A truth of Valor

THREE

Torin knelt by the body of the dead Marine, cataloguing his visible injuries. Had she been able to download the stored medical data on his implant as well as receive the BFFM beacon, she'd have been able to list internal damages as well. As it was, she could record only what she could see. That was enough. All the bones in his hands and feet had been broken, the cartilage in his nose had been removed, and one eye had been punctured multiple times. No point in destroying both eyes-that would have kept him from seeing what was coming.

His torturer had known how to use fear.

His kneecaps had been twisted to the side. His genitals had been both bruised and burned. Given the purple-and-green discoloration covering his torso, the odds were good ribs had been cracked and then pressure had been applied to the damage.

Over the years, Torin had seen a lot of injuries-limbs lost, guts literally spilled-but nothing that provided evidence in flesh and bone of such deliberate brutality.

He had a crest tattooed on the bicep of his left arm: 3rd Division, 1st Re'carta, 4th Battalion, Sierra Company.

"Did you know him, then?"

Torin took a final recording, shifted her weight back, and stood. "He has a sergeant's implant. Given his apparent age, I assume he's been retired for more than a few years." Which wasn't exactly what Craig had asked. She hadn't served with him, but she knew him. Had stood beside him on the yellow line that first day at Ventris Station. Had sat beside him on a VTA dropping for dirt. Had lain beside him in the mud, hands steady on her KC-7 as he bitched about the weather. Torin sent a copy of the file to Promise's data storage. Just in case. "He didn't tell them what they wanted to know."

Craig rubbed at the reddened dent the plumbing hook-in from the HE suit had left on his hip. "You know that because…?"

"There's nothing here that would have killed him outright." She gestured with the slate. "He died of the cumulative effect of his injuries, so his death was unintentional. Also, they didn't destroy his ability to talk-his lips are split, but they didn't go after his teeth or his tongue although he's bitten through his tongue himself."

"Doesn't look like he carked it that long ago either." When Torin shifted her attention off her slate and onto him, he shrugged. "If he'd been in vacuum any length of time, he'd have dehydrated more."

"So, not left over from the battle."

"Battle?"

"The one that created the debris field."

"Fuk, no," he snorted. "That battle happened back before you enlisted."

A lifetime ago. "Where's the nearest Warden's office?"

"Torin…"

One hand on the sergeant's shoulder, she met Craig's gaze. "This one's mine."

"They won't…"

"Craig."

"Nearest Warden's office is on Sulun Station-Sulun's a recent di'Taykan expansion planet." He rattled off the coordinates, but when Torin raised a brow at him, he added, "It's a short fold."

"How short?"

"About a day and a half in Susumi." Craig gestured at the body and added in a tone so neutral it had to be deliberate. "He'll have to be secured in the pen."

Torin thought about Jan and Sirin laid out for viewing in the market. "You say that like you think I might object."

"He's a Marine."

"He's a dead Marine. I don't get sentimental about the dead."

Craig stared at her for a long moment. "You get angry," he said at last.

"Sometimes," she admitted.

He nodded although she wasn't entirely certain what he was acknowledging. "Well, the sergeant here's not going to get any fresher. Throw out one segment while I suit up again, would you."

With a last look at the body, Torin moved to the pilot's chair and called up the screen that deployed the salvage pen. She'd ridden in it-with the survivors of the recon team sent to Big Yellow-and even if the sergeant had still been in a position to care, he'd likely had rougher rides over the years.

"So who do you think dumped the poor bastard out here?" Craig asked. She could hear the creak of his HE suit going back on.

"I'm hoping pirates."

"Hoping?"

"I don't like the alternative." She didn't need to voice the alternative; Craig had been there for the reveal. If the gray plastic aliens had maintained an interstellar war for generations in order to use it as a social laboratory then they could easily torture a few individuals in order to provide more context. "The sergeant's spent a lot of the last few years in space. His feet have no calluses and there's a scar on his hip where a suit's rubbed." Glancing up as the segment began unfolding, Torin muttered, "They can come up with broccoli in a tube and yet they still can't design a plumbing hook-in that doesn't leave a mark."

Her fingers drummed against the inert trim of the control panel. One more unnecessary mark on the sergeant's body. This one placed by bad design rather than cruelty, but still.

Then she realized the only sounds she could hear, other than her fingers, were the distant booms and scrapes of the pen moving into position against the hull. "Craig?"

Half into his suit, he stood and stared down at the body like he was seeing it for the first time. Then he stepped over the sergeant's splayed legs, the suit's bright orange arms flapping around his waist, and reached past Torin to tap the control panel. His lips were pressed into a thin line, and a muscle jumped in his jaw.

Torin breathed shallowly through her mouth-the insides of HE suits worn as often as CSOs wore theirs emitted a distinctly pungent aroma-and waited. Ships the size of the Promise were too small for secrets. He'd tell her in time.

When Craig straightened, a man's face filled one of the screens. The image had light brown eyes, a broad nose, salt-and-pepper stubble, and an expression that suggested he didn't think much of having his image recorded. "Is this him?"

"Is this who?" Torin asked.

"The dead Marine."

She twisted and stared down at the body on the deck. The chin, at least, was the same. "Probably. Who is he?"

"Rogelio Page."

They found Page's ship, Fortune's Fancy, drifting by the far edge of the debris field, two sections of pen deployed, both half filled with scrap. Plastics in one, metal in the other.

Craig zoomed in on the trailing safety line. "They took him while he was securing the load. That line's been cut."

Torin could think of no good reason why a man might cut his own line although a few bad ones occurred to her. "Pirates?"

"Pirates would take the pen."

"Whoever took him didn't want what he had, they wanted something he knew."

Page's ship was smaller even than the Promise.

"If we tighten his salvage into one pen, power Fancy down, and deploy all our panels…" Craig's fingers danced over the screen; the complex mathematics of maneuvering unique parameters beyond Torin's current skill set, "… we can take ship, salvage, and Page to the Warden at Sulun. Dying's one thing," he said in answer to Torin's silent question. "What Page went through, that's not part of the accepted risk package. And you're right. Dealing with this kind of shit is what the Wardens do."

"So to sum up…" One Who Maintains Order at the Edge, rested long, golden-furred forearms on her desk and laced gleaming claws together, "… you believe that two Civilian Salvage Operators-Jan Garrett-Wong and di'Akusi Sirin-were killed for salvage they had gained possession of and another-Civilian Salvage Operator ex-Sergeant Rogelio Page-was tortured in order to elicit information and although you do not know if Civilian Salvage Operator ex-Sergeant Page had been in contact with either Civilian Salvage Operator Garrett-Wong or Civilian Salvage Operator Sirin…"

Craig shifted, and Torin closed her hand on his arm, shaking her head when he glanced her way. Experience had taught her that the Dornagain could not be hurried. Would not be hurried. Their obsessive attention to detail and insistence on considering every possible variable before coming to a decision made them the perfect civil servant. At least from the government's point of view.

"… you postulate that these terrible crimes were somehow connected." Highlights rippled slowly across her fur as she shook her head. "Your service in the Confederation's defense has perhaps made you paranoid, ex-Gunnery Sergeant Kerr."

To the Dornagain, titles and names were one and the same. Torin gritted her teeth and let it stand. Besides, being paranoid had been part of her job.

"Civilian Salvage Operator ex-Sergeant Page clearly had a falling out with someone, of that we can agree."

All Dornagain sounded vaguely patronizing. Torin reminded herself not to take it personally.

"But to extrapolate his unfortunate fate into something larger is distinctly premature. We do not yet have his post mortem…"

Page had been so lovingly brutalized the odds were good his torturer had left DNA behind.

"… or any forensic evidence from his ship or salvage that might connect this to the previous incident-which, I must remind you, did not occur in my jurisdiction."

It would have only muddied the waters to admit that the other murders hadn't been reported. Given the distances, it would take some time before the Wardens could compare notes across sectors.

"We are able to recognize coincidence," One Who Maintains Order at the Edge continued. "But I assure you, we will conduct a full investigation once all the evidence is in. Thank you for bringing this to the attention of the Wardens' office." Unlacing her claws, she tapped out a fast sequence against an active screen on her desk. "If you provide the pertinent data to my assistant, you will, of course, be compensated for the fold."

"Feel free to say I told you so."

Craig turned far enough to see Torin's profile. She didn't look particularly angry. If he had to say, she looked weary. "What about?"

Her snort had no force backing it. "The Wardens."

"I told you so."

"Fuk you." There wasn't a lot of force behind her laugh either, but at least she was laughing.

Leaning out over the railing, Craig swept a critical gaze over the station's central hub. He could smell chilies cooking although he couldn't nail where the smell came from. Not that it mattered; most Taykan food was hot enough to fry Human taste buds-ghost peppers had been an early Taykan import-and he'd be willing to bet he could get decent tucker anywhere on the station. "We've got a hookup paid for by the government until tomorrow, might as well eat out."

"Can we afford it?"

"We can. There's a card game in maintenance with my name on it and it's bangers to bust that someone's going to put their faith in trip nines." Torin was a competent player; if she joined the game, he had faith in her ability to break even. When he turned to face her, she was staring off into the middle distance, one finger tapping on a plastic plug cover. "Beer and tomagoras." He nudged her shoulder with his. "Maybe go crazy and have a little armee on the side. What do you say?"

She frowned. "Can you hack Fancy's system?"

Not what he'd expected her to say, that was for damned sure. "You want to use Page's credits?" When Torin turned to face him, Craig raised both hands and took a step back, fairly certain she wouldn't take a swing at him but not one hundred percent positive and definitely not willing to find out. "Hey, I talk about replacing what we spend on food in a card game and you ask if I can hack his ship. I jumped to the logical conclusion. Now I've had a chance to think about it, what I should have asked was: What the fuk are you talking about?"

Torin narrowed her eyes but stopped looking like she wanted to disembowel him. "The Dornagain don't work quickly."

"No shit."

"Jan and Sirin died defending their cargo from pirates. Pirates tortured Page but ignored his salvage. Two exceptions to the rules could mean the rules are changing. If the pirates are changing the rules, they're going to be moving a lot faster than One Who Maintains. I want to know if Page was in contact with the Firebreather. If so, they could have passed on the information that got him tortured to death."

"Why?"

"Why?" she repeated.

He hadn't been shot that look since the early days when, he suspected, she'd considered him a distinct species. Not a Marine, therefore nothing to do with her. "I know you're angry about this, Torin, hell, I'm angry about this, but a tenday ago you didn't even know pirates existed."

"And?"

"And now suddenly it's your responsibility to stop them." He scratched at the spot on his jaw where the depilatory wore off first. "Look, I get that your first inclination is to fix shit, but this shit, you can't fix. We've brought it to the Wardens, who will take their time doing sweet fuk all, and now we get on with things."

"You done?"

Worse than the look was the tone. Craig hated that tone. That gunnery sergeant tone. Both tone and look had been way too close to the surface since they'd found Page. "No, I'm not," he growled. "We risked our necks to bring this to the attention of the authorities-and don't look at me like you don't understand what I'm talking about. A ship in a pen doesn't make for an easy Susumi equation. You and me, we're not living in a cheesy vid; it's not our job to illuminate the dark between the systems with the light of justice." It was a SpaceCops quote. He'd never seen the show before he'd hooked up with Torin, but she loved it. When Torin folded her arms, waiting for him to go on, he sighed. "Okay, now I'm done."

"We work and live in the dark between the systems," she pointed out. Unnecessarily, considering how she'd just started the job and he'd been doing it for over a decade. "This isn't about the light of justice, it's motivated self-interest."

And about the undeniable fact that ex-Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr was incapable of walking away from a fight.

"All right, fine." It wasn't like he hadn't known that about her from the beginning. He could get into the Fancy; he'd done it once already to power her down before the jump. The ship had known Page had been out too long for his air supply, so emergency protocols had gotten him in. Whether he could access her data stores though, that was another question. If Page had locked his board down before he went out, the odds weren't high he could crack it before they attracted attention. CSO codes were idiosyncratic at best, and his codes would only take him so far. "Say I can hack Page's ship. First I have to get to it. What happens if the Wardens have put a guard on it?"

Torin snorted. "We're on a Taykan station. They're not that hard to distract."

Page's ship wasn't guarded. No reason why it should have been, Torin supposed. One Who Maintains wouldn't consider it part of an ongoing investigation until she had, as she'd said, a lot more evidence. They walked unchallenged into the repair bay and across the deck, footsteps echoing. Without the added bulk of her pen segments-they'd been tethered outside-Fancy looked dwarfed by her surroundings. Someone had run a ramp up to her air lock, but the outer door remained closed and the telltales were red.

"Let's hope they haven't recoded the lock," Craig muttered, fingers on the pad. On cue, the telltales turned green, and both outer and inner doors opened.

Torin followed Craig into the tiny air lock. He paused at the inner door and when she put one hand flat against him to steady herself, she realized that the muscles of his back had twisted into knots under his shirt. He'd only just learned to tolerate having another person on the Promise with him, using his resources, and Fancy was smaller. From what she could see over Craig's shoulder as the inner door opened, depressingly smaller. The toilet and sink folded up into the bulkhead and Page had left the toilet folded down before his last trip out. It smelled like he'd forgot to hit reclamation when he finished. Or maybe he was just a lousy shot.

He'd decorated by attaching old-fashioned, two-dimensional, Human-centric porn to every vertical surface. The closest piece proved just how flexible a bipedal species could be. Not something Torin would want to look at every day, out in deep space, alone, but it took all kinds.

"I'll wait out here."

Craig turned just far enough to glare. "I'm fine."

"I know." Since her hand was already on his back, she traced the valley of his spine with her thumb, fingers trailing over the heavy muscle to either side. "But you don't need me hanging over your shoulder, and if I go in there with you, there won't be any other option."

His gaze swept around the cabin, then back to her. It didn't take long. "Good point," he said.

As she took her hand away, she felt him begin to relax.

Back at the bottom of the ramp, habit dropped her into an easy parade rest. If it turned out Page knew what Jan and Sirin had salvaged, knew what they'd died trying to protect, that connection might be enough to light a fire under One Who Maintains' enormous, furry ass. If it didn't, it was still information they could take to a military station in order to direct the Navy patrols. The patrols responsible for hunting down and removing the pirates.

Pirates.

She still had trouble believing it.

There wasn't enough organized violence around? People had to freelance?

Maybe the Elder Races were right. Maybe a species shouldn't achieve interstellar capability until they'd learned to manage their aggression. Not that it mattered, after a couple hundred years of war, that ship had well and truly folded and there could be no going back. She wondered how the Primacy, made up entirely of young aggressive species, was managing without the focus the gray plastic aliens had provided. Odds were about even they'd started pounding on each other.

In much less time than Torin had expected, the sound of Craig's boots ringing against the ramp pulled her around to face him.

He shook his head as he walked toward her. "Not locked, not that it mattered. There's no record of contact between Page and Firebreather, but," he added before Torin could respond, "he had been messaging someone fairly frequently on the Two-four. No idea who, but I uploaded their codes so we can find out. A mate of Alia's is maintaining a database-who uses what codes when. Not that I'm saying some might use more than one set of codes," he added, seeing her expression. "If Jan or Sirin happened to have been talking to the same person Page was…"

"Long shot," Torin acknowledged, falling into step beside him as he stepped off onto the deck. Even a tenuous connection would be better than nothing but it wouldn't get One Who Maintains or the Navy moving against the pirates.

"We'll bog in first, I'm starving." Craig threw an arm around her shoulders. "Then we go make Rogelio Page proud by taking a group of hardworking engineers for every credit they have."

"That would make him proud?"

"It'd make me happy."

When it came right down to it, the living had to be more important than the dead. "Good enough."

Torin finished checking the Susumi equation and glanced up at Craig, who backed away and tried to look as though he hadn't been checking it over with her. Given that mistakes were usually fatal, she didn't mind. "So, tell me why we're returning to the same debris field?"

"We have first tag on it, now Page is dead." Craig scowled at the empty coffeepot, then took it into the head to fill it, raising his voice over the sound of running water. "Not to mention, if we chuck back to our previous coordinates, the government will pay for the fold. It's a little ghoulish, but it's practical since the reason we were headed there originally still stands-we know there's no surprises in the salvage to mess up a rookie run."

"Except for the pirates."

He froze halfway back through the hatch and stared at her. "Shit."

Seeing how long she could let him hang wasn't really an option; maintaining a relationship took roughly the same care as training a green second lieutenant, leaving little room for error between teasing and making him look like a fool. "If the pirates had planned on staying in that area, they'd have sent both the body and the ship into the nearest star. I expect they're long gone."

"So you gave me the gobful about it because…?"

She frowned. "Seemed like you'd forgotten them. I don't think we should."

Craig made a noncommittal noise as he crossed back to the coffeemaker. She watched him set the coffee to brew, wondering what the noise had meant. He stood, back toward her, until his mug filled, then he turned and said, "You sure you're not looking for a new enemy?"

"Why would I want a new enemy?"

"You've always had one."

"Habit?"

"Purpose."

Torin opened her mouth to deny it, then closed it again. She wasn't one hundred percent sure he was wrong. From what she could see of his expression behind the mug, he knew it.

"We just got a yabber from Alia. No connection between Firebreather and Fortune's Favor. She doesn't know who Page was messaging, but she does know Jan and Sirin weren't. Weren't messaging the same person. At all. Ever."

Torin swore softly as she cinched a tie-cable tight and checked that it was reading the mass of the salvage. "No chance of yanking the Wardens' thumbs out of their collective asses, then."

"Not for what looks to be a shitty coincidence. Torin, that piece with the electronics in it…

Grinning, Torin silently mouthed the rest of the sentence along with him.

"… has to go in the pen closest to the ship so we can hook it up and make sure there's nothing that might go active when we fold."

"I'm on it." There wasn't enough "electronics" on the piece to go active even if they hooked it directly to the engines.

"I'd mentioned that?"

"Couple of times." Considering he'd spent almost as long working alone as she had in the Corps, he wasn't doing too badly in his supervisory position. The small clump of tagged debris she was securing didn't need two people suited up, and she needed the practice. It hadn't taken her more than fifteen minutes to convince him of that. Had he been a green lieutenant, she could have done it faster. There were days she definitely missed her old life.

Demagnetizing her boots, she tightened up her safety line and used it to gain enough momentum to flip out of the pen, magging up again to drop down just forward of where she'd racked the "gun" used to attach the tags to the salvage. Fine motor skills suffered in an HE suit, so the trigger mechanism was oversized but familiar. There were a limited number of ways aim and pull could be interpreted mechanically.

Twisting to the left, she lined up the next piece of salvage in the crosshairs, and fired, careful to brace herself against the minor momentum. It would take a lot more than one shot to actually move her anywhere, and one shot was all she needed.

"No surprise you're good at that."

It would have been more surprising if she'd missed it, given the size.

"Your tax dollars at work," she muttered as she locked her suit on the tag, released her boots, and pushed off. Her jet swiveled to eighteen degrees almost immediately and fired a micro burst, lining her up more precisely. There were automated systems that would do all this from the control panel of the ship, but every piece of equipment added cost, and salvage operators never had the kind of margin that allowed them to ignore the brains and bodies they could wrap in an HE suit and use for free. Torin suspected Craig, on his own, had seldom bothered with either the jets or the 100 meters of safety line spooling out behind her.

She only wore the jets on Craig's insistence since jets and an unbreakable safety line was a fair definition of redundant.

"So…" Torin could hear him drumming his fingers against the edge of the control panel. Knew he was searching for things to say that didn't involve the suggestion that she come on in and he take it from there. "… you're not arguing the shitty coincidence theory?"

"Did you want me to?"

"Didn't figure you as believing in coincidence."

"I believe in it," Torin told him. "I don't trust it. Was Pedro able to add anything to Page's background?"

"Haven't heard from him yet. Alia says he took the smaller ship out to do some second tagging at 772ST4."

Still only halfway to the new salvage, Torin had time to run over the CSO's debris field designations. "The Kertack and the Cameroonian?"

"That's the one."

The two Confederation battleships as well as three cruisers and nearly equal representation from the Primacy had faced off about eighteen months ago. Torin had been tanked at the time but heard about it when she got out because one of her physical therapists had a thytrin on the cruiser that had been blown with all hands. The other ships had taken twenty-five to thirty percent casualties. Torin didn't know what the Primacy's loses had been, but they'd definitely contributed to the debris. More importantly… "That's almost to the edge."

"Yeah, but there's an ace chance of pulling in pieces of enemy tech."

"There's a good chance of attracting enemy attention."

"War's over."

She sighed and flipped around to begin decelerating. "He's got kids."

"To provide for."

"Yeah, I get that." And she did. But when she thought of Pedro out on the edge, she couldn't stop herself from thinking of Jeremy without one of his fathers. "Dargonar had her engines on, Captain." Huirre transferred his slate to his right foot so he could spread both hands in a fukked if I know gesture. "But there's no way of knowing if Captain Firrg used the equations I sent her until we're out of Susumi space and she's either there or she isn't."

"She'll be there," Cho growled. "I don't trust her as far as you could spit a spleen, but she screws us over and she screws over Big Bill."

"She could turn on us on the other side. Lie to Big Bill about it."

"Why would she do that?" Dysun asked, most of her attention on shutting down the communications board.

"Firrg hates Humans." Huirre's nose ridges flared. "Captain's Human. So's Nat and Doc."

Dysun shrugged, hair rising and falling in time with her shoulders-both the Taykan and Krai had adopted the gesture, but only the Taykan had really mastered it. "So's Big Bill."

"Doesn't count."

She looked up at that. "Why doesn't…"

"Enough!" Cho snapped. Huirre had made the only relevant point-the Dargonar would be there when they emerged or she wouldn't; they couldn't do shit about it either way, and he was sick to death of the constant speculation. "Go fuk your thytrins or something."

"Aye, aye, Captain!" As the last of the board locked down, Dysun tossed off an enthusiastic salute and ran from the control room.

"Like there was a chance of or something. You'd think she hadn't got any for a tenday instead of a couple of hours," Huirre snorted. Then he snapped his teeth together and added, "Serley di'Taykan."

"So join them," Cho sighed, sliding down in his chair until his spine barely maintained contact. Inside Susumi space, the ship didn't require a captain and, as long as the crew managed to keep from killing each other, he didn't give a shit what they got up to.

"It's not…"

He could read the reason for Huirre's recent ill humor in the pause. "Firrg wouldn't have you if you were the last Krai in known space. You've been contaminated by contact with Humans. You want to go crawling to her and beg her to take you on so you can be horny and frustrated in her presence, be my guest."

"That's harsh, Captain." His nose ridges opened and closed a couple of times. "You'd just let me go?"

"Better than you being horny and frustrated on my boat. Go or get over her."

He shifted his slate from foot to hand and back to foot again. "Not too many female Krai out here, Captain."

"That's why the universe gave us the di'Taykan."

"It'd make me feel better if I got to dispose of the next CSO we pick up."

"No." Cho didn't care how fukking frustrated his helmsman got, the last thing he wanted, given what had sent Huirre out into the deep, was to indulge the Krai's taste for Human flesh. Sure, running Page through Huirre's gut would have removed any evidence of the way he'd died, but it wasn't like the Wardens would stumble over the CSO's body anytime soon. OutSector Wardens were about as much of a threat as a pouched H'san.

"So, Captain…" Huirre's nose ridges began opening and closing slowly. Cho figured he was breathing himself into a better mood. "… seems like this equation's going to take us pretty damned close to the edge."

"We need a younger salvage operator. The young take chances. The edge is all about taking chances. We've got a line on a single ship, and I don't want a repeat of Page."

"Ah." Huirre nodded. "Suppose it doesn't hurt that the Wardens never get out that far."

"No," Cho agreed in a tone that said the conversation was over, "it doesn't."

The Dargonar had come out of Susumi space three seconds before the Heart of Stone, having made no changes in the equations Huirre had sent. Cho chose to take that as a good sign.

"Move in at one eighty to our zero." Cho frowned down at the ship locked into his long-range scanners. "Don't worry about being seen, just tag the pen. When they dump, they'll hit their aft thrusters." Fukking predictable. The first thing a CSO did after dumping their pen was hit the aft thrusters every damned time. Surged straight ahead until they could fold into Susumi space. It was like every one of them forgot normal space had three dimensions. "We'll be waiting to grapple the ship in. Make sure the operator is in the ship before you tag."

"Gre ta ejough geyko. You just do your job and leave us to do ours. We keep what's in the pen. Firrg out."

Cho glared at the back of Huirre's head. "Translation."

"Roughly, sit on it and rotate." Huirre kept his gaze locked on his board. "She's moving out."

"Take us into position."

"We can't just let her have the pen, Captain!" Dysun protested.

"We can if I say we can," Cho told her shortly. Let Firrg have the pen. He had a Marine armory with all the promise of a great and glorious future it contained, and the Krai captain didn't have a hope in hell of scoring anything that even came close to matching it.

As Huirre maneuvered the Heart of Stone into position, her signature masked by the static emitted by a pair of lopsided rings circling an equally lopsided planetoid, he split his attention between the salvage ship and the empty space beyond it, waiting for Firrg to appear.

"Captain, the salvage ship's engines have come on-line." Dysun transferred the information to Cho's screen. "I think they're getting ready to move out."

"No one asked for your opinion," Huirre growled, hands and feet ready over his board.

The di'Taykan's hair flipped up on the side closest to the Krai. "Who tied your kayt in a knot?"

"Gren sa talamec!"

"If someone stuffed it up yours, you'd be in a better mood," she snorted.

"Shut up. Both of you." Fingers digging into the edge of his screen, Cho willed Firrg to make her move.

"Net's are away, Captain!"

"I don't see them."

"We're not picking them up on visuals, but there's a ripple in the data." Hair flicking quickly back and forth, Dysun bent over her board. I'm boosting magnification. Give them a minute or two to show… There!"

"I see them."

She drummed her fingers on the inert edging. "If that ship starts to move before the nets…"

"We know," Huirre interrupted. "For horon's sake, we all know."

Twenty kilometers.

Fifteen kilometers.

Five.

Contact.

"Anchor lines have caught. Dargonar has powered the buoys. They've dumped their pen, Captain! They're moving!"

"Get them, Huirre."

"Aye, aye, Captain."

Huirre moved the Heart of Stone out of concealment directly toward the fleeing ship.

Suddenly faced with another ship, the salvage operator did the unexpected and went straight up the Y-axis.

"Son of a fukking bitch!" Cho shifted forward on his seat as though the movement would bring them into alignment. Huirre had them perfectly positioned had the other ship been where it was supposed to be. It just figured that today, when it meant so much, he'd run into the one original thinker in the entire fukking salvage fleet. "Almon!"

"Captain?"

"Get the grapples into that ship!"

"It's not…"

"I know it's not! Huirre, bring the aft end around!" In spite of the inertial dampeners, his stomach lurched as Huirre flipped the Heart vertically. "Almon, do it!"

"But.."

"Now!" He was not letting this salvage operator get away. Not when he was so close to getting that armory open.

"Aye, aye, Captain. Grapples away!"

Cho watched the signals from the grapple ends close in on the smaller ship, willing them to make contact and dig in. He'd haul that CSO's ass inboard so fast it would… Contact! "Huirre!"

"Aye, Captain." Eyes locked on his own screens, Huirre worked the lateral thrusters with both hands. "Adjusting angles."

"Shit!"

"Talk to me, Almon."

"Looks like the Susumi drive's punctured!"

The silence in the control room was so complete Cho could have sworn he heard half the light receptors in Dysun's eyes snap closed. "Looks like?" he growled. "Be sure!"

"I tried to warn.."

"Cover your own ass, why don't you," Huirre muttered.

"Captain! Energy leakage." Dysun's voice had risen half an octave. "There's a puncture for sure."

A punctured Susumi drive meant they were, at best, moments away from being caught in a blast wave of Susumi energy. At worst, they'd go up with the other ship.

"Release grapples!"

"Released! But it'll take twenty-seven seconds to bring them in!"

"Huirre! Get us out of here!"

"Captain! The grapples!"

"Fuk the grapples! Let them swing!" Being smacked about by their own lines was the least of their worries. Susumi explosions twisted space. "Huirre, get us back behind that rock!" The planetoid that had hidden them earlier offered their best chance of survival; its bulk would deflect most of the Susumi wave.

Huirre burned everything they had. They were still too close.

"What the fuk is going on up there?" Krisk had bypassed the comm protocols again.

Before Cho could answer, Huirre snarled a fast sentence in Krai at the engineer, who growled back, "Not on my watch."

The Heart of Stone surged forward. Swearing, Huirre worked his board with all four extremities, fighting to maintain course while riding the unexpected burst of power. They'd just passed the planetoid's rings and were rounding the horizon when the salvage ship blew. In the 2.73 seconds it took for the blast wave to hit, Huirre managed to get most of the Heart to safety. Cho made a mental note to give him a really big gun when they got the armory open.

If they survived.

The blast hit the aft end just behind the cargo hold, flinging the Heart end over end. Huirre danced both hands and feet across his board, firing microsecond bursts on one thruster after another to keep them clear of the rings. Rock slammed into the hull. The lights flared and went out. Dysun swore and threw herself backward as her board sparked, left hand cradling her right.

Then it was over, the control room lit only by the telltales on the boards.

"Nat!"

"Aye, Cap. Checking cargo integrity."

"Fuk cargo integrity." Krisk sounded furious. "We've got two small hull breaches, and we're at half thrusters until someone gets out there and looks at the damage the right fukking grapple did."

"The hull breaches…"

"I sent Lime-boy out to do interior patches… Krisk had never bothered to learn the di'Taykan's names. "… but at least one is going to need exterior work. Easy fix. No idea about the rest until I see on real time."

"Could be worse," Huirre muttered, still working his board.

"I'm fried." Still holding one hand against her chest, Dysun danced the fingers of the other over a blank screen. "Scanners are out. Internal communications are using the captain's station as their primary. It'll only take a moment to reroute external comms."

"One-handed?"

She glanced down at her hand, seemed to see the reddened curl of her fingers for the first time, and whimpered, her hair flattening tight against her skull.

"Get down to Doc. Have him fix it, then get your ass back here." Pain had shut her eyes down so far there was almost no black among the orange. Given the lack of light, he wondered how she could even see.

"The comm…"

"You think I'm fukking useless, is that it?" As her eyes darkened slightly, he dove into the guts of the operating system. Theoretically, the entire ship could be flown from the captain's board, but the defaults had to be overwritten first. Thank the Navy for making sure every idiot who joined could slap together a patch. When he looked up, she was still staring at him. "Go!"

"Captain?"

He looked up from his board to find Huirre watching him. It was too dark to see the Krai's expression. Hell, it was almost too dark, given the lack of hair, to be positive he was starring at Huirre's face. "What?"

"If we want lights back, I'd better help Krisk."

"How stable is our orbit?"

"Doesn't need watching if that's what you're asking."

Given Huirre's careful tone, Cho figured he must smell like he was fukking furious. Good call, given that he was. "Go. Tell Krisk I said you were to concentrate on the lights. If he gives you any shit, I'll deal with him."

"Aye, Captain."

They needed the scanners and weapons back on-line. Dysun would need the lights to repair her board. "Oh, and Huiire." He heard the helmsman pause by the hatch. "You saved our asses. Good work."

"I was mostly concerned with saving my own ass, Captain."

"I don't give a flying fuk what your motivation was."

He could hear Huirre grin. "Aye, Captain."

The ship's original OS had been sliced and diced when safeties had been removed and new programming added, so it took him longer than he liked to get the external comm patched through. The system was barely up and running when it grabbed an incoming repeat from the Dargonar.

Cho considered ignoring it. Didn't.

"So you're not dead," Firrg sounded disappointed. "Your salvage operator is."

Somehow, Cho managed to hold his temper. No point in starting something he couldn't finish with Dysun's board out. "We'll find another. They're like cockroaches."

"You'll find another, not me. Not my problem if you're incompetent. I did what I said I'd do, and that clears me with Big Bill. You say otherwise, I'll hunt you down and eat your liver."

It sounded more like a statement of fact than a threat.

"Good news is the armory took no damage." Nat snorted. "Of course, that's a little obvious since we're not a smoking hole in space. Marines are hard on their toys, so the Corps builds those fukkers to last." She swept her thumb over her slate and scowled down at the data. "Fact is, Cap, the cargo hold came through aces. The galley, not so much. The Susumi energy changed all of the protein strings. Won't kill us right away, but cumulative effects would be unpleasant. Doc says we should space anything with the new markers. Not even let Huirre and Krisk eat it."

"And that'll leave us with what?" Cho demanded.

She shook her head. "Not a lot. We can stay out maybe a tenday with supplements, but we're going to be hungry after a couple of days, very hungry by the end of the tenday, and sharing a ship with very hungry Krai, specially given why those two are out here-well, frankly, Cap, that doesn't appeal."

Krisk had been a Navy engineer. Accelerated promotion to petty officer and moving up fast. Then, during a battle, he'd eaten his lieutenant. Eating her had meant Krisk could stay at his post and make the repairs that saved the ship. It might have been ignored-heat of the battle, circumstances needs must-except that there had been other organics Krisk could have eaten instead. Not to mention that the review board hadn't been entirely convinced it had been the enemy that killed her.

Cho glared down at his screen. Krisk had advised against bringing the Susumi engines on-line until he checked them out.

"Shielding could've held. They might be fine. 'Course, we're toasted if they're not. Take me some time to make sure."

"How much time?"

"If you trust Lemon-and-Lime-boy to do the external patching, I can run basic tests in three. Results'll tell me how much longer."

"You've got two." Cho indicated that Almon should suit up and join Nadayki outside.

"Well, that's fukking great. My jernil always said there'd be no one to eat me after I'm gone."

Two days minimum before they could get the Susumi drive back on-line. Five and a half days folded into Susumi space to get back to Vrijheid Station. Seven and a half days with food for two. Even if the Humans and di'Taykan went on short rations to keep the Krai fed, that was dangerous bordering on covering each other in steak sauce.

"Keep rations as short as you can," he told Nat finally. "Use the supplements. How are we for water?"

"We've got water up the wazoo, Cap."

"If a wazoo is what I think it is…" Almon grinned, pausing half into his HE suit, "… there's this place where you can…"

Cho glared Almon to silence and bent over his slate, searching for a closer station where they could resupply without attracting the attention of the sector's Wardens. Torin checked the balance on her slate one more time as they walked away from the quartermaster's office. "You're certain people make a living doing this job?"

"Some of us do." Craig bumped against her, his shoulder warm and solid. "MidSector stations pay more, but they need less and they charge more for docking and respiration. OutSector stations need the materials, so they'll take everything you have, but they haven't the lolly. It's a balancing act." His gesture took in the minimal distractions offered in the station's commercial pier where there was one bar and an undersupplied store. "And how could you refuse these hardworking people the pleasure of our company?"

Torin shook her head. "Let me guess. Bored people are more willing to play cards with you even though the last time you were through, you cleaned them out."

He grinned. "I may have won a couple of hands.

"Unfortunately, Lurell, at least for you, full house, tens over threes, beats three nebulas." Craig scoped in the pot as Lurell ruffled her feathers and made quiet hooting noises.

Lurell's pale blue crest hadn't entirely grown in making her just barely adult by Rakva standards. Old enough to be in the bar, therefore, old enough to play. Although Torin knew better than to extrapolate an emotional state from the facial expressions of a nonmammalian species, she felt safe assuming that, like most kids her age, Lurell believed her luck would change if she just kept playing long enough. Technically true, given that continued play would teach her luck had less to do with winning than learning when to fold. From the way her feathers kept ruffling up along the back of her neck, Torin suspected she'd already lost more than she should have-in spite of the credit chits still in front of her.

Lifting her head, Torin frowned past Lurell's shoulder and across the bar toward the windows-Craig liked the potential for a quick escape an outside seat represented, Torin preferred a wall at her back. "Lurell, you know a big male Rakva with a dark blue crest?"

Lurell jumped and only just managed to keep from looking over her shoulder. "This one has a brother with a dark blue crest," she admitted, with studied nonchalance. "Why does one ask?"

Torin shrugged. "He just went by outside on the concourse. He didn't look happy."

"How could one tell?"

"Could have been the way his crest was up," Torin told her, blandly. "Or could have been because people were hauling ass out of his way."

"Ah. And he is…?"

Taking a long swallow of beer, Torin put the bottle down before answering. "He's gone now."

"Ah."

Cards shuffled, Kensu, the scarlet-haired di'Taykan dealing, paused as Lurell pushed her chits around on the table "You in, baby bird?"

"Yes… No."

His eyes lightened. "Which is it?"

Crest flattened, she scooped up her chits and stood. "This one remembers this one has things to do. This one…" She opened and closed her beak a couple of times, then ruffled her feathers-the Rakva equivalent of a blush-and headed for the door. Where she paused and turned. "This one wonders which way…"

"That way." Torin pointed.

Lurell nodded. Left the bar. Went the other way.

"Not that I'm objecting…" Kensu dropped a red nebulae in front of her on his first circuit of the table. "… but why make up stories to scare the baby bird away?"

"I don't like taking money from children." Torin checked her cards again. They hadn't changed into something she could use.

"No brother?" Craig asked, brow up. He hadn't been able to see the window. Kensu had.

"No brother." The quartermaster had been a Rakva with Lurell's coloring. Pictures of his fledglings had been scattered around the office. The blue feathers in the crests were fairly distinctive, so she'd played the odds.

"How's she going to learn if you mollycoddle her?" Surrivna Pen, one of the two Niln at the table wondered. "Kid needs to learn the world'll shit on her if it can."

"She doesn't need to learn it from me," Torin said.

The Niln snorted something that sounded very much like, "Soft."

Rolling her shoulders, Torin considered responding to the deliberate provocation and decided against it. A fight would end the game, and given what they'd made for the salvage, Craig's skill at the table had taken on a new relevance.

"Done dealing," Kensu pointed out. "Ante up, people."

Torin sighed and turned her facing cards down. Time to call it a night. "Try not to lose the ship," she murmured, gripping Craig's shoulder as she passed.

He grinned. "Have I ever?"

"Not so far."

Heading out the door, she passed an older Human woman with short gray hair hurrying in on a direct line to the poker table. With her was a Human male, moving a little slower, paying more attention to his surroundings. There was nothing about him that attracted attention, but Torin figured it was a surer thing than her last hand that his outer calm covered an inner twitchiness. No mistaking the tension that pleated the soft skin around his eyes. Ex-military-the tells were obvious to anyone who'd spent as much time in uniform as Torin had-with the look of someone who'd seen too much and not been able to let any of it go. He was the first person she'd met since getting out that she wasn't entirely positive she could beat if it came to a fight. He'd nodded in her direction as they passed, an acknowledgment that carried the hint of a warning.

Torin had no intention of sharing war stories. She let the warning stand.

"So." Craig watched the Human woman lay her money on the table and grinned, "Who are you when you're home, then, mate?"

"None of your damned business who I am at home." But she smiled as she said it. When making an effort to be charming, Craig knew he was hard to ignore. "I'm Nat when I'm here, though."

"You're not local."

"You psychic?"

"These fine folk are local…" He indicated the other four players, "… and they don't know you from a H'san's ass either. That tells me you're docked here. Like me. Salvage."

"Do tell." She grinned and scratched at her head. "Cargo."

Nearly an hour later, Craig watched a small pot move across the table to Surrivna Pen who flicked her nictating membranes across her eyes twice when she got a good hand. Unlike Yavenit Tay, the other Niln at the table, who tapped his tail. With everyone's tells identified, he could start winning.

"So…" He turned to Nat, who stopped scratching when the cards went her way. "What're you hauling?"

"Bad luck," Nat snorted, beckoning the server over. "Had a hinky fold that wasted a galley's worth of food. Had to resupply."

The Heart of Stone had been at the other end of the docking arm for seventy-two hours. The story had spread. "So that's you, then."

She shrugged, aware that kind of luck would get talked about.

"And you…" Kensu nodded at Craig, hair flicking out and back. "… sold a double pen of scrap to the quartermaster for recycling. Now we've established strangers get talked about, it's your deal, Ryder." He tapped a long finger against his pile of chits. "Or am I playing with myself here."

Nat glanced under the table. "Oh, sure, get my hopes up."

Concentrating on the worn cards-this late in the game they were a bit sticky, and he sure as shit didn't want play called for perceived cheating, not now, not with the groundwork done-Craig missed Kensu's response. Not that it mattered. Given the comment, any response by a di'Taykan would merely be variation on a theme.

A couple of hands later, in the pause while refills arrived, Nat turned to him, much the way he'd turned to her earlier, Human to Human, and asked, "So where you heading after?"

He shrugged. "Not a hundred percent sure."

"Well, before we got fukked by that Susumi wave, we might've stumbled over a tech field out by the edge; not more than a day's fold away."

Everyone always knew where the treasure was.

"Math makes it a debris drift from where those bastards took out the Norrington and the M'rcgunn and the Silvaus? The Salanos? Fuk it, the other ship that was with them." She topped up her new glass with the dregs of the old and handed the empty to the server. "Cap even thought about checking it out. Didn't." When she smiled broadly, her face folded into pleats that gave some indication of her actual age. "Or I wouldn't be mentioning it. Us having no tags and all. Anyway, I'm not sure anyone's tagged it yet and even if they have, it's the kind of field that a second tag or even a third tag could make some haul on."

A tech field, Craig admitted silently, even on third tag, could very well net them enough credit they'd be able to add another three square to the Promise sooner rather than later. He'd expected Torin to have trouble rubbing elbows 28/10 on a one-man ship, but her years in the Corps had trained her to share limited space-accepting or ignoring other bodies as required. He, however, had been used to working alone-being alone-and regular sex could only compensate for so much.

Sooner, rather than later, sounded damned good to him.

"Any chance you remember the coordinates?" he asked, checking his cards.

Nat snorted. "I might have them on me."

"How much?"

Her eyes narrowed as she studied the chits in front of him. "We'll talk when the game's over. Time to play now."

"Dangerous on the edge," Kensu pointed out absently, frowning at the pair of threes he'd just been dealt.

Craig had a nine and a seven showing, an eight and a six down. "Danger is my middle name."

"And the female you travel with?" Yavenit asked, tail still.

He laughed. "Danger is her first name."

"She looks familiar," Surrivna said thoughtfully, dealing out the final round.

So far, only the quartermaster had recognized Torin as the gunnery sergeant who'd blown the lid off the little gray aliens' power-behind-the-war gig. Unavoidable, given that he'd had her codes on the docket. Without the uniform, without the expectation of seeing her in a half-built OutSector station, she'd gone unnoted by everyone else. Although his economic reasons were valid, that anonymity had been a deciding factor when Craig had chosen where they'd empty their pens. Even among the salvage operators-who collectively used none of my business as a mantra, for fuksake-someone had tried to pick a fight and, as far as he was concerned, Torin had already done more fighting than any two people should have to.

By morning, the whole station would be talking about her, but by morning they'd be gone.

"Are we playing or talking?" he asked the table at large as Nat dug bloody fingernails into her scalp.

Sleep when you can was not one of the Corps' official mottos, but Torin had always figured it should have been. Head pillowed on her jacket, she woke when Craig approached their air lock. Ankles crossed, she rolled up onto her feet.

"They charge us every time we use the lock," she reminded him as his brows rose.

He grinned and spread his hands. "I wasn't going to ask."

"How'd you do?"

"I won big." He moved closer when she turned to code in.

Torin leaned back against his heat. The floor had been a bit cold. "And then?"

"How do you know there's an and then?"

Torin said nothing as the telltales turned green.

"Okay, there's an and then." He shifted, trying to get a look at her face. "Are you smiling?"

She was. "So you blew your winnings on racing stripes for the Promise?"

"Not quite." Torin felt his chest rise and fall against her back as he took a deep breath. "I used my winnings to buy the coordinates for a tech field from a cargo jockey."

"Magic beans were going to be my next guess."