The Truth of Valor (31 page)

“Who would that help?”

“You.”

Torin thought about sticking with the party line, gunnery sergeants didn’t fall apart—not for a few minutes, not at all—but gunnery sergeants had the entire Corps helping to hold them together, and she’d given that up.

“All that pressure you’re under . . .” Werst tapped a fingernail against his glass. “Cracks are starting to show, Gunny.”

A missed drop of blood gleamed a translucent crimson in the light from the menu.

“I’m not under . . .”

What if Craig was dead? What if they were too late?

Fuk it. Torin took another swallow of the overpriced, watered beer. “Trust me, I’ll use that pressure, let it blow when we find the
Heart
.”

Werst shrugged. “As long as it doesn’t use you. The
Heart
’s here. It was here with a cargo. It went away. It came back sometime yesterday.”

“But while they were here the first time,” Ressk added, sitting down, “word is, they were acting strange. Rumor has it they’d scored big but weren’t sharing. Were selling only a small fraction of what they had, and weren’t talking about the rest. And then Big Bill got involved. That Krai ship, the
Dargonar
—you questioned the crew . . .”

“I know what I did, Ressk.”

“Right, well, it left the same time as the
Heart
. Sent out with the
Heart
by Big Bill. They aren’t back yet.”

“Given their last meeting with the gunny, that’s a good thing,” Werst muttered. “And now the
Heart’
s docked down where the processed ore used to get loaded onto the drones. It’s not on an arm, it’s sucking on the actual station. And no one docks way the fuk down there without Big Bill’s approval.”

“No one docks at this station without Big Bill’s approval,” Torin reminded them.

“Yeah, but where the
Heart
is now, that’s off the beaten path.”

“Considerably off,” Ressk agreed. “Question still outstanding is why?”

“You could always ask Mackenzie Cho, ex Naval officer, current captain of the
Heart of Stone
.” Mashona grabbed an empty chair from the next table and sat carefully. “Seems he finds di’Taykan service
distracting.
” Her teeth flashed white in the dim light of the bar. “He drinks down the concourse at the
Sleepless Goat
.”

Mashona watched Werst go into the
Goat
through narrowed eyes. “You sure this is going to work?”

“You’ve known me almost ten years,” Ressk snorted. “If we switched clothes, could you tell the two of us apart?”

“Are you likely to switch clothes?” Mashona’s brows went up. “Is there something you want to tell me?”

“Fuk off. Point is, it’s a Human bar. Werst asks the bartender if he’s seen Cho because the
serley chrika
stiffed a friend of his, bartender’s not going to suddenly ID Werst from the furball’s vids.”

“You know she can hear you, right?”

“Doesn’t scare me.”

“And you’re supposed to be the smart one.”

“Smart enough not to sit on that bench. Your nose is just decorative, right?”

Leaning back against the recycling chute, eating a steamed momo she’d bought from a food cart, Torin kept the camera attached to her tunic pointed toward the door of the
Goat
and listened to Mashona and Ressk fill time with meaningless chatter. She chewed a little more vigorously than the minced filling required, the burn of the chutney almost covering the familiar taste of the vat. Years in had taught her how to wait but didn’t change the fact that waiting sucked.

Craig was on the station. Or on a ship attached to the station.

So close.

When Werst finally emerged, although objectively he hadn’t been more than ten minutes, he stopped by the same food cart for a kabob before joining them. Torin had known he was going to do it, throw off any attention he might have gained, but she still had to bite back an order that he get his ass in gear and deliver the damned sitrep.

“Cho hasn’t been in since the
Heart
got back to the station.” Werst took a look at the bench and stayed standing. “None of his crew have. Whatever they needed your boy for, it’s keeping them at the ship.

Ressk held out a hand and Werst dropped the last bite of kabob into it.

“Seriously, guys . . .” Mashona’s brows were back up. “. . . is there something you want to tell me?”

“You’re sitting in . . .”

“Not about that.”

Torin crumpled the momo’s wrapper and tossed it down the chute as she straightened. “They’re all in one place. Let’s go.”

“I warned him about fukking around.” Cho’s voice was an ice pick that slammed into Craig’s head beside the hot pokers.

Hot and cold shifted when Huirre let go, and Craig’s knees hit the deck. Feeling like his head was about to explode, he curled forward, hands digging into his hair trying to relieve some of the pressure. Somehow, he managed to get an eye open as footsteps approached and stopped, and he found himself staring down at the toe of Doc’s stained boots.

“He was alone with a di’Taykan, Captain.” Doc sounded amused. “I’m not surprised.”

“Not actual fukking!” Cho snarled. “Not this time. Nadayki says Ryder forced himself to vomit.”

“And Nadayki’s an expert on Human physiognomy now? Beyond the obvious? Isn’t it more likely,” Doc continued, before the captain could answer, “that as he defines himself by his skills, he hates needing Ryder’s help to get into the armory. Odds are high, he’s lying.”

“Doesn’t matter if he is. He says he can get through the last layer on his own. You said the station medic needs organs ...”

Cho’s foot connected with his ribs. Craig slammed down on his side, gasping for breath. The way he felt right now, they could take his brain. He wouldn’t miss it.

“While breaking him down for parts . . .”

Oh, fukking hell. Craig tensed, sending muscles into painful spasms. They weren’t kidding about the organs.

“. . . would bring us a tidy profit,” Doc agreed, “consider two things.” Even through the pain, Doc sounded terrifyingly reasonable. Craig tried to crawl away, but another kick from Cho dropped him flat on the deck. “All right, three points. One, stop bruising the merchandise. And two, at this point in the proceedings, I have to reiterate that Nadayki could be talking out of his ass. He says he can get through the last layer on his own, but you have no reason to trust that and every reason to believe it’s what he wants you to believe to maintain his place in the crew. It might be wise to keep Mr. Ryder around until the job is done.”

Cho snorted. “In case Nadayki is, as you say, talking out of his ass.”

“As far as his organs are concerned, a few more hours will make no difference.”

“And your third point?”

“Ryder’s crew. No one gives a shit if you kill a prisoner, but you can’t kill a member of the crew for puking.”

“Doc’s right, Captain.” Huirre sounded pretty much exactly the way Craig imagined a man caught between a rock and a hard place would sound. “I mean, you’ve got to keep discipline, sure, but if puking’s a killing offense, whole crew’d be dead a couple of times by now.”

“I can kill anyone I want to!”

“Yeah, but ...”

Craig cracked the eye again. Huirre was looking to Doc for support. Surprisingly, he got it.

“You can kill anyone you want to,” Doc agreed. “But that’s not a philosophy people will follow, and you need a minimum of four crew to keep the
Heart of Stone
profitable.”

Huirre shifted nervously back and forth, toes flexing against the deck, but it seemed that Cho was actually thinking about what Doc had said. From anyone else, the observation would have sounded like a threat, but it hadn’t taken Craig long to learn that Doc didn’t make threats.

Breathing shallowly, one arm wrapped around the newly rebruised ribs, Craig began to relax. He didn’t want to die and now, it seemed as if he might get through this little adventure in one piece. Not counting the pieces of his gut he’d already hurled to the deck down in the pod.

“You’re right,” Cho said at last. “If Ryder’s crew, he gets treated like crew. Nadayki could be full of shit about his chances of getting through that last bit of code, and he could be bullshitting about Ryder doing this ...”

The toe of his boot jabbed the bruise rising from the earlier kicks. Pain surged out from the contact like waves of flame. In its wake, his body felt burned.

“. . . to himself, but maybe he isn’t. Maybe Ryder’s worried that once he gets me into that armory we won’t need him anymore, so he’s fukking around. Fukking around delays the payout to the crew. We can’t have that.” Cho sounded pleased with himself.

“No, we can’t.” Doc still sounded reasonable.

“He needs to be taught that the crew comes first. That we don’t fuk around and delay payouts. Take a toe.”

Huirre had him held down before Craig realized what
take a toe
meant. He got an elbow up, Huirre grunted, then Huirre’s foot closed around his forehead and slammed the back of his head into the deck. Struggling to escape became weak flopping between the four points Huirre had locked down.

Doc got his boot off with terrifying efficiency.

He felt cold air against his sole.

A strong hand closed around his ankle, grinding the small bones together.

Metal pried the smallest toe on his left foot out from the one next to it.

Given the spikes of pain in his head, it wasn’t the new pain that dragged the cry out of him. It was the crunch of the blades going through the bone.

The salt-copper smell of blood.

Closely followed by the crunch of Huirre’s jaws.

Then
the new pain hit.

Over the years, the squatters had made very few changes to the layout of the station. Outside of the additional docking arms, most changes seemed to be a case of areas being used in ways the planners hadn’t intended.

“Not much they can do to the internal structure,” Ressk noted as he climbed out the lip of yet another double decompression hatch. “This thing’s been designed to break apart into independent segments rather than hole and blow in case of an explosion. Limits the damage. It used to be the default for stations supporting mining operations, but these days, not so much.”

Mashona shook her head as she stood just the other side of the opening, watching back along their six. “You’re just a font of knowledge, aren’t you?”

“Knowledge is power.”

“I think you’re overcompensating for something.”

“You
think
?”

“Less chatter, people.” They weren’t saying anything Torin gave a H’san’s ass if Big Bill heard, nothing about Craig or the
Heart
or why they were actually here since they’d left the masking noise of the Hub, but she saw no point in sending up flares, giving him sound on top of everything else.

“Big Bill’s got this whole place under surveillance, Gunny.” Ressk brushed a hand over his slate. The gesture would have meant nothing to anyone watching, but it told Torin he was mapping that surveillance out.

“Eyes and ears in the whole place limits him,” Werst grunted, dropping down into the new section. The double decompression hatches were wide enough the Krai found it easier to climb over than step over. “He can’t watch the whole
serley
place at once.”

“We get into an area that’s off limits, we’ll trip a sensor. Talk, don’t talk; doesn’t matter. He’ll know we’re here.”

Werst waved it off. “He didn’t say this area was off limits. He didn’t say any area was off limits.”

“He’s too smart to lay down those kind of rules for these kind of people,” Mashona said, falling back into position behind the two Krai.

“You head out here when you’re tired of rules,” Torin reminded them. That was why they’d told Big Bill they were on Vrijheid. Better to leave it at bad things happen to people who go where Big Bill doesn’t want them to; that implied choice.

Each new section as they moved away from the Hub had been less used than the one before. The pale gray bulkheads of this section had been scored and dented by old machinery—Torin neither knew nor cared how they got machinery over the hatch lips—but it felt as though it had hardly been used since. Every other light was out in the band along the ceiling, and the black rubber treads running down the center of the deck were barely worn. It felt abandoned.