A truth of Valor

Emerging back into sunlight after 5K of trails through old growth forest, Torin eyed the forty-five degree incline up to the top of the bluff and knew she'd been spending too much time in space and too little time paying attention to her training. In spite of having been dirtside for the last tenday, she could feel the effect of the run in both legs and lungs.

There was a time, back before she joined the Corps, when she'd end her 20K run with a six-meter dive into the lake and swim a good fifteen, twenty meters underwater before having to surface to breathe. Diving straight into the lake today would be stupid bordering on suicidal. The gravity here on Paradise, Torin's birth world, was 1.14 oldEarth norm while ships and stations both maintained artificial systems at.98-a small difference but telling after a few years.

Although, Torin admitted, throwing everything she had left into the last 100 meters, it could be the mileage. The distance between nineteen and thirty-six was one hell of a lot farther than the distance between Paradise and the OutSector station where Sh'quo Company had been based.

The top of the bluff hadn't changed; a silver-gray cap of limestone curved out over Lake Serella, worn smooth by wind and rain. Her older brother Mohan and his friends used to hunt for fossils in these rocks; spiral-shelled creatures from an ancient sea trapped in time. She wondered if he ever brought his kids out here and tried to teach them the names the Human colonists had given some of the oldest of Paradise's original inhabitants.

The narrow fissure that ran across the rock at the two-thirds point marked the exact end of the 20K. Torin crossed it and stumbled less than gracefully to a stop, the stiffer soles on her trail shoes sliding a little on the rock's smooth surface. Regaining her balance, she walked over to the edge and stared out at the view while she caught her breath.

The lake gleamed more green than blue in the sunlight, a little chop whipped up by the morning breeze. It looked cold and, being spring fed, probably was. Only the hottest of summers made any noticeable difference in the lake's temperature, and if this past summer had been unusually warm, no one had mentioned it to her. A small flock of Barnard's ducks paddled about in one of the quiet coves and a pair of blue-footed hawks swooped around each other overhead. Strictly speaking, they were neither ducks nor hawks, but the colonists had reused the names they'd brought from home. That familiarity hadn't been quite so necessary on planets settled later, Torin knew, but Paradise had been the first, gifted to oldEarth after they'd not only agreed to join but to protect the Confederation.

"Come on out," the Elder Races had said. "We'll give you advanced technology and brand-new planets to live on. We just need you to do one small thing for us. It seems we're in the middle of this war we can't solve diplomatically and, well, funny thing, we don't actually fight, so we need you to do it for us."

"Seems like a fair trade," Humans had replied. Later, the Taykan and the Krai had said the same.

Essentially.

Maybe it had been a fair trade. With no idea of what life had been like on oldEarth so many years ago, Torin couldn't judge. She'd been a career Marine and a damned good one until she'd discovered that the entire war had been a social experiment by sentient, polynumerous molecular polyhydroxide alcoholydes, so it was definitely 20/20 hindsight that made her think her ancestors should have locked the doors and told the Confederation to go fuk themselves.

Better than being screwed over by hyper-intelligent shape-shifting plastic.

From the top of the bluff, Torin could see past the edge of the forest to where the land flattened out and green changed to the gold of harvested grain. The family's flock of hah-hahs had been turned loose into the field for gleaning although they were too small for her to spot them from here. If she'd had a helmet with her, she'd have been able to pick out individual feathers and, with one of the KC-7 sniper scopes, make an easy kill. Not that she would. No matter how obnoxious the damned birds could be.

Leaning out a little, she could just make out the hill that covered her parents' farmhouse. They'd be finished with morning chores by now, sitting down to breakfast. Her mother would have her slate propped up on her coffee mug, and her father would be slipping bits of bacon to the cats as soon as the early news feed caught enough of her mother's attention.

When she finally heard footsteps approaching on the trail, she sat down, legs dangling above the water. Years of experience at putting Marines through their paces kept her from looking as though she'd ever been concerned. He was walking, not running, but he wasn't breathing as hard as he had when they'd first landed. Craig Ryder might have been born on Canaberra, but he'd lived most of his life in space. Civilian salvage operators had little reason to go dirtside when the bulk of their salvage came from Naval battles between the Confederation and the Others-no, the Primacy now; Torin, of all people should remember that-and their markets were all on stations. Paradise hadn't been easy on him.

Her family, on the other hand, had adored him.

But then, he could be a charming son of a bitch when he wanted to. It was one of the first things she'd noticed about him, back when the last thing on her mind had been taking him home to meet her family.

"Ace view." He dropped to sit beside her, nudging her with a sweaty shoulder.

"Strategically important," Torin pointed out. "Controlling the high ground gives us the edge."

"While we sit here jawing, those ducks are probably planning a doomed assault."

She grinned. "If they get into the air, that'll give them the advantage."

"Should I be worried?"

"I can take them."

"Good." Bracing his right arm behind him, Craig twisted around to rub his left thumb along the top of her cheeks. "Your father's right; you're picking up some pink."

She wrapped her fingers around his wrist and tugged his hand down between them. "My father worries too much. Don't you start." Torin had inherited her mother's brown hair and eyes, but her less than generous portion of melanin came directly from her father. Both her brothers had a significantly higher natural tolerance for UV radiation and were obnoxiously smug about it.

A barred loon called from the far end of the lake.

"Easy to see why you love it here," Craig murmured, leaning in and kissing her softly. "And," he added, pulling away, "easy to see why you left. This place is so fukking bucolic, I keep wanting to punch something."

Torin leaned forward and caught his mouth with hers, fingers of her free hand threading through the long, sweaty spikes of his hair. This kiss was messy and carnal and stole away most of the ability to breathe he'd regained after his run. "Oh, thank the fukking gods," she said after a minute, resting her forehead against his. "I was afraid all the damned pie had convinced you to stay longer."

Blue eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled. "Not a chance. If we shoot out before dawn and break a few speed limits, odds are on we can trade in our tickets and catch tomorrow's shuttle up to the station. Sleep on the Promise tomorrow night." The smile slipped. "You really are pinking up, Torin."

"Then I guess I need to cool down."

Craig's shoulders and arms were heavily muscled enough to pull his torso out of proportion to his legs, even at 1.9 meters tall, but he didn't have much leverage and Torin had maintained her grip on his wrist.

Also, she believed in doing what was necessary in order to win, up to and including fighting dirty. She didn't so much throw him off the bluff as take him off with her.

The water was as cold as it looked. "Net's away, Captain!"

Leaning back in his command chair, Mackenzie Cho, scrapped a thumbnail over his stubble, the soft shup shup shup adding to the background noise, and listened to Huirre counting down the distance until contact.

"Twenty kilometers. Fifteen kilometers."

"Firebreather's Susumi engines have come on-line, Captain!" di'Berinango Dysun half turned from her station, eyes darkened to a burnt orange, hair flipping around her head in a tangerine aurora.

The three di'Taykan on the crew had been running from trouble on their home world before signing on, but given the differences in Human and Taykan aging, they were still little more than kids out looking for thrills. Dysun was a natural in the control room, though-followed orders like she'd been trained to it-and both her thytrins had skills he could use.

When Cho jerked a thumb toward Dysun's board, she whirled back around, adding, "They must've seen the net."

"Not your job to speculate," he growled.

"Five kilometers," Huirre announced.

It was possible, Cho allowed, that the civilian salvage operator at the controls of the Firebreather had been feeding data into their Susumi equations since leaving the debris field, cargo pen bulging with salvage. It was possible the Susumi engines coming on-line had nothing to do with the approaching net. And if the Susumi drive didn't kick in before the net covered the final three kilometers, it wouldn't matter.

"Two, one… we have contact! Anchor lines have caught the pen, net is spreading."

"Power up the buoys."

Huirre slapped his board. "Aye, aye, Captain!"

"Susumi engines are powering down." This time, Dysun kept her eyes on the data.

Of course the engines were powering down. Only a suicidal fool would fold into Susumi space when their equations had just been fukked beyond correction. Galaxy-class battle cruisers with a full complement of Susumi engineers had slammed out of Susumi space into unforgiving solid objects because of a missed decimal, so a seat-of-the-pants pilot and a cheap computer had no chance with the random pulsing from the buoys making an accurate equation the next thing to impossible.

Some might say actually impossible.

Cho didn't believe in the impossible. There was always a way. Case in point: in spite of a dishonorable discharge from the Confederation Navy designed to force him into jobs well below his skill level and ambition, he'd still gotten his captain's ticket. Even if he'd had to take it by force.

The days when some idiot with a bit of braid, a fool who'd got his rank from luck rather than skill could order him around were over. Long over.

"Captain, the Firebreather is coming around."

"Interesting." Straightening, he stared up at the large screen he'd had installed to give the illusion of an external view in spite of the bridge having been buried deep in the bowels of the ship for safety. Most CSOs cut their losses at this point, dumped their pens, engaged their default equations, and left the victor the spoils. Against all odds, the Firebreather was coming around. "I wonder if they've forgotten what happens to ships that challenge us?" he said thoughtfully.

Huirre snorted. "No one's challenged for a while, have they?"

An excellent point, Cho admitted silently. Memory being what it was, it was past time to remind the salvage operators that resistance was useless. Get them talking again about the Heart of Stone and her merciless captain.

"Captain." Dysun's hair had flattened against her head. "I'm picking up a strange energy signal."

"Define strange?"

"Like a…"

The bridge shuddered as the Heart of Stone took a hit.

"Like a weapon?" Cho asked quietly.

Her shoulders rose a little at the threat in his voice. "Yes, sir."

Confederation law put all weapons in the hands of the military. CSOs were supposed to run crying for help while the Navy-buzzing around with their collective heads up their collective asses because the war had turned out to be a big fukking joke-did sweet fuk all about the big, bad pirates. Seemed like this fool hadn't got the memo.

"Huirre."

"Captain?"

"Don't damage the pen."

The Krai grinned. On a species able to not only eat, but digest pretty much any organic matter in known space, the baring of teeth gained an added significance Cho appreciated. Huirre danced the fingers of both hands and the long, prehensile toes of one foot across his board.

An instant later, the bow of the Firebreather exploded, creating a miniature starburst of debris.

"Two bodies, Captain."

One of the things Cho liked best about Dysun, about all three di'Taykan, was their lack of concern when people died. People always ended up dying in his business.

"No life signs," she added.

"Damage?"

"Uh…" Confused, Dysun waved at the screen. "The shot probably killed them, but they might have decompressed…"

"He means damage to the Heart, you serley idiot," Huirre muttered. "We took some outer hull damage by the cargo bay, got one of our sensor arrays completely fukking fried, and I'm betting…" He nodded toward the flashing lights on the comm panel. "… Krisk wants to know what the fuk is going on."

"Take us in alongside the pen," Cho ordered, then opened the channel to engineering, cutting Krisk off in mid rave with a terse, "Shut up. If there's no breach and no chance of a breach, that salvage remains our first concern. Make sure the hatch to the cargo bay hasn't been compromised. I'm on my way down."

The Heart of Stone had been designed as a scout ship for the Navy. When Cho'd taken it over, he'd doubled her firepower and added a cargo bay. Fortunately, vacuum didn't care about aerodynamics. In his line of work, he couldn't waste time reworking Susumi equations for every piece of crap they picked up-space was big, sure, but there was always a chance the Navy could accidentally stumble over them while they were sitting around dividing by the cube root of who the fuk cares. Cargo had to fit inside the ship's set parameters.

When he arrived in the extension, delayed a few minutes by a sparking panel near the air lock that joined the old and new, the outer hatch was open and Dysun's thytrins were working the grapples, plucking the salvage out of the Firebreather's pen.

"Pen's too big to fit inside," Almon explained before Cho could ask what the hell they were doing. Eyes locked on the screen, he had so many light receptors open very little of the pale yellow remained. "Don't know what this guy found, Captain, but he found one fuk of a lot of it."

The deck plates quivered as something big came under the influence of the artificial gravity on the other side of the inner hatch.

"Sorry, Captain." Nadayki, the youngest of the three di'Taykan, flashed him a nervous smile, lime-green hair jerking back and forth in a nervous arc.

Cho smiled back. Nadayki's trouble with the law had been the reason the three had initially gone on the run. The Taykan were stupid when it came to family loyalties. "You dent my ship and I'll space you."

"He will, too. Space you soon as look at you. Mackenzie Cho's the meanest son of a bitch in this end of the galaxy."

"How many times do I have to tell you to stop calling my mother names?" Cho said quietly as Nat Forester moved up to stand just behind his left shoulder, slate in hand.

"At least once more, Cap. Krisk says he needs condenser parts and Doc says if you pitch another field kitchen, he's going to throw six kinds of fit."

"That kitchen had been slagged."

Nat shrugged. "He says he could have fixed it. And he likes the food."

"The food is crap."

"Not arguing, but Doc likes it and there's always a market for kitchens. You're letting your prejudices cut into profits."

"It's not prejudice. I know the food they turn out is crap."

"And I know," his quartermaster grunted, "that these two'd probably work faster if you weren't peering over their shoulders."

"Sucks to be them."

In spite of the captain's presence, or maybe because of it, the two di'Taykan worked full out for almost two hours, creating a complex three-dimensional jigsaw of captured salvage in order to fit it into the available space. Finally, Almon sighed and said, "Cargo's locked and loaded, Captain."

"Noted." Cho raised his voice slightly; the comm pickups in the extension could be temperamental. "Huirre."

"Captain."

"Turn us toward home." They'd kick on the Susumi drive after he and Nat had the cargo sorted, separated the crap from the cream, and ditched the crap.

"Aye, sir. Home it is." The subtext-about fukking time-came through loud and clear, but they'd been roaming for a while, looking for a prize worth the trip, so he let it go.

"Cap and I going to fit in there?" Nat wondered, peering past Almon at his screen.

"No. Too tight." Almon turned just far enough to wink at her, a Human gesture the di'Taykan had wholeheartedly adopted. "Tight's good."

Nat winked back. "Not arguing, kid."

The di'Taykan were known as the most sexually indiscriminating species in known space, but tossing innuendo at Nat Forester put them above and beyond. Cho trusted Nat with his life, but he'd fuk Huirre first. And given that Huirre had been involved with a cartel that provided Human body parts to Krai kitchens, that was saying something.

"That's not so much tight as wall to fukking wall," Nat snorted, transferring her attention from Almon's screen to her own. "Crowded enough we'll have to use the eye for first sort." She called up the controls on her slate one-handed, then ran the hand back through short gray hair. "Eye gives me fukking vertigo. Let's just hope I don't puke."

"Don't," Cho told her, his own slate ready.

"Yes, sir, Cap. Because my stomach always does what you tell it."

It was a good prize, Cho acknowledged as he guided the remote camera around and through what were clearly parts retrieved from a single destroyed battle cruiser. Looked like they'd scored some of the Marine package, too, he realized as the eye picked out the crest of the Corps on a…

"Holy fukking shit."

"Cap?"

He fed her slate the coordinates without speaking.

"Holy fukking shit," she agreed a moment later. "Now that's worth puking over."

They'd scored a Marine armory. An undamaged Marine Corps armory. A small fortune in weapons if he decided to sell them. A way to change the future if he didn't.

The seals were solid and…

… had been oversealed by one of the dead CSOs.

If he wanted to get the armory open without blowing it and everything around it to hell and gone, he needed another CSO. Alive this time. "Promise, you are cleared at vector twenty-four point seven for two hundred kilometers. Returning computer control in three, two, one."

"Return acknowledged, Paradise Station." Craig ran both hands along the edge of his board, the movement not quite a caress. While he understood why the station controlled all approaches and departures-the unforgiving nature of vacuum made accidents usually fatal and always expensive-it wasn't required that he actually like being forced to sit as a passenger in his own ship. So he didn't. But he sure as hell liked getting his lady back.

"All right, you said you'd tell me when we were in space." His poor old pilot's chair dipped as Torin settled enough weight to make a point across the top. "We're in space. Spill."

Torin hadn't been happy about being kept in the dark, but she hadn't done anything about it either, and Craig knew that represented a huge leap in trust for them. Torin didn't like not knowing things.

"We've seen your family," he told her, leaning back and looking up. "I figured that now we could lob in and see mine."

She frowned. "Your parents died thirteen years ago, and you haven't seen your cousin Joe for nearly six."

"You fossicked through my records, then."

Torin spun the chair around and straddled his lap. The chair complained again, and Craig told it silently to shut up as he slid his hands up the curve of her hips to settle around her waist. At 1.8 meters with a fighter's muscle, Torin wasn't light, but he knew for a fact the chair could hold them both… while moving a lot more vigorously.

"I checked after I joined you here, on the Promise," she said. "Not before."

So her research had no influence on her joining him. He appreciated that she'd decided with her heart and not her head. "You could have asked."

"You never spoke of them and, just in case…" She waved a hand, the gesture taking in the bunk, the half-circle table, the two chairs, and closed hatch to the head. "… we don't have a lot of room for touchy subjects."

"'S truth. But unless we make one hell of a find-working tech say-even adding another three square meters'll cost more than we can afford this year." They'd used a chunk of Torin's final payment from the Corps to put in a new converter. As long as they could find ice-and if they couldn't find ice, he was in the wrong business-they could replenish both water and oxygen significantly faster than two people could use it. That and the upgraded CO2 scrubbers went a long way toward removing any residual dread of sharing the limited resources of a small ship with another person.

With Torin anyway.

"We were talking about your family." She rocked her hips forward, and his eyes rolled back. Torin had relaxed the moment the air lock telltales had gone red and they were clear of Paradise and her family. When she got like this, it was hard to remember she knew twenty-five ways to kill a man with her bare hands. "Where are we going?"

"Salvage station."

She stopped moving. Craig made an inarticulate protest.

"They actually exist?"

"Seventy-two-hour fold and we'll rock up. You can see for yourself."

"And they're safe?"

He laughed at that. The myths about salvage stations usually included the word deathtrap in the description. "For fuksake, Torin, you were a Marine!"

"And contrary to popular opinion, gunnery sergeants can't breathe vacuum."

"Trust me, if there's one thing a salvage operator understands, given how much time we spend suited up, it's not breathing vacuum. Now then," reaching up, he cupped the back of her head and pulled her mouth down to his, "you could keep working on that twenty-sixth way to kill a man. Seems I'm not dead yet."

"It does not look cobbled together," Craig muttered. "It looks…"

Torin waited while Craig frowned out at the station they were approaching, obviously searching for the right response to her initial reaction. Which had been, all things considered, relatively mild.

"All right, fine," he surrendered, "you win. It looks cobbled together. But give it a fair go. People are raising families in there."

"Families?" Torin leaned forward and took another look at the tangled mass of habitats referred to as Salvage Station 24. "In that?" It was hard to pick out details given the glare off the hectares of deployed solar sails, but she was certain she could see one of the H'san's ceramic pods cozied up next to a piece of a decommissioned Navy cruiser, as well as half a dozen Marine packages. Tucked up against it, in no discernible pattern, she could see a dozen ships the Promise's size or a very little larger. Apparently, salvage operators didn't believe in docking arms on their stations.

A direct hit by the enemy would turn ninety percent of this particular station back into the scrap it had started as.

"Not at war," she reminded herself. "Not anymore." Then she added aloud, "Shouldn't you let them know we're on our way in?"

"They know."

Eyes narrowed, Torin studied the board. There'd never been any question that Craig would teach her to both fly and repair the ship-she'd spent most of her previous career working to keep the Marines under her alive and now all that training and experience had been refocused on the Promise and her captain-but she'd been infantry and that meant starting essentially from scratch.

"Give me a large group of heavily armed people and I'll make it do whatever you want, but this.." Blowing out a deep breath, she'd shaken her head as she tried to make sense of the display. "I'm neither a pilot nor an engineer."

"You'll dux it out. This is easier than dealing with a large group of people."

"Maybe for you."

Definitely for him. Torin sectioned the board but still couldn't find a data stream that suggested the Promise was in communication with the station. "I don't see it," she admitted at last.

"They pinged us 100 kliks out and got the codes."

She stopped staring at the board and turned to stare at him. "That's it?"

"That's it."

"And docking?"

"I'll bring her in alongside a free nipple and we'll grapple in. Use the universal hookup if there's no match."

"Well, that's very…" Torin considered and discarded a few words. "… independent."

Craig grinned at her. "You're swearing inside, aren't you?"

"Not at all. Watch where you're going." She sat back and rested her hands on her thighs, watching so that her fingers didn't curl into fists. "I spent my entire career being carted around by the Navy, depending on their engineers to do the math right. This is just a difference in scale."

Craig's brows rose as he micro-fired a forward thruster.

"A big difference," Torin admitted.

They rose a bit higher.

"Fine. I'm swearing a little. There's a reason docking computers are the default."

"No worries, I can do anything my computer can. Although in some cases it may take me a little longer," he added quickly as Torin opened her mouth.

As she hadn't decided if she appreciated or was appalled by the sentiment, Torin let that stand. "So who's in charge here?"

The corner of his mouth that she could see, twitched. "Group consensus as needed."

"So, essentially, no one. Shoot me now." After watching mismatched pieces go by for a while, and watching Craig's brows dip closer to the bridge of his nose, she asked, "What happens if there isn't a free lock?"

"There's always a free lock," he muttered. Promise twitched as he gave the upper aft thrusters a bit of juice. "But it looks like we'll have to hook in a little far from where I usually dock."

"And that means? Other than the obvious?"

"We're going to need a native guide once we get inside."

"Craig! Hombre! Empezabamos a pensar que no quisiste que los de mas te ven con nosotros, you son of a bitch!"

Torin moved back half a step as a tall man with four-centimeter dreads and three white stars tattooed on his left cheek swept Craig up into a hug that looked painful. She didn't recognize the language-although it sounded Human-and she didn't know their relationship-although since no one had started throwing punches, she assumed they were at least friends. It seemed safest to give herself some maneuvering room.

"Pedro!" Craig locked his arms around the other man and lifted him off his feet. "Too long, mate! Too long!"

"Had to let the bruises fade," Pedro snickered as they released each other at exactly the same time. He leaned out around Craig's shoulders. "And you must be Torin."

She nodded, expression neutral. He'd had to have spent the last year without a comm hookup of any kind not to recognize her face. The vid Presit a Tur durValintrisy had shot of her conversation with the polynumerous, shape-shifting, organic plastic alien hive mind who'd been responsible for a war that had taken millions, if not hundreds of millions of lives had been played 28/10 on some stations.

Pedro grinned at her. "All that publicity and you couldn't do any better than this asshole?"

Craig dodged the punch aimed at his arm. "Torin Kerr, meet Pedro Buckner. Best mate I ever made."

He wanted them to like each other; she could hear it in his voice. That meant he wasn't bothering to hide it since he had one of the most unreadable poker faces/voices she'd ever played against. Which meant it was important to him. Torin locked eyes with Pedro and held out her hand. "Pleased to meet you."

To her surprise-because he in no way telegraphed the move-he grabbed it and pulled her into a hug. "I, too, have spent time locked into a small ship with that man. You have my sympathy, chica."

Torin had no real problem with physical greetings from vetted sources, so she hugged him back and only barely stopped herself from turning it into a pissing contest like the one he'd had with Craig.

Who was smiling when they parted like he'd known how close it had come.

And, of course, he had.

She was weighing a couple of responses when the communications implant in her jaw pinged and she tongued it without thinking. *Salvage Station 24 requests access codes.*

"You can tell it to piss up a rope," Pedro told her, as she frowned. He'd probably recognized the common expression of someone listening to a voice in their head. "But if we lose hull integrity, responses are faster if the OS can coordinate the implanted beyond the emergency frequency." He tapped his jaw.

According to Craig, many CSOs got basic implants the moment they could afford it. Torin had assumed it was to remain in contact with their ships while loading cargo but, as all Hazardous Environment suits had comm units, it now seemed more likely it was for the times they were unsuited. When she glanced over at him, Craig nodded. Since Craig had refused to allow the Berganitan access to either his implant or his ship while on the Navy battleship, that said something.

Mostly about Craig.

Torin tongued in her codes. It bothered her more to be unconnected. Being able to instantly reach the station sysop could mean the difference between trying to breathe vacuum and not. The construction of this particular station only reinforced that belief.

The inside of the station was as much of a rabbit warren as it looked to be from the outside. No point in actually making that observation aloud, though; the odds were good neither man knew what a rabbit was. Falling into step behind Pedro, Torin could see wear-everything from scuff marks to hard use-but no oxidizations. She was encouraged by the lack of actual decay but would have liked to have the scuff marks dealt with. Polishing made an excellent punishment for minor disciplinary…

Shaking her head, she dragged her finger in and out of a dent. Not her problem anymore. Sometimes, she forgot.

Creating a mental map of the path back to the Promise missed being the most difficult bit of orienteering she'd ever done only because no one was shooting at her.

The familiar smell of a few too many people for the air scrubbers ghosted along beside them, seasoned by something enough like curry to make her stomach growl. Their path seemed to be leading them toward the center of the station and although she could hear people-Krai and Human definitely, di'Taykan and Katrien probably-they didn't actually run into anyone.

Given the number of ships attached to the station, that seemed strange.

"What's up with the ghost ship effect?" Apparently Craig thought so too.

"Jan and Sirin were supposed to be in four days ago," Pedro explained, ducking as he stepped through an interior hatch. "Got cut off in the middle of a transmission. Brian Larson-you remember him, damn near lost his fukking arm when a tangle blew-he's heading out to check their last coordinates. Chloe Badawi's checking out the other end of their intended Susumi fold, and most folk are sticking pretty close to home until word comes in."

"Cut off in the middle of a transmission," Craig repeated, touching the tips of his fingers to the gray plastic hatch numbers as he followed. "Mechanical problems?"

Pedro snorted. "On Jan's ship? I don't think so. Jan considered her ship a part of her body." He tossed the information in Torin's direction. "No way it would have the kind of mechanical problems that'd keep them from getting a message out for four days. Wouldn't happen. Just, no. And," he added darkly, "Sirin said they'd picked up a maker."

"The kind of salvage that'll make you," Craig explained.

Torin nodded and filed the slang away as she also touched the hatch numbers. It was a habit they'd both picked up since discovering a marker left in their brains sometimes caused the plastic aliens to spontaneously react to their touch. Sometimes. But it was all they had. When the hatch numbers remained inert, she turned her attention back to the matter at hand. If the salvage ship had been military, she'd assume they'd been attacked.

"You think they were attacked?" Craig asked Pedro as though he'd been following Torin's train of thought.

"Don't like to think it, but…" Pedro spread his hands and shrugged.

It was unlikely but possible, Torin acknowledged silently, that a CSO could get caught up and destroyed in a naval battle. Sometimes they came in a little close.

"Fukking pirates!"

She grabbed Craig's arm and pulled him to a stop. "Pirates?"

He nodded. "They net your pen with buoys to keep you from folding to Susumi. Most people dump the pen at that point, give it up. Sirin wouldn't."

"Wait." Torin shook her head, trying to settle the thought. "There are actually people in ships-criminals in ships-stealing lawfully acquired salvage?"

"You didn't know?"

"There was a war on, I was busy." The concept of criminal activity on the scale of bad vid programming was a little hard to absorb. This wasn't an episode of SpaceCops; real people, people Craig knew, were being attacked. "What's being done about it? Are the Wardens involved?" The Wardens dealt with crime outside the jurisdiction of planets-or systems depending on local resources-and answered directly to Parliament, specifically the Justice Minister.

"Wardens don't do shit. They're supposed to send the Navy out to chase them down, but…" Pedro shrugged again. "… there's a war on. They're busy."

"War's over." Although, given the scale of the conflict and the geography of space, not to mention pure bloody-mindedness of some participants, battles continued to be fought.

"And I'm sure they'll get around to us eventually." Pedro's tone had moved past dry to desiccated.

Torin's hand dropped to her slate at the same time Craig wrapped callused fingers around her wrist. She was impressed he knew her that well.

"Okay, your first instinct is to fix it, I get that," he said quietly, "but who are you going to tell who doesn't already know?"

"Presit."

She tried not to laugh as Craig opened his mouth and closed it a few times.

"Presit?" he managed at last. "Are you shitting me? You never liked her."

"Liking her has nothing to do with it." Presit a Tur durValintrisy had been a furry little pain in Torin's ass from the moment she'd appeared on the alien ship, Big Yellow, determined to get the story in spite of its highly classified nature. While true that the reporter had far too high an opinion of her own importance, Torin had come to realize that media could be used as a powerful weapon and pointing powerful weapons had made up a large part of her previous career.

"The pirates are going after salvage operators now because you're… we're," she corrected when Craig's grip tightened, "in small ships working independently. If they get away with it unopposed long enough, they'll up their game and start going after more lucrative targets. Ore carriers, say."

"There's a rumor unmanned ore carriers are going missing in statistically relevant numbers," Pedro interrupted.

"There you go. Presit tells the story, the mining cartels see the danger, they put pressure on their representatives in Parliament, Parliament pressures the Navy, and the Navy finally gets its head out of its ass."

"Just like that?" Pedro's brows had risen nearly to his hairline.

"It's a fairly simple cascade of cause and effect." Torin shrugged. "No guarantee, but we won't hit anything if we don't pull the trigger."

Pedro raised both hands in surrender. "I bow to your superior knowledge of violent responses."

When she shot him a pointed glance, Craig released her wrist.

"Presit's a big shot celebrity now," he reminded her as she touched the screen of her slate. "You think she'll even answer your call?"

"Probably not. That's why I'm using your account. Presit likes him," she added to Pedro who grinned wide and white at the emphasis. "If he'd been shorter and furrier, I'd have had a fight on my hands."

Craig's protests carried them the rest of the way into the center of the station and the large, open area Pedro called the market.

Torin had seen variations on every station she'd ever been on. Social species liked to congregate, to see and be seen, to take comfort in knowing they weren't alone. This particular market had clearly once been the shuttle bay of a large transport. The four individual bays across the narrow, inboard end had been turned into two sizable shops bracketing what looked like a popular bar.

Torin exchanged a speaking glance with Craig about the amount of visible plastic, then stepped out of the way as half a dozen shouting kids-Human and Krai-charged past. The dominant scent seemed to be fried egg, and she wondered where the chickens were. Chickens had adapted remarkably well to space, and eggs provided a protein source that not even those Elder Races who professed to be appalled by the taking of life for food could get all more-evolved-than-thou about.

Small kiosks, selling what looked like everything from body parts to engine parts, dotted the actual docking area although very few people seemed interested in the merchandise on display. The twenty or so people Torin could see stood around in small groups. The di'Taykan's hair lay flat, and everyone's body language shouted waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Waiting to see if one of theirs had been attacked by pirates.

No. Waiting to see if one of hers had been attacked by pirates.

Because these were her people now.

Given that, Torin took another look around. Used to be, she could pick her people out of a mixed group because they were part of a whole. Marines, for all the physical differences inherent in three separate species, had a similarity of movement written on bone and muscle by training and experience. Even in a crowd of civilians, they were aware of each other and could be pulled into a unit with a word.

Their decision to take up the responsibility of defending the vast bulk of Confederation space and the nonaggressive species that lived there kept them a people apart.

These new people had decided to live apart, their only connection that decision.

As she followed Pedro across the docking area, she noted that Craig had been identified as one of them. A few greeted him by name, but as they were moving purposefully toward a destination, no one tried to pull him out of formation. In contrast, she had been identified as "other." All of the children and most of the adults in the market stared openly at her. Most of the stares were speculative, those who recognized her passing the news on to those who didn't. Some of the adults seemed openly hostile. Until they were in a position to open fire, Torin didn't give a H'san's ass about hostile. No one ever bled out as the result of a pissy expression.

Conversations ebbed and flowed as they passed and, in their wake, she could hear movement from group to group picking up.

Civilian salvage operators self-identified as individuals, accepted only the minimal government authority necessary for them to operate. Their obsessive need to be unique was what gave them their group identity, and the single word that would pull her Marines together would scatter this lot like a fragmentation round.

These new people she could identity because of their desire not to be part of a whole.

It was… different.

She heard her name, Silsviss, Big Yellow, Crucible, the di'Taykan phrase that meant progenitor, and the familiar sound of speculation.

Same old, same old.

As "individuals," they were clearly not averse to gossip. Pedro and his family lived in an old cargo ship built into the structure of the station. Torin followed Craig into the cargo bay and stared around at the piles of… salvage, she assumed, although junk would be as accurate. Seconds after they'd stepped through the hatch, half a dozen kids-ranging in age from early teens to just past toddler-threw themselves at Craig. As he didn't seem to be in any danger, Torin turned her attention to the three adults descending the metal stairs from the living quarters on the upper levels.

"Torin, these are my wives Alia and Jenn and my husband Kevin. The horde is ours collectively. There's an air lock there," Pedro continued, nodding at the control panel Torin had already noticed on the far side of the bay, "and another one off the kitchen. We've got a ship a little bigger than the Promise locked in up there and another about twice as large down here. If the klaxon goes, don't worry about which one you end up in. Closest adult grabs the kids, singly or collectively, then sings out so everyone knows where they are. We'll shuffle around once we're clear."

It was the first time Torin had ever been given emergency evacuation protocols mixed in with introductions, but what the hell.

"So you're the one sucking back half of Craig's precious oxygen," Alia extended a hand. "Never thought I'd see the day."

She was missing the top joint of her second finger. It looked like an old injury, long since healed. Torin had never known anyone-and she'd seen a lot of injuries-who'd refused the medical advances the Confederation offered.

Alia noticed Torin staring. "No regen tanks here," she explained, "and I just couldn't be arsed to get to a government station. By the time I had time, didn't see any point in regrowing something I didn't miss."

"I see." It was the tone Torin'd used on officers when they were being enthusiastic about something particularly stupid. Polite interest; no noticeable approval.

Jenn and Kevin were huggers. They were both packing serviceable muscle.

"I was going to be a Marine." The child tugging at her jacket was somewhere between five and ten, gender indeterminate, with Pedro's rich, dark skin and Jenn's green eyes. "But Da says the war is over. Are you going to have to stop killing people now?"

Torin thought about it long enough Craig turned from his conversation with Kevin and asked the question again, silently.

"As things stand right now," she said at last. On the way up the stairs, she dragged two fingers along the gray plastic handrail.

Later, after an amazing meal, where everyone present provided her with enough potential blackmail material to even out the stories her family had told to Craig, Pedro sat down beside her on the sofa and said, "He really loves you."

"Is this the if you hurt him, I'll do you speech?" Torin wondered, watching Craig racing with Helena, the fourteen year old, on the room's bigger vid screen. He was working his slate one-handed and using the other to poke Helena and make her fall off her hoverboard into the snow. Helena knew some words Torin hadn't learned until she got to the Corps.

Pedro snorted. "Yeah. Pretty much."

"Noted." "He's still not talking, Cap."

Cho's fingers curled into fists, and he carefully uncurled them. "Have you tried convincing him?"

"I have. I even sent the di'Taykan in without their maskers." Nat snickered. "Thought maybe all that sexual frustration might loosen his lips."

The di'Taykan exuded pheromones that crossed species boundaries-and if there was a species outside the Methane Alliance that was immune, Cho'd never heard of them. Without the maskers they wore, arousal levels were at best irritating and at worst painful. "And?"

"Well, he started talking all right. Old bugger was downright inventive. Almon got pretty pissed when I hauled their multicolored asses out of there before they could follow through." She dug her fingernails in through the short bristles of her hair and brought them away bloody after a vigorous scratch. "Oh, fuk it. I knew that damned cream of Doc's wouldn't work."

Cho stared down at the image of the armory on his slate. Rogelio Page had been working the same scattered debris field for years. A crazy old loner, even by CSO standards, he'd never salvaged anything Cho would consider worth taking from him, but he was easy to find and easy to grapple right off the side of his pen. Almon had deftly set the hooks in the old man's HE suit and reeled him in, kicking and swearing the whole way. Checking the meager contents of Page's pen while Nat took care of getting his codes, Cho had no idea how the old man managed to find enough salable salvage to stay alive, but he supposed if staying alive was all a man cared about, it didn't take much.

Cho wanted more. A lot more. To begin with, he wanted that fukking armory open.

"Let Doc talk to him."

Nat paused in mid scratch. "You serious, Cap? Page is a stubborn old bastard, and Doc's not exactly subtle."

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly through his nose. "I want those codes."

Nat recognized the tone. "Aye, Cap."

"Tell Doc, I'm going in with him."

The old man grinned as Cho led Doc into the room. His teeth were bloody, bruises were rising on pale, loose skin, and he was still half erect in spite of the air scrubbers. "So you're the fly in charge of this shit pile." He spat, the mouthful of bloody saliva spattering over the toe of Cho's left boot. "Looks like we can finally get this show on the road."

Cho raised a hand, holding Doc in place. "Give me your codes and I'll put you back on your ship."

To his surprise, Page laughed. The laughter turned into coughing. "Liar," Page gasped, and spat again. "Only one reason scum like you wants government codes. You got something big-something big enough to compensate for the size of your dick and that's one fuk of a lot of compensating, so I'm thinking weapons. One really big one or lots of little ones, don't matter. You're not getting my fukking codes."

"Give me your codes," Cho told him, barely managing to keep his voice level, "and I'll kill you quickly."

"The fuk you will," Page snorted. "You'll have your trained ape kill me quick." He narrowed the eye that still worked, looked past Cho, and locked his gaze on Doc's face. "I've seen your type before, boy. You wanted Recon or Ranger, but you were too crazy even for those crazy fukkers."

Doc showed no reaction to Page's accusation. Less than no reaction.

"No one tried to convince you too hard to stay, after your first contract ran out, did they, boy? No, it was, 'so long, Private, have a nice life. Hell, have a shitty life, just have it away from us.' " Taking a deep breath, Page straightened as much as age and the earlier beatings allowed. "Sergeant Rogelio Page, 3rd Division, 1st Re'carta, 4th Battalion, Serra Company, Confederation Marine Corps. Do your worst."

Dropping his hand, Cho stepped to one side. "You heard the man."

He was, he admitted nearly an hour later, impressed with how long Doc had kept Page alive and more or less coherent. Sure there'd been screaming and moaning, but there'd been actual words as well. The ending, however, came as no surprise.

During the questioning, Doc's hair had come loose and the strands hanging around his face were stiff with blood, drawing lines of red against his bare shoulders as he turned, blue eyes looking even bluer within the crimson splatters. "Sorry, Captain. He's gone. Heart gave out. If you want my opinion, he wasn't going to talk anyway."

"I don't want your opinion," Cho growled. So close, so fukking close! With the weapons in that locker, things would be different. He'd get… no, he'd take what he deserved. No more just accepting the shit the universe threw at him. He needed that locker open!

"Goddamned fukking stubborn old fool!" Pivoting on one foot, he spun around and slammed his fist into the bulkhead.

Even over the sound of the impact, he heard his knuckle crack.

The pain hit a moment later.

"Let me look at it, Captain." Doc's fingers were sticky, but his touch was sure. "Yeah, you broke it. Come on, let's get to sick bay and I'll shoot you full of blockers. You won't feel a thing when I bond it."

Hand cradled against his chest, Cho shook his head. It was never smart to access the two halves of Doc's personality too close together. "I'll meet you up there after I get us moving. No point in lingering out here any longer."

Doc nodded, his hair dripping red as he tied it back. "If you take too long, I'll come looking for you."

Cho waited until the other man left the room, then crossed to Page's body. "Just to set the record straight," he growled, "Doc was a medical officer, CMO on the Seraphim. You remember the Seraphim. Two hundred and thirteen survivors from a crew of five thousand. Doc, he's a walking, talking fukking casualty of war. Huirre!"

"Aye, Captain?"

"Best time to Vrijheid."

He could feel how badly Huirre wanted to ask if Doc had been successful but, after a long moment the Krai erred on the side of self-preservation and said only, "Aye, aye, Captain!" Torin woke the next morning to an incoming message from the station OS. Brian Larson had found the missing Firebreather, her hull breached and her pen abandoned. He'd salvaged the debris and had begun scanning the immediate area for bodies.

"Bodies." Craig scratched the matted hair on his chest and padded across the cabin to start the coffee, shaking his head. "Why the hell would they put up a fight?"

"You don't usually?"

He blinked, visibly replayed both lines of dialogue in his head, then backtracked so far he'd have been outside the ship had he been actually moving. "With what? Confederation law specifically states, all weapons are to remain in the hands of the military. What?" he demanded when Torin raised a brow.

"While we circled the station looking for a lock, I saw at least seven ships armed with salvaged weapons. They weren't obvious, but they were unmistakable if you know what to look for. These ships wouldn't be able to sell back to the military or any reputable recycling yard without being brought up on charges, but I'm betting someone on this station, on any salvage station, is willing to act as a middleman, providing legal tags for a price and buying the tagged salvage back."

"Torin…"

"You wondered why the Firebreather put up a fight, so you knew they were armed."

He stared at her for a long moment then he smiled. "I keep forgetting you're no drongo. Smarter than you look."

"You keep forgetting," she told him levelly, not responding to the smile, "that we're in this together now."

"I'm sorry." Craig drew in a deep breath and exhaled quickly. "We're big on minding our own bizzo, us."

She thought back to crossing the station's market, the clear division between us and them. Between us and her. "I'm part of that we now."

"I know. Old habits."

"Get over them."

This was an entirely different smile. "Yes, Gunnery Sergeant."

What the hell. She could stay mad, or she could recognize she'd be sharing a small space with this person-that she wanted to share a small space with this person-for the foreseeable future. "What did I tell you about calling me that out of bed?"

He laughed then, a little relieved, a little turned on, and got the mugs out of storage. "So I guess the question is, what the fuk did they find that was worth dying for?"

Torin stretched out on the bunk and ran possible scenarios in her head.

"Torin?"

She glanced up at him. "What the fuk did they find that was worth keeping away from pirates?"

Craig poured both mugs of coffee before asking, "Isn't that the same question?"

"Not quite."