The Better Part of Valor (26 page)

Tsui and Werst stood behind the slight cover offered by the corners, on opposite sides of the corridor, shooting diagonally. Under their covering fire, Torin scrambled back until she shared Werst’s space.

The two engineers carrying the captain between them were past. Guimond pounded by carrying a Katrien under each arm, closely followed by Ryder holding
Harveer
Niirantapajee.

How nice he’s making himself
…She fired as a head and thorax suddenly appeared, driving the bug back….
useful. And who the hell took him off stretcher duty?

As the last Marine crossed, Torin tapped Werst on the shoulder. “Go!”

The moment he was clear, she followed.

It still seemed to be ninety-five point five meters to cross corridor number six.

Thirty paces along, Torin stopped and spun around, back against the wall, benny extended out from her right side. “Tsui! Break off!”

The lance corporal squeezed off another half dozen shots, then whirled and ran.

Torin held her position as Tsui raced past, waiting for the first bug.

“Staff! Break off!”

Thirty paces farther up the passage, Tsui held the wall.

They’d managed to leapfrog nearly all the way to the sixth corridor when the first bug appeared out of corridor five.

Torin dropped to her stomach and fired.

The bug threw itself back out of range.

A quick glance over her shoulder and Torin noted Captain Travik had nearly reached the vertical.

At corridor six, Nivry and Jynett had taken a bug out although from nine meters away, it was impossible to tell for certain if it was dead. Eventually, its head would explode and remove any doubt, but Torin had no intention of remaining around for the spectacle.

Jynett’s right arm was smoking.

“Chemical weapon,” she explained, firing at the sudden appearance of a bug in the shadows. “Tried to fukking eat through my suit. Couldn’t quite. Suit’s neutralized it now, I think.”

“Make sure of it the moment you can.” Over the years, Torin had taken a number of injuries and, in her experience, nothing delivered old-fashioned, scream-until-hoarse pain like a chemical burn. She jerked her head in the direction of the vertical. “Go. I’ll hold here.”

With two corridors to watch, the next set of leapfrogs became more complicated. Ten meters from the drop, the bugs swarmed out of corridor six.

Firing one-handed, Torin dropped her microphone. “Do it, Frii!”

His music card was everything he’d said it would be. Blasted through the dead bug’s comm unit at full volume, the attack ran into a solid wall of sound.

The passage smelled suddenly of burned cork.

The final three Marines sprinted for the ladder.

Torin slid last, and as her head dropped below the level of the deck, the sound switched off.
Found another channel. Smart bugs.

Almost before her boots hit the deck, she was moving out into the new passage.

Before she could speak, the hatch slammed, the two engineers were laser welding the seal, and Presit had a handful of Torin’s combats.

“You are getting me out of here, now!”

“Guimond!”

“Sorry, Staff.”

“Was anyone besides Jynett hit?” Torin snarled, glaring at the Katrien as Guimond led her away.

“Huilin and Dursinski. Aid kit stuff. Nothing to…” Something rattled in the vertical.

“Fire in the hole!”

Johnston and Heer dove out of the way as a muffled explosion buckled the hatch.

“Something to remember, people,” Torin announced as she stood. “They’ve got ordnance with them. Did the welds hold?”

“Enough of them, Staff.”

“And the hatch is jammed in its track now,” Heer added. “They’re not coming through here.”

“Unless they’ve got a couple more of what they just dropped?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Then let’s not linger, people. We’re on the right level, it’s just a matter of getting to the air lock before the bugs.” She checked the charge on her benny, noted that Guimond seemed to be keeping his bulk between her and the reporter, and finally took a moment to look around. “What’s with all the fukking pipes?”

*   *   *

“Captain! The Others appear to be opening their launch bays!”

“Appear to be, Mister Potter, or are?”

“The Others
have
opened launch bays.”

“Flight Commander.”

“Launch bays open, Captain. Squadrons standing by.”

“Captain!”

“I see it.” Fighters, longer and narrower than the Jades, were dropping into space.
What would happen if we didn’t respond?
the captain wondered as the enemy fighters began to
gather into flights of three.
What would happen if we just sat here, and let them come at us? Would Big Yellow stop them?

Maybe.

Maybe not. It wasn’t something she could risk.

“Flight Commander, launch squadrons.”

“Aye, aye, Captain. Launching squadrons.”

*   *   *

“Buh-bye scientific support,” Lieutenant Commander Sibley chortled as he dropped his Jade with the rest. “Let’s hear it for being back in the saddle.”

“It,” Shylin muttered. “You think we’re going to be allowed to do any shooting, Sib?”

“Allowed?”

“Big Yellow stopped the missiles. Could as easily stop us.”

“Could. Won’t.”

“You know something I don’t?”

“Lieutenant, the amount I know that you don’t could overload the
Berg
’s memory core.”

“And you’re modest, too.”

“Aren’t I?” Grinning, he turned to his wing frequency.
“Black Eight, Black Nine
, form up on me.”

“Roger
, B7. Eight
taking position to port.”

“Nine
to starboard. Ready to move in.”

“All fighters, enemy is advancing around the full 360 of Big Yellow.”
The flight commander’s voice filled the double cockpit like the voice of God and Sibley hurriedly adjusted the volume.
“All fighters, advance pattern zeta.”

“Eight wings of them, eight wings of us, all evenly spaced out in two pretty, pretty circles. Oy, mama, I get the feeling someone’s selling tickets to this.” Sibley moved his wing into the forty-five-degree mark. “Step right up, ladies, gentlemen, and species undecided. Get a front row seat as we fill the skies with pyrotechnics.”

“They’re more ellipses than circles, Sib.”

“I’m not going to argue with you, Shy.”

“’Cause I’m right.”

*   *   *

“Fighters are about to clear Big Yellow, Captain.”

“Ours or theirs?”

“Both.”

“W
hen I find out whose head
this
came out of, I’m going to kick their ass.”

When no one claimed responsibility, Torin snorted and ducked another pipe. The only passage leading away from the last vertical headed starboard in a series of fifty-six-meter diagonals no more than a meter wide, crossed and recrossed by pipes in a variety of diameters and colors. The lowest pipes were about shoulder height on Torin, the highest disappeared into darkness two or three levels up. Some of them were warm to the touch. Some of them made noise.

The lack of space had taken them down to two stretcher-bearers. At each corner, they had to lift Captain Travik’s head until his body was nearly vertical in order to get him around the forty-five-degree angle. Various vital signs would fluctuate during the maneuver, but as they always returned to more or less the same position afterward, Torin figured they weren’t doing much damage. Not that they had any choice.

On the upside, the civilians, now behind the stretcher party, got a series of short rests.
Harveer
Niirantapajee was visibly flagging and even the Katrien were saving most of their breath for walking. Sooner or later, they’d have to be carried, but Torin wanted to delay the inevitable as long as she could. Many Marines had trouble taking the smaller species seriously, and she didn’t want to reinforce bad attitudes. Nor, however, did she plan on allowing the march to be overrun by bugs because the civilians couldn’t keep up.

“Why won’t he just fukking die,” Johnston muttered, inching backward, both hands at shoulder height gripping the forward stretcher handles. The captain sagged forward against
the net. “Then we could bag him. Dust him and he’d be a lot easier to carry.”

“A good officer would die,” Heer grunted agreement at the other end of the body. “Fukking figures Travik would linger.”

“You call that an
abquin
?”

Johnston jerked and narrowly missed hitting his head on a random “u” of yellow pipe. “Staff! Captain Travik’s awake.”

The captain’s eyes rolled around in their sockets independent of each other while the two engineers lowered him carefully back to a horizontal position. “Sergeant, put that Marine on report.”

“Captain?” Torin waved the stretcher carriers forward so the rest of the march could get around the corner then bent and wrapped one hand around the captain’s chin. His skin felt cold and slightly clammy. “Sir? Can you hear me.”

For an instant, his eyes focused on hers. “I won’t,” he snarled, upper lip curled. “And you can’t make me.” Then he blinked twice and his features sagged back into oblivion.

She sighed and straightened. “He’s gone again, let’s move on.”

“They are wishing he is dead,” Presit declared, emerging into the new length of passage. “I are hearing them.”

“Ma’am, fair warning.” Torin waved the engineers and their burden forward. “No one likes a snitch.” Rather than waiting for a response, she turned and shuffled sideways past the captain, shooting Johnston and Heer both a silent warning as she passed. Griping was a grunt’s right, but they needed to keep their voices down unless they wanted every word repeated on Presit a Tur durValintrisy’s “Voice from the Front.” The torrent of chittering that followed her to her previous place in the march sounded less than complimentary even given the language barrier.

“Staff! Dursinski. We got bugs cutting us off!”

According to the map, the switchbacks opened up into a wide passage that would take them the remaining 1.79 kilometers aft. Which would do them no good at all if they couldn’t get to it.

“Dursinski, which direction are they coming from?”

“Both directions. I think they know we’re in h…”
The sound of weapons fire sounded clearly over Dursinski’s PCU.

“That’s a big affirmative on them knowing we’re here! We can’t get out!”

Fuk. Only one thing to do. “Fall back. We’ll retreat to that last vertical and head back up a level.” Provided Big Yellow hadn’t changed the floor plan, they’d have room to maneuver up there.

“Roger, Staff. Falling…Goddamn it, Huilin! Cover your left side!…back.”

“Staff.”

“What is it, Johnston?”

“We sealed the hatch at the bottom of the vertical.”

“I know. Now, you’ll have to unseal it because they could hold us indefinitely at these goddamned angled corners. You heard what’s happening, people. Nivry, you’ve just moved from tail end to point.”

“Roger, Staff.”

“So, now we are walking back,” Presit sneered. She pointed an ebony finger up at Torin with such force the thick fur fringe folded back off her wrist. “You are having no idea what you are doing!”

“Shut up, you idiot. I’m so tired of hearing you complain.” The scales on the Niln’s throat began to flush a deep gold. “In fact, I’m just generally tired of hearing you.”

Presit whirled on her, teeth bared. “You are not silencing the media!”

“No, I’m not. I’m silencing an annoyance with more hair than brains.”

“We are needing to get along,” Gytha began, but Torin cut her off with a touch on the shoulder and a quick shake of her head. When the Katrien stepped back, Torin stepped between the two combatants, her relative bulk impossible to ignore. “I’ve run out of dead targets to shoot in order to make a point,” she said quietly.

“You are not meaning…” Presit’s voice trailed off as she met Torin’s eyes.

Torin raised a brow.

“Fine. We are walking back.” She spun around and stomped off in a cloud of shed fur. “But I are registering a complaint with General Morris the instant we are rescued.”

“You know,” the
harveer
murmured to Gytha as they passed, the younger scientist having given an arm to the elder,
“I’m thinking freshmen would be a lot easier to control if they let us carry weapons.”

Ryder wanted to say something, she could feel it in the air, but a pointed look got him moving after the others. Grinning, Guimond followed.

“And what are you two smiling at?”

Johnston and Heer exchanged essentially identical expressions as they carried the captain back to the corner.

“Nothing, Staff.”

She stepped back as Harrop paused by her shoulder. “Go on, Corporal. I’m going to beat my head against a bulkhead for a moment.”

“The general’ll stand by you, Staff. No matter what the little hairball says.”

“Thanks.” Given their history, Torin figured the odds were about even that he wouldn’t. “Now, get moving.”

“Staff, Nivry. We got bugs at this end, too!”

As all eyes turned toward her, Torin allowed only mild annoyance to show.

They’d maneuvered their way back around three corners. If the map was right, and if the ship hadn’t decided to rearrange the architecture, they were exactly halfway between in and out.

No way to avoid a firefight.

“How many bugs, Nivry?”

“Can’t tell. Tsui took a hit trying to get around that last corner for a look.”

“Is he bad?” Torin ducked around a pipe looping down from the tangle up above, paused, flipped down her helmet scanner, and tilted back her head.

“He’s bleeding, but he’ll live. We can hold them here indefinitely, Staff.”

“Just like they can hold us.” At maximum magnification, the light she’d spotted became a recognizable pattern. “Everyone fall back on my position.”

“Roger, Staff.”

“Dursinski, you copy that?”

“Roger, Staff. Falling back.”

“Harrop. Take a look up there and tell me what you see?”