A truth of Valor

FOUR

Craig blinked up at the top of the bunk, wondering what had woken him. He shifted, realized he was alone, and from the lack of residual heat, probably had been for some time. Rolling up onto his side, he could see the back of the pilot's chair silhouetted against light rising from the control panel and assumed Torin was in the chair.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to wake you," she said before he could speak.

It would never not be fukking creepy when she did that.

"Your breathing changed," she added, spinning the chair around far enough so he could see her against the lit screen.

Craig thought about pointing out that most people wouldn't have noticed, but Torin wasn't most people, never would be. The hour seemed to call for the direct approach. "What're you doing?"

"Threat assessing. Go back to sleep."

Yeah, like that was going to happen now. "Are we in danger?"

Torin huffed a laugh. "Most of the time." One hand rose up through the light to wave at the fuzz of Susumi through the front port. "Screw up a basic trigonometric function, and that shit eats you for breakfast."

Old news. "Specific danger?" he prodded, covering a yawn with his fist.

He couldn't quite see her shrug, but her tone told him she had. "The data stores have nothing on The Heart of Stone."

"No reason they should. It's a cargo ship I've never run into before."

"I don't trust this… Nat. I don't trust that she sold you the coordinates for so much less than they could be worth."

"Could be worth," Craig repeated, adding emphasis. "And she sold them for as much as she could get. Nat did okay, more than, given that she can't bring in military salvage without tags. She got a sure thing. We're taking the chance. And I checked the math before I paid her-the odds of it being a debris drift from the destruction of the Norrington, the M'rcgunn, and the Salvanos are high. Very high, even. But you know that because I showed you the numbers." Eyes narrowed, he strained unsuccessfully to see her expression. "What's really wrong?"

For a moment, he thought she wasn't going to answer. Finally, she sighed.

"I knew Marines on the M'rcgunn. Most of them are still MIA."

"… three hundred and seventy-one thousand, two hundred and twenty brought home. And counting."

"You're wondering if we'll find them."

"It had crossed my mind."

Craig knew that one of Torin's hands rested on the place the tiny cylinders holding the ashes of the dead would fit into a combat vest. He suspected she still carried every Marine she hadn't been able to bring home alive. He wanted to tell her she could put them down. Knew it wasn't his place. But he'd do what he could. "Come back to bed. Celebrate life."

He could feel her stare. Heard her snort. "That may be the corniest pickup line anyone has ever used on me."

"What can I say?" He grinned. "You're a sure thing; I've stopped trying."

Torin had always thought that, given the chance, she'd prefer to be at the controls during a Susumi fold rather than have her survival depend on another's ability to get the equation right. Far as the Navy's Susumi engineers were concerned, Marines were meat in a can. Not that Torin had ever actively worried about them getting it wrong. No point. Nothing she could do, strapped down in one of the Marine packets, would affect the outcome. She preferred to save her concern for things she could affect.

Turned out, being at the controls gave her exactly as much satisfaction as she'd thought it would. It felt good to have external responsibilities again.

The last time, she'd merely been at the controls when they emerged. This time, it was her fold, start to finish.

As the Susumi wave faded, she brought the front thrusters on to slow their emergent speed, and then checked her boards. "We've arrived at the coordinates we were aiming… Shit!"

"What?"

A piece of duct tape tore as Craig's grip on the top of the chair actually tightened. Given the white-knuckled grip he'd been using as they came back into normal space, Torin hadn't thought tighter was possible. "Scanners are reading dispersed Susumi radiation."

"Our wave…" he began, but she cut him off.

"No." Enlarging the display, she frowned at the scrolling numbers. "That's the edge of our wave there. See the overlap?"

He was close enough that his sigh of relief moved her hair, breath lapping warm against her scalp. "Oh, thank fuk. Levels that low, we ignore."

"Ignore?" With the Promise now essentially motionless, she twisted around to face him, putting them nose-to-nose. "Are you serious?" Susumi radiation wasn't just nasty, it was variable at the molecular level, and results were never the same twice. The scientific community had agreed only that run away, run away was the wisest response.

Shifting to the right, Craig reached past her and enlarged a different display. "During the battle, three Confederation ships blew within five thousand kilometers of these coordinates-this is just residue. And, Nat, the cargo jockey who pointed us this way told me they'd had a hinky fold. Might be nothing more than that. We can pull salvage at twice this level."

"And you have?"

He snorted. "Sure."

Torin took another look and still didn't like the numbers. "Tell me you've banked sperm."

"I've banked sperm."

"Good." Both branches of the military required the banking of reproductive material upon enlisting, given the hundred percent probability of being exposed to hard radiation while serving. Torin had an ovary in storage back on Paradise. Civilians who went into space made their own choices. Most of the mutations weren't viable.

An incoming communication pinged the board.

"Fukking figures." Craig scaled the radiation readings down so he could bring up the code. "Looks like there's already a tag registered."

Torin surrendered the pilot's chair. "If this is a one-on-one with another CSO, you'd better take it."

He grinned and sat. "You have to learn to talk to them sometime."

"The moment they learn communication protocols."

"You know some people would consider the term hot mama a compliment."

"Some people think the H'san are cuddly, I'm not responsible for their delusions either." She took the position he'd been holding behind the chair, just as glad she had no farther to walk as her first Susumi fold had left her legs feeling embarrassingly wobbly. Ex-gunnery sergeants did not wobble.

"It's just the code for the tag coming through-no one I know. Seems they don't want to talk."

"Is that standard operating procedure?"

"We're a little skint with those." Craig pulled up a keyboard. "If they're working alone, maybe suited up outside-they won't want the distraction of talk. I'm registering second tag," he added, before she could ask. "Whoever they are, their registration says they're on the other side of that lopsided planetoid with the ring, so I'll do a long-range scan and see if there's anything worth investigating about 500 kliks from their…"

The scanner pinged.

"We found debris?" Torin frowned. "That was fast." It was a hell of a lot faster than their first trip out. Vacuum being short of friction, objects in motion, like pieces blown from battle cruisers, tended to keep moving. Made them harder to find.

Usually.

"Damn!" Craig reached back, yanked her head down by his, and kissed her enthusiastically.

Torin grinned as she pulled away. "While I enjoyed the sitrep, I'm going to need more details."

"There's tech potential in this clump. Nat was right."

"I'm sorry I distrusted her."

"No, you're not."

Her grin broadened. "No, I'm not." Maintaining a little healthy distrust would go a long way to keeping them alive. "So, do we head to the clump?"

Craig shook his head. "Not yet. We give first tag a chance to object to us working those coordinates."

The CSA with the first tag could reject second tag's first three choices. Should a third CSO arrive, the approval of both previous tags had to be acquired. Torin couldn't decide if she appreciated the fact they had a system in place-given their whole my business is none of your business attitude-or if she was appalled by the inefficiency.

She made coffee while they waited. As she filled the first mug, Craig brought Promise's engines back on-line. She hadn't thought they'd been pinged. "No news is good news?"

His teeth flashed white as he smiled broadly. "Every damned time."

First tag's registered coordinates were behind the lopsided planetoid. Out of sight. Scanners blocked. Torin stood by the control panel, stared down at the scrolling numbers still registering the Susumi radiation, and tapped a fingernail lightly against her mug until Craig reached up, wrapped a hand around her wrist, and stopped her.

"What?" he demanded.

"They might not be answering because they're in trouble."

"Then we'd be picking up a distress call from the ship or the suit." He sat back and swept his free hand over the board. "No distress call."

True as far as it went, but she'd learned to trust her instincts. "Would pirates give them time to send a distress call?"

"A distress call'd have bugger all to do with the pirates; the ship'd send it automatically. Once he got close enough, Brian was up and aces finding the Firebreather," Craig added. "What took the time was Jan and Sirin. Here…" Still holding her wrist, he used his free hand to tap the edge of the small screen showing the steady blip of the other CSO's tag. "A registered tag but no distress call means the alleged pirates destroyed the ship completely but left behind some of the tagged cargo. Not likely, love."

"I know." They'd discuss the endearment another time. "But it wouldn't hurt to go check on them."

"It'd use resources…"

"Then take it out of my share," she snapped.

"Torin…" He sighed, tightened his grip slightly, and shook her arm-not quite hard enough to spill her coffee. Smart man. "… I know this is hard for you to get your head around, but you're not responsible for every fukking thing that happens in known space. Most people, they don't need you to ride to the rescue. They can live their lives all sunshine and puppies without you giving them…"

The corners of his mouth twitched up, and Torin almost heard him say, Why not… in the pause.

"… context."

The little plastic aliens, the polynumerous polyhydroxide alcoholyde shape-shifting molecular hive mind, had deep scanned both their brains-hers and Craig's-during the Recon investigation of the unidentified alien ship known as Big Yellow. The organic plastic bastards had then hitched a ride inside their skulls in order to give context to observations about the centuries-long war between the Confederation and the Primacy. A war the little plastic aliens had admitted to both starting and maintaining. A lot of Marines had died while they'd been along for the ride, and sometimes Torin would sit in the control chair, listen to Craig sleeping in the bunk behind her, watch the stars, and find herself second-guessing every choice she'd made since that day on Big Yellow. Wondering if it had actually been her making them.

CSOs were able to doubt the lives they'd lived, but gunnery sergeants accepted responsibility for their decisions and moved on. They didn't dwell. And, yeah, she'd left the Corps, but the Corps would never really leave her.

Twisting her hand above Craig's grip, Torin poured the coffee into his lap. They'd gotten dressed before emerging from Susumi space, so it didn't make as much of an impression as it could have.

"Fukking hell, Torin!"

Still, it was a fresh pot. Hadn't cooled much.

Torin knew a lot of different ways to kill people. She could come up with three ways, off the top of her head, using the mug as a weapon. All things considered, a crotch of coffee rated minus five on a scale of one to ten.

When she stepped back, Craig hung on. She could have broken his hold. She didn't. Minus five or not, she figured she owed him that much.

He met her gaze, ignoring the liquid pooling in his lap. "Okay, it's too soon to joke about context. I'm sorry. If it means that much to you, we'll go check on the other ship."

My business is none of your business.

HE suits screamed for help if their wearers got into trouble they couldn't get out of. Beacons in the suits were slaved to the ships and when they went off, the ship would go off as well, extending the suit's range. If the ship was damaged, its own distress call would sound.

The Promise wasn't picking up a distress call.

But she was picking up registered CSO tags.

Pirates would take the tagged debris, or what the hell was the point of being a pirate.

"No, you're right…"

"If I'm right," he interrupted, "why am I absorbing caffeine through my ass?"

Four ways with the coffee mug. "You're right," she repeated, "that I need to start thinking more like a salvage operator."

Craig nodded, relaxing slightly. "Without a distress call, they wouldn't thank us for dropping by."

That surprised a laugh out of her. "I was a Marine. I didn't expect to get thanked."

The battle debris had drifted into an interlinked mass, the smaller, more salvageable pieces fused to huge sheets of twisted metal and slabs of ceramic. Given the parts she could see, given the protection offered by the large, outer pieces of hull, Torin was willing to bet her pension that the odds of finding DNA remnants would be high. Maybe not the specific Marines she counted as her friends, but Marines.

"This first trip out, we eyeball the puzzle pieces," Craig reminded her, waiting by the air lock as Torin checked his helmet seals. "We tag what'll give us the best resale price, maybe set a few small charges to break things up so that we can get a better look inside. DNA scans come later." He checked her seals in turn, then moved his hands to her shoulders and left them there. "We're not wearing propulsion, so we stay tethered to the ship or the end of the grapple at all times. Eyeballs on where I'm attached before you unhook. It's safer if we're not both off the ship at the same time."

The urge to respond to this latest repetition of common sense masquerading as instruction with a noncommittal "Yes, sir." was intense, but that wasn't a dynamic she wanted to set up with Craig-he'd earned her respect a long time ago. And, in all fairness, in spite of her previous performance out by the pens, she understood why he erred on the side of caution. She'd been equally unwilling to trust his skills, all evidence to the contrary, when he'd been on her turf. Since the CSOs didn't have any kind of basic training to meld individuals into a unit, and would likely be appalled by the thought, all she could do toward being thought one of them, was give it time.

So she said, "You think eight charges will be enough?" They were each carrying four.

"We're not out here to fight a war."

"Please," she snorted. "I could win a war with seven."

They were close to the edge, as likely to run into a Primacy ship making a foray into Confederation space as a Confederation ship on patrol.

"Eight should be aces, but there's only one way to find out for sure." He opened the air lock's inner door. Promise's interior lights shifted red-they were now a lot closer to vacuum than the ship's sensors were happy about. "After you."

They used the heavier grapple to first tether the ship to the largest piece of wreckage and then to winch them closer, the wreckage winning the mass sweepstakes.

Standing beside Craig on the edge of the deployed pen, Torin couldn't see his expression through the helmet's polarization, only her own blank silver reflection, but she could hear the smile in his voice when he gestured at the massive triangular piece of metal above them and said, "Race you," as he released his magnetic soles and pushed off.

She considered jerking back on his safety line. Didn't. But it was close.

In the end, she won only because her suit was newer and, when she flipped, she remagged her boots at full charge, allowing them to drag her down past him. She was moving fast enough at impact that she was glad she had her tongue tucked safely away from her teeth.

Landing beside her two seconds later, Craig grunted, "Cheater."

"Don't start with me, Ryder. Usually, there's a three count before a race."

"Just assumed, you being an ex-gunnery sergeant and all, you should be handicapped to make it fair."

She grinned and flipped him off. "Handicap this."

They were standing on a piece blown out of the outer hull, roughly eight meters by four meters at the longest points, and half a meter thick-the two visible Susumi contact points on the metal no longer radiating.

"You don't find that odd?" Torin leaned over to check that the information on Craig's sleeve matched hers. She didn't completely trust his aging tech. "Given the initial radiation readings?"

"Dispersal," he said absently, his attention having been pulled deeper into the tangle. "Damn! Take a look there."

"You want to be a little more specific?" There covered a lot of ground.

"That piece, the blue-green one just past the cable end." His voice was as animated as Torin had ever heard it. "That's Other… Fuk it, Primacy tech. Premium scoop, babe! We get that out and we're building a deck."

"Babe?" Love she could cope with. Lines had to be drawn.

"Heat of the moment." She heard the grin in his voice.

One hand gripping the edge of the hull, Torin turned until she could pull herself headfirst a short distance into the debris. "Piece we want looks fused to that link section, but I can't get a good enough angle on it to see for certain." With the magnification on her faceplate at maximum, she could see pitting caused by tiny pieces of debris but still couldn't see the point where the Primacy tech butted up against the link.

They were going to have to blast it clear.

"Do we tag it for later?" she asked reaching for the tagging gun strapped to her thigh.

"We tag it for now." Craig pulled one of his charges from the pouch. "This, we don't wait for."

Maybe she was a little more excited about that than she needed to be, but so far, the crazy, dangerous life of the civilian salvage operator had been a bit dull. "They're both suited up and climbing around the debris, Captain. We can go on your order."

"We need Ryder." Cho gripped the edge of his board. "He's the registered CSO. Doc says the woman was Corps long enough for it to mark her, so cut her free when we take him." Only a fool brought that kind of trouble on board and Mackenzie Cho's mama had raised no fool.

"You got it. Or him." Dysun made a small adjustment to her scanners and sat back, looking pleased with herself. "One of them is enough larger to account for Human gender differences and is in a significantly older suit. The smaller one, she's wearing a Marine design, no more than a year old. Sending specifics to cargo."

"Almon?"

"It's enough data to aim the net around him if you can get him out in the open, Captain."

Dysun answered before Cho could. "I take out their tethers, and send the next shot into the debris. That'll shake them loose. That is if Huirre can keep us pointed the right way."

"I could fly this ship right up your ass," Huirre growled.

"Promises, promises."

"Move in fast," Cho snapped. "Dysun, you take out the ship as soon as their proximity alarms go off. We don't want them getting back to it and fukking dying on us. Then take out the tethers, then hit the debris. If you've got a clear shot at the woman, take it. Get her out of Almon's way."

"Aye, Captain." The ends of her hair flipped back and forth

This was going to work, he could feel it. This time, Craig Ryder would give them the information they needed. Cho could see the armory opening. He could almost feel one of the Corps' ubiquitous KC-7s in his hands, bucking back as he switched it to full auto and squeezed the trigger. Ships in orbit could EMP more complex weapons but no one on either side had been able to dream up a way to stop a basic chemical reaction from happening. Armed with KC-7s, they could take over any station they docked at.

This time, nothing would go wrong. "Dysun, whatever happens to their drive, happens to you."

Her hair stilled. "Aye, Captain." "The fuk!" As Promise's proximity siren screamed through his suit's comm link, Craig, slapped his last charge down, and worked his way backward along the path of his tether as fast as possible. Unfortunately, as fast as possible was too fukking slow, but a hole ripped into his suit by a jagged edge would slow him more. "Torin! Have you got a visual?" He didn't have to shout to be heard over the siren, the comm would take care of volume levels, but it felt good. Like he was doing something.

"Negative. Still obscured by wreckage."

"It's probably the wreckage that set it off." He jerked his line off a twisted cable end. "If we got it moving…"

"Not unless you've been putting on weight," Torin snorted. "Four meters and I'm out."

He could see the patch of stars that marked his entry to the clump's inner labyrinth. "I'm out in three."

They emerged at roughly the same time. Torin popped out and kept rising at about 120 degrees to his zero, clearing the slab of metal cutting up like a fin out of the tangle and then remagging her boots to snap down onto the upper edge. "I've pinged the Promise. The debris hasn't moved."

"Then what the fuk…" His boots demagged, he pushed off, grabbed a loop of piping, swung around it until he pointed the right way, then bent his arms and shoved off. As he landed three meters from Torin's position, the top of the Promise's cabin blew off, debris spraying out as she decompressed into vacuum.

He didn't remember moving, but Torin's grip on his ankle said they both had.

"Let me go, damn it!" He had to get to his lady. She wasn't answering, but he knew she wasn't dead. Holed, yes, open to vacuum, but nothing crucial had been hit.

"Craig! Listen to me! There's a ship…"

The next shot took out the line holding Promise to the wreckage.

In order to set the charges around the piece of tech, they'd both tethered to the grapple head. With that gone, the only thing holding him in place was Torin's grip.

He could see the incoming ship. Ex-Navy with a cargo hold attached like half the small freighters in known space. But the guns said…

"Pirates!"

"No shit!" The next shot slapped into the slab of metal just under Torin's boots. Craig whipped backward as her knees buckled, but she hung on. "They want the salvage! We need to get clear!"

"No! It's not the salvage they're after!"

"Damn it, Torin, you don't know…"

The next shot slid behind the slab and into the wreckage.

The clump shuddered.

He felt Torin's grip shift as her body adjusted to the movement under her feet.

Then the charges blew. Shards of debris flew past. Hit his shoulder. His suit absorbed most of the impact, but it fukking hurt.

He heard Torin grunt, more an exhalation than an actual sound as though, just for that moment, she were breathing inside his helmet with him.

Then he felt her grip fall away.

She'd never have let him go were she still able to hold on.

"Torin!"

He saw stars, the attacking ship, his poor wounded lady, debris flying off in every possible direction, Torin caught up in it-the bright orange of her HE suit, visible then obscured by wreckage as he pinwheeled. He reached out. Stupidly. She'd absorbed more of the blast. Was moving away faster than he was spinning. Red lights flashed around the edge of her helmet.

Red lights…

Air leak!

Craig tasted blood as he slammed against the mesh of a cable net, jaw impacting with the hard edge of his suit's collar. His faceplate, crossed by four cables, creaked but held. He couldn't turn his head, but if they'd netted him, they planned to haul him in. The ship he'd seen while spinning had to have been two kilometers away, minimum. Two kilometers of cable gave him time…

His charges were gone, but he had a cutting tool on his belt. Much smaller but the same basic principle as the Marine's bennies.

Don't think about Marines now.

Right arm trapped between two loops, he shoved his left between his body and the net.

Torin's trained for this, he reminded himself. Situations like this.

Fumbling the magnetic clasp out, he managed to shove his first two fingers into the tool pouch.

If Torin were conscious, she'd have her suit patched before she lost enough air for it to matter.

With the charges gone, it wasn't that hard to hook out the cutter.

If Torin were conscious, she'd be talking, implant to implant, to keep the pirates from overhearing. If she'd been hit hard enough to damage her implant…

The cutter was harder to use with his left hand, and working so close to his body, there was always the chance he'd hole his own suit.

Didn't stop him from aiming it at the net and turning it up to full burn.

All he could hear was his own breath. In. Out. A little too fast. A little too hard.

Three strands through.

Four.

One more…

A sudden shadow caught his attention. Craig turned his head to see the edge of a cargo door go by on his right. He'd barely been pulled over the threshold when the gravity generators kicked in and slammed him down hard onto the deck, the edge of his tank driving into his kidneys with enough force to ensure he'd be pissing blood. Teeth clenched, he flopped over onto his side.

And saw…

He wasn't sure what it was, but it was fukking huge and explained why they'd dropped him so close to the door. There wasn't room to drop him any farther in.

A siren wailed as the doors started to close, and he fought the weight of the net to raise himself up onto his hands and knees. Promise still had power. Craig could see her lights flashing in the distance. If he could get to her, he could get to Torin.

Then the door closed, the halves coming together hard enough he felt the vibrations through his gloves. Through his knees. As he watched, still crawling forward, the telltales turned green.

He kept crawling. Inching forward. Muscles screaming.

That was the way out, and he was Goddamned well going out it.

Suddenly, the floor receded as the net lifted about half a meter into the air. He grunted as his weight drove the cables into his chest, making it hard to breathe. His right leg slipped through the gap he'd cut, but his left remained hung up.

When they came to get him out, he'd get one chance.

He went limp, cutting tool hopefully hidden behind the curve of his gloved fingers. With luck, they'd think he'd taken damage and was a little out of it.

With luck, they'd be quick about it because he didn't know how long he could overcome his need to move, to get free, to get to his ship, to get to Torin.

The net started to swing almost immediately.

Maybe his luck was changing.

He turned his head inside the helmet, the polarizing making the movement invisible from the outside, and saw boots approaching. HE boots. They hadn't pressurized the cargo bay, then.

As the wearer of the boots peeled the net away, and he could feel himself begin to fall, Craig flicked his cutter on. Letting gravity win, he dropped free of the net, landing back on his hands and knees.

He made contact, that much he knew, but he had no idea how much damage he'd done. No idea if he'd bought himself enough time to get to the door.

Surging up onto his feet, he'd taken only two steps forward when something jabbed his thigh, and the jolt snapped his head back, driving the edge of the suit's collar into the back of his neck.

Torin would've made sure the bastard stayed down, he thought as he pitched forward, slamming face first into the deck, mouth filled with blood from where he driven his teeth through his tongue. Next time… "You had to fukking knock him out?" Cho glared up at Almon, who glared back, the ends of his hair carving short choppy arcs over the collar of his suit.

"The ablin gon savit tried to take Nadayki's leg off." Almon jerked his head toward the deck where Doc had the gash sealed and was working on getting the younger di'Taykan out of his suit. "I didn't have time to fukking mess around being pleasant."

The problem was that not everyone reacted well to the tasik-where not well could be defined as turned into drooling, brain-dead meat. Originally developed to control the large, flightless birds that were the main source of animal protein on the Taykan home world, they were a cheaper "personal weapon" to acquire than black market military guns, and Cho had two on board. "If you've broken him…"

"Then he's broken," Almon interrupted flatly, most of his light receptors closed, his eyes pale yellow, lid to lid. "And we'll get another one. And if that one tries to kill my thytrin, I'll break them, too."

He wasn't going to back down, Cho realized. Not when it came to protecting his thytrin. If Almon hadn't been already suited up and on his way into the cargo bay, Nadayki would have bled out and Almon would likely have ripped the helmet off their captured CSO and spaced him. Pushed now, he'd push back and he was still wearing the tasik clipped to his suit. Lucky for him, Cho knew that the trick to turning the kind of people who were willing to do the things the job required into a functioning crew, was knowing when not to push. And when to shove the offender out the air lock.

Stretching out a foot, Cho poked the body slumped against the bulkhead. Everyone looked bigger suited up, but Craig Ryder was clearly not small. "Get your suit off," he snapped at Almon. "Then get his suit off and get him secured to the chair before he comes to. Doc, how will we know if Ryder's still functional?"

"Functional is usually pretty fukking obvious," Doc grunted without looking up, his hands leaving bloody prints all over the ruin of Nadayki's suit.

Head lolling forward, too heavy for his neck to hold, Craig felt like he had the worst hangover in the history of hangovers. Worse than that time back when him and Kurt and Nicole had grabbed the first bottle they could get their hands on out of Nic's dad's liquor cabinet and gotten stupidly drunk on creme de menthe. Only a drongo could have decided that that particular green poison, of all the many ways the Human species had created to get shitfaced, needed to go with them into space. Took months before Nic had stopped puking at the smell of mint.

He remembered a card game. Except he never drank to excess when he was playing.

After?

He tried to move his arms and legs. Couldn't. How fukking drunk had he gotten that he couldn't…

Couldn't because there were bands around his arms. He could feel the pressure against his skin. Bands around his ankles, too. Warm liquid pooled on his right thigh, but it was his left thigh that hurt. Blood?

Hospital?

No. He was sitting up.

Station lockup?

No. Torin wouldn't…

Torin!

He saw stars, the attacking ship, his poor wounded lady, debris flying off in every possible direction, Torin caught up in it-the bright orange of her HE suit, visible then obscured by wreckage as he pinwheeled.

Memory surged back hard enough it slapped against the inside of his skull, causing starbursts of brilliant white against the inside of his lids. The attack. The explosion. The net. Pain…

They'd hit him with some kind of current.

Pain radiated out from the burning circle in his left thigh where they'd jabbed the contact point into flesh. The dull pain across his lower back matched up to where his tanks impacted. The ache in his mouth-Craig remembered spasming, teeth closing on his own flesh. Last but not least, a red-hot iron spike had been jabbed into each temple.

Only not actual spikes since he was apparently still alive.

He was pretty sure he was breathing.

He was naked. No surprise, if they'd just peeled him out of his suit.

Tied to a chair. He couldn't lift his head or open his eyes.

Torin's suit had been leaking air.

No way she'd survived a war and been taken out by pirate scum.

No fukking way.

But she hadn't been conscious.

And her suit had been leaking air.

He recognized the vibrations he could feel through the soles of his feet. The Susumi engines were on-line. The pirates had folded away from the debris field.

Away from Torin.

This wasn't the first time he'd been expected to believe Torin had carked it. Last time, the Primacy had taken out most of a battalion, melted Marines and equipment and the ground they were standing on into a sheet of gray-green glass. He hadn't mourned Torin then. He wouldn't now.

Muscles knotting across his shoulders and upper back, he forced his head up and his eyes open.

"Finally."

Craig blinked, closed his mouth around a line of pink drool-the warm liquid on his thigh explained-and looked for the source of the voice. The young male di'Taykan standing by the hatch had pale yellow hair and a nasty expression. As Craig watched, he raised one long-fingered hand to his throat, and turned his masker off.

"Fuk you." Even to his own ears, it sounded garbled, but Craig figured he got his message across.

The di'Taykan sneered. "I'll remind you of that in a few minutes when you're begging me for release."

Dragging his tongue across dry lips, Craig managed a snort. "Are di'Taykan even able to withhold sex?" The plastic cable ties that held his forearms and his lower legs tight to the chair had no give in them. Fukking sentient alien plastic, never around when needed. The chair had been secured to the deck. No matter how he threw his weight-forward, back, side to side-he couldn't budge it.

When he rocked his hips forward, his ass came off the seat, skin ripping up off the plastic with a disgusting sucking sound. If these were the same pirates who'd tortured Rogelio Page-and he almost wanted them to be if only to keep down the numbers of bugfuk crazy sons of bitches cruising around known space-he had a good idea of what made the seat sticky. Maybe not a good idea…

The di'Taykan watched him, eyes dark, so he rocked his hips forward again, trying to bring the bastard close enough that he could rip his throat out with his teeth. He'd never considered himself a violent man, but for this lot, he'd make an exception.

He felt himself beginning to respond to the pheromones. They'd crank him up until he was so sexually frustrated he couldn't think straight and then go after whatever the fuk it was they wanted to know. Had they started that way with Page?

Tough old bastard had held out, though, forced them to bring out the knives and live wires.

Had died in this chair.

This chair.

This inert plastic chair. Fukking figured. Insult added to injury.

Craig began to fight the bindings. Held nothing back. Felt his knee pop. Kept fighting. Had no idea when the struggle turned to rut. His skin felt on fire, and if he didn't get some release, soon, he was going to…

The fist that smashed into his face snapped him back to himself. He'd never had any interest in tying sex to pain. Although, by the third blow, he couldn't remember why.

Out in the corridor, Cho frowned down at the monitor and the image of Almon beating their prisoner. "This can't go the way the last one did."

Beside him, Doc shrugged. "Then make him an offer."

"An offer?"

"Traditionally, in this way of life, if the captured seaman had needed skills, it was join the crew or die."

"Join the crew?"

"Or die."

"What if he decides to die?"

Doc sighed. "No one decides to die. Page was a crazy old loner who stood on principle, but his actual death was an accident."

"You accidentally questioned him to death?" Cho asked dryly.

"It happens. The point is, it won't happen to this guy if I don't have to question him." Doc repeated the emphasis exactly. "Ryder's ship has been destroyed, his woman is dead, what does he have to return to? Nothing. Offer him life."

"As a part of the crew? We won't be able to trust him."

"So? When push comes to shove, we don't trust anyone."

It was, Cho acknowledged silently, opening the hatch, a valid point.

"Almon! Back off!"

The di'Taykan drove his fist into Craig's stomach one last time, then backed away breathing heavily, his arousal evident. Craig's own arousal had been dealt with twice. Vomit descending from half a meter up provided sufficient friction. Who knew? The relief had been temporary; he could still pound nails with his donger.

"Hose him down, he stinks."

He turned his face into the splash of water to get the blood out of his eyes and managed to focus on the Human male by the door.

Shorter than the di'Taykan by about half a meter, he had a cap of glossy black hair, dark eyes, a rivet through his right earlobe, and, behind the glimmer of a filter over his mouth and nose, an expression that suggested Almon's fists had been merely the prologue. Given the condition they'd found Page in, Craig had already figured that out for himself.

"Now get out."

Almon bent closer to the other man and said something too quietly for Craig to catch.

"Do I look like your sheshan? Go to the infirmary and check."

The di'Taykan shot Craig a look of such loathing on the way out the hatch, Craig wondered how much damage he'd managed to do with his cutter. Damage to someone Almon cared about. That would explain the personal touch.

He wasted the time while the new guy crossed toward him wondering if this was what a crazy person looked like. Almon sure as shit hadn't been the guy who'd done Page.

"Craig Ryder. Yes, I know who you are," the new guy said, stopping at the edge of the mess on the deck. "You're probably wondering why you're here. I need your codes."

Craig spat out a mouthful of blood. "Could've just asked for them, mate."

"Would you have given them up?"

"No, but you still could've asked." More than the beating, the red-hot spikes through his temples, left over from whatever the fuk they'd taken him out with were making it hard to think. What the hell had Sirin and Jan locked down? What was big enough for three people to die to protect.

"I don't like to waste time, Ryder. Which is why I've come to make you an offer." He had to be the captain, Craig realized, no one else would have had the authority to make an offer. "Join my crew."

"What?"

"Join my crew, and your codes become part of our…" He looked slightly pained. "… booty. Refuse and you die. There's a lot more salvage operators out there and, while I'd rather not have to put more time into this, frankly, you're not that hard to grab."

All things considered, Craig had to agree with that. "What do you want my codes for?"

"That's none of your business."

"Hey, my codes, my business." The blow took him by surprise. He hadn't thought the captain would be willing to get his hands dirty.

When Craig managed to focus on the captain's face, he smiled. "You decide to join us and you'll find out what I need the codes for."

"You couldn't possibly trust me if I joined you."

The captain's smile twisted. "I have it on good authority that when push comes to shove, we don't trust anyone. You'll be outnumbered, and even if you could get away from the rest of the crew, where are you going to go? We're in deep space. You could make a run for it when we reach a station, I suppose, but should we dock at a station that might offer sanctuary, I suspect I'm smart enough to lock you down for the duration."

"Being a member of your crew sounds a fuk of a lot like being your prisoner."

"Beats the alternative. And you have nothing to go back to, remember? Your ship was destroyed, your woman left for dead."

"Left for dead?" Torin wasn't dead.

The Captain shrugged. "She was alive when we folded, but her suit had been breached, and vacuum has a way of taking care of these things. Think the offer over," he added turning toward the hatch. "It's open for a limited time."

Torin wasn't dead!

Craig heard the hatch slam and looked up to find himself alone in the small room, bruised, bleeding, still hard enough to pound nails, and tied to a chair.

Torin wasn't dead. She'd been left for dead, but when talking about ex-Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr, that was a long way from being dead. All he had to do was stay alive until she found him.

Damn, but she was going to be pissed.

"That went well," Doc said, thoughtfully looking up from the monitor as Cho joined him.

Cho glanced down at the screen and frowned. "Why is he laughing?" "… unless one of you lot have learned how to breathe vacuum. Private Kerr!"

Torin jerked awake and onto her feet. Since she'd arrived at Ventris Station, her days had been filled with intense physical and mental training and her nights had held no more than four to five hours of sleep. She wasn't the only one dozing off in quiet moments-or even not so quiet moments. Tom Wiegand had fallen asleep during drill. His body had managed to keep marching in a straight line, but an order to about face had caused a pileup and resulted in an extra 5K run for the entire platoon.

But Wiegand wasn't the one on the hot seat now.

She blinked and managed to bring Staff Sergeant Beyhn into focus. His eyes were dark-most of the light receptors open-and his hair-which was honest-to-gods scarlet and not auburn or strawberry blond-jerked back and forth. She'd never met a di'Taykan until she got to the Marine Corps recruiting center on Paradise and was amazed to discover that the stories about them were mostly true. She'd never met a staff sergeant either, and the stories about them were definitely true.

When he saw he had her attention, Staff Sergeant Beyhn smiled and said, with exaggerated patience, "Perhaps Private Kerr would like to tell the platoon what she would do should she find herself in vacuum in a leaking HE suit."

Oh, thank gods, this was something she knew. "I'd patch the leak, Staff Sergeant."

"You'd patch the leak, Private Kerr? That's it?"

Torin had no idea what he was getting at. "Yes, Staff Sergeant. I'd patch the leak in the suit." Since he seemed to be waiting for more, she added, "Or I'd die."

"And you don't intend to die, is that it?"

She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. "No, Staff Sergeant, I do not."

His eyes darkened further and she wondered how much more there was for him to see. After a long moment he nodded, and said, "Good."

Wait…

She frowned. She had a leak in her HE suit?

Not good.

Leak in suit…

As soon as the pressure dropped, the internal patching material would have been released. If the leak was large enough, a further drop in pressure would release the secondary IPM.

Conscious personnel were instructed not to wait for the release. Conscious personnel needed to preserve more air. Torin's first attempt resulted in an inarticulate croak. No good enough. She wet her lips, swallowed, and tried again.

"Command! Patch release!"

Better.

It was cold. She remembered that from training. Cold and a little slimy.

"And then what, Private Kerr?"

Staff Sergeant Beyhn's red eyes were blinking. Off. On. Off. On. Off.

Torin blinked when the lights stopped and the surrounding stars came slowly into focus. The surrounding stars and quite a bit of moving debris. Calming her breathing, she worked back from what she knew.

She was in an HE suit. In space. Surrounded by moving debris. There'd been an explosion. Frowning, she opened and closed her right hand. She'd been holding something.

Craig. She'd been holding Craig. The tethers had been cut.

She couldn't see him. Not even with the helmet magnification on full.

"Craig! This is Torin, do you copy?"

A ship had come out of nowhere, shot out Promise's cabin, cut the tethers, and blown up the clump of wreckage she and Craig had been tagging.

"Craig! Damn it, answer me!"

The wreckage had blown as spectacularly as it had because the shot had set off the eight small charges they'd set to free up that piece of Primacy tech.

"Command! Run diagnostics on communication unit."

By tucking her head down, she could see Promise's lights flashing in the distance and her own cut tether pointing back the way she'd come. She was moving away from the ship. Diagnostics told her there was nothing wrong with the comm.

"Craig!"

No answer.

No sound at all but her own breathing. Usually, Torin found that comforting.

She'd been carrying twelve hours of air when they left the ship. They'd been out for ninety minutes when the shooting had started. Her suit said she had four hours and twenty-three minutes left. The leak had not been a hallucination. Or not only a hallucination.

Four hours and twenty-one minutes before the scrubbers were no longer effective and the oxygen levels dropped below what the suit considered air. She could manage for another ten to fifteen minutes after that as long she didn't need to do anything too complex

Even more fun, two layers of internal patching hadn't quite stopped the leak.

"Shit."

Had she been wearing jets, it wouldn't have mattered; she'd be back to the Promise before she ran out. But she'd been wearing a safety line. Jets and a safety line were redundant.

Apparently not.

Had she been in Craig's suit instead of one of the new military tested designs, she'd have been screwed and this was not the time to think about Craig in Craig's ten-year-old suit, unconscious, unable to make repairs. "Command! Foam release."

The foam-more or less the same material that protected Navy fliers in disabled pods-filled in all the space between Torin and her suit, started warm, got very hot for seven seconds, then semi-solidified, becoming, in essence, a second suit. She could still bend her arms and legs but not without effort. Design flaw-fix a leak, but then make her work harder, breathe harder. To add insult to injury, the foam itself was a brilliant pink. So was the skin under the foam. On the other hand, insulted beat dead. The collar seals bulged up against the bottom of her chin but held.

Giving thanks that she'd bothered to hook up the plumbing this trip, Torin considered her next option.

She wasn't moving particularly fast, but she was moving away from the ship. Fortunately, the tagging gun was still strapped to her leg and…

Her tanks hit first.

Given the amount of debris around her, moving at differing angles and speeds, it was inevitable she make contact with a piece of it. This felt like a big piece. And, in this instance, make contact was clearly a euphemism for full body impact.

Her tanks, or tanks like them, had been dropped out of a low orbit and continued to work when the defense contractors dug them out of six meters of dirt. Torin had seen the vid; she wasn't worried about her tanks.

Instinct said, brace for impact.

Training said, relax

Torin had seen Marines thrown about like rag dolls by unexpected explosions, ending up bruised and battered but without major injuries. Rag dolls didn't break.

The foam pressing against the collar seal held her head in place.

Her brain, unfortunately, continued moving until it was stopped by the inside of her skull.

"If the collision is relatively elastic, then object A is going to rebound much like a rubber ball, traveling now back along its original course." Sergeant Roper paused, turned away from the formulas on the screen, swept a weary gaze over the training platoon and said, "Here in the Corps, we call inelastic collisions crashes. Try to avoid them."

"Yes, Sergeant!"

Torin really wished people would stop shouting. She had one fuk of a headache.

Opening her eyes, she squinted her surroundings into focus and slowly realized something was wrong.

No, right.

Most of the wreckage continued to follow the blast radius, moving out and away.

She was on her way back.

That was good.

Four hours and six minutes of air.

Okay, the concussion she seemed to have wasn't optimum, but as long as she could avoid slamming into anything else that massed out significantly higher than she did, she could work around it.

Evidence seemed to suggest an HE suit full of semi-solidified foam made collisions remarkably elastic.

Unfortunately, because her tanks had hit first, she'd lost enough energy during the crash that she'd slowed considerably. She pinged the Promise-114 kilometers-then waited five minutes and pinged again-113.27 kilometers. She'd traveled.73 of a kilometer in five minutes,.146 in one minute, so in sixty minutes she'd travel 8.76 kilometers.

"These things need a fukking speedometer," she muttered, redoing the math.

Math never lied.

When she ran out of air, she'd be a little under 80 K short of the ship.

She needed to be moving three times faster. Roughly three point three times faster, but who was counting.

Not entirely convinced she could keep it down, Torin took a sip of tepid water and swallowed carefully. Ignoring the unpleasant reality of-she glanced down-three hours and forty-one minutes of air-the two liters of water would recycle for days until the laws of diminishing returns caught up to her. The concentrated sludge in the emergency food pouch would keep her from starving. Craig had mocked her when she filled it. His was empty.

Mouth moistened, she tongued his codes into her implant. Her comm was working, but his might have been damaged in the explosion. "Craig! Answer me!"

Still nothing.

Torin ran her magnification back to full, trying to see between the pieces in the thicker parts of the debris field, but she had a bad feeling she wouldn't find him without the ship's scanners.

She froze. Barely breathing.

One of the charges hadn't blown. A ping read it at 2.6 kilometers away at 320 degrees to her zero. Without maneuvering thrusters, it might as well be in the next system.

Three hours and thirty-seven minutes of air.

If she could get to the charge, she could use it to shoot herself at the ship.

Shoot…

Her brain must've taken more damage than she'd thought.

Forcing her arm down to her side, she slid the first finger of her right hand through the trigger guard and pulled the tagging gun free of the holster. Still ninety-seven tags in the magazine. She drew a mental line along the path the piece of debris carrying the charge would take. Another along the line she'd have to take to meet up with it.

Aimed the barrel back along that line.

Adjusted to account for the debris' speed.

Adjusted to account for her speed.

Adjusted to account for any additional speed that might be added by the tagging gun during the course correction.

Realized there was no way in hell she could do that kind of math in her head.

And pulled the trigger.

Better to die attempting the impossible.

A full magazine held a hundred tags. She'd used three while they set the charges. She used another twenty-two before her path looked like it would cross the debris' path. Maybe. Probably.

"Fuk it."

Three hours and four minutes of air.

Two hours and fifty one minutes.

It was going to be close.

Another six tags made it closer.

Moving slowly and carefully, Torin stretched out her left arm…

Two hours and forty-seven minutes.

… and closed her thumb and forefinger on the edge of the debris.

At this point, spin didn't matter-she'd have to aim herself at the ship regardless, so she moved as quickly as she could, arming the charge and then using the remains of her tether to strap the piece of debris across her back. By the time she managed it, she'd used up another forty-nine minutes of air.

Fourteen tags lined her up facing the Promise's lights.

Fifty-one tags left to adjust her course-she was aiming a projectile at a target almost a hundred kilometers away by eye-and to keep her from slamming into the ship at a speed that would do neither her nor the ship any good.

It all came down to whether or not the blast would supply enough push to get her to the Promise's tanks before her air ran out.

"Fire in the hole!"

Teeth together, tongue safely out of danger, she detonated the charge.

"Escape pods…" Captain Farmer slapped the curved metal of the pod beside her. "… are not designed for comfort. They are designed to get you away from your transportation and the battle that's destroyed it as quickly as possible. You will be pulling close to 4 Gs during the initial thrust, so if you've taken any injuries during the time the Navy has been getting the shit shot out of it, it's going to hurt." She smiled out at the training platoon. "Here in the Corps, we feel a little pain is preferable to going down with the ship."

When Torin came to, a nosebleed had gummed her lips together. She checked the time-she'd been out for twelve minutes-worked her lips apart, and licked them mostly clean. Good thing she'd never minded the taste of blood.

Most of the debris field had moved past her at this point. This was a good thing because slamming into random pieces of wreckage currently filled the top spot on her list of things she'd rather not do.

A ping put her at 84.6 kilometers from the ship. She'd traveled 14.4 kilometers in the twelve minutes she'd been out. That was 1.2 kilometers a minute and 67 kilometers an hour.

She'd reach the Promise in an hour and thirty-six minutes.

This left her a little better than thirteen minutes to get inside and hook up to the ship's tanks. At full magnification, it appeared that only the cabin had been holed, but she couldn't be a hundred percent positive the tanks were intact until she actually got there.

Decelerating would also eat up some time, but she had a plan.

If not for the concussion, she'd catch a quick nap-setting her comm to wake her in an hour. As that wasn't an option…

The Susumi radiation they'd read on arrival had undoubtedly come from the other CSO's ship, destroyed more thoroughly than the Promise. That explained why there'd been no answer. Nat, the cargo jockey who'd pointed them at this field, had been on station because her ship had taken a bad fold. Not a huge jump to suspect it hadn't been a bad fold at all but that they'd been caught in the blast radius. No one deliberately put themselves in the radius of a Susumi blast. The destruction had been an accident.

Rogelio Page's injuries told her they wanted information from a CSO.

The blast had destroyed any chance of them picking up a new operator.

So they'd had to look elsewhere.

Craig wasn't answering his comm or his implant.

There was always the chance he'd died when the charges blew.

Torin didn't think so.

Didn't want to think so.

Nor did she think she'd find him when she finally got to the ship's scanners.

The pirates needed him. They-Nat and her crew-had scooped him up and left her for dead.

She was more than a little pissed about that.

Turned out, an hour and a half later, her course didn't need much correction.

"Let's hear it for paying attention on the heavy ordinance range."

Torin took three shots to slightly change her angle of approach and spent the rest of the tags to slow herself as much as possible. She hadn't aimed herself right at the ship but just over it, her boots barely clearing the metal. As it passed under her, she took a quick look at the hole in the cabin. The control panel looked intact and the odds were very good the main cabin had been sealed off immediately from the rest of the ship. There'd be air. If she could get to it.

The moment her body cleared the ship on the far side, she remagged her boots. Full power. They slammed her down onto the ship working against her forward momentum.

To a certain extent, the foam continued to protect her.

Swearing seemed like a good idea except she had to concentrate on basic functionality. Given that she was in the cabin, she assumed she'd managed to stay conscious through docking maneuvers, but she wouldn't have bet her pension on it. And the tank hookup seemed stupidly complicated until she realized she still had the piece of wreckage tied to her back.

Things started to spin while she worked it loose and she only just got her mouth over the puke tube in time.

"You haven't had fun until you've had a helmet full of puke." Staff Sergeant Beyhn frowned down at her. "You're sucking carbon dioxide, Kerr. Get your gods-damned tanks in the fill position."

"Work… ing on… it, Staff."

"Work faster."

"Yes, Staff Sergeant."

She didn't so much push her tanks into the fill niche as collapse back into it.

"Lucky these things are idiot proof," the staff sergeant muttered.

Torin turned off the scanners, started to sit, and remembered her suit didn't exactly bend anymore. She'd been right. The scanners had picked up no sign of Craig. If he'd been blown to pieces, they'd have picked up the DNA signature. The pirates had him.

The way they'd had Rogelio Page.

But Craig had something Page hadn't.

He had her.

All he had to do was stay alive until she came for him.