An Ancient Peace (9 page)

Because ships emerged from Susumi space minutes after they entered, regardless of distance traveled, there were academics who claimed the time spent within a mathematical construct was irrelevant. Those people were idiots. In Susumi space, the ship and those she carried defined their own reality and with reality so tightly defined, relevant things were inevitably squeezed out of dark corners.

Torin knew how to deal with Marines and a Marine's problems. Mission prep helped, but this time there wasn't much of it. Not yet. So when Werst needed to fight, she stepped in and called it training. When Ressk wielded code like a weapon, she minimized collateral damage and calibrated his sights. On day three, after a night when her dead died again while she fought against the drag of melted glass, unable to get to them, she sat shoulder to shoulder with Binti in the darkened galley and watched recordings of a Rakva soap opera with the translator off, adding their own dialogue to the ruffled feathers and high drama. She didn't need to ask why Binti was there. She didn't need to explain why she was.

Marines, she understood.

Craig's demons were remarkably similar.

On day two, Torin woke with Craig's arms wrapped tightly around her, his heart racing, his breath huffing out hard and hot against the top of her head. On day four, she woke crouched on the deck ready to fight—thrown out of bed by his old panic of too many people and too little air. In the first case, she was there for him to hold as long as he needed to. In the second, her reassurances were less passive and, counterintuitively, used up a fair bit of air.

Alamber . . .

He'd done what he had to in order to survive in Big Bill's criminal
organization after his
vantru
died. Torin appreciated his competence, admired his courage, and acknowledged his
vantru
had been a viciously twisted excuse for sentience who'd thoroughly screwed him over. At an age when sex should have been play and exploration, he'd been taught to use it, and the touch di'Taykans needed, as a means to an end. He was brilliant and screamingly insecure and, in spite of the certain knowledge that he'd broken any number of laws, Torin had no intention of turning him over to the authorities even though she suspected she should. Suspected it might be better for him to get his shit straightened out by professionals during an official rehabilitation. But he had no family to stand for him and, given a choice, he'd chosen to stay. She wouldn't be another person who held power over him and abandoned him.

After a year, he still doubted Torin wanted him there because she wouldn't have sex with him.

He was an adult. Old enough to die for the Confederation. Older than many of the Corps' new recruits.

Taykans were a communal species. If they could help it, they never slept alone. Most often, Alamber slept with Binti, sometimes he slept with Werst and Ressk, and . . .

. . . on day five . . .

“Boss?”

“All right, come on.” She slid back against Craig and lifted the covers so Alamber could crawl in beside her. He squirmed around until she swatted him, then settled with his head on her shoulder, legs long enough to wrap around hers and Craig's, his skin cool and soft, his hair slowly stilling, the metal of the masker warming between them.

This wasn't sex. It was comfort. Family. Needing to know he belonged. It happened most often while they were in Susumi space—Binti had a theory it was tied to the distinctive hum of the Susumi engines and they'd shared a silent agreement not to speculate on what had caused it. His scars were layered and deep, but every now and then he let her give him a few hours of peace. By morning, he'd be back to insecurity and innuendo.

“We have
got
to get another di'Taykan in this crew,” she murmured when Alamber's breathing slowed and the grip on her arm finally eased.

Craig kissed the back of her neck, his arm wrapped around her, one big hand cupping Alamber's hip. “Not arguing.”

“What do you want?” With only one other di'Taykan on the entire planet, Sujuno hadn't needed to look up from her slate when she'd heard the rustle of the plastic sheeting being moved aside. The scent was unmistakable. “Turn your masker back up,” she snapped before he could get any closer. Most di'Taykan commanders allowed maskers to be removed when there were only di'Taykan, present but
most
did not mean
all;
her vows kept her from indulging in such pointless excesses. If he chose to remove it among the Humans and Krai, well, that had nothing to do with her.

“They've almost got the air lock built.”

“Good.”

“I could be in there for a couple of days. Or longer.”

She looked up then to see his lime-green eyes darken as more and more light receptors opened.

He shuffled his feet, his hair flicked around his head in small arrhythmic arcs, and, when he finally realized she wasn't going to fill in the blanks, sighed. “I thought we should spend some time together before I got sealed in.”

“Why would you think that?”

“Because . . .” His fingertip traced a pattern she didn't understand on the lid of the sarcophagus. “. . . I'll be alone in there and you'll be alone out here and Humans and Krai are all very well for a while when you're not about to be alone and Timin's dead.”

“Major, I may have found something.”

The others were searching the crypts, searching the sarcophagi, searching the bodies, but Timin had remained in the main hall of the necropolis, frowning down at his slate and then up at the symbols that made up the balusters of the balcony railing. As Lieutenant di'Geirah had been a linguist within the Intelligence Service, Sujuno had kept the greater part of her attention on him.

“There,” he said, as she joined him in the center of the hall. “If Dion's right, then that sequence ends in the symbol we need.”

She could barely see the difference between the symbols he pointed at, but then, she didn't need to.

“Logically,” Timin continued, moving toward the far wall, “the door, exit, opening,
govian
, should be under the symbol.”

Sujuno fell into step beside him. “I don't see it.”

“The H'san know how to . . .”

The floor fell out from under him, what had looked like solid stone shattering into hundreds, thousands of tiny pieces. She felt the side of her foot begin to dip, and time fractured as she jumped away. She saw Timin throw out a hand, reaching, his eyes black, his hair clamped tight to his head. She knew where the edge was. She could step forward enough to grab his hand. To yank him to safety. To save him. To touch him. Hand to hand. Skin to skin.

No.

Time pieced itself together.

Timin disappeared, screaming. The fingers of one hand slapped the edge, but gravity gave him no chance to hang on.

By the time he hit the bottom and the soft/hard, wet impact cut off the scream, the others had gathered.

“Should we . . .” Toporov began.

Sujuno cut him off. “Lieutenant di'Geirah is dead. We would be of as little assistance to him as he now will be to us. We should check that section of wall for an exit to the weapons cache.”

“Major?”

He'd moved closer. She stared at his reaching hand until he lowered it then nodded, once, and said, “Get out.”

“Jump ends in three. Two. One. And we're out.”

The song
Promise
sang to keep them moving, to keep them safe, chased away the hum of Susumi, and Craig felt his shoulder muscles relax.

“Coreward buoy, registered.” Sitting second, Werst enlarged the pertinent screens. “We're not only alive, we're right where we're supposed to be, three and a half minutes after we left.”

As a hundred kilometers of translucent netting harvested the
energy of their Susumi wave, the buoy brought
Promise
's front thrusters on to slow their emergent speed. “You know,” Craig growled, hands held above the board, “I only thought I hated giving over control to the docking master. That's all over soft compared to how I feel about handing her over to a buoy.”

“Garn chreen
,
”
Ressk breathed from the second row of jump seats. “I've never seen so many stars.”

Craig hadn't either. Facing into the heart of the galaxy, even as far out as they still were, meant facing into a blaze of light, individual stars lost in the center of the display.

“I've heard that the Mictok homeworld never gets dark,” Binti said from directly behind him.

“Yeah, and that's why evolution went with the exoskeleton.” Twisting slightly, Craig could see Alamber in the seat beside Torin, his legs crossed, his pale feet bare. “All the bugs are from farther in. Ow. What?”

He saw the corner of Torin's mouth twitch when Binti leaned over and flicked the di'Taykan on the ear. “We don't say bugs.”

“So we say what?” Alamber sneered. “Evolved insectoid species?”

“We say Mictok. Or Ciptran,” Torin told him, eyes on the stars. “The same way we say di'Taykan or Krai or Human.”

“Yeah, but, Boss, that net out there? Probably extruded from Mictok ass.”

“Your point?”

“They creep me the
sanLi
out.”

“They creep everyone the hell out, Alamber. They're giant spiders. Suck it up, be polite.”

“Get it off me. Get it off me,” Binti said quietly.

“Hollice?” Craig asked as Torin's left hand twitched toward her torso.

“Glicksohn.”

He liked to think it was progress that the names of the dead were being spoken. Sliding the incoming data into a temporary file, he tossed her a grin. With nothing to choose between the three dealers, they'd gone with a random draw and Torin's expression when it turned out they were chasing the biscuit warmer had been aces. “The buoy's
cleared us for Abalae.” The codes tapped in, he felt
Promise
alter her course. Even a million point six kilometers out from the planet—no one jumped close in the Core—space didn't seem as big in here.

He already missed the dark.

Their new registry raised no alarms when
Commitment
docked as an independent trader on the most stripped down of Abalae's three stations.

“If I hack the sysop, I could narrow our target.” Irritation added volume to the slap of Ressk's feet against the deck as all six of them made their way along the docking arm toward the main bulk of the station. “Once I'm in this station, I can squirt over to the others . . .”

“Never going to unhear that,” Binti muttered.

“. . . and amalgamate the data before I sift it. Give me a couple of hours and I can come up with the registry number of every ship that makes regular runs. A few hours more and I can hand over a list of their crews.”

“We don't need a list of their crews.”