The Truth of Valor (45 page)

“How?”

“What?”

“How would he know?” Craig brushed an agitated lime-green veil away from his face. “Who’s going to tell him?”

“He could be listening in.”

Craig thought about the captain voicing his suspicions about Big Bill’s plans. “He’d have a bigger reaction than just those two if he’s been listening in. Besides, no signal in the pod.”

“Hardwired.”

“It’s a storage pod for explosives, kid. It’s a big box with reinforced walls.”

“Okay, you’re so fukking smart, why are they here?”

Still messing about the storage cabinets, the Grr brothers—and Craig had trouble even thinking that with a straight face—had found the abandoned tools. One of them was swinging the broken pipe wrench in lazy circles while the other sorted through the screwdrivers and ignored him. “Best guess, Big Bill’s a paranoid s.o.b. That, and there’s fuk all honor among thieves.”

“Honor and a credit will buy you a bowl of
seesu
,” Nadayki snarled. “We’re coming out on top of this, not Big Bill.”

“Hadn’t you better get back to work, then?”

“Har vena ser shetinan!”

“Not after what happened the last time, kid.” Any other di’Taykan standing that close would have grabbed his ass before heading back into the storage pod. It would have been instinctive, expected even given their positions. Watching Thing One toss the wrench aside while Thing Two bitched about wasting time in the ass end of the station, Craig wondered if maybe this time it wasn’t the di’Taykan but the situation. These two really had the kid freaked. His mouth went dry as he remembered Huirre crunching down on his toe. On the other hand, maybe the kid had reason to be freaked.

He should give the captain a heads-up.

His hand was actually on his slate before he realized what he was doing.

He wasn’t really crew. He didn’t owe Captain Cho shit.

“I have to admit, I was expecting something more complicated.” Big Bill folded his arms and stared at the plans for the smelter up on the big screen. “This is . . . basic. Except for the range, it looks more like a classroom than a place to train warriors.”

Warriors? Torin took a moment to temper her response. And then another moment, just to be on the safe side. “They won’t be learning how to charge in, guns blazing. Any idiot can do that and get themselves trapped between decompression hatches breathing vacuum.”

“HE suits . . .”

“Because multiple crews emerging from docking arms all suited up won’t look at all suspicious.”

“I don’t think I like your tone.”

Torin tried to look like she cared. “If you want to take over a station, you have to realize that the weapons in the hands are incidental to the weapons between the ears.”

He shook his head and blanked the screen. “We don’t want them too well armed, Gunnery Sergeant. They’ll point their weapons where they’re told.”

“You still don’t understand. When I’m done with them, they’ll
be
weapons—head and hand. You’ll be pointing them. What they want won’t matter.”

He stared at her for a long moment. “You can do that?” he said at last.

“I can.” She could. She wasn’t going to, but she could.

“And they just let you wander around loose?” He started with a snicker, then his response evolved into a full-out laugh.

Torin fought down another urge to punch him in the throat. And then considered the implication. The Grr brothers were down in the ore docks about as far away from Big Bill as they could get and still be on the station. If she killed him, what would they do? Would they know? Could she show up and send them away, passing on Big Bill’s orders because of a sudden glitch in his implant? No, the paranoid bastard would have put contingency plans in place if the Grr brothers couldn’t reach him. Given the Grr brothers, that plan would likely be violent, and Craig was in the ore dock.

She couldn’t risk making things more complicated than they already were.

“Gunnery Sergeant, I am very glad you found your way to my corner of known space.” Big Bill wiped his eyes with one hand and activated his desk with the other. “But now, if you don’t mind, I have work of my own to do. Why don’t you wander around and get to know the place a little better.”

“I’d like to go down to the ore dock and check the security.”

“Why?”

“We have a perfectly good armory. During training, it can be used to secure the weapons.”

“I think you forget, Gunnery Sergeant, these are not Marines. They’ll have bought their weapons from Captain Cho.”

Torin frowned as she worked through the variables. William Ponner was too smart to let his Free Merchants loose on his station, armed. He had to have come up with a way to control them because his fifteen percent of the armory’s contents wouldn’t be enough to . . .

“They’ll own their weapons,” she told him. “But you’ll own the ammunition.”

She thought he was going to deny it for a moment, then he bared his teeth in what wasn’t a smile. “You’re right. The ammunition won’t be remaining in the ore docks, but here, where I can personally keep an eye on it.”

“You think Cho will agree to that particular fifteen percent.”

“Mackenzie Cho, Gunnery Sergeant, is ambitious. Too ambitious for the Navy. He wants to make the decisions. He wants to command and I can give him what he wants. He’ll be at the forefront of big changes, or he’ll be a sad remnant of a system that didn’t work. I think he’ll come to see things my way.”

“What if he’s too ambitious for you?”

“Then he can leave. The way he left the Navy. But if you’re that set on not trusting him, go to the ore docks by all means. I’ll tell the Grr brothers you’re relieving them. They do have other work. Supporting social change is all very well, but accounts won’t collect themselves.”

For a change, there wasn’t so much as an argument in the Hub as Torin crossed through on her way to the ore docks. The dead were gone. The injured from crews without their own medics were no doubt off paying through broken noses to use Big Bill’s staff and facilities. A couple of the kiosk owners had their heads together, probably complaining about damages, and two of the smaller cleaners were working their way around the deck doing an inadequate job of dealing with blood splatter, but otherwise things were quiet.

As Torin moved into the first corridor past the decompression doors, she tongued her implant. “Report.”

*Werst and I are bruised but back on board, Gunny.*
Mashona sounded tired. Given how little sleep she’d gotten, no surprise.
*Ressk says he’s nearly got control of the subroutines.*

“I’m on my way to the ore docks. I need a value for nearly.”

*Soon, Gunny.*
Ressk’s teeth snapped together, the closest he could get to telling her to leave him the hell alone.

“Hour and forty-one minutes and they’ll have the fukker open,” Torin growled. “Make it
sooner
.”

Craig was sitting on something low by the open storage pod. One of the Grr brothers sat beside him, slate out, the other she couldn’t see, so he was either in the head or the pod. It was unlikely he’d go any farther away from what Big Bill had sent them to keep an eye on.

She could feel Craig’s gaze on her as she crossed toward him, but she split her attention between noting the exact location of the HE suits, the distance from the storage pod to the exterior hatch, the red lights on the air lock plate leading to the
Heart of Stone,
and the one Grr brother she could see.

The second emerged from the pod as she reached it. Craig stood, moving carefully—not so much in pain as in anticipation of pain. He’d been sitting on an overturned bucket.

“The great thing about low tech,” she said, nodding toward the bucket. “Multiple uses.”

“So I’ve discovered.”

His eyes were still bloodshot, but they were bright and focused. With no chance for sleep, he had to have taken a stim. Good. His exhaustion was one less thing for her to deal with. Moving so she could see both Grr brothers put her well within Craig’s personal space, but it was a minor thing and a minor comfort and fuk it.

“What?” she demanded as one of them stared up at her, nose ridges flared. “Big Bill told you I was coming down.”

“Yeah.” He blinked and turned to his brother, nose ridges closing. “You were right.”

“Told you.” The second Grr put his slate away. When he closed his nose ridges as well, Torin shifted her weight forward onto the balls of her feet. Things were not looking good.

“Apart, it’s not so obvious.”

“Together, though . . .”

“Yeah.”

“He had hair then.”

“True.”

“What are the odds that Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr would show up on the station where the salvage operator who went outside of known space to find her has been taken?”

It was the longest statement Torin had heard from either of them.

*That’s a very good question, Gunnery Sergeant.*
Big Bill’s voice boomed in her head. One or both of the Grr brothers must have pinged him.
*Care to answer it?*

“Big
serley
coincidence,” one Grr brother smirked, lips pulled back off his teeth.

“Is your name Gunnery Sergeant Kerr?” Torin snapped.

They blinked in unison and stepped back, squaring their shoulders. They’d been Corps, for however short a time, conditioned to respond to that tone.

*I’m waiting.*
Big Bill had not.

“They’re wrong.” They were moving forward again, although looking more embarrassed by their response than particularly fierce. “I’ve never seen him before in my life.”

*Kill him.*

She must have reacted because Craig started to reach for her. When she shook her head, he let his arm fall back down by his side. “I don’t kill on your command.”

*You might not.*

The Grr brothers jumped for Craig; one aiming high, one low. As they passed, Torin grabbed a handful of their tunics, shifted her weight to her left leg, and spun around it, throwing them across the ore dock. In spite of their previous interactions, they hadn’t expected her to react so quickly, but with one in each hand, she couldn’t get a lot of distance. They hit, rolled . . .

*Get your souls back, boys.*

. . . and charged.

*Gunny! I’ve got control!*

“Cut the gravity!” As the gravity cut out, she folded into a crouch, then snapped her legs down, pushing straight up from the deck as the Grr brothers’ momentum kept them moving toward where she’d been. Big Bill’s last order had made this personal, so she had no worries they’d go after Craig while she was still alive. “Ressk! Secure the
Heart
’s air lock!” She didn’t need any more players in the game, and the last thing she wanted right now was to have her speculation about the possibility of the
Heart
having weapons on board to prove prophetic.

Both Krai recovered quickly. Torin waited until they’d committed to a trajectory, then pushed off one of the overhead railings and shot past them.

Except there were two of them. Using his brother as a launch pad, the other one headed right for her . . .

The gravity came back on.

Torin heard Ressk swear just before impact. Big Bill had regained control.

“Ryder! What the fuk is going on out there?”

Craig watched Torin get her hands under her and push herself up onto her knees. Breath knocked out of her then, not hurt. He wanted to go to her, but she wouldn’t thank him for getting into the middle of the fight. He yanked his borrowed slate off his belt. As long as Nadayki was in the pod, Cho had a potential weapon on the dock. Not a great one, but even useless shits could turn the tide. “It’s the Grr brothers, Captain!”

“I know it’s the fukking Grr brothers! Nadayki told me.”
Yeah, big surprise; the little shit squealed at the drop of a hat.
“What the hell are they doing!”

“Fighting! With the gunnery sergeant.”

“She knows you!”

Fuk Nadayki’s fukking ears! Had Torin admitted . . . He ran over everything he could remember of Torin’s conversation with Big Bill. No, she hadn’t. “The Grr brothers are causing trouble. They don’t like that she’s in tight with Big Bill.”