The Heart of Valour (3 page)

She glanced across the front of the small lecture hall to where General Morris, still without that third star and his promotion to Tekamal and apparently destined to be her personal pain in the brass for years to come, was speaking to a di’Taykan major. The deep orange hair made it a sure bet that it was Major di’Uninat Alie, the Intelligence officer who’d debriefed Torin just after she’d arrived at the station. “The general’s filling her in on what he considers the pertinent points, isn’t he, sir?”

“I think that’s a given.”

General Morris had chosen her for the mission to Silsvah. She supposed it was a compliment that he’d believed her capable of doing what was necessary to bring the Silsviss into the Confederation before the Others could recruit them, but she’d lost thirteen Marines on what was supposed to be ceremonial duty, and while she had no trouble following orders, she disliked being manipulated. He’d also chosen her to lead the recon platoon into Big Yellow, the unidentified alien vessel found floating dead in space.
Probably
another compliment. He’d needed a senior NCO capable of riding herd on a glory-seeking officer destined for promotion to placate the Krai members of Parliament, but since Captain Travik had spent most of the mission unconscious, the official reports were slightly different than the reality of the situation.

Torin really hated politics.

Fortunately, she wasn’t expected to smile as the general approached.

“Staff Sergeant Kerr. Good to see you again. I’ve just been telling Major Alie what she can expect.”

“Sir.” Captain Stedrin cleared his throat, a Human noise the di’Taykan had adopted. “It’s Gunnery Sergeant now.”

“Why, so it is.” General Morris’ florid cheeks flushed darker as his gaze flickered to her collar tabs and back. “Congratulations.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“I’m looking forward to hearing what you have to say.”

“Sir?”

“About the Silsviss.”

He was staying? Well that was just fukking wonderful. “Yes, sir.”

With a final, patronizing nod, the general moved toward an empty seat in the last row. Captain Stedrin let him get most of the way there before he caught up and bent to murmur something in the general’s ear. Standing by the lectern, Torin couldn’t hear the captain’s part of the conversation, but the general’s, “What now?” came through loud and clear. After a moment, and an inspection of the captain’s slate, he shook his head and stomped off out the rear door.

Captain Stedrin shot her a very di’Taykan grin as he followed.

The bastard had waited until the last minute to clear the general out just to watch her sweat. Nice one. He’d known from the beginning they’d be leaving, or he’d have left his slate with the others on the table near the lower door. Torin had been warned her slate wouldn’t record—Compartments 21 to 39 were configured to prevent it—but slates were designed to be ultimately flexible, and there was only one way to be certain no one would enter the information with a stylus and that was to take them out of the hands of their owners. She suspected there were certain things about the way the Silsviss had joined the Confederation that the highest levels of the Corps preferred the general population never knew. Ultimately, there’d be no way to prevent it, but—in the here and now—the top brass were doing what they could to slow things down.

“Are you ready, Gunnery Sergeant Kerr?”

She faced Major Alie and nodded, an echo of Staff Sergeant Beyhn’s single dip. “Yes, sir.”

“You don’t look nervous.”

“Are they likely to shoot at me, sir?”

The major’s eyes lightened as she smiled. “I doubt it.”

“Then I’ll be fine.”

Torin assumed every one of the thirty officers in the room—there’d be other rooms and other ranks later—had read not only her report, but General Morris’ report, Lieutenant Jarret’s report and probably, depending on their clearance levels, both the diplomats’ and Cri Sawyes’ report. She wasn’t here to go over the facts of the mission one more time lest something crucial had been left out that effected the acceptance of the Silsviss into the Confederation and their eventual integration into the Corps. She was here because later, after the facts had been presented one more time, there’d be questions and she was the only one who could answer many of them.

It was both clichéd and dangerous to believe that insight into a species could be gained by wholesale slaughter, but Torin was willing to bet that, here and now, no one knew the Silsviss quite like she did.

Slate to hand in case she needed to refer to her notes, she faced the tiers of seats and began. “During the mission in question, I was a Staff Sergeant with 7th Division, 4th Recar’ta, 1st Battalion, Sh’quo Company. My orders were to put together a platoon out of able-bodied Marines to accompany a group of diplomats and their support staff—Mictok, Dornagain, and Rakva—to Silsviss under the command of Second Lieutenant di’Ka Jarret…”

There’d been diplomacy for a while, but then all hell had broken loose.

When she reached the point in the story where the
Berganitan
had returned to Silsvah and sent down a VTA to lift them off—the VTA they’d landed in having been lost in a swamp—she saw a few of the officers begin to stir. Either they hadn’t heard what happened after liftoff and they thought she was nearly done or, more likely, she was just getting to the part they were interested in.

“The Silsviss have a pack mentality. They know where each one fits in the pack, and the strong fight to rise. They’d just joined our pack, and they wanted to see how much they could push us around.”

“They wanted you to kill General Morris.”

The statement came from a Human lieutenant colonel. He might have felt safely anonymous in the dim light amid the other twenty-nine black uniforms in the room, but Torin had spent too many years pinpointing smart-ass comments from the ranks to let him get away with it. Glancing over at him, she abandoned the last 4.5 minutes of prepared speech and said, “No, sir. They wanted me to believe it was the general’s fault and then use what I had learned about the Silsviss to save the treaty by killing him.”

“And why didn’t you?”

“Because we weren’t joining them, sir. They were joining us.”

“General Morris’ report said he was willing to die.”

“I wasn’t privileged to read the general’s report, sir.”

“But you would have killed him if it had been necessary?” He was leaning forward now, one hand pale and obvious where it gripped the dark fabric over his right knee.

Torin lifted her chin, locked her eyes on his face, and said, “As it wasn’t necessary, sir…” She loaded implication into the pause. “…we’ll never know.”

The lieutenant colonel looked away first and, as his gaze dropped, Major Alie stepped forward. “Since we seem to have already opened the floor to questions, Gunnery Sergeant Kerr will now address any
other
points you may want clarified.”

Interesting emphasis,
Torin thought as a Krai major began the official Q&A.

For the most part, the questions stayed fairly close to her observations of the Silsviss military and how well she felt they’d integrate. As they revisited the same points over and over again, Torin became increasingly grateful that she wouldn’t be part of the team designing the integration protocols. Given how long it had taken before the Krai joined mixed fireteams, she figured she’d be long retired before she had to worry about maintaining discipline with di’Taykan-sized lizards in the ranks.

When the briefing finally ended, just before 1300, Torin followed the major’s silent order and stepped back to let the room empty before she left. With the major acting as a barrier between her and any further questions, she kept her gaze locked on the far wall to give no one a chance to draw her into conversation.

As the last officer retrieved his slate and disappeared out the door, Major Alie turned toward her and smiled. “Thank you, Gunny. Grab some food, and I’ll see you back here at 1400. The officers attending this morning have orders not to approach you out of this room, so you should be allowed to get to the SRM in peace.”

“Thank you, sir.”

The captain who’d asked the first question had been Intell, seeded into the group by Major Alie. It was inevitable those particular questions would be asked, so the major had arranged for them to be asked under controlled conditions. The timing, before the Q&A officially began, had allowed her to cut the questions off when the information she’d wanted released had been covered. It was a smart move.

Torin appreciated smart, but she had no intention of mentioning that to the major. Intell got a little snotty when one of their subtle plans turned out to be that obvious.

The afternoon session was a near exact copy of the morning’s—minus General Morris’ small part. Finished at 1800, she skipped the Senior Rank’s Mess and headed to a pub she remembered fondly from her last course on station. She was expecting a call and didn’t want it going through the duty officer before it reached her in the SRM. Off-duty and in a public part of the station, the message would be bounced straight to her implant.

On the OutSector stations the lowest two or three levels of the center core were set aside for off-duty and civilian personnel. On a station the size of Ventris, certain broad concourses had been set aside for stores, bars, and cantinas. The recruits were given access to the lowest concourse on their last tenday. They never saw the other four until they returned to Ventris as Marines.

Sutton’s, on Concourse Two, was about half full. A group of privates and corporals were watching mixed league cricket on the big screen in the corner. Apparently it was an oldEarth sport the Elder Races had taken to the way the H’san took to cheese, but Torin couldn’t see the attraction. Along the other side of the bar, eight of the small tables were full, two of them pushed close so a group of four officers and their companions could eat together. Three di’Taykan sat at the bar itself, bodies close and looking about five minutes from heading to someone’s bunk for the night.

Torin took one of the small tables, where she could see both the door to the concourse and the door behind the bar leading to the kitchens, and coded her order into the tabletop. To her surprise, Elliot Westbrook, the grandson of the original owners, came out with the first part of her order.

“Gunny,” he said as he set down the beer, “I hear you single-handedly got the Silsviss to join up. Any chance you can give me a scouting report on their beverage selection?”

Seemed that Major Svensson was right; everyone on the station
was
talking about her. Still, it never hurt to cooperate with the man cooking dinner and, while information about how she’d single-handedly got the Silsviss to join up was classified, what the giant lizards drank was not. What’s more, if they were going to join the Corps, it was an important cultural touchstone. “The upper ranks drank fermented fruit juices, but the lower ranks usually drank beer.”

“Good to hear.”

“The beer was usually green.”

Elliot grinned. “So they’re Irish?”

When her pie arrived, he left her to it, heading back to the bar muttering notes about ales and lagers and fermentation times into his slate.

She was just mopping up the last of the gravy when the call came through.

*I’ve docked. Section 8, slip 17.*

Pushing her plate away, she tongued an acknowledgment and murmured, “On my way,” just loud enough for the implant to pick up.

They were naked twenty-two minutes later.

P
ushing damp hair back out of her eyes, Torin rolled up on one elbow and frowned down at her companion. “I get the impression you missed me.”

“Funny, because I got the impression I was right on target… OW!” Tugging her fingers out of his chest hair, Craig Ryder wrapped Torin’s hand in his, immobilizing it. Since she wasn’t planning on going anywhere for a while, she allowed him to think he could hold her. “You win,” he said. “I missed you. You’re just lucky I needed to register new salvage tags.”

“You’re talking like I’m the only one here who got lucky.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” He waggled his brows suggestively. “But you are saying you got lucky, then?”

She freed her hand, moved it lower on his body, and squeezed. “A couple of times.”

“Bloody cheek!”

But this time when he grabbed for her, Torin rolled off the bunk and rose to her feet out of reach. “That thing’s too small for comfort.”

“You’d better be talking about the bunk, mate. And you are not sitting your bare ass down on my control panel,” he growled as she moved the very small distance to the other side of the cabin.

Torin snorted. “Not after what happened the last time.” Scooping his discarded shirt off the floor, she tossed it on the pilot’s chair covering the majority of the duct tape and sat. One of the reasons the bunk was too narrow for them both was that Craig Ryder was a big man. Undressed, there was a little softness at his waist, but most of his bulk was muscle, his arms and shoulders so broad and heavy, they distracted from his height.

“What?”

All right. Maybe she had been staring. “Rumor has it that this is a romance.”

“Really?” Craig rolled up on his side, head propped up on one huge hand. He looked amused, the bastard. “Who’s been talking, then?”

She shrugged a shoulder, suddenly wishing she hadn’t brought it up. “Some of the medical staff off the
Berganitan
are on station. Apparently, I’m a topic of conversation.”

“Apparently?” When she shrugged again, he laughed. “Fuk, all you’ve done in the last year was convince a race of aggressive lizards to join up right before you outsmarted a big old alien spaceship. Can’t see why they’d be talking about you. Obviously, they’re talking about me.”

“You?”

“Don’t mean to skite, but I’m the other half of the romance, aren’t I?”

Torin scratched at the drying sweat on her stomach. “There is no romance. There’s sex.”

“Good sex.”

“Granted.”

“That’ll do, then.” Blue eyes gleamed. “So what the hell are you doing all the way over there?”