended to turn right if given an option. The Krai were not only completely ambidextrous but ambiextremitied as well.

Six minutes up the new tunnel and around the first of a series of increasingly tight curves . . .

Ressk tapped her lightly on the wrist, his voice low, not intended to carry. “The smell's getting stronger but not from in front of us, Gunny.”

She tapped Mike on the shoulder, signaled that they should keep walking until they were around the next bend and wait, and then she flattened against the wall, dropping to one knee. Without a helmet, the best way to survive a head shot was to keep from being shot in the head, and removing that head from where the enemy was aiming was the easiest way to do that.

By the time the sound of boots had faded—deliberately silenced for the benefit of their stalker as all nine Marines waited barely eight meters away—she could hear an almost familiar tapping growing closer. Club in her left hand, knife in her right, she waited.

The bug didn't exactly have a face, so Torin had to assume the way both antennae flicked straight up indicated surprise. Having tossed a grenade at one while sharing the insides of Big Yellow, she'd learned that the sharp smell of lemon furniture polish translated fairly closely to
oh, fuk!
They were the only insectoid species of Others she'd ever fought against and wouldn't have picked them as their jailers if given a choice—mammals knew at least some of the strengths and weaknesses of other mammals.

She'd barely raised the club when the bug pivoted its entire body around the rear clump of its millipedelike legs—hard to see actual numbers under the skirt of its body armor, but there were at least three involved—and took off back down the tunnel. Torin wanted to say it looked terrified but had long since learned that cross-species generalizations seldom came close to what was actually happening.

The question now became did they follow the bug or run like hell in the other direction?

Easy enough to answer; the jailers knew the way out.

“We've got bugs, people. Let's go!”

BUGS HAD A LOT OF LEGS, BUT THEY WEREN'T
particularly long—all that movement down by the floor made them seem faster than they were. While the cherry candy bug might be motivated to get away, Torin's need for answers drove her to close the distance before the odds changed in the bug's favor. She could hear boots pounding close behind her—Mashona and the di'Taykan; the Krai couldn't keep up on the flat and the other two Humans were still shaking off the effects of the current.

They raced through a series of switchbacks where Torin's smaller turning radius allowed to her gain a little ground. When they reached another t-junction and the bug started left, hesitated, and then turned right, she dove forward and got her arms around the abdomen, using momentum to bring them both crashing to the ground. Torin wasn't too concerned about injury, not to herself or the bug—they were both considerably tougher than they looked—she just wanted to slow it down long enough for backup to arrive.

“Gunny!”

“Haul ass, Mashona!” She used her elbow to block one of the under arms, claw bouncing painfully off bone, and twisted away from the other. Her position made her relatively safe from the upper arms where
relatively
meant the bug wasn't quite able get hold of her but was more than willing to raise bruises trying. Its mouth parts clattered, and Torin got a nose full of the sharp, ammonia scent of evergreens mixed with cinnamon. Xenolinguists in the Corps were fond of speculating on how much the bugs depended on scent; did it stand on its own as a language or did it merely support verbalization. Torin's gut feeling said both, just as her gut was saying that cinnamon-sprinkled evergreen equaled yelling for backup. Her head slammed into the tunnel wall, but she managed to tip the bug over onto its side, exposing the vulnerable underbelly and giving the bug something to worry about other than taking her to pieces as it began struggling to get away. Apparently, no one had ever told it that the best defense is a good offense.

Odds were very good she was young and had never fought a mammal before. At least not hand to claw.

The sound of approaching boots got lost between the ringing in her ears and the crack and scrape of bug and Marine against the stone.

“Gunny!” Mashona's warning was suddenly up close and personal. “Hostiles!”

She had a split second to decide. Did she hold onto the bug and use it as a hostage, assuming its companions cared enough about it to stay back, recognizing that in her business, assumptions about alien species usually fell on the
early death
side of stupid? Or did she jump clear, giving herself and her people more maneuvering room?

Shifting her grip, she let the bug get her legs under her again and when she thrust up with her abdomen, Torin used the movement to jump clear, rolling and coming up onto her feet just in front of and between Darlys and Mashona.

“Well . . .” She shoved a tangle of hair back off her face and her fingers came away bloody. That explained why her head hurt so fukking much. “. . . this is interesting.”

No point in tracking the bug as she scrabbled back to her companions. It seemed a lot more important that Torin keep her eyes on the three quadrupeds, two other bugs, and four members of a bipedal species she couldn't remember ever fighting. Taller than the Krai but at the low end of Human norm, they were stocky—if she had to guess she'd say muscular—hairless, with ivory skin, thin, almost nonexistent features, and eyes that showed black from lid to lid.

“What do we do, Gunny?” Mike asked quietly.

Not a good idea to glance back. Better to assume they were all there, then. Ten of the good guys. Ten of the Other guys.

“We don't make any sudden moves,” Torin said at the same volume.

One of the quadrupeds—the female, the short plush fur on her lower half a tawny gold only a little darker than her eyes—moved slowly out in front of the group, a member of the unidentified species close by her side. They wore dark gray uniforms patterned with black but no helmets. No PCUs. No visible tech at all. No weapons except for . . .

“Werst. On the far left. Is that a sling?”

“Looks like, Gunny.”

Made out of what looked like a strip of leather and it wasn't the only one. Now Torin knew what to look for, all the bipeds were carrying. The leather looked identical to the strips that held the rock heads on the clubs, braided to increase the surface area.

The quadruped gestured, vertical pupils in golden eyes narrowed to barely visible lines, and seemed to ask a question.

The biped at her withers swept a flat, emotionless gaze over the Marines and answered.

The quadruped seemed to disagree.

Torin didn't know much about the Others rank structure, but if she had to guess, the two silver lines curving along the front of the quadruped's shoulder signified officer. The pattern the biped wore, however, very nearly matched her collar tabs for complication. Senior NCO.

The biped, dark eyes locked on Torin's face, answered again. At length.

“These aren't our jailers,” Torin said, slowly straightening up out of fighting stance. “They're prisoners as well. Stripped-down uniforms. No tech. Weapons created from available resources.”

In the silence that followed, she could hear the three Krai breathing in sync.

“You think they know that? That we're not
their
jailers?” Mike asked at last.

“I think the senior noncom there just explained it to his officer.”

“If they're not our jailers, then who are?” Kichar wondered.

A snort. Werst probably. Definitely when he started talking. “Not the time, kid. And they're still the enemy.”

Torin would have bet her pension that the officer, currently scraping the claws on one foreleg against the floor, had just said the same damned thing. She nearly smiled at the expression on the NCO's face.
Nearly
because it was never a good idea to show teeth across species lines until all parties were clear on the meaning.
Smiled
because given the reaction of the NCO, the odds were good the officer was a lieutenant at best. Or the alien military equivalent.

“Darlys, got a gender on the NCO?” It didn't really matter since sex was unlikely, at least as far as she was concerned, but she liked to have the pronouns straight in her head.

“Male, Gunnery Sergeant.” The di'Taykan always knew. They didn't usually care, but they always knew.

One of the other bipeds said something aggressive. The NCO responded calmly.

And the slate clipped to Torin's vest repeated the last few words injecting two
ands
and a
the
in Federate.

Everyone froze. Torin could only see the ten facing her, but she could feel the reaction of her own people, and the silence had never shouted,
“What the fuk?”
quite so loudly.

“Gunny . . .” Mike, moved up behind her left shoulder. “. . . hand me the slate.”

Still holding the NCO's gaze, she dropped her left hand, one millimeter at a time, until her fingers were touching the plastic but not obscuring the screen. If he'd spent any time in combat—and experience told her he clearly had—he'd have seen a slate before. The belief that the Others didn't take prisoners might be back on the table, but no one had ever suggested that meant they didn't examine captured tech. When he nodded, she unclipped it. “The translation program?”

“Don't know why it's analyzing,” Mike grunted, “but yeah.”

“I could have brushed against the screen while I was grappling with the bug. Accidentally activated it.”

“Could have.” He tugged it out of her hand. “But it's unlikely.”

Another terse question from the officer. Another long reply from the NCO. Torin got the impression it was longer than it needed to be. Long enough for the translation program to work out a few more patternsand compare them to languages it had stored. Hell, for all she knew, the officer who'd owned the slate had been working on cracking the Others' common language in his or her spare time and had all relevant recordings loaded. That explained why it had come up with a conjunction and an article so quickly.

“It's running three levels of analysis. Minimum.” Mike sounded impressed. “Keep them talking, Gunny.”

She wanted to ask just what exactly she was supposed to keep them talking about given the lack of a common language, but they seemed to have plenty of other points of congruence, so what the hell. Touching her collar tabs, she nodded to the other NCO, then shifted her gaze to the officer and came to attention saying, “Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr.” Her tone made it quite clear that gesture merely acknowledged rank and was not, intrinsically one of respect.

Because she was watching for it, Torin saw an expression that looked very much like amusement flash for a moment across the NCO's face. He, at least, understood the subtext.

The officer snarled a reply, a stiffer crest of hair running along the center of her skull and down the back of her neck, flaring up. She had a set of impressive teeth to go with the claws.

Torin heard teeth snap behind her. One of the other quadrupeds reared. Definitely male given the lack of uniform covering his lower body. Impressively male, actually. His crest was larger, too. Suddenly, there was a snap of leather and a rock flying toward her head. She swung the club without thinking.

The sharp crack of the impact rang out over the shouting—and the pervasive smell of lemon furniture polish—slapping the rock up to shatter against the ceiling between the two groups. For a moment, the only sound came from pieces of rock pattering down onto the polished floor, then Torin and the other NCO filled in the silence.