A truth of Valor

TEN

*Alamber?* "Hear he's following you with his kayt in his hand." *He's di'Taykan. And young. Are you jealous?*

"No." *Then why the hell…*

"Torin." With all the other things fighting to be said, asking her about Alamber had seemed the least weighted. In retrospect, Craig realized that might not have been the best idea he'd ever had. He'd never heard Torin sound so thrown. "I just… there's just…" Fuk it, start over. He glanced over his shoulder into the pod, but Nadayki was still bent over the seal, muttering Taykan profanity, hair in constant movement, concentrating so hard on cracking the code he'd be unlikely to notice H'san opera let alone a little mumbling. "I knew you'd come."

Craig actually heard her draw in a breath through the open link. Could see her straightening her shoulders and pulling her shit together because Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr didn't do mushy. *Are you okay?*

Loaded question. "Am now." *What…* Another breath and a clear decision to move away from the personal in the pause.*Do you think Nadayki will make the deadline?*

No surprise she remembered the kid's name. "Yeah." *Damn. Okay, it's 0653 station time. That gives us nine hours and forty-three minutes to get you to safety and blow the armory.*

"Six hours and forty-three minutes." *What?*

"Cho wants it open earlier." Not the time to go into the kid's ego cutting yet another hour off their time. When he heard Torin repeating the new information, he realized she hadn't come alone. If she'd brought Pedro into this mess… the man had kids for fuksake. "Torin, who's with you?" *Ressk, Werst, and Binti Mashona.*

She'd called in the Marines. Big surprise. All three of them had climbed out of that hellhole of a prison with her, and all three of them would follow her right back in if she asked them to. If he had reason to be jealous of anything… of anyone…

"You have a plan?" *We have a goal. Get you to safety and blow the armory with as little loss of life as possible.*

That was a little less detail than he'd hoped for. *Maybe…* Something had clearly just occurred to her.*Vrijheid was built to survive explosions-I've never seen so many decompression doors on a station. Plus there's emergency fracture lines built into the docking bay. If we blow the armory in the storage pod, between the pod and the design, the station might just blow into its component parts. I'm sure that's the only reason Big Bill allowed it on board. Wait…*

Where was he going to go? Nadayki had stopped swearing and started whining. Even without knowing the language, Craig would bet that every other sentence started with: It's not my fault. A better man might have felt sorry for the kid; as good as he was, it was obvious Nadayki was in over his head and afraid he wasn't going to finish in the eleven hours his ego had locked him into. *Ressk ran the numbers.* And Torin didn't sound too happy about them.*Even at minimum potential, if we blow inside, the odds are uncomfortably high that we lose the station. We have to get the armory outside and… what?* The question had clearly not been to him.*And far enough away that the debris will disperse beyond the point where multiple impacts will chop the station into pieces. Do you know how they moved it from the Heart into the pod?*

"No." *All right. If you find out, get back to me. We'll try and work it from this end.*

He thought for a moment, that was it. *Craig…*

She said his name like it held a hundred questions but finished up an answer short. "I know. You know…?" *Yes.* Even through the implant, he could hear how close that tiny bit of personal connection came to cracking her composure. Knew she'd let him hear it. It wasn't necessary; he'd seen how much she wanted him safe, but under the circumstances he'd take the little extra to hold on to.*We can't stay connected. When Ressk pulled our codes out, he noticed the log shows random signal sweeps. Big Bill doesn't seem to like the idea of anyone trying to beat the system. Long odds there'll be one in the next six hours, but let's not make it easy for him.* "Deal." Connection wasn't necessary. It was enough to know she was there, on the station. That she'd come for him. *Ping me when you've got something. I'll do the same.*

"Yeah, okay."

He smiled as the extended pause reminded him of sitting at the table in Pedro's kitchen, hearing Helena and her current crush muttering, You pop off. No, you pop off first. And wouldn't Torin appreciate being compared to a fourteen year old.

The smile faded when the implant pinged the connection closed. "All right." Torin took a deep breath and turned to face her team. Ressk and Mashona had their eyes locked on their slates. Werst had stretched out on the bunk, eyes closed. All three of them pretending they hadn't been trying to hear as much of her side of the conversation with Craig as possible. Torin appreciated the effort, but she'd needed Ressk during the conversation and could have gone into the Star's additional threeby or into the head if she'd required privacy. "Listen up, people; we figure out how to get the armory off the station. We work everything else from that."

Ressk waved his slate, although in the close confines of the Star's cabin the extra effort to get her attention wasn't necessary. "We can pull up the schematics and work them from here, Gunny, if you want to head down to the docks and check things out."

"Why would I do that? Where I refers to the person Big Bill just hired to teach his free merchants how not to blow holes in the bulkheads."

"This job you're not doing," Mashona began. Frowned. Began again. "This job we're not doing, right? He's hired all of us?"

"Technically," Torin told them, "he's hired me. I've hired you lot."

"How much are you not paying us?" Werst wondered, sitting up.

"Exactly what you're worth."

"I need next week off."

Torin sighed, sagging back until her shoulder blades hit the bulkhead. "Mashona, you were explaining why the person who's paying Werst more than he's worth would head down to the docks."

"You can't start doing the job you're not doing until the armory's open. Therefore, you'd like it to be open." Mashona shrugged. "Hatches are locked, you can't send one of us down, so it makes sense that you'd personally check on their progress. While that you is being impatient about the wait, the you that's here to take care of business can spend some time with Ryder."

"I don't…" Except she did. They were on the same damned station and that wasn't enough. She'd just spoken to him and that wasn't enough. If she'd been able to touch him, that would've helped convince her that he was… not all right, it was obvious he wasn't all right, but that he didn't blame her for what happened to him.

Most of her adult life had been spent at war, and now she was out, it seemed like that violence had followed her. Rationally, she knew what had happened to Craig had nothing to do with her, and guilt over it was self-indulgent bullshit she had no time for, particularly not given their new shortened schedule. Rationally, she knew that if Craig hadn't been with her when he was taken, there'd be no one coming to pull his ass out of the fire now.

Rational had nothing to do with the way she'd felt when she saw him.

Or heard his voice.

But rational was what would destroy the armory and get them all off of Vrijheid in one piece.

"While Ressk pulls the schematics up, tell me about Cho and his crew."

Werst and Mashona shared a look Torin didn't care to examine too closely, then Mashona said, "Captain because it's his ship. Mackenzie Cho is ex-Navy. Made lieutenant before they court-martialed him for abuse of power."

"There's about fifteen different versions of what he actually did," Werst put in. "Doubt that any of them are accurate, but they all agree that Marines died. He's got two Krai on crew. Most of the Krai here-on station and on the ships-are here for the same thing, eating sentient species, but that said, Huirre's apparently just a guy with no military training, used to fly cargo ships smuggling body parts, and Krisk never willingly leaves the engine room."

"Three di'Taykan." Mashona flipped fingers up. "Dysun, Almon, and Nadayki di'Berinango."

"Nine letters in their family name?" Torin frowned. Taykan society was hierarchical. The more letters in the family name, the lower the class. Alamber was a di'Cikeys; six letters, solidly working class, and making up a high percentage of the di'Taykan in the Corps. Prodded by Parliament, the Taykan were working toward equalizing their society based on merit and more or less succeeding on the colony planets.

"Unfortunately, the poor bastards come from home world," Mashona continued as though she'd been following Torin's line of thought. "With nine letters stacked against them, I'm amazed they even got off the ground. By all accounts, Nadayki, the youngest, is some smart. Ressk-level smart. And, like you said, Gunny, he does what Ressk does."

Ressk snorted.

"Cho has Nadayki breaking the seal on the armory, so he could be Ressk-level smart," Torin pointed out. "But he'd have had to fight for any opportunity to prove that at home."

"Could've joined up," Ressk muttered, pulling the big screen up from the Star's board.

"Crime's easier. Are they siblings?"

Mashona shook her head. "No. Thytrins. Almon, the oldest, he's a big guy and apparently pretty damned protective of the kid. Competent street fighter; no training but if he fights, he doesn't tend to lose. Only thing I heard about Dysun was that she took to pirating like the H'san took to cheese. She's on the bridge of the Heart doing pretty much everything Huirre doesn't."

"I got told she's likely to have her own ship someday." Arms folded, Werst met Torin's gaze. "If she survives. They're none of them too serley old, Gunny."

Torin thought of Alamber and ran both hands back through her hair. "And Nat?"

"Okay, she's old. Well, not young anyway, not by Human standards," Mashona amended. "When Cho showed up looking for a crew, she was the first to sign with him. There's a lot of rumors about what she used to do but I'm guessing ninety-nine percent of them are bullshit. Me and Werst compared stories and think she was probably quartermaster corps back in the day and cashiered out for black marketeering."

"And the other one?" Torin asked. "The Human male I saw with her?"

With the schematics hanging in the air over the board, Ressk spun the chair and joined the conversation. "That's Doc."

"Definitely ex something," Mashona continued, "but no one agrees on ex what. Everyone figures the military broke him, but no one's willing to risk getting caught talking about him because he's completely bugfuk. Disturb his calm, and he'll hurt you. Someone with more balls than brains challenged him to a fight once. At the end, Doc gouged his eyes out and dropped them on the body."

"Showy," Werst snorted. "But effective."

"Good thing I'm not actually taking Big Bill's job," Torin muttered.

The three ex-Marines murmured varying agreements. He'd watched Dysun stagger back to the Heart just after Torin had pinged off, and now, watching Huirre cross from the air lock to the storage pod, Craig wondered if the two things were connected. Had Dysun brought news in from the station? News about Torin? Had someone finally realized he was the bearded man in the vids from the prison planet?

Then he wondered how true all those stories were. Once a Krai tastes your flesh, they'll do anything to get more of it. He straightened, rolled his shoulders to loosen stiff muscles. If Huirre wanted more, Craig would start him off with a mouthful of fist.

"Captain says you're to pull some rack time."

Braced for a fight, that wasn't the opening line Craig had expected.

"Oh, fukking great," Huirre sighed. "I eat your toe, you get all weird around me. Well, pull your shit together, and go grab a few hours sleep."

Pulling his shit together sounded like a good idea. So did sleep. Craig dug the heel of his hands into his eyes. "The captain told me to watch that exit to the station, let him know immediately if Big Bill returned."

"And he sent me here to replace you, you serley chrika." Holding the edge of the hatch, Huirre leaned into the pod. "Not done yet?"

"Asshole," Craig heard Nadayki mutter. "Ryder was talking to himself."

When Huirre leaned back out to snort a wordless request for an explanation, Craig shrugged. "Trying not to fall asleep." He rolled his shoulders again, cracking his upper back. "He's lucky I didn't sing."

"Yeah, well he's lucky about a lot of things."

Craig heard boots ring against the deck then Nadayki stood in the open hatch, scowling down at the Krai, the ends of his hair flicking back and forth in short, jerky arcs. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Hurrie ignored the question. "You going to get that thing open in time?" His nose ridges flared and closed, slowly, deliberately, and-although Craig realized his perceptions might be colored by lack of sleep-he suddenly sounded dangerous. "Cap'll pitch a fit if you promise and don't deliver. You don't want to piss him off, do you?"

Nadayki's eyes darkened. "If the captain does anything to keep me from working, he'll never get through this seal. Not when I'm the only one who understands the groundwork I've laid."

"Was that a threat, kid?"

"No." Nadayki's chin rose, but his hair flattened. Mixed messages. "It's a simple if/then statement. If he hurts me because I haven't finished, then I can't finish. Cause and effect."

"Yeah?" Huirre flexed his toes against the deck. "Does it effect you if he hurts one of your thytrin to motivate you?"

"Affect," Nadayki snapped. Craig had to suppress a completely inappropriate desire to laugh. "And no. If he hurts one of my thytrin, I won't finish." This, he was sure of. His hair started moving again.

"If you're not going to finish," Huirre pointed out thoughtfully, "he might as well hurt you."

"What?" Nadayki's hair stopped moving again.

Craig sighed. "Huirre's fukking with you, kid. Getting you to waste time. Then he tells the captain, and he's golden while you catch shit."

Huirre snickered. "You're no fun at all. Tasty, but no fun."

Eyes darkening, Nadayki frowned, then smirked in triumph. "You hate that I'm more important right now than you!"

"Moment of glory. Enjoy it." The Krai dipped a hand into his pocket and held it out, a stim on the tip of one finger. "Captain wants you to take this."

"I don't need a…"

"Yeah, you do, kid." Back against the bulkhead, Craig worked himself up onto his right foot, keeping his weight off the left until absolutely necessary. "You get tired, you'll make mistakes. You make a big enough mistake, we all die. Bottom line, that's what the armory blowing up means. We all die. I don't want to die. You don't want to die. Take the stim."

"Stop calling me kid!" But he took the stim.

Huirre picked up one of the takeout boxes with his left foot and tossed it up into his hand. He sniffed the stained interior and took a bite. "Chrick. Just like my jernil used to make. Now get lost, Ryder. And you might want to fukking shower. You stink."

Considering he was still breaking out in a sweat every time he moved his foot, Craig wasn't surprised. He hadn't thought of showering until Huirre mentioned it, but right now, there was only one thing he wanted to do more than stand under hot water. Torin's implant could reach dirtside to a ship in orbit. It could reach him in the Heart.

He took a careful step away, weight on his left heel, and remembered Torin had wanted him to check on how they'd moved the armory into the pod. The deck was smooth. They had to have shifted the armory from the ship's cargo bay doors in through the big decompression doors-it was too gods damned big to get it to the storage pod any other way-but they hadn't moved it on rails.

"Hey, Huirre." He nodded back toward the pod. "You know how they got that thing in here?"

"The armory? Yeah."

Craig waited.

Huirre snickered. "I'm not going to tell you. Ask the captain. Or Almon. He could beat you up again before he fuks you." He took another bite of the box. "I don't give a shit about Doc's pirate guidelines. Far as I'm concerned, you're not crew until you're in deep enough you can't screw us over with the Wardens. Until then, you're walking snack food." After showering, Torin felt a lot more Human. They still had ice in the hopper, and the Star had a top-of-the-line recycling system; they'd have plenty of water to get them through the next…

She glanced at her slate.

… five hours and seventeen minutes. Given what Big Bill charged for water-up front-that was no small thing.

The station schematics had proved without a doubt the armory had come through the ore dock's decompression doors-the armory was just too big to have gotten onto the station any other way. But how had they maneuvered it from the doors to the storage pod? That was the question. The schematics showed nothing capable of maneuvering that kind of…

Her implant didn't so much ping as ring loudly enough she felt her jaw vibrate. *Good morning, Gunnery Sergeant. I hope I'm not waking you.*

Torin had survived under fire more times than Big Bill had charged his fifteen percent. No way was she going to show that the son of a bitch had startled her. "I'm up." *Good. Meet me at the old smelter in thirty. I'll send a route to your slate.* The ping when he broke the connection was at a volume significantly closer to the default.

Torin fought the urge to beat her head against the bulkhead, reached for clean clothes instead, and began dragging them on. She couldn't believe she'd forgotten that Big Bill had her codes. Technically, he was her employer, so she'd had no good reason to refuse when he'd asked. Actually, she'd had any number of good reasons, but none she could give him.

She paused, one arm through her shirt. Big Bill's implant codes didn't go into the system. As far as the station sysop was concerned, that call hadn't happened. Therefore, her codes hadn't been put into the system and she could still contact Craig without putting him in danger.

"Probably," Ressk agreed as she put her boots on. "I'll go in and check. Easy enough to take them out now anyway."

"Easy enough?"

"I set it up as a link to the communications boards." He waved his slate. "Full access from here."

"Can you eavesdrop on Big Bill's implant?"

"Not yet. But I'm working on it."

"Good." Second boot on, she took a moment to lay her head on her knees and get her shit together. "I'm a soldier," she muttered. "I fukking suck at this undercover shit."

"You're doing okay so far, Gunny."

She straightened then and glared across the cabin at Ressk. "Just okay?" That pretty much proved her point.

He grinned. "I'm sure you'd be happier if someone was shooting at us." He held out his hand, a familiar white dot on his palm. "Mashona found stims in the first aid kit. Look like ours-the Corps'-don't they?"

They did. She crossed the cabin and lifted the tiny white pill on her fingertip. "How many?"

"Two. I took the other one. Mashona and Werst'll have to do it the old-fashioned way. They've fought a war on less sleep."

"War." Torin swallowed a mouthful of saliva caused by the familiar, bitter taste of the stim. She shrugged into her tunic, checked that Presit's camera was secured, and headed for the air lock. "War has rules. Whatever this is, it could use some rules."

"Harder to break an arbitrary decision," Ressk agreed as the lock cycled closed.

Five hours and six minutes. They needed a plan.

The route Big Bill had sent to her slate would have taken her more than thirty minutes even if she'd left the ship immediately after receiving it. With only nineteen minutes remaining, she took a short cut. First up to the Hub's mezzanine level, moving quickly through the public areas-senior NCOs did not run in order to reach their destination on time. At least not where they could be seen. Once through a locked hatch, Torin picked up the pace, racing down the pale gray corridor that led to the staff quarters, left at the t-junction, then past twenty identical darker gray hatches…

"Hey! What the fuk are you doing up here?"

Torin ignored him, opened the maintenance access she'd been aiming for, and stepped into the darkness, closing the access behind her. Using her slate as a light, she hooked two fingers under a bit of gray plastic conduit, and, having given it as much time as she could spare to respond, pushed herself down toward the smelter level-for representational rather than gravitational values of the word down. Like the verticals, the maintenance shafts were kept at zero G-one of the reasons so many maintenance workers were Krai. The Krai, as a species, suffered no nausea, no disorientation; without gravity, they were able to use both hands and feet to double their efficiency.

She skimmed her free hand along the plastic cables.

One deck. Two. Three.

Snapping her slate back on her belt, Torin snagged another conduit to stop her descent and flipped the access panel open with her free hand. She swung her feet out onto the deck, twisting sideways to clear her shoulders as gravity took over and her weight pulled her clear.

Six seconds to twitch everything into place, and she walked around the corner to the smelter with a minute and a half to spare.

The Grr brothers noticed her first, turning slowly, nose ridges flared, hands out from their sides. The position was half reassurance that they weren't reaching for weapons, half loosening up for a fight. The swelling had mostly gone down, and although the mottling made it difficult to tell for certain, it looked as though the bruises had begun to darken.

Bruises made her think of Craig and the evidence of violence still marking his face.

Both sets of nose ridges slammed shut. Torin fought to get her expression under control before she faced Big Bill.

He started to turn as she passed his bodyguards, frowned when he saw her, then glanced back in the direction he'd expected her to arrive from.

Torin fell into parade rest and waited, counting the seconds they were wasting. She'd counted to six when Big Bill said, "I see you found your own way."

It wasn't a question, so she didn't answer it.

His slate chirped.

One of the Grr brothers snorted.

Big Bill had intended her to arrive late, putting her on the defensive, allowing him to give her shit or grant clemency depending on his mood. Torin kept her expression neutral. Compared to General Morris, he was a complete amateur.

"Why didn't you use the route I sent you?"

When she looked directly at him, his gaze slid off hers-not so obviously it seemed deliberate but consistently enough Torin knew it had to be. "You expected me in thirty."

"And you always do what's expected of you?" His tone sounded more speculative than curious, no doubt wondering how he could use that information.

"It's part of the job."

And the camouflage.

"Well, as you're here so promptly, let's use the time you saved and have a look at the smelter. Boys, open the hatch. It's a community arena now," he added as the Grr brothers hurried to obey. "Used for courts and fights and the like, but I thought you might use it as a training facility."

The small decompression hatch led into a large rectangular area, with high ceilings and nearly as much floor space as the central part of the Hub but empty except for black metal bleachers around the bulkheads. At first, Torin thought the walls had been allowed to rust. A moment later, she realized they'd been painted a dark red-brown-the shade somewhere between rust and dried blood. A double set of glossy black decompression doors broke up the seating at ninety degrees from her zero. Patches rough welded into the floor showed where large machinery had been removed.

She doubted there was much difference between the courts and the fights.

There was no visible plastic. That was less comforting than she'd expected it would be.

"The seats can come out if you don't need them, or they can be rearranged into more useful configurations." Big Bill slapped a meaty palm against the bulkhead. "Industrial reinforcing-it's the best place on Vrijheid to put a range even with targets designed to absorb the impact."

Not everyone would hit the target. On military stations, they built a barrier designed to neutralize the rounds from a KC-7 and set the targets in that. As Torin enjoyed the thought of pirates shooting holes in their own station, she didn't bother correcting the flaw in Big Bill's design.

"For the larger weapons, we may need to set up something on the planet. Although it's not like the big stuff needs precision shooting, right?"

He was waiting for a response. "Just needs to be pointed in the right direction," she agreed. Pirates blowing themselves to hell with heavy ordinance would also be celebrated. She scuffed her sole against one of the welds, frowned at the big double hatch, and laid out the station schematics in her head. "The smelter machinery; how did you get it out?"

"Why?"

Torin gave him her best that question is too stupid to require a facial expression. "We'll need to move some large equipment back in."

"Of course." Big Bill moved out into the center space. "The double hatch leads to the ore dock. We cut the gravity in both sections, opened the hatches, ran leads in from the runners in the ore dock and floated them out. Then we cleared the ore dock by putting a couple of crews in HE suits and shoving the machinery-stripped of anything useful, of course-out the big exterior hatch the ore carriers used. The crews that did the work got to grapple the scrap in and sell the metal to my recycling contacts. You'll merely need to reverse the process."

Or repeat the process to get the armory off the station.

Torin nodded. "It's a plan." She needed to get the hell back to the Star, but Big Bill wasn't finished.

"It's more than a plan, Gunnery Sergeant, it's a beginning." He faced her, arms spread. "The Navy can shoot at individual ships the Wardens designate pirate-bureaucracy runs slower than a H'san in the sun, so no ships have yet been designated, but it's only a matter of time before the Wardens get their opposable digits out of their anal passages and convince Parliament to declare the free merchants enemies of the Confederation. Ships will therefore only take us so far. But, if we take over stations, who's to say who's a free merchant and who's part of the station crew? If we control stations, the government will have to talk to us. We can form a Free Merchant Alliance." His voice bounced back off the metal surfaces, layering on a patina of aural crazy. "When we control enough stations, we'll sue for representation in Parliament."

Torin stared at him. There were holes in his plan a battle cruiser could slide through, but the son of a bitch thought big, she'd give him that. "And all you get from this…"

"Is fifteen percent."

When Torin raised a brow, he smiled. She glanced over at the Grr brothers who looked more bored than impressed by the rhetoric. If she had to guess, she'd say they'd heard it before.

"Problem." She made it sound like a single problem, not a problem with the crazy-ass concept in general. "Even with the armory on the station, doesn't Cho control most of the weapons?"

"Captain Cho will, of course, be one of the leaders of the Alliance, and he'll sell the weapons he and his crew don't personally need."

"To people you've chosen."

"To the people who will give him the best price." Smiling, Big Bill beckoned her closer. When she was an arm's length away, he said, "I'd like you to have the training facility ready to use the moment the Free Merchants have weapons in their hands, but the ore dock is off-limits until the armory is open, so that'll limit any large-scale changes." With his volume dialed back to conversational levels, he might have been discussing sweeping out the Hub instead of the first steps toward violently commandeering stations and holding their inhabitants hostage. "It's eight fifty-three now…"

Four hours and thirty-three minutes until Craig said Nadayki would have the armory open.

"… I'd like to see a design by 1130," Big Bill continued, unaware of the change Cho had made in his schedule. "Include a list of everything you'll need to make it happen-material, tools, workers-and once I've approved it, you can begin."

"Then I'd better get started." She pivoted on one heel and headed for the hatch, roughing out a plan that would not end with the Free Merchant Alliance gaining representation in Parliament or Big Bill using the weapons in the armory to gain fifteen percent of anything. As Torin stepped onto the Star, Werst handed her a mug of coffee. "We cut the gravity, open the exterior decompression doors, use the overhead runners to get the armory out of the storage pod and out the doors, grapple it, use the Star to tow it away from the station, blow it up, and fold before any of the pirates come after us, illegal weapons blazing?"

Torin nodded. "Bare bones."

"What about Ryder?" Mashona asked, breaking the seal on a packet of eggs.

Torin gripped the mug tighter, pulling at the bonded knuckle. "I said, bare bones." With no time to waste, she'd filled them in while returning to the ship. Assuming Big Bill was watching, or would be watching at least fifteen percent of the time, she'd tried to look like she'd already begun to design a training facility for thieves and murderers. Ressk's tracking program kept her face turned away from surveillance cameras.

"Okay, one and zeros." Ressk cracked his toes and took a long swallow of sah. "Moving training equipment would be a great cover. Any chance of Big Bill changing his mind about waiting until the armory's open?"

"No." When it looked like he was going to pursue it further, Torin raised a hand and cut him off. "You've cracked the station sysop, can't you shut down the gravity and open the exterior hatch from your slate?"

"I'm in Communications, Gunny."

"Not what I asked you."

He straightened, responding to her tone. "Yes, I can shut down the gravity and open the big hatch from the slate. But it'll take time to find the right subroutines and more time to subvert them."

"How much time?"

His nose ridges opened and closed. "Probably more than we have."

Torin narrowed her eyes. "You hacked through ship security every time Sh'quo Company was deployed."

"Yeah. But, Gunny…"

"Are you telling me Big Bill Ponner is more paranoid than the Navy with Marines on board?"

"Gunny, he created a digital history that convinced everyone who mattered that Vrijheid was destroyed in the war. He's either written or adapted every program running on this station. I'm telling you he's better than the Navy."

"Better than the Navy doesn't make him better than you."

"Well, no, but…

"No buts. Get to work; we need the gravity off and the hatch open." Torin dropped into the pilot's chair and set her mug on the edge of the board. "All right, before we can open the ore docks to vacuum, we have to get Nadayki and Craig away from the pod. I'll talk to Craig." She frowned. "There's no blast wave in vacuum. Does that change the result if we blow the armory in the pod?"

"Not enough. Atmosphere or no atmosphere, the pod's not designed to contain large chunks of shrapnel. Pieces of the armory will go through the pod and then the station like cheese through a H'san. We have to get it, on an absolute minimum, thirty kilometers away and even then the station will take damage."

Every mission came with collateral damage. The brass tried to pretend it didn't, but the people on the front lines knew better.

"Let's hope the interior decompression hatches work as planned, then. You two…" Torin spun the chair to face Werst and Mashona at the table. "Get down to the Hub and watch for Big Bill. We can't risk him going to the ore docks and finding out he's got three hours' less time."

"Why would they tell him?" Mashona asked, shoving the last spoonful of scrambled egg into her mouth and shoving the tray in the recycler.

"From what I saw of Nadayki, if asked, he's likely to brag about it."

Werst emptied his mug. "Would it matter?"

"Big Bill believes nothing will happen until 1630. If he learns the armory's due to open at 1330, our cover story tightens up. Without those three extra hours, we blow our cover with Big Bill or we lose the armory. Either way, we're screwed."

"Or Cho is. Cho's betraying him," Werst expanded off Torin's look. "Pulling weapons out early."

"If Big Bill finds out before the armory's open, Cho'll argue he was just being gung ho. Wanted to surprise Big Bill with how efficient he is." Pain from her injured knuckle reminded her to loosen her fist. "If we control the information, we can aim and fire it when it'll do us the most good, so we have to keep Big Bill…"

"From the docking bay." Werst laid his palm against the air lock's inner panel. "Check."

"And if we see him?" Mashona asked, falling in beside Werst.

"Ping me." So far, the plan had more variables than actual points of reference. A few more variables couldn't hurt. "Let's mix things up a bit. Drop a few subtle rumors about Cho while you're out there."

"About how this big mystery haul of his is big enough to finally piss off the Wardens and have them kick the Navy into action, putting the station and everyone on it in danger?"

"That's good."

Mashona smirked. "More than just a pretty face, Gunny." Huirre and Nadayki were at the storage pod; Krisk apparently never left the ship. Cho wasn't going any farther from the armory than the Heart. Craig suspected he wasn't standing at Nadayki's shoulder only because he didn't want his crew to think he had nothing better to do-even though until the armory was open, he had nothing better to do. Dysun had returned not long after Almon, but Nat and Doc were still out.

With half the crew gone, the ship felt empty.

Craig didn't much like the ship having a feel. It smacked of familiarity. Of becoming a part of something he wanted no part of.

Sitting on a bench outside the showers, he nearly fell on his face while carefully easing the overalls past his injured foot. Fuk, he was tired. As he bent to pull the dressing off-Marines used sealant alone in the field-small spikes tapped into his temples and, although Doc had bonded the ribs Almon had cracked, breathing became less an automatic function and more a painful chore.

But Torin was here. On the station.

It was almost over. *Craig. We know how they got the armory in-they cut the gravity, floated it out of the Heart and in through the exterior hatch. We'll take it out the same way.*

"Great." He stepped over the lip into the shower and pressed hot/ strong. "You can take me out with it."

He thought for a moment the hot water pounding down on his head and shoulders had drowned out her reply. Impossible given that the implant was jacked directly into his ear. *Are you up to it?*

He didn't know where his suit was, and he very much doubted Cho would just hand it over. Or allow him to unhook a suit from the Heart. "Are you serious?" *Easier to get you out the exterior hatch than through the station. Craig, are you up to it?*

She didn't think he was, or she wouldn't have asked again. But she'd take his word for it, or she wouldn't have asked the first time. One of the first things he'd learned about Torin was that when she asked a question, she wanted an actual answer to it.

Stepping out from the wall, changing the angle so the water could pound at the base of his spine, he took inventory. Everything hurt. But if he could walk out to the fukking storage pod right after Huirre ate his toe, he could do what he had to in order to get the hell away from the Heart.

"Yeah, I'm up to it." *Do you have access to a suit?*

"Not right now, I'm in the shower. Naked. Soapy." Actually, he hadn't even started soaping. So as not to be telling a lie, he pushed a little into his palm and began to carefully rub it around the bruising. *Ressk says the schematics show a suit locker on the ore dock, by the head.* It sounded as though she was smiling and trying not to. He really hoped it was because she was thinking of him naked and not because of Ressk. That would just be… wrong.

"Yeah, I saw the hookups. No suits, though." *Shit.*

"At least some of the stations are live. Maybe I can get a couple suits out there." *How?*

"Captain Cho already thinks Big Bill is up to something. I'll use that." *Don't take any unnecessary risks. I need to know you're…*

"Safe?" He regretted the word the moment it left his mouth. Okay, maybe not the word itself but the tone, the sarcasm, that he regretted. "Sorry, I'm tired. It's been a long day." *Pain is tiring. Regrowing a toe requires only a small sleeve.* Worst of it was, she probably thought she was being comforting. Loss of body parts was no big deal in the Corps. Bam! Lose your head? Just regrow it. Pain? Pain was an inconvenience. Suck it up, Marine. You've got a job to do. Craig knew he was being unfair; he'd seen Torin's reaction, but he was just too tired to care. Losing a body part, even a small insignificant one, might not be a big deal to Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr, but it was to him.

"Trust me, I won't provoke the captain." *Good.* Her intent to make Cho bleed seeped out around the edges of the word. Craig wasn't one hundred percent positive that if it came to it, he'd be able to stop her. He wasn't one hundred percent positive he wanted to.*Ping me when you've got at least one HE suit moved out into the ore dock. Make it sooner rather than later.* She took it for granted he'd succeed. He liked that. Braced against the tiles, he bent to wash his legs. "You have a time frame?" *Depends on Ressk.*

"He's got to take control of the program." *Programs. Gravity, hatches, and the runners-the cables that'll help control the armory.* "Zero G; it won't weigh anything." *It'll still mass one fuk of a lot.*

"Right." They were talking just to hear each other now. Since he knew it, Craig assumed Torin knew it, too. "Well, give me a heads-up and I'll go out with the armory. While you're getting the grapples on it, I'll hit Promise's air lock and be inside before they even notice I'm gone."

This new silence felt different.

"Torin?" *I'm not on Promise. I'm on Pedro's Second Star."

"God fukking damn it, Torin!" So much for her just calling in the Marines. And how nice she didn't mention it until now. "Pedro has kids!" *Pedro's not with us.* Her voice gave nothing away. Absolutely nothing. She never pulled that shit on him, never, so if the situation was so bad she couldn't not… Craig shifted into a more stable position as she continued.*I bought the Star from him, from the family, because the Promise was too badly damaged to use.*

"What? Damaged?" *Cho shot the shit out of it when he took you.*

His skin pebbled as a chill slid down his spine. Torin wasn't hiding how she felt about the Promise-or Cho's part in it at least. And she'd clearly gone back to the station if she had Pedro's Star. What would Torin have done when…

"You tried to turn the salvage operators into a ragtag battle fleet, didn't you? I could have told you that wouldn't work." *You weren't there.*

"They're not Marines, Torin," he said gently, turning the water off and reaching for a towel. "You can't feel betrayed because they didn't act like Marines." *Not the time to talk about it.*

"Granted." He added it to his mental list of thing they needed to talk about after the rescue. The list, not exactly short before he'd needed rescuing, had grown to the point where whatever this was between them needed to last for a good long time or they'd never get to everything. He crumbled the towel between his hands and sagged back against the bulkhead. "Torin, where the fuk is my ship?" *The Wardens have her. Evidence. The damage is external. Structural-not functional. I patched what I could in order to fold her back to the station…*

"You what? Never mind." Not a story he needed to hear now. Even thinking of the possibilities had begun to knock sharp edges onto the throbbing in his skull. "We're going to have to break her out, aren't we?" At the speed the Wardens worked, both he and Torin would be dead of old age before they were ready to release the Promise back into his hands. *I'll add it to the list.*

Not a big surprise to discover that Torin also had a list. Hers probably involved a lot more hitting and a lot less talking. *We need to break this off. Chance of random scans…*

"Right." *Three hours, forty-six minutes and it'll all be over. One way or another.*

Craig stared down at the place his toe had been and wished she hadn't added the qualifier. "Fukking hell, Cap, I have no idea where Doc is." Nat dropped into one of the eight chairs surrounding the big galley table and stared into a mug of coffee like she wasn't entirely certain what it was. "I'm not his fukking mother, am I?"

Cho folded his arms and leaned back against the counter. "How drunk are you?" he growled.

"Not very. I took a party pooper pill on the way back to the ship. Be sober as a C'tron any minute now."

"And while you were out there drinking, did you remember what I sent you out to do?"

"Sure." The fingertips on the hand she waved were stained with fresh blood. "Find out what Big Bill's up to without giving anything away. Shit, I couldn't do that without drinking because me being in a bar without drinking would raise suspicions you don't want raised. That last one, that was not the first party pooper pill I took and my stomach would like… oh, fuk." Nat set the mug carefully on the table, stood, walked to the sink and puked up a thin stream of colorless bile.

Barely maintaining a fingernail grip on his temper, Cho sidestepped farther from the sink as she splashed water into her mouth. "And?"

"And there's a lot more talk of that free merchant crap going on." Nat spat and straightened. "How we're going to change known space and won't they be sorry they were mean to us and boo fukking hoo." She downed a glass of water and belched. "High percentage of them talking that way. Too high to be random."

Now that was information he could extrapolate from. "The people Big Bill has lined up to buy our weapons are gathering."

"If I had to guess, I'd say, yeah."

Cho paced the length of the galley and back, trying to work out Big Bill's plans. He needed to compare the ships in dock to the ships on the list Big Bill had given him. "He's putting together a fleet…"

"Nope. From the sound of it, and given that gunnery sergeant is definitely on the payroll, I'd say he's putting together assault teams." Hissing through her teeth, Nat pulled her fingers out of her hair and wiped them on her hip. "What do you figure he's going to assault, Cap."

Frowning, Cho juggled the pieces. Smiled as they finally snapped into place. "Stations. Like this one was. Stations with no planetary government, so they're under the Wardens' jurisdiction. The Navy can't attack a station…"

"No way of separating the good guys from the bad guys." Nat nodded, returning to her chair and picking up her mug.

"So they have to negotiate." Cho leaned back against the counter, clutching the edge so tightly the plastic creaked. "It's exactly what I was going to do. But if Big Bill takes enough stations, he'll be negotiating from a position of power. And once he's established, he'll get rid of those ships who didn't sign with him."

"And we're not signing with him, right? But he said you'd have a place in the forefront of the revolution," Nat added before Cho could answer.

"His revolution." Cho curled his lip at the thought of being under Big Bill's command. "I don't like being told what to do."

"Okay, so we don't sign with him, but why would he turn us in?"

"Turn us in? To the law? No, he won't do that. Won't risk pissing off his captains. But if we continue to use this station-and he knows there's fuk all other stations we can use-he'll put a surcharge on ships that didn't play his game. We sign to serve under him, or we pay until he owns us anyway."

"That's…" Cho could all but see her ticking the list off in her head. "That sounds possible," she admitted at last. "But, Cap, odds are the armory's not holding the kind of weapons we can arm the ship with. In order to be of any use at all, they've got to be in someone's hands. Someone who gives us money for them. Big Bill's people'll give us the most money because that means he gets the most money. You're willing to make the hard choices, Cap, that's why we ride with you. And because of those choices the paydays have been good so far, but none of us are going to give up this kind of a payday now on the chance, however possible, that Big Bill might screw us down the line."

He should have known it would come down to the payout. He not only made the hard choices, but he was the only one who had any foresight. "If Big Bill controls the market, Big Bill controls the price."

Nat opened her mouth in the pause, then closed it again without speaking, indicating that he should go on.

"The whole concept of the free merchants…" Cho sketched quotes around the words. "… means more to Big Bill than money, so he has to get the weapons into the right hands. The weapons change everything. This is the one time Big Bill is not going for the immediate payoff." He cut Nat off with a raised hand. "Yes, he'll get his fifteen percent, the fukking universe would be imploding before he gave that up, but he'll get fifteen percent of one fuk of a lot more if his plan works. So Big Bill is screwing you out of part of your payoff because Big Bill is setting the prices."

"Okay, so…" She stared into her mug as if it might have the answers, then up at him as if it actually had. "In order to get the payoff we're entitled to, we need to set the prices."

"Yes." And because Nat had come to it herself, she'd sell it to the rest of the crew. As often as possible, Cho believed in giving orders he knew would be obeyed. Greased the way for those times the orders were less palatable.

"How?"

It all came back to the weapons. "We get the weapons off the station, out of the territory Big Bill controls-it's hard to take a stand when the person you're standing against can turn off the air-and we renegotiate based on how important we know the weapons are to Big Bill's long-term plans."

"Yeah, but if we set the prices, Big Bill can just suggest no one buys."

"He won't. The weapons change everything."

"Okay." She nodded slowly, forehead folding into well-defined lines. "I can see that. But we can't get the armory off the station with the gravity on. Big Bill controls the gravity."

"The armory doesn't matter."

Nat rolled her eyes and slapped both palms down on the table. "Damn it, Cap, I thought the armory was the whole fukking point!"

"The contents of the armory are the whole fukking point. When Nadayki gets the seal open and we have three hours Big Bill doesn't own to unload everything onto the Heart."

"So Big Bill's station, not the Heart, took the risk of Nadayki blowing the armory," Nat said slowly, "and we end up free and clear with a load of weapons."

It sounded good. Simple. Foolproof. Profitable. "And we renegotiate a better price. Our price, not Big Bill's."

"Why, Captain Cho," Nat grinned, bloodshot eyes gleaming, "that's practically piracy."

Nat made him feel good about command. Always had. She was never obsequious the way Huirre could be and she always, eventually, understood what he was doing and why. For the first time since that gunnery sergeant had clued him in to Big Bill's betrayal, Cho felt back in control.

The weapons were his, not Big Bill's.

He might sell them to Big Bill's people, he might not. His final decision would be based entirely on whether or not they could pay the price. That was what kept the system they had out here working.

Cho didn't begrudge Big Bill his fifteen percent-not of the weapons, not of the price he got for them-the canny bastard kept the station running, a safe haven in a universe that tried to choke a man with rules, but Big Bill had to learn he didn't control the other eighty-five per…

"Ryder." He managed to stop before slamming the salvage operator to the deck. His eyes were red, face was still bruised, his hair was wet… the man looked like shit. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Looking for you." He swayed in place and laid a palm against the bulkhead. "You think Big Bill's trying to screw you, right?"

"Go on." No point in denying it Cho realized, Ryder had been right there in the pod when Big Bill had tipped his hand.

"Okay, suppose Big Bill thinks that the hard part's done. The CSO seal is the hinky one; the Marine seal is straightforward in comparison. He convinced a government that this station didn't exist; surely he can get through a Marine seal. Why should he settle for fifteen percent when he can have the whole enchilada?"

"What the hell is an enchilada?"

"When he can have the whole thing," Ryder amended.

"Why do you think…?"

"Weapons change everything," Ryder interrupted flatly.

Cho's eyes widened. His own words, thrown back at him.

"All he has to do is open the exterior hatch," Ryder continued. "Any crew by the pod has sweet fuk all in the way of time to get to the air lock and into the ship. They're sucked into vacuum. Nadayki's brain is explosively decompressed pudding. Result-Big Bill's the only one with the mad skills to get the seal open. And you know what they say: possession is nine tenths, not fifteen percent."

"Fuk him!" Cho snarled. He could see Big Bill spreading his hands and smiling and saying exactly that.

"You can't stop him," Ryder pointed out, and kept going before Cho took off his whole fukking foot for being obvious. "But you can screw him in return. There's a suit hookup right by the storage pod. You put suits in it and they're just hanging there, charging behind closed doors, not giving anything away if Big Bill comes down. But, if the exterior hatch opens…"

"There's no time to get into a suit."

"Those are big heavy doors with a big heavy seal. There's not much time, but there's time."

"Could you do it?" Cho looked him up and down. Right at the moment, Ryder didn't look like he could get into a bunk without falling on his face, but before Almon had started in with his fists, Ryder's body had worn the marks of long hours suited up. "Could you get into a suit in time?"

"Hell, yeah! Why do you think I'm telling you? It's as likely to be my ass on the line as anyone's."

Cho thought for a moment while Ryder sagged against the wall. "Take two suits out and hook them up," he snapped at last, using his voice to jerk Ryder vertical. "One for you, one for Nadayki."

"Oh, no." He actually had the balls to wave a dismissive hand. Cho glared it back down to his side. "Huirre said he was relieving me, that I could get some sleep…"

"That was before you got useful. Nat's in the galley. Have her pull you a stim and, Ryder, if it comes to it, make sure Nadayki gets into a suit or as you float by, I'll let Almon use you for target practice." "No, Gunny," Ressk scrubbed a hand back over his scalp. "Big Bill's got code set up like he expects people to try and crack it. It'll throw alarms. Bastard doesn't trust anyone."

Torin sagged against the bulkhead. "So what you're saying is…"

"I need more time."

"Gunny." Werst's voice out of the comm panel. "Big Bill's heading across the Hub."

"Toward the docking bay?"

"There's really no way of telling where the hell he's going until he's gone too far for us to stop him."

"Right." She pushed herself up straight. "Delay him."

"Tell him you want to talk to him?"

"No. He won't wait. He'll expect me to find him." Given it was Werst and Mashona, Torin could think of only one solution. "Start a fight. Make it inclusive."