The Heart of Valour (2 page)

The sound of the inner doors opening jerked her attention back to the terminal.

“Listen up, children, because I’m only going to say this once.”

Torin stared in disbelief at the familiar figure standing just inside the open doors. Hands tucked behind his back, scarlet hair moving slowly back and forth, his uniform more like a matte-black shadow than actual fabric, stood Staff Sergeant di’Allak Beyhn.

A little over ten years ago, he’d stood in exactly that position, said exactly those words and had, over the next 150 days, gone on to be one of the main reasons Torin had become a career Marine.

It couldn’t be the same Marine.

It had to be another di’Taykan trained by him, another di’Taykan with the same coloring who’d picked up the same phrases and mannerisms. An imitation, not the real thing. He’d had more than a few years in back when he’d been her DI, so Staff Sergeant Beyhn had to have moved on to qui’Taykan—the breeding phase—and left the military.

“I am Staff Sergeant Beyhn.”

Or not.

He swept a scarlet gaze over the recruits. “When I give the word, here’s what you’re going to do: you’re going to pick up your gear and move in an orderly fashion through these doors. Once inside, you’ll make a quick left, proceed to the end of the corridor, and arrange yourselves on the yellow lines. Anyone who can’t figure out how to accomplish that should consider enlisting in the Navy.”

A couple of the recruits snickered.

Staff Sergeant Beyhn’s expression made it clear he wasn’t kidding, and the snickering stopped. “This is your last chance to reconsider your decision to become a Marine,” he continued, redirecting his attention to the room at large. “No one will think any less of you if you decide to turn around and take the next shuttle home.”

Torin had never heard of anyone taking him up on the offer; the recruiters made sure that anyone who got this far would make it past the yellow lines at least, but she supposed there was always a first time.

No one moved.

She checked the brown-haired young man by the map. He was frowning thoughtfully.

“Gunnery Sergeant Kerr.”

All attention snapped suddenly to her as the recruits followed Staff Sergeant Beyhn’s gaze up to the gallery. She saw two or three heads dip together and was sure she heard a whispered “
Silsviss
,” the sibilants making the word carry.

“When you have a moment, Gunny.”

Fighting the urge to snap to attention and shout,
“Sir, yes, sir!”
Torin nodded. “I’m on my way down, Staff.” If he could use the diminutive, she could use the diminutive. She’d have to keep telling herself that.

He nodded in turn, one smooth dip of the head—it was hard to tell at that distance, but she thought the
ablin gon savit
was smiling, fully aware of what her instinctive reaction would be. Stepping back out of the doorway, he snapped, “Let’s move, people!”

The brown-haired young man was in the last group of recruits through the doors into Ventris Station. Torin made a note to check his name; he was going to win her an easy twenty.

The station studied her identification for a moment and then let her in through the decompression door at the end of the gallery—big open spaces in stations made people nervous, so the designers added redundancies to their fail-safes—and by the time Torin dropped down a level the recruits were moving off the lines and into the hygiene unit. Given that di’Taykan hair wasn’t hair at all but a uniform length, multistrand sensory organ and the Krai had no hair to speak of, the Corps had come up with a compromise for their Human recruits that acknowledged they were part of an integrated universe and managed to satisfy tradition as well. The hygiene unit removed dead tissue from all three species, so for the 150 days of Basic, it was business as usual for the di’Taykan, a slightly shinier scalp for the Krai, and on Human heads, stubble. If nothing else, the stubble made it perfectly clear that no Humans were going to get by on their looks.

Torin maintained her own hair at di’Taykan length, but she knew Human Marines who kept their personal hygiene units locked at the dead tissue setting. She thought it made them look like they’d just been detanked, but hell—if they were into an
I nearly had my ass shot off
hair style, who was she to complain?

Staff Sergeant Beyhn stood by an inner wall, watching the last recruits cross into processing. Up close, he looked tired, like he hadn’t been sleeping. di’Taykan didn’t get bags under their eyes, but he was close.

“They’re not mine,” he said as Torin joined him. “I’ve got a group coming up on one twenty I should be with right now, but for the last few days this place has been jumping like the seals are blown, and assignments have therefore been late coming down.” He turned to face her. “You wouldn’t know why, would you, Gunnery Sergeant Kerr?”

“I hear Major Svensson has recently been detanked, Staff Sergeant.”

He made a noise that from a Human would have been noncommittal but from a di’Taykan bordered on insulting. “Don’t give me that crap, Gunny. The whole station knows that you single-handedly brought the Silsviss in on our side and followed it up by outsmarting a big yellow spaceship and bringing your recon team safely home.”

“Not all of them.” Torin closed her hand around the memory of the small, metal cylinder that held the remains of PFC August Guimond.

Beyhn stared at her for a long moment, his eyes moving from near pink to scarlet as more and more light receptors opened. Finally he nodded, his expression relaxing, and Torin realized that she’d been measured and not found wanting.

A smart person would have let it go. “You thought I might be…”

“Getting too big for your britches.”

Torin blinked. “What?”

“Means full of yourself. Picked it up from a Marine who came through on his SLC.”

There could only be one Marine that fond of oldEarth idiom. “Hollice?”

“That’s the name.” He headed down the corridor, and Torin fell into step beside him. “So, since it’s unlikely they promoted you for just doing your job, I’m guessing you’ve got blackmail material on that General Morris who seems to like you so much.”

As it happened, she did, but since her old DI wasn’t actually digging for information, she merely said, “Ours is not to question why, Sergeant.”

He snorted. “Yeah, that’s what they keep telling me.”

*Your 0930 briefing has been moved to L6S23C29.*

Torin tongued an acknowledgment and checked the time.

*0858*

No need to hurry.

“New implant? You half winced just there,” the sergeant continued when she raised an inquiring brow. “Like you were reacting to the memory of pain.”

She fought the urge to cup the left side of her jaw, recently cracked by the techs back at Battalion who’d installed her new unit during the short time she’d spent with her company on the OutSector station before being ordered coreward to Ventris. The bone ached and the skin over it felt tender. “Good call.”

“Not really. Automatic upgrade when you hit Gunny,” he reminded her. “Been a long time since I got cracked, but I seem to remember them saying it wouldn’t hurt.”

“Yeah. That’s what they say.”

“Lying bastards. Where you heading?”

“L6S23C29.”

“You remember how to find your way around?”

“I do.”

An ability to negotiate Ventris Station was a hard-earned skill. The word
tesseract
had been mentioned on more than one occasion. Other, less scientific words were used more frequently, the Corps having a long history of creative profanity and two new languages to practice it in. Torin had refamiliarized herself with the more unique aspects of station navigation early that morning on her five k run.

“Well, if you find your way to the baby-sitter’s club sometime when I’m not hand feeding the future of the Corps, I’ll buy you a drink.” Then he glanced at the half dozen chevrons surrounding the crossed KC-7s on her sleeve, looked up, and nodded; that same single dip of the head. “Good work, Marine.”

He’d been the first person to call her Marine. She’d just finished two tendays on Crucible, her and the rest of Platoon 29, learning to actually use all the information they’d had crammed into their heads over the first 120 days of training. They’d been in ranks, bloody but unbeaten at the pickup point, and, as the VTA’s hatch opened, Sergeant Beyhn had yelled, “Double-time, Marines. We’re moving out.” That had been—and remained—the proudest moment of her life.

“Don’t get all choked up on me now,” he grinned as he opened the door into Hygiene and the sound of seventy-two recruits being sanitized drifted into the corridor. “I bet Sergeant Hayman you’d make Gunny before I got out and Jude’s just contributed a solid fifty to my offspring fund.”

Torin didn’t bother hiding her shudder. “That’s the scariest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“That I bet a fifty on you?”

“That you have an offspring fund.”

* * *

Level 6, Section 23, Compartment 29—according to the station directory, she couldn’t get there from where she was. Torin snorted and headed for the nearest vertical. All routes on Ventris Station led to the main parade square. Logically, from the main parade square, it was then possible to get to any address in the station.

They should never have let the H’san help with the design.
She slowed to let an approaching captain into the shaft first, waited for the next available rising strap, and stepped across a whole lot of nothing to catch hold of it. The public terminal was on level one, but there were fourteen sublevels under that. Her stomach did a lazy loop in the zero gravity, then settled.

Even with the workday underway for almost an hour, the shaft was busy. She nodded at a descending technical sergeant, politely ignored a pair of officers sharing a strap while they discussed their latest liberty, and raised an eyebrow at a Krai recruit adjusting her uniform as she passed, one foot holding the strap, both hands attempting to straighten her collar. The Krai had no problem in zero gee—no nausea, no disorientation—but other species weren’t so lucky. Human and di’Taykan recruits who’d spent their whole lives dirtside were tested in zero gee modules before they were allowed into the shafts, but even then it was pretty much a guarantee that the rest of the station would be dodging wobbly globes of vomit and the embarrassed recruit trying to clean them up at some point during the first thirty days of every Basic course. Since a new course started every ten days, it paid to pay attention in the verticals.

At Level 3, Torin grabbed the bar over the door and flipped out into the deck. The link station was right where she remembered it. By the time the link arrived, there were eight Marines waiting with her, and she had less than twenty minutes’ travel time left.

Not a problem.

Like the public terminal, the main parade square had been designated as an “outside” area of the station. On her way around to the link station that would take her to Section 23, Torin snapped off three salutes and then stopped by a recruit who stood staring around at eighteen potential exits in rising panic.

“Where do you need to be?” she asked.

Pale gray eyes holding an equal mix of determination and fear locked on her face. “Sir! This…”

“Don’t call me sir, I’m not your DI. Call me Gunnery Sergeant.”

“Sir! Yes, si… Yes, Gunnery Sergeant! This recruit needs to be at L4S12 main administration.”

She checked his collar tabs. He was still in his first fifty. “Are you cleared for verticals?”

“Yes, Gunnery Sergeant!”

“Take that shaft… That shaft!” She reached out and turned his head. “Take it up two levels. Turn right immediately out of the shaft. Keep moving until you get to Section 12 then take the first vertical you see back down a level.”

He glanced at his watch. “I have to be there in four minutes!”

It was hard not to smile. “Then you’d better hurry.”

“Yes, Gunnery Sergeant!”

She watched him double-time off, turned back toward her station, and saluted a Krai lieutenant wearing a Ventris patch who was staring at her with disapproval.

“The recruits need to learn their way around on their own, Gunny.”

Stifling a sigh, she stopped walking. She really didn’t have time for this. “The recruits need to learn they can depend on other Marines when the chips are down, Lieutenant.”

“And what does he learn if you tell him how to get where he’s going?”

“That it isn’t a weakness to ask for directions.”

“He didn’t ask for directions, Gunny.”

“Now he knows he can, sir.”

The lieutenant’s nose ridges flared. “You can’t ask for directions in combat!”

Torin did not drop her gaze to the lieutenant’s chest and an absence of ribbons but was so obvious about it, she might as well have. “You’d be surprised, sir.” She snapped off another salute and was in the link and gone before he realized he’d been dismissed.

She reached L6S23C29 with three minutes and forty-two seconds to spare.

And found her reputation had preceded her.

“Congratulations on the promotion, Gunnery Sergeant Kerr.”

“Thank you, Captain Stedrin. And you on yours.”

The captain smiled, pale blue hair flicking back and forth. “I suspect the general thought it was easier to promote me than to break in another aide. Besides, we’ve got an actual staff now, and he probably believes the extra bar will make it easier for me to take command.”

“I don’t think you’ll have any trouble, sir.”

Captain Stedrin’s hair sped up a little. “That’s quite the compliment coming from you, Gunny.”

“Yes, sir.” She meant it, though. When they’d first met on the
Berganitan
, Lieutenant Stedrin had been a typical “stick-up-the-ass” young officer—not, as it happened, too different from the lieutenant she’d just been talking to on the parade square although the attitude was temperamentally unusual for a di’Taykan—but he’d made the right decisions when it mattered, and while he might never be much of a line officer, she’d been in the Corps long enough to know that a good staff officer, one who cared about the Marines more than the paperwork, was worth his weight in ammo. Maybe not the impact boomers, but definitely the regular rounds.