The Heart of Valour (23 page)

Fumbling his slate back onto his belt, the major sank down onto an ancient rockfall at the base of the cliff and almost, but not quite, made it look as though his legs hadn’t nearly given out under him.

Torin watched him as she set up their shelter and because he had a bit of color back in his cheeks when she rejoined him she asked only, “How’s the hand, sir?”

He had his mittens off, thumb of his right hand digging into the palm of his left. “Itches. The part I hate most about healing.”

“Dr. Sloan…”

“Is busy dealing with the staff sergeant. Trying to get enough information to deal with the staff sergeant,” he amended as an incredulous shout of
“You have got to be kidding me!”
rose out of the middle of a cluster of half a dozen di’Taykan.

Lirit stumbled back as the doctor pushed past her, the cluster opening to watch the doctor stomp away, a dark slash of blue against the gray-on-gray the uniforms and the snow had become after sunset. If Torin had to guess, based on body language and the movement of their hair, all six of them were embarrassed. And that was a description she couldn’t remember ever having applied to a di’Taykan.

“They really don’t know anything,” Dr. Sloan announced the moment she was close enough, where
close enough
meant she obviously didn’t care who overheard, “when that blue hair…”

“Private di’Arl Jonin,” Torin interrupted.

“Right. Fine. When Private Jonin said his people don’t talk about this, he meant it literally.” She dropped her volume slightly as she planted her boots in front of Torin and Major Svensson, but only slightly. “I have only theoretical knowledge of the change, and even I know more details than these Marines do. This is going to happen to their bodies someday and the only information they have is that they should head home at the first indication the change has begun.”

“A Taykan heading into qui while still in the Corps gets an immediate medical discharge,” Major Svensson told her quietly.

“And that’s a big help now. Staff Sergeant Beyhn has been having a series of small seizures as his brain chemistry adjusts to the new
normal
.” The doctor sketched mitten-thick quotation marks in the air around the final word. “But, unfortunately, since I don’t know where things are supposed to end up, I can’t actually define normal, so any response I make is based on a less-than-informed guess.”

“Come on, Doc, you do experimental procedures all the time. A lot of that is guesswork.”

“It’s the less-than-informed I’m having trouble with,” she snapped. “And speaking of…” She pulled her slate from one voluminous pocket. “Let’s see your hand.”

He held out his right hand.

Dr. Sloan looked down at his palm and her brows dipped. That was enough to pull his left hand around to join the right.

Torin was impressed; she couldn’t have done it better herself.

As the screen lit up with numbers and what looked like a small graph, the doctor frowned at her slate. “You’re still very active on the molecular level and the temperature in the surrounding tissue is up one fourteenth of a degree.”

“And that means?”

“That you’re still very active on the molecular level and the temperature in the surrounding tissue is up one fourteenth of a degree.” Moving the scan up his arm, her frown deepened. “The join is holding, but I need probes of…”

“Doctor!” All three of them turned to see Jonin half out of the staff sergeant’s shelter. The four di’Taykan who had assigned themselves guard duty on first watch brought their weapons up. “It’s happening again!”

“What’s happening again?” the major demanded as Dr. Sloan started to move and Torin made a gesture that suggested those weapons be lowered immediately or they’d end up somewhere extremely unpleasant.

“Could be a lot of things. This is me off to my next learning experience.” She stopped four strides out and half turned. “Are we likely to be attacked tonight?”

Torin shook her head. “The odds are against it, ma’am. We’re right on top of the CPN, and they’re too expensive to lose.”

The noncombatant chip rode up and down on her forehead as she frowned. “The Others care about the Corps budget?”

“No, ma’am, but they’d have to reprogram each drone individually and crack a number of safety protocols to bring the drones in this close.”

“And that’s not likely to happen because? I mean, since they’re clearly already able to hack the system?”

“It would mean that of all the Marines on Crucible, they’re choosing tonight to focus all their reprogramming attention on us. Possible, but as I said, the odds are against it. And even if they are, hacking through safety protocols takes time.”

“Good.” She snapped out the word like it was the final one on the subject and continued on her way to the shelter.

Torin watched as she dove inside, saw the sides of the shelter bulge and shook her head. “That’s got to be a little crowded in there.”

“I think the doc can handle it, Gunny.”

And Sakur emerged right on cue, his hair whipping back and forth as he stood and glared down at the door he’d just been summarily backed out of.

* * *

“So all that screwing around with the staff sergeant’s slate that you were doing today…” Piroj shuffled left, then right, then finally gave up attempting to see around his teammate. “…I’m guessing you were beating his high score in
Delaysa Tong
.”

McGuinty’s gaze flicked between his slate and the node’s screen. “What the fuk are you talking about?”

“You’re not in, are you?”

“What was your first clue?” He scowled at the scrolling lines of code, frustration level rising, and touched the screen, freezing the numbers in place.

Piroj juggled his weapon from hand to hand. “Fact I’m still standing here freezing my ass off and not in the shelter, boots off and starting to warm up, that gave me the first clue. Fact you’re still playing with that thing gave me the second.”

“Oh, yeah, playing. This is fukking fun and games.” The Others might not have gotten around to reprogramming Crucible’s drones, but they definitely controlled the system, locking him out with encryptions that weren’t just alien, they were
weirdly
alien, and that was distracting because he kept thinking they weren’t alien at all—and then they were again. But numbers were numbers and code was code, and he’d been so close to cracking the insanely-more-complicated Ventris security when they shipped for Crucible that he should have been able to get this. Except he wasn’t. It just… kept… slipping… by. “Crap!” Slate shoved under his arm, he began working the screen with both hands as the light in the niche began to pulse.

“Ah, shit, look at the lights. Are you doing that? McGuinty?”

“Shut the fuk up!” The CPN, built into a niche carved out of the wall of a steep-sided gully, was identical to the previous CPN, and both were kissing cousins to the station consoles he’d grown up with. The weird alien encryption did not—thank God—extend to the security protocols. This sudden cascade, he could stop. Probably.

“McGuinty! What’s happening?”

“What part of shut the fuk up don’t you get?” This wasn’t especially complex, it was just moving fast. The trick was to get ahead of it and… “Got it!” The pulsing stopped. The light settled back down to the traditional dim glow, and his heart settled with it. He really wanted a stim, but he didn’t dare risk it with the rest of the platoon so close.

“You said you disconnected the security codes!” Piroj smacked the barrel of his KC-7 against McGuinty’s shoulder.

“I did!” As his bodysuit sucked up the sweat, McGuinty turned his back on the node and smacked the barrel away, glaring at the other Marine. Piroj’s nose ridges flared, his lip pulling up off his teeth, and McGuinty forced himself to calm down. He needed all his fingers. “All right, so I missed one. If I hadn’t stopped it, we’d have lost the core.”

“The data storage?” With no challenge to respond to, Piroj’s ridges snapped closed with one final puff of water vapor. “That where the command codes for the drones stay when they’re home?”

“Yeah. No. Sort of.”

“If the drones don’t have commands, what happens to them?”

“I dunno. I guess they fall out of the sky.”

The words hung between them for a moment, then Piroj shrugged. “So, I’m not raised in a can, techie-type, but wouldn’t that be a good thing? Least while we’re up this node’s tree?”

…in this node’s territory,
McGuinty translated, and then the implications smacked him in the chops. “Crap. Crap. Crap!” Whirling around, he stared at the screen. Stopping the core dump had been instinct. Station kids learned early on that hard vacuum was unforgiving of mistakes and that hacking any system on station meant small, careful,
specific
changes. Control maintained at all times. That control had nearly given him Ventris. “But we’re not in a fukking vacuum now,” he muttered. His intervention had knocked him right back to the beginning, tossed him out through the layers of encryption he’d already broken. The Corps’ crest, the only thing currently on the screen, seemed to be mocking him.

“Problems, Marine?”

He snapped to attention at the sound of the major’s voice, heard Piroj doing the same.

“Sir! No, sir!”

“Glad to hear it. As you were.”

Backing up until he was beside his teammate, McGuinty wished Major Svensson had stopped about two meters farther away.
Probably intentionally looming. Officers probably do that.
He wasn’t quite as short as the Krai—
Not quite as good looking either
, Piroj had pointed out toothily—but the major was tall enough, and close enough so that distinction became moot.

“So…” Major Svensson frowned down at the node. “This is as far as you’ve gotten?”

He actually felt his ears heat up. “No, sir! I got tossed trying to prevent a critical error.”

Beside him, Piroj shifted his weight from boot to boot.

“Well, why don’t you two relax for a moment while we see if I can get us in a little further.” The major paused, right hand raised, bare fingers nearly touching the screen. “I assume I need to disable the security codes?”

“Yes, sir, but only because I…”
Marines don’t make excuses, Recruit!
He could all but hear Staff Sergeant Beyhn’s voice. “Yes, sir.”

Major Svensson moved one-handed through the first few layers of security. He seemed to know what he was doing.

But then, my eight-year-old niece could get this far in.

After a few more minutes, the major made a speculative sound, pulled off his other mitten, and began to work two-handed. If he could work the screen two-handed, he definitely knew what he was doing. Speed mattered when breaking systems. McGuinty wondered if the major was station-born.

And then he just wondered what the major was doing since his chance of seeing the screen through the broad shoulders now blocking it was zero to zilch. He’d have moved in on another guy in the platoon, but one twenty days of training suggested officers got shitty about being crowded.

When he glanced over at Piroj, the Krai gave a been-there-done-that kind of shrug.

Major Svensson worked in silence while McGuinty wondered how long they were going to have to stand there. It had been a long, hard hump, and if the major thought he was going to break the node, then maybe other people could go get some sleep. Not that the major was going to break the node or anything because McGuinty was into his second night of tearing through both the Corps’ encryptions and that weird alien shit and he hadn’t even found the drones’ programming yet, and he knew how good he was.

He was just working up a good head of resentment for officers who showed up and showed off and kept people who knew what they were doing from their jobs when the major jerked, muttered, “What the hell?” and stepped away from the screen. When he turned, rubbing his head with the heel of his right hand, he looked as frustrated as McGuinty felt.

“It was… There was…” He turned just enough to glare at the node. “Well, at least I…” The pause was almost too long then he shook his head. “It’s all yours, McGuinty, and good luck.”

“Yes, sir.”

He stumbled as he walked away, catching his boots on the deep footprints others had left in the snow banked against the side of the gully, and McGuinty remembered how recently he’d been detanked.

“Major’s not doing too bad considering he was a floater not so many tendays ago.”

Piroj seemed to be reading his mind, and that was just fukking scary. “He got five screens in, that’s not too bad. At least there’s a bunch of really basic crap I don’t have to redo.”

“Oooo, bite!” The Krai snapped his teeth together and McGuinty grinned.

* * *

“Gunnery Sergeant Kerr? Can I speak with you?”

“No one’s stopping you, Kichar.” Torin took another pull on her pouch of coffee. Under her earnest expression, the young Marine looked even more tightly wound than usual. Given the events of the day, it wasn’t hard to figure out why.

“It’s my helmet, Gunnery Sergeant.” In the reflected light of moon and stars, the helmet in question was a rounded blur—built-in camouflage darkening with the setting of the sun. “Damaged equipment is to be reported to the senior NCO.”

In previous, albeit limited conversations, Kichar had tended to sound like a vid Marine—all clichéd gung-ho. Right now, she sounded like a twenty-year-old whose fireteam had detonated a mine that had thrown up a rock that had nearly killed her. Easier to process Private di’Lammin Oshyo’s death—it had happened to someone else. Torin held out her free hand. “Let’s see it.”

Kichar glanced around the camp, pulled the helmet off her head, and reluctantly passed it over.

Given the light levels, the damage wasn’t a lot easier to see up close and personal but a rough, palm-sized patch on the right side indicated where the photovoltaic covering had been destroyed. Although she knew very well what had happened, Kichar needed to talk about it with someone who wasn’t all
Oh, my God, you nearly died!
“Let’s hear the report, then.”

“Gunnery Sergeant, the helmet was damaged at 10:13 this morning when one/one detonated an antipersonnel mine, probably a L08 on the trail. During the subsequent explosion, a piece of rock about six centimeters in diameter slammed into this Marine’s helmet.”