Valor's Trial (22 page)

“Lieutenant McCoy? Gunnery Sergeant Kerr needs a pallet.”

The lieutenant scowled up at Mashona then over at Torin, then backed up a few steps to lessen the kink in her neck. It was a maneuver Torin had often seen from the Krai; she'd never seen a Human use it before, but the lieutenant was tiny. “Can't the gunnery sergeant speak for herself, Corporal?”

“The colonel said I was to liaise, sir.”

“I see.” But she didn't look happy about it. “I only have two spare pallets right now.”

Quartermasters were like quartermaster's stores—true to type. Although their job was to supply the Corps, they hated actually releasing any of their inventory.

“I only need one, Lieutenant.”

Dark eyes narrowed. “I'm aware of that, Gunnery Sergeant.”

Torin waited, gaze locked on the lieutenant's face.

“All right, fine, you'd best get it then before the lights go out. Follow me.” She led the way across to the opposite imaginary wall and gestured at the two rolled pallets. “Take the one on the left and sign for it.”

“Sign for it, Lieutenant?” Torin followed the pointing finger and looked down. On the floor next to the pallets was a drawn rectangle enclosing a list of names scratched into the rock. Next to the rectangle was a slightly paler rock, just smaller than her fist. “Ah. Sign for it. Yes, sir.”

Technical Sergeant Gucciard glanced up when Torin dropped her pallet down beside his and grinned. “I see you've met Lieutenant McCoy.”

“I appreciate gung ho as much as the next Marine,” Torin muttered as she shoved the ends of the pallet flat with her boot, “but that was a bit . . .”

“Surreal?”

“That's just a little more polite than I was going to go with.”

“Fukking surreal?”

Torin returned the grin. “That's it.” She sat and nodded toward the pair of combats spread across his lap. “So, Gucciard . . .”

“Mike.”

“Mike . . . you still think you can get that slate up and working?”

“I'll let you in on a secret, Gunny . . .”

“Torin.”

“Torin.” He nodded toward the spill of fabric. “Once I set my mind on something, failure is not an option.”

She watched for a while as his large hands teased the tech free of the fabric at an access seam. Given the size of those hands, he had a surprisingly delicate touch. “I take it you can't just plug into the diagnostic points?”

“Is it ever that easy?” he asked as he exposed another millimeter of tech. “The diagnostic points can hook up to other combats and to the slate, but for the hookup to the power source, I'm going to have to improvise.”

Torin had to admit he looked like he knew what he was doing and, over the years, she'd developed good instincts for who was faking it.

The announcement that it was ten minutes to lights-out finally freed Mashona from the three lieutenants who had her cornered. She jogged over to her mat and dropped down with a heavy sigh. “They want to know how long you're staying, Gunny.”

“Not long,” Torin told her, voice pitched to carry over orders to retrieve pallets and the sounds of a hundred Marines doing just that. She hadn't noticed before how much the smack of a pallet hitting the rock sounded like a body going down for the count.

“You got people who'll come after you?”

“Very probably.” Kyster definitely. “How do they know how long until lights out?”

“Colonel's got people assigned to count.”

“Count?”

“One, H'san like cheese. Two, H'san like cheese.” Mashona folded her arms behind her head. “You can use whatever spacer you want, but you go to a thousand and then pass it off to the next guy. Forty-two thousands in a day,” she added anticipating Torin's next question. “Give or take.”

Torin did the math. “Roughly a twenty-eight-hour day.”

“Station norm,” Mashona agreed. “If you're here long enough, you'll get your own place in the queue.”

“Colonel Mariner needs noncoms; he's going to want to keep you,” Mike put in, looking up from his work.

“No, I don't think so.” Torin grinned. “I make him nervous.”

The technical sergeant snorted. “Can't think why.”

“She killed nine mutineers single-handed back at the other pipe. What? Was that supposed to be a secret?” Mashona asked as Torin turned toward her. “Sorry, Gunny.”

“I can see how that would make the colonel a little nervous,” Mike admitted. “If it's true.”

Torin sighed. “It's true. Although aren't mutineers Navy?”

“Damned if I know.” He shook his head. “No Navy around to ask. So you took out nine? In that case, you should be gone by . . . shit.”

Like everywhere else she'd been in the underground complex, the lights didn't dim. They just went out. There was a fair bit of swearing for the first few minutes—for the sake of swearing mostly. As far as Torin could see from where she was sitting, nearly all the Marines had been on, or right beside, their pallets.

“That's enough, people.” The voice rose to fill the space, the tone proof there was at least one senior NCO in the node. “Settle down, get some sleep, get ready for another glorious day in the Corps.”

The volume level dropped to muttering and the muttering fell off sooner than Torin expected. Sleep was something to do, at least. There were other things being done as well, and not only in the tent with the di'Taykan where sex was a given.

“I heard the colonel tried to stop this lot from so much as having a wank after lights out. I heard his staff talked him out of it. I wonder if he has hair on his . . .”

“Corporal Mashona, go to sleep.”

“Yes, Gunny. Sorry, Gunny, it's just . . .”

“I know.” It was just seeing a familiar face. Having someone there who knew her, who tied her to her past. Torin had felt much the same way about Werst. Now, however, her head hurt, her left leg ached, and she was more tired than she could remember being. Which was weird, because she'd certainly been awake longer and done more. One hand slipping inside her vest to close around the salvage tag, surrounded by the comforting sounds of a hundred Marines, she closed her eyes and slept.

“I've sent messengers to the barricade and to Lieutenant Colonel Braudy.” Colonel Mariner attempted to lock his gaze with hers, failed, and stared at his hands folded on his desk instead. Torin continued looking just past his left shoulder. “I believe it is necessary for you to tell your story to the lieutenant colonel yourself, Gunnery Sergeant. I see no way she'd believe it if it came to her secondhand. I will inform your Major Kenoton that you are remaining here for further debriefing and that as soon as he is physically able, I shall expect him to report to headquarters.”

“Headquarters, sir?”

“Here, Gunnery Sergeant. Or have you missed the fact that I am the ranking officer in these tunnels?”

“No, sir.”

“Structure of the Corps must be imposed. Staff Sergeant Harnett's abuse of power is a prime example of what happens when that structure is ignored.”

He hadn't asked a question, but he seemed to be waiting for a response. Torin spent a moment considering an honest answer but she really didn't need to deal with the fallout so she stuck with a bland, “Yes, sir.”

Highlights gleamed as he settled back, satisfied. “As you will not be remaining permanently, I see no reason to assign you to a platoon. Technical Sergeant Gucciard seems to think he can get that slate of yours up and running; it might be best, the least disruptive anyway, if you kept yourself busy assisting him until Lieutenant Colonel Braudy arrives.”

“Yes, sir.”

Mike gazed up at Torin from under brows nearly meeting in a vee at the top of his nose. “You know anything about working with tech?”

“I know how to use it, and I know how to delegate when I need something done with it.”

“Nothing personal, but what kind of help does the colonel think you're going to be?”

Grinning, she held out her hand. “I can pick you up when you touch a live wire and get knocked on your ass. I can field dress any injuries that happen when you're flung backward and your head connects with the rock. And I can do CPR if the power surge stops your heart, although you'll probably stay dead since, as I understand it, your lungs will have filled with liquid and you'll have drowned.”

He snorted and put his hand in hers, allowing her to haul him back up onto his feet. “Yeah. You're going to be a big help.”

“It are looking now we are being here, live, remarkably like it are looking in the vids,” Presit said, the dry wind ruffling her fur. “Imagine that.”

The battlefield, the battlefield where Torin had died, looked like a rippled sheet of gray-green glass. Shining. Lifeless. Craig went to one knee, reached across the seam where melted rock met dirt and rapped his knuckles against the glossy surface. Felt like glass, the kind tourists to backwater worlds picked up as “a primitive remnant of precontact culture” without ever realizing it was mass-produced at a filthy factory down streets a little less quaint.

“Artisans,” Presit said suddenly.

Craig twisted to look at his reflection in her mirrored sunglasses, his position putting them eye to eye. “What about them?”

“There are being a seven hundred and thirty-eight dead mixing into this glass. I are thinking those who are mourning would be liking a piece of it.”

“No.” He straightened.

“It are being presented tastefully,” she argued. “Could be having piece of glass set in metal enclosure for garden or be cutting flat and are using for patterns in windows.”

“No,” Craig repeated, a little louder.

Presit sighed. “You are being the only one who are getting closure, then?”

He didn't answer that, just as he didn't respond to the number of the dead. The difference between seven hundred and thirty-eight and seven hundred and thirty-seven was the difference between hope and despair. He hadn't come here because he believed Torin was dead. He hadn't come here because he hoped she was alive. He just needed to see. Shouldering the camera, he stepped onto the glass. “Let's go find those scientists.”

“Based on the coordinates the military has given us, we know that Captain Gordon Rose was standing right on that spot . . .” The Niln scientist half turned away from the camera to point. “. . . when the attack occurred. Captain Rose's DNA becomes, in effect, our control. We have his pattern on file; we know where it should occur within the melt. Once we can develop a way to pull a clear reading out, we can use the same techniques across the battlefield to bring closure to the families of the other Marines.”

“Closure are being important.” Presit's left ear tip flicked pointedly toward Craig. “So if I are understanding you,
Harveer
Umananth, you are not having the techniques to be getting the captain's DNA out yet.”

The
harveer's
nictitating eyelid flicked across both eyes but whether in reaction to the dry wind or the question or to Katrien syntax, Craig wasn't sure. “Whatever weapon the Others used to do this, it had an effect like nothing we've ever seen. Strictly speaking, it didn't melt the ground; it reformed everything in this immediate area—where immediate area refers to everything within 38.172 square kilometers—at the molecular level. Essentially, it took it apart and put it back together again as something new.”

“So you are saying you are not having the techniques to be getting the captain's DNA out yet,” Presit repeated, smiling toothily.

Harveer
Umananth sighed, the tip of his tail making lazy figure eights by his right leg. “Yes, that is what I am saying.”

“And how long are you being working on this new technique until you are successful?”

“There's no way of knowing. We could work it out today. It could take years.”

“Years? And when the Others are returning, what are you doing then?”

The young Niln's tail snapped out straight as he hissed. “The Others are returning?”

Presit's species was omnivorous. Her smile suggested otherwise. “This are being a front line and there are being a war on. Also . . .” She waved at the undulating hectares of glass. “. . . there are being Others
reformed
in this, are there not? I are having seen the last recorded battle positions, and they were definitely being within 38.172 kilometers. Are you being sure that this are being caused by one of the Others' weapons?”

Craig shifted position to stare around the camera at Presit. She hadn't mentioned any of this to him.

“We have data from the Navy that indicates the weapon was deployed from one of the Others' ships,” Umananth insisted.

“On friend and foe alike?” Presit combed her whiskers. “That are being very careless of them, and I are imagining someone are catching trouble for it. If I are being them, I are definitely returning to analyze results.”

“Logically I suppose, but . . . you have no actual
data
on the Others returning?”

“I are having no actual data on the Others staying away.”

“Yes, right.” His tail scribed agitated figure eights in the air. “Well, I should get back to the team. You may, of course, wander around, but please remain outside the tagged area. We don't want your DNA to mix with that of Captain Rose.” He bobbed his head and turned to go.

“You are thinking you might be mixing up my DNA with DNA of Captain Rose?”

Keep going, mate.
Craig thought at him.
You can't win this one.