Valor's Trial (54 page)

Her antennae dipped, and the air briefly smelled of pepper. Mandibles clattered.

“They suspected,” Sanati translated incredulously.

“Then they were smarter than we were.”

“Then they never reported their suspicions,” Durlin Vertic growled.

When the pepper scent grew sharper, and Firiv'vrak spoke again, Torin held up a hand before Sanati could translate. “They reported,” she said. “They weren't believed.”

Almost funny how she could share a moment of total understanding with a giant bug. Almost. But not.

“Gunny!”

The durlin started to topple away from Kyster. Torin slipped a shoulder under her flailing arm and eased her to the floor as her legs crumpled. “Durlin Vertic! You still with us, sir?”

Her smile was more of a grimace. “As long as I can be with you from the floor.”

Gray-on-gray eyes blinked a third time. “You have been damaged.”

Torin reached out, grabbed a handful of Kyster's combats and hauled him back before his fists made contact. “I just remembered, sir. The Krai can digest the alien.”

The grimace grew fiercer. “With no harm?”

She pushed the struggling Marine into the durlin's arms. “Not to the Krai.”

“Good to know.”

“Gunny?” His nose ridges were open and his lips were all the way off his teeth.

“We'll hold it in reserve, Kyster.” She gripped his shoulder lightly. “For the moment, you keep supporting Durlin Vertic. Looks bad when the CO faceplants during negotiations. Get up here, then,” she added as the male Polina made whining sounds. “There and there.” As they settled in flanking positions, she straightened, grateful Craig knew enough to let her do it herself no matter how obviously he wanted to reach out and help. Officers could fall over. That was why there were gunnery sergeants.

“You are ignoring the Gray Ones,” Presit pointed out sharply. “They are not going to be happy about that!”

“I don't give a flying fuk if they're happy.” Torin twitched her vest back into place before turning to face the aliens. “All right. You were in my head—our heads—to give your data context. Is that why I was saved, plucked off the battlefield when so many others died?”

“We take those who would have died before they die so they are not missed.”

“They're missed, you gray son of a bitch.”

The pain in Craig's voice pulled Torin closer to him.

“That is also context.”

“Fuk you!”

“So it was just chance that you grabbed one of your deep scan contextual subjects?” Torin was a little impressed she had enough energy left for sarcasm. “Save the data before the meat sack dies?”

“Dying would not damage the data. It would give us further context.” As Craig growled, it turned a distinctly disapproving expression on the durlin. “Remaking the matter would destroy the data. Their weapon would damage the data. That is why you were saved and brought here. You meeting those you considered enemy gave us the last of the necessary context.”

“He says context again and I'm telling Werst to eat him.”

Torin closed her hand briefly around Craig's arm, the momentary contact as much as she could handle. “Good thing he listens to me, then. So our escape . . .” She let a gesture that encompassed all seventeen of them finish the sentence.

“You were each acting as your nature demanded. We had no part in it.” It turned to look at Werst. “Hazard pay is an excellent suggestion.”

“Did it just make a joke?” Mashona wondered.

“With sufficient data, we called in the rest of those researching.”

“You were in contact with the . . .” There weren't words. “. . . bits in Craig and Presit's brains.”

“We are in contact.”

“All the bits?”

“Each.”

“Great. A polynumerous molecular
telepathic
species. That makes you omnipresent and damned near omnipotent.” Torin had to consciously relax her jaw to keep talking. “Why don't we just call you gods and cut out the middleman?”

“We do not care what you call us.”

“Lucky for you,” Craig snarled, “ 'cause I can think of a few things . . .”

He wasn't the only one.

Torin let the yelling go on for a bit and then raised a hand, cutting it off.

The alien's gaze followed the gesture and seemed amused. “Damned near omnipotent,” it repeated.

“Gunnery Sergeant,” Werst snorted.

“Progenitor,” Darlys added.

“Not. About. Me.” Torin's tone promised consequences if anyone else piped up with an opinion. “What,” she demanded of the alien as the resulting silence stretched and lengthened, “happens now?”

“The data must be analyzed.”

“No, that's what happens next. What happens
now
?”

“That is not up to us.”

“How do you figure? Because it looks like the whole fukking thing has been up to you for some time now.”

“If you are bringing us here,” Presit snapped, “then you are sending us home!”

“No.”

“No? What are
no
meaning?”

“What it has always meant.”

“You are one smart-ass comment from being an entrée,” Torin told it. It was fast, sure, but the Krai were hungry and a hungry Krai was a motivated Krai.

“Our part is over. It is time to leave.”

“You're going nowhere without . . .”

Given the way nerves were stretched, Torin wasn't surprised when the sudden shrilling of an alarm from Craig's slate caused Kichar to haul off and slug Everim with everything she had left. As Craig snapped the slate off his belt, Freenim let Everim take his swing then pulled the two youngsters apart, tossing one at Mashona and one at Merinim.

“Six ships just came in-system. Three of ours. Three of theirs. Theirs,” Craig qualified jerking his head toward the durlin. “They're some distance apart, doesn't look like they've spotted each other yet.”

“I thought you said this system was off the charts?”

“It is.”

“Then how . . . ?”

They turned together toward the alien.

The alien was gone.

Torin fought the urge to vomit. She'd have known if it had reentered her. She had to have known. “Presit?”

“There are a blur on the recording.” Presit peered over her glasses into the camera's monitor. “Then nothing.”

“Fukkers!” It could have been any one of the watching Marines. It could have been all of them.

“No argument. No time either.” They were context, sure, but they were also witnesses. It would be stupid for the alien, the Gray Ones, to keep them alive to tell both sides how they'd been screwed over. “Craig, upload everything you've recorded to
Promise
's distress beacon, then pulse it. No matter what happens next, everyone hears what just went down.”

“What if they don't receive?” Craig asked, but he was slaving the camera to his slate so she let it stand.

“It's a distress beacon. They'll receive. Our side will want to save us; theirs will want to take advantage.”

“But, Gunny . . .”

“We're on the same side, Kyster.” She turned and swept a weary glare over Kichar and Everim. “That's been the whole fukking point of the exercise.”

“Gunny! They're taking the . . .” The roar of the engines finished Ressk's sentence. When they got to the control room, when they got the shield down again, the VTA was gone.

“Not enough of them to become a ship this time,” Craig grunted.

“Unless they were also the VTA,” Ressk pointed out.

“Thanks, mate. Didn't need to hear that.”

“They did not go far. Not even into orbit.” Sanati smacked a screen with her palm. Against all odds, the static cleared just long enough to show the VTA on the roof of the prison.

“They're pulling out.” Torin rested her fists on the edge of the control panel. If her fists were holding her weight, it'd be easier to keep from punching something. “Gathering the rest of their . . . bowls.”

It didn't take long before the VTA was lifting again, but they all knew how fast the Gray Ones could move.

“Fastest bowls in known space,” Werst muttered as the screen gave way to static again.

Sanati frowned down at the board. “They have left the atmosphere.”

Torin hadn't seen any weapons on the VTA, but in a universe where the species running things hung out as bowls, that meant absolutely nothing.

“They are still moving out.”

“Perhaps they do not care that we know what they have done,” Freenim said quietly. “Perhaps they want us to bear witness as the fastest way of ending the war they started.”

“You honestly think they care?” Torin asked him.

The durlave shrugged. “I honestly think they do not care, and that is why they are leaving. Going back where they came from to analyze their data.”

“Yeah, well, given the holiday camp atmosphere on this shithole of a planet, I'm just glad they took the time to build the structures out of something other than themselves.” Mashona patted the wall beside her.

“You absolutely positive of that?” Ressk asked her.

She stepped away from the wall. “Oh, that's just fukking great. How do we know if they're all gone?”

Torin shrugged when all eyes turned to her. “We don't. We just do our jobs the way we always have.”

“It can't be that easy, Gunny.”

“If it was easy, Mashona, they wouldn't send in the Marines.”

Smiles at that. At the expected among the unknown. That was part of her job, too. Be the one thing they could count on no matter what. No matter how much she wanted to beat her head against a wall and scream.

It had been there, in her head. In her head and in Craig's head. She glanced over at him, wondering if the thing between them, the thing she was not going to name, not yet, wondering if it had ever had anything to do with the two of them, or if it had been arranged from the moment she'd dropped through the floor of Big Yellow and nearly flattened him.

He smiled, lifted a hand toward her, glanced around the room, and settled for shaking his head. “No.”

“No what?”

“No, they aren't responsible for us. For you and me.”

“I didn't . . .” She hadn't had to. And maybe that said enough. Now her fists on the edge of the panel were keeping her knees from buckling. “Okay, then. So what do we do while we wait to see if we survive this next bit?”

“What next bit, Gunny?”

“The bit where we see if those six ships destroy each other or us.”

“But not in that order, right, Gunny? Because if the six ships destroyed each other, then they couldn't destroy us. Well, they could if they launched planet splitters before they blew, but . . .” Kichar's voice trailed off. Suddenly the center of attention, she flushed.

“They are not destroying each other.” There was a chance, albeit a small one, Presit intended to sound comforting. “Gunnery Sergeant Kerr are having ended the war. The Gray Ones are telling us we are pawns, puppets,
ser ka bingh me
. Gunnery Sergeant Kerr are letting everyone know it. Forcing everyone to take a good hard look at what are happening. And she are doing it in her underwear.”

Torin did not glace down at her bare legs. “And my question still stands, what do we do while we wait?”

“We could eat.”

The jaws Torin could see dropped. Ressk brought his teeth together with a snap so loud Firiv'vrak clattered something in response.

“The duffel I dropped by the elevator has a couple dozen field rations in it,” Craig continued a little sheepishly. “I ran everything organic I had through the mess kit.”

“There's food?”

“Yeah, it's . . .”

“Mashona!”

“On it, Gunny.”

Werst, who'd started moving at the mention of food, rocked to a stop by Craig's hip, turned, and glared up at her. She ignored him. No way in a hundred hells was she sending one of the Krai out for that pack. Corps training might be the best in known space, but it only went so far.

“I hope you are happy, Gunnery Sergeant, there are no food left on the
Promise
.” Presit finally kicked free of the HE suit and began to run her claws through her fur.

“The VTA's gone.” Torin nodded toward the window and the empty landing bay, barely visible through the new scorch marks. “You can't get back to the
Promise
.”

“He are not knowing that when he are coming down here.”

“No, he didn't.” She raised a brow in Craig's direction. If he'd come dirtside with some romantic notion of dying with her, she'd kick his ass.

“
Promise
can't hold everyone here even if we just took the Marines actually in this building . . .” He raised a hand before Torin could protest. “. . . which I know you wouldn't allow anyway, and I also knew you weren't leaving unless everyone did—and I wasn't leaving without you. I lost you once already, and had no intention of doing it again. I'd planned to live out my life down here if I had to.”

Werst's nose ridges clamped shut. “That's so touching I think I'm going to puke.”

Torin tried not to look as if he agreed with him. Living together on this burning shithole came perilously close to dying together.

“I are not given a choice,” Presit snarled. “I are perfectly willing to lose you again.”