Valor's Trial (19 page)

“Sir . . .”

“Yes. Your escape plan.” He went back to staring at his hands. “Who knows, they may have escape plans of their own. Or,” he added quietly as the skin folded under his caress, “you can refuse a direct order and do what you want. I'm sure Corporal Werst and Private Kyster and all of Harnett's surviving di'Taykan will go with you to help clear rocks.” It didn't sound as though he cared.

The question was, did Torin?

“I'll leave for the barricade in the morning, sir.”

Apparently, she did.

Torin fought the urge to tell Werst that he was in charge while she was gone. Not because she didn't believe Staff Sergeant Pole was doing his best, but because Werst was carrying a lot less baggage than anyone who'd been in the node under Harnett's care—although starvation-induced lethargy seemed to be keeping a lid on what should have been a powder keg.

“Why take Kyster?” Werst demanded as she adjusted the rope holding the sleeve full of kibble on her shoulder.

“Fuk you,” Kyster muttered, close enough to hear.

“Fuk you, Lance Corporal,” the older Krai corrected smugly. “What about his foot, Gunny?”

“Didn't slow us down walking here.”

“You think he'll follow you if you don't take him?”

Kyster's body language made it obvious that was exactly what he'd do.

“He'll follow you over the fukking barricade,” Werst pointed out.

“I'll deal with that at the barricade.” It was a long walk; she had a whole day to come up with something.

Harnett had assigned six of the eight two-liter canteens he'd retrieved off incoming prisoners to the hunting parties on the barricade. Torin had found the other two in Harnett's stores, both bloodstained but intact—four liters meant two days out, two days back. She had twelve biscuits tucked into the pockets of her vest, traded for the biscuits she'd be missing while she was gone.

“So why do you have to go?” Werst asked.

“Major's orders, Corporal.” Torin looked out over the prisoners— Marines—and shook her head, although at what, exactly she wasn't sure. “And if I don't, well, I'm just a little concerned I'm going to kill someone.”

His nose ridges opened and closed, and his expression suggested that her killing someone would be no surprise. That was one of the things she was concerned about.

“Still plenty who need killing,” he reminded her.

“It might not be one of them.”

That was the other.

“Ah.” He stood quietly for a moment, arms folded. “Why not me?”

“You were one of them, if only for a short while, and besides, Terantowicz will likely try something the moment I'm gone. You can . . .”

She snorted. “If you can find a nice red sauce, go for it.”

They left just after the morning meal, Watura and Kyster to remain at the barricade while she went on. In another three days Divinit and Sergei might be strong enough to make the trip, but for now she was still forced to rely on Harnett's di'Taykan.

Who had been complicit in the abuse of three Marines.

Just like the hundred who did nothing,
her subconscious insisted on adding. Intellectually, she understood why force of numbers didn't apply. There had been thousands of Silsviss surrounding that supply station. Thousands of Silsviss against most of one platoon and half a dozen diplomats. Numbers had not given the Silsviss the victory. Emotionally, however . . .

In an effort to keep her thoughts from circling around and around like scavengers over a battlefield, she worked out the logistics of clearing the rockfall. Worked out how much food she'd need if she used Harnett's survivors in shifts. Manual labor was a traditional Corps punishment.

She'd consider conscripting a few heavy gunners had they come through with their exoskeletons, but with nothing plugged into their implanted contact points, they were no more capable of moving rock than any other Marine.

Traveling through the tunnels screwed with Torin's time sense. The light never varied, and the rock had very little gradation in color. Number seven tunnel had fewer of the minor caves than number four, and she mentally mapped them against the positions of the equally smaller number of cross tunnels. Watura and Kyster had a small argument at each cross tunnel concerning where it went and how it got there. About half the time they were unable to come to an agreement, and Torin sided with Kyster. Survival was a better teacher than the occasional patrol.

Otherwise, they didn't talk much; Kyster had grown used to keeping his own counsel, and Torin didn't feel like chatting. Watura was either too much in awe of her progenitor status to attempt conversation or, hopefully, smarter than he looked. Since he didn't seem to be in awe, she reluctantly granted him the second option.

They ate mush when Kyster said it was midday. When Watura demanded to know how he knew, Kyster showed his teeth and said, “Half the light is gone.” Since they had no other way of judging time besides their bellies, and bellies were notoriously inaccurate, Torin took his word for it.

A couple of hours, give or take, after mush and Watura waved at a cross tunnel. “Last one, Gunnery Sergeant Kerr.”

“ 'Swhere I saw the hunting party come back. Beaten,” Kyster added cheerfully.

“Tunnel goes straight after this,” Watura continued, ignoring him.

“So the prison is set up as two separate territories with a link between them. Maybe more than two,” Torin corrected thoughtfully. “There could be an infinite number of nodes strung out like beads on a necklace.” The string had broken at the rockfall by Kyster's water supply. Were there more nodes beyond? “Why did Harnett send you out this far?”

“He was extending his perimeter to the limits of the canteens— one liter for the day out, one for the day back. Edwards said they got jumped on the second day. Other than that, I don't know. I wasn't there.”

Didn't matter, Jiyuu was at the barricade, and if she needed more details than he'd already spilled, she had no doubt the youngest di'Taykan would be happy to oblige.

“How long ago did it happen?”

“Damned if I know, Gunnery Sergeant.” Watura raised his left arm with its dead cuff. “My calender's completely fukked.”

“Kyster?”

“More than thirty days, Gunny. Less than sixty.”

He sounded so definite she didn't smile at the thirty day margin of error. “The other group only approached the barricade that one time?”

“Yeah, just once.” Watura's hair flipped back and forth. “Some say they've seen people moving in the distance, but I never have. It's pretty fukking creepy at night, though.”

The barricade had been made of rock pulled from the smaller caves and piled across the tunnel. More of a territorial statement than a deterrent against a determined assault—particularly when the only missile weapons were more rocks—it was waist-high on Torin, a little lower on the di'Taykan, and about eye level for Kyster. He peered over it, grunted, and backed up to sit against the tunnel wall and rub his bad foot.

Darlys, Jiyuu, and Akemi seemed pleased to see her and would have included her in the welcome they gave Watura had she not raised a warning hand.

Later, over bowls of mush and supplement, she looked toward Jiyuu tucked up tight against Watura's side, jerked her head over the barricade, and said, “I want a full report on what happened the day you met the others . . .” She frowned. “The other Marines. I want the details. Everything you remember.”

“I told you . . .”

“Your report was short on detail.”

He sighed and turned his bowl between his hands. “We stopped just past here; maybe another hour, it's hard to tell.” His eyes lightened to pale pink as he glanced around the tunnel and shrugged. “It all looks the same. After dark, we decided not to get entirely naked because Edwards . . .”

Torin raised a hand. “Skip those particular details.”

“But . . .”

Her patience had frayed beyond allowing for species idiosyncrasies. “You know how to give a sitrep, Private. Stop screwing around.”

The hair of all four di'Taykan momentarily stilled. When Jiyuu began speaking again, his voice had lost some of its ingratiating tone.

“Next morning, Edwards figured we should go a little farther before we turned. Even if we got caught in the dark, we'd be nearly back to the node and we could easily go the rest of the way without light.”

Possibly but not easily; not unless they'd reached that last ten meters of straight tunnel.

“We got just past where the tunnels started to twist again . . .”

On the other side of the barricade, the tunnel looked like it ran straight for about a kilometer.

“. . . and at the first small cave . . .” Jiyuu paused, his hand rising to his masker.

“Lower it,” Torin snapped. “Making me horny won't make me any less angry about this. At the first small cave you found a new Marine.”

“We heard moaning,” Jiyuu admitted. “Edwards went in, and a while later he came out wiping his hands . . .”

“Killed him or robbed him. Left him to die,” Kyster growled when the di'Taykan paused again. “Not too fukking gentle about it, neither. I found some of the guys you left. I
was
one of the guys you left!”

“We didn't leave you . . .”

Kyster snapped his teeth together, and Akemi jumped. “Fukking dumped me!”

Darlys shook her head, ocher hair spreading with the motion. “If we hadn't done what Harnett said, someone else would have.”

“Do not give me that crap.” Torin's voice slapped the di'Taykan's hair flat, even as she closed her hand around Kyster's arm and held him in place. They stared at her, all four of them breathing hard, their eyes dark. “Let's be clear about this. There are no excuses for what you did. Young and stupid isn't an excuse. Fear isn't an excuse. If I had killed you all when I took the node back from Harnett, I would be feeling no remorse.” She took a deep breath. “You did what you did. All you can do now is take responsibility for it.”

“Der heen sa verniticna sa vey.”
The Taykan phrase pushed Darlys into formal cadences. “We are truly sorry for what we have had a part in.”

“Because a progenitor caught you at it or because it was wrong?”

She spread her hands, hair spreading out again. “Were it not wrong, it would not matter that you had caught us at it.”

“You shouldn't have needed me to tell you it was wrong. You were complicit in the death of fellow Marines. You were complicit in the abuse of fellow Marines. You were complicit in the slow starvation of fellow Marines.”

“We didn't know about the supplements, Gunnery Sergeant,” Akemi protested.

Torin realized she was still holding Kyster's arm, released him, and scrubbed a hand over her face. What a fukking mess. Maybe she
should
have disobeyed Kenoton's order and headed straight for the rock wall because the only thing that was going to fix the mess was getting her people out.

All her people.Every fukking Marine down here.

And that put her right back at the barricade.

“Gunny?”

“Just trying to keep from beating my head against the wall. You'd got to the point where Edwards had come out of the cave,” she prodded Jiyuu. “Go on.”

Jiyuu looked down at the last of his mush and pushed it across to Kyster—who pushed it back. Offering food to a Krai had—could have—ceremonial significance. Torin didn't know Jiyuu was aware of it, but from the way his hair flattened, she suspected he was. She appreciated the attempt but had no sympathy for the rejection.

“Edwards came out with a first aid kit. Just a combat kit, but we hadn't had one of those in a while, and he knew Harnett would be pleased, so he decided it was time to head back. We hadn't gone more than thirty meters when four . . .”

“Marines.” Torin dropped the word into the extended pause.

“Yes, Gunnery Sergeant. Four Marines came up on us from behind. We never even heard them coming.”

Torin raised a brow, and his hair flattened again.

“We were making a bit of noise, joking around.”

About a fellow Marine they'd just left for dead.

“They didn't have weapons—I don't think they had weapons—but there were four of them and only three of us.”

Kyster snorted

“Edwards yelled they were just incomers who'd banded together. They had an officer with them, a lieutenant. He told us to surrender, but Edwards told him to fuk off. And he kept telling them to fuk off until they started beating the shit out of us. When we ran, they didn't follow us. We got back and told Colonel . . . Staff Sergeant Harnett, and he ordered the barricade.” The flip of his hair reminded her she knew the rest.

Anything else she needed to know, she'd have to find out from the other Marines.

Darlys turned her bowl around and around, the movement oddly similar to the way the major had rubbed at his hand. “What are you going to say if you find them, Gunnery Sergeant?”

“That depends on who I find.”

When the lights went out, the di'Taykan made themselves comfortable on one side of the tunnel while she and Kyster bedded down on the other. Later, when soft noises made it obvious what they were doing in the dark—although Torin gave them points for keeping the noise down—Kyster said quietly, “You could forbid it.”

She could, but they weren't on watch, and the tunnel was so dark it couldn't be said they were showing interspecies insensitivity. But mostly she didn't forbid it because it would be petty behavior on her part, and that was a line she wasn't ready to cross.