An Ancient Peace (42 page)

This was a bad idea, but she couldn't help Ressk—Binti was covering him, if Wen and the lieutenant weren't assisting, they weren't hindering—and she had no reason to wander among the weapons. She didn't want to talk to Nadayki. She wanted to wring his skinny neck, so she stayed away. Dion was delirious during his increasingly
rare moments of consciousness. Werst was napping, curled up on one of the jellied “chairs.”

Torin couldn't sit quietly. Couldn't settle. She needed to do something, but other than conclude the mission they'd been given by Colonel Hurrs, the only thing left to do was talk to Major Sujuno.

It was already too late to pretend she was a stranger if and/or when Torin killed her. She might as well get some answers.

“Major.” Torin stood on one side of the long counter that divided the food preparation area from the rest of the room, the major on the other. “Werst says you look at me like you want to crack my bones and eat the marrow.”

The major met Torin's gaze, and, after a long moment, stopped pretending.

Torin had been disliked often enough over the years—she'd never denied she could be abrupt and insensitive, arrogant and hyper-vigilant, all words that had been spat at her—but she'd never been hated. She'd stared into the eyes of enemy combatants as they tried to kill each other and she hadn't seen hate. She saw it now. Werst was right; Major Sujuno hated her. “Why?”

“You're here to arrest us.” The major shrugged, the motion tight and controlled and at odds to the passion in her expression. “I'm committing a crime, and you're the weapon wielded by the Justice Department. Why wouldn't I hate you?”

“No.” It wasn't a general hate, a hate of what Torin represented. It was personal. Werst was right about that, too.

“No?”

“No. Have we met? Was a
thytrin
of yours in Sh'quo Company when they died and I survived? Did I leave a
thytrin
of yours behind in the prison?” If either of those were the reason, Torin wouldn't blame her. There were days she hated herself.

“Nothing so simple.” The major crossed her arms, one hand cupping her masker. One of her maskers; Torin suddenly realized she wore two. She'd begun to think that was the end of the conversation when the major said, “You were named progenitor.”

“I had nothing to do with that.”

“Of course not.” Her voice had become a low growl, the edges
unraveling, and the last centimeter of her hair flicking back and forth. “It means nothing to you. You're not Taykan. You'll never begin a family line. You have nothing to do with those who've lost everything and can't afford to keep their name.
You
were named progenitor. You. You have nothing to do with the bureaucrats who mock your mourning, who only care about squeezing blood from your pain. You have nothing to do with your name dying and you unable to stop it. No one listening to you. Do you know what it costs to be named progenitor? Of course not. Why would you?” she spat, her eyes dark as she threw herself up and over the counter, sliding on the polished stone. “You have nothing to do with that!”

Torin blocked the first blow and the second. The third got through, rocking her head back as she tried to take Major Sujuno down without hurting her. And yes, she recognized the irony. The major was taller, with a longer reach, but she was reacting, not thinking, and she hadn't had Torin's specialist training.

When Torin finally pinned her arms, she collapsed for a moment, pushing into Torin's touch before pulling back and hissing, “Release me, Gunnery Sergeant.”

Torin dropped her hold and stepped away, a gesture holding her people where they were. The major's people were watching but didn't seem to care about the aborted fight one way or the other and clearly had no intent to intervene.

The major took another deep breath and stilled her hair. She squared her shoulders, nodded toward the cache, and said, “That is the survival of my name.” Then she pivoted on one heel and walked away.

Torin stayed where she was. Looked down as Werst moved to stand beside her, his injured arm in a sling.

“Valid reason at least.”

“Millions dead,” Torin said.

Craig stepped back from the control panel and banged the side of his head against the bulkhead until Alamber grabbed his shoulder, pulling him too far away for contact. Since it hadn't been helping, he allowed himself to be pulled.

“What?” Strong fingers dug into the knotted muscles at the base of Craig's neck. “You expected to be in orbit by now?”

“Not orbit . . . something.” He sighed. “The lights are only on because the H'san have an automatic light fixation. We've managed jackshit since we broke in.”

“Since
we
broke in?”

“Maybe we should stop being so careful.” Shrugging off Alamber's touch, he returned to the panel, turned dials, shifted slides, rubbed his fingers across what might have been a touch screen, and kicked the lower edge of the console for good measure, the metal booming under his boot.

“Hey! A light's on!”

The boom caught everyone's attention. Even Dion blinked and fought to focus.

“Hey! A light's on!”

“Alamber?” Torin couldn't see the speakers. Given her urge to look up, they were somewhere high.

“What does it do?”

“It lights up. How the sanLi should I know what it does? You're the pilot. What did you do?”

“I turned that. I moved that. I touched that.”

“And you gave it the boot, right? Kicked it right . . .”

The second boom cut off halfway through.

“Sounds like they're in the ship.” Binti swept a narrow-edge gaze around the edges of the ceiling and pointed at a dimple Torin had missed entirely. “At least we know they're alive.”

Torin had a long swallow of water and wished she was the type of person who could drink on the job.

“Shite. The light's off again.”

“Does it matter? We don't know what it did.”

Craig turned, moved, touched, kicked. Nothing. “And now we'll never know.” He dropped onto the pilot's chair, swore, shifted, and glared at the control board. “We might be going at this the wrong way.”

“I thought we'd established that.” Alamber rolled a dial under each hand.

“That . . .” Craig pointed with his second finger. “. . . is an alien control panel, the access to an alien sysop. The alien sysop controls an alien ship.”

“Yeah?”

“Too many variables, mate. Remember the door. It opens, it closes. It's locked, it's unlocked.”

“So, it's not turning on because the hatch isn't sealed?”

“Possibly. But you're missing the point; we need to simplify this.”

Alamber's eyes darkened and he hissed as his hair gave an involuntary flip. “We go directly to the engines.”

Craig grinned. “Engines turn on. Engines turn off.”

“The weapons aren't exactly biometric, they operate on the same system as the body, powered through this contact.” Ressk lifted one of the H'san's upper appendages to show the narrow metal plate in the palm. He'd been working nonstop since the explosion and Werst's injury. Werst's best chance was the medical unit on
Promise
and in order to get there, they had to get out. “There's no corresponding contact in the grip of their weapon, so there's a good chance the guardians could use anything in the armory.”

“Another reason for not letting them get this far,” Lieutenant Verr pointed out. “Right up there with not wanting to die.”

Major Sujuno ran her thumb over the contact. “If we could use this to control some of the larger weapons, we could destroy the guardians.”

“Once we destroy the guardians,” the lieutenant added, “there's nothing stopping us from leaving.”

Torin decided to let that go for the moment. “Ressk?”

“It wouldn't work with the bodies we have. When you shoot out the unit that powers them . . .”

“We stop them,” Wen growled.

“. . . you fry the whole system. Not to mention, you destroy the power source. Although, H'san metal to H'san metal, it gets a lot more destroyed when you hit it with an ax.”

“Axes aren't really practical, given the scale.” They could continue to take the guardians out one at a time, piling them in the barracks away from any chance to be rebuilt—if that's what was happening behind the metal doors—but, if the major hadn't exaggerated the numbers, they'd be at it for a couple of tendays, even working with teams at each threshold. Food and water needs aside, Werst might not have that kind of time. She definitely didn't have that kind of time. Torin pointed the H'san's cone-like weapon at the wall and squeezed the grip. Nothing happened. The same way nothing had happened when she'd twisted it. “What about the head shots?”

Ressk dropped the appendage into the major's hand and picked up the net he'd pulled out of the skull. “Hitting any of these blue disks . . .” A bit of brain dropped off the crumpled metal and bounced. “. . . fries the—for lack of a better word—wiring. I expect the surge scrambles the programming as well, but that's entirely redundant because there's nothing left for the programming to run through. You could skip the head shot entirely and only hit the power source and still take them down.”