The Truth of Valor (11 page)

In much less time than Torin had expected, the sound of Craig’s boots ringing against the ramp pulled her around to face him.

He shook his head as he walked toward her. “Not locked, not that it mattered. There’s no record of contact between Page and
Firebreather
, but,” he added before Torin could respond, “he had been messaging someone fairly frequently on the Two-four. No idea who, but I uploaded their codes so we can find out. A mate of Alia’s is maintaining a database—who uses what codes when. Not that I’m saying some might use more than one set of codes,” he added, seeing her expression. “If Jan or Sirin happened to have been talking to the same person Page was ...”

“Long shot,” Torin acknowledged, falling into step beside him as he stepped off onto the deck. Even a tenuous connection would be better than nothing but it wouldn’t get One Who Maintains or the Navy moving against the pirates.

“We’ll bog in first, I’m starving.” Craig threw an arm around her shoulders. “Then we go make Rogelio Page proud by taking a group of hardworking engineers for every credit they have.”

“That would make him proud?”

“It’d make me happy.”

When it came right down to it, the living
had
to be more important than the dead. “Good enough.”

Torin finished checking the Susumi equation and glanced up at Craig, who backed away and tried to look as though he hadn’t been checking it over with her. Given that mistakes were usually fatal, she didn’t mind. “So, tell me why we’re returning to the same debris field?”

“We have first tag on it, now Page is dead.” Craig scowled at the empty coffeepot, then took it into the head to fill it, raising his voice over the sound of running water. “Not to mention, if we chuck back to our previous coordinates, the government will pay for the fold. It’s a little ghoulish, but it’s practical since the reason we were headed there originally still stands—we know there’s no surprises in the salvage to mess up a rookie run.”

“Except for the pirates.”

He froze halfway back through the hatch and stared at her. “Shit.”

Seeing how long she could let him hang wasn’t really an option; maintaining a relationship took roughly the same care as training a green second lieutenant, leaving little room for error between teasing and making him look like a fool. “If the pirates had planned on staying in that area, they’d have sent both the body and the ship into the nearest star. I expect they’re long gone.”

“So you gave me the gobful about it because . . . ?”

She frowned. “Seemed like you’d forgotten them. I don’t think we should.”

Craig made a noncommittal noise as he crossed back to the coffeemaker. She watched him set the coffee to brew, wondering what the noise had meant. He stood, back toward her, until his mug filled, then he turned and said, “You sure you’re not looking for a new enemy?”

“Why would I want a new enemy?”

“You’ve always had one.”

“Habit?”

“Purpose.”

Torin opened her mouth to deny it, then closed it again. She wasn’t one hundred percent sure he was wrong. From what she could see of his expression behind the mug, he knew it.

“We just got a yabber from Alia. No connection between
Firebreather
and
Fortune’s Favor
. She doesn’t know who Page was messaging, but she does know Jan and Sirin weren’t. Weren’t messaging the same person. At all. Ever.”

Torin swore softly as she cinched a tie-cable tight and checked that it was reading the mass of the salvage. “No chance of yanking the Wardens’ thumbs out of their collective asses, then.”

“Not for what looks to be a shitty coincidence. Torin, that piece with the electronics in it . . .

Grinning, Torin silently mouthed the rest of the sentence along with him.

“. . . has to go in the pen closest to the ship so we can hook it up and make sure there’s nothing that might go active when we fold
.”

“I’m on it.” There wasn’t enough “electronics” on the piece to go active even if they hooked it directly to the engines.

“I’d mentioned that?”

“Couple of times.” Considering he’d spent almost as long working alone as she had in the Corps, he wasn’t doing too badly in his supervisory position. The small clump of tagged debris she was securing didn’t need two people suited up, and she needed the practice. It hadn’t taken her more than fifteen minutes to convince him of that. Had he been a green lieutenant, she could have done it faster. There were days she definitely missed her old life.

Demagnetizing her boots, she tightened up her safety line and used it to gain enough momentum to flip out of the pen, magging up again to drop down just forward of where she’d racked the “gun” used to attach the tags to the salvage. Fine motor skills suffered in an HE suit, so the trigger mechanism was oversized but familiar. There were a limited number of ways
aim and pull
could be interpreted mechanically.

Twisting to the left, she lined up the next piece of salvage in the crosshairs, and fired, careful to brace herself against the minor momentum. It would take a lot more than one shot to actually move her anywhere, and one shot was all she needed.

“No surprise you’re good at that.”

It would have been more surprising if she’d missed it, given the size.

“Your tax dollars at work,” she muttered as she locked her suit on the tag, released her boots, and pushed off. Her jet swiveled to eighteen degrees almost immediately and fired a micro burst, lining her up more precisely. There were automated systems that would do all this from the control panel of the ship, but every piece of equipment added cost, and salvage operators never had the kind of margin that allowed them to ignore the brains and bodies they could wrap in an HE suit and use for free. Torin suspected Craig, on his own, had seldom bothered with either the jets or the 100 meters of safety line spooling out behind her.

She only wore the jets on Craig’s insistence since jets and an unbreakable safety line was a fair definition of redundant.

“So . . .”
Torin could hear him drumming his fingers against the edge of the control panel. Knew he was searching for things to say that didn’t involve the suggestion that she come on in and he take it from there. “. . .
you’re not arguing the shitty coincidence theory?”

“Did you want me to?”

“Didn’t figure you as believing in coincidence.”

“I believe in it,” Torin told him. “I don’t trust it. Was Pedro able to add anything to Page’s background?”

“Haven’t heard from him yet. Alia says he took the smaller ship out to do some second tagging at 772ST4.”

Still only halfway to the new salvage, Torin had time to run over the CSO’s debris field designations. “The
Kertack
and the
Cameroonian
?”

“That’s the one.”

The two Confederation battleships as well as three cruisers and nearly equal representation from the Primacy had faced off about eighteen months ago. Torin had been tanked at the time but heard about it when she got out because one of her physical therapists had a
thytrin
on the cruiser that had been blown with all hands. The other ships had taken twenty-five to thirty percent casualties. Torin didn’t know what the Primacy’s loses had been, but they’d definitely contributed to the debris. More importantly . . . “That’s almost to the edge.”

“Yeah, but there’s an ace chance of pulling in pieces of enemy tech.”

“There’s a good chance of attracting enemy attention.”

“War’s over.”

She sighed and flipped around to begin decelerating. “He’s got kids.”

“To provide for.”

“Yeah, I get that.” And she did. But when she thought of Pedro out on the edge, she couldn’t stop herself from thinking of Jeremy without one of his fathers.

“
Dargonar
had her engines on, Captain.” Huirre transferred his slate to his right foot so he could spread both hands in a
fukked if I know
gesture. “But there’s no way of knowing if Captain Firrg used the equations I sent her until we’re out of Susumi space and she’s either there or she isn’t.”

“She’ll be there,” Cho growled. “I don’t trust her as far as you could spit a spleen, but she screws us over and she screws over Big Bill.”

“She could turn on us on the other side. Lie to Big Bill about it.”

“Why would she do that?” Dysun asked, most of her attention on shutting down the communications board.

“Firrg hates Humans.” Huirre’s nose ridges flared. “Captain’s Human. So’s Nat and Doc.”

Dysun shrugged, hair rising and falling in time with her shoulders—both the Taykan and Krai had adopted the gesture, but only the Taykan had really mastered it. “So’s Big Bill.”

“Doesn’t count.”

She looked up at that. “Why doesn’t ...”

“Enough!” Cho snapped. Huirre had made the only relevant point—the
Dargonar
would be there when they emerged or she wouldn’t; they couldn’t do shit about it either way, and he was sick to death of the constant speculation. “Go fuk your
thytrins
or something.”

“Aye, aye, Captain!” As the last of the board locked down, Dysun tossed off an enthusiastic salute and ran from the control room.

“Like there was a chance of
or something
. You’d think she hadn’t got any for a tenday instead of a couple of hours,” Huirre snorted. Then he snapped his teeth together and added, “
Serley
di’Taykan.”

“So join them,” Cho sighed, sliding down in his chair until his spine barely maintained contact. Inside Susumi space, the ship didn’t require a captain and, as long as the crew managed to keep from killing each other, he didn’t give a shit what they got up to.

“It’s not . . .”

He could read the reason for Huirre’s recent ill humor in the pause. “Firrg wouldn’t have you if you were the last Krai in known space. You’ve been contaminated by contact with Humans. You want to go crawling to her and beg her to take you on so you can be horny and frustrated in her presence, be my guest.”

“That’s harsh, Captain.” His nose ridges opened and closed a couple of times. “You’d just let me go?”

“Better than you being horny and frustrated on my boat. Go or get over her.”

He shifted his slate from foot to hand and back to foot again. “Not too many female Krai out here, Captain.”

“That’s why the universe gave us the di’Taykan.”

“It’d make me feel better if I got to
dispose
of the next CSO we pick up.”

“No.” Cho didn’t care how fukking frustrated his helmsman got, the last thing he wanted, given what had sent Huirre out into the deep, was to indulge the Krai’s taste for Human flesh. Sure, running Page through Huirre’s gut would have removed any evidence of the way he’d died, but it wasn’t like the Wardens would stumble over the CSO’s body anytime soon. OutSector Wardens were about as much of a threat as a pouched H’san.

“So, Captain . . .” Huirre’s nose ridges began opening and closing slowly. Cho figured he was breathing himself into a better mood. “. . . seems like this equation’s going to take us pretty damned close to the edge.”

“We need a younger salvage operator. The young take chances. The edge is all about taking chances. We’ve got a line on a single ship, and I don’t want a repeat of Page.”

“Ah.” Huirre nodded. “Suppose it doesn’t hurt that the Wardens never get out that far.”

“No,” Cho agreed in a tone that said the conversation was over, “it doesn’t.”

The
Dargonar
had come out of Susumi space three seconds before the
Heart of Stone
, having made no changes in the equations Huirre had sent. Cho chose to take that as a good sign.

“Move in at one eighty to our zero.” Cho frowned down at the ship locked into his long-range scanners. “Don’t worry about being seen, just tag the pen. When they dump, they’ll hit their aft thrusters.” Fukking predictable. The first thing a CSO did after dumping their pen was hit the aft thrusters every damned time. Surged straight ahead until they could fold into Susumi space. It was like every one of them forgot normal space had three dimensions. “We’ll be waiting to grapple the ship in. Make sure the operator is in the ship before you tag.”

“
Gre ta ejough geyko
. You just do your job and leave us to do ours. We keep what’s in the pen. Firrg out.
”

Cho glared at the back of Huirre’s head. “Translation.”

“Roughly, sit on it and rotate.” Huirre kept his gaze locked on his board. “She’s moving out.”

“Take us into position.”

“We can’t just let her have the pen, Captain!” Dysun protested.

“We can if I say we can,” Cho told her shortly. Let Firrg have the pen. He had a Marine armory with all the promise of a great and glorious future it contained, and the Krai captain didn’t have a hope in hell of scoring anything that even came close to matching it.

As Huirre maneuvered the
Heart of Stone
into position, her signature masked by the static emitted by a pair of lopsided rings circling an equally lopsided planetoid, he split his attention between the salvage ship and the empty space beyond it, waiting for Firrg to appear.