An Ancient Peace (4 page)

“And you don't think it might be better if you made a clean break from the Corps?”

“And what exactly might be better, Doctor?” Torin raised a brow and the doctor smiled. Her first court appointed psychologist—after the exploded pirates and the destroyed station—had been brand new to the job and that had been a disaster. Dr. Ito, however, had a streak
of cynicism Torin could relate to and he almost understood. About the war with the Primacy. About how the war had more or less ended once she'd discovered it had been a lab experiment run by sentient, polynumerous molecular polyhydroxide alcoholydes—hive-mind organic plastic. Granted, the war had “ended” more on some days, less on others. About what she'd done and what she'd been willing to do when Craig had been taken and tortured by pirates. About the weight of all the small metal cylinders she still carried, the ashes of all the Marines she hadn't been able to bring home alive, although the cylinders themselves had long since been returned to family and friends.

When she got around to mentioning it, he might even understand how it had felt as though she'd been fighting herself in that explosives locker.

“You haven't actually been a Gunnery Sergeant for some time now, Torin.”

“You never stop being a Gunnery Sergeant, Major.”

Dr. Ito's left eye twitched. He'd made it clear from the beginning that he preferred to be addressed by the medical honorific. “I think you've just made my point for me.”

“I notice you don't have any visible plastic in your office.” Torin smiled. In the year since the hyper-intelligent shape-shifting organic plastic had been exposed and had admitted to manipulating both the Confederation and the Primacy into a centuries-long war, natural fibers had started to make a comeback. “Is that for my benefit or for yours?”

“Are you still angry that you haven't been sent out to hunt for the plastic aliens?”

Torin stared across the room at the psychiatrist. Dr. Ito stared back at her. They'd spent one whole session like that, Dr. Ito silently waiting for Torin to answer, Torin wondering how long he'd wait. This time, they kept the dance short.

“Yes,” she said. “I am still angry that we haven't been sent out to hunt for the plastic aliens. I am fully aware that no one has any idea of where to start looking. I know while the cellular marker they stuck in our heads means they occasionally respond to my touch or to Craig's, that means shit in the end given that I carried a plastic bowl
for days without them giving themselves away. But I also know that people died—good people, mediocre people, bad people,
people
—because they were using us, all of us, Confederation and Primacy both, as subjects in a social science experiment. The war was their laboratory, our deaths were data, and they don't get to do that without consequences.”

“And yet, because they've disappeared from known space, it appears they have indeed escaped without consequences.”

Torin pushed both hands back through her hair and sighed. “Why do I think the word displacement is going to show up any minute now . . .”

On OutSector stations, the lowest two or three levels of the central core were set aside for off-duty and civilian personnel. On a MidSector station the size of Ventris, five broad concourses had been set aside for stores, bars, and cantinas. Although Sutton's on Concourse Two was a civilian bar, it seldom saw civilians; both officers and enlisted personnel gravitating there for the excellent beer, the first-class kitchen, and the enormous vid screen that showed a steady stream of the Confederation's more obscure sports. In spite of three solid days of cricket annually, it had been Torin's favorite bar when she'd served on Ventris and she saw no reason to find another just because she no longer wore a uniform.

The first time she'd sat down with her team in Sutton's after a Justice Department debrief—the debrief where Torin had picked up another dozen visits to the Corps psychologist for what the Wardens had called excessive violence while closing an orbital factory turning Katrien into coats—a brand new second lieutenant had made a comment about certain people not knowing where they were unwelcome. The comment had been intended to be overheard. Before Werst could do more than threaten further excessive violence, the lieutenant had been set straight by two captains, three NCOs, and Elliot Westbrook, the grandson of the original owners.

Staff Sergeant Kerr had fought a thousand Silsviss to a standstill, ripped off their leader's head, and brought the vicious reptilian race into the Confederation.

Staff Sergeant Kerr had outwitted a sentient alien ship and, unarmed
and with only an HE suit between her and vacuum, stood between her people and enemy fighters.

Gunnery Sergeant Kerr had brought down Crucible when it turned against the Marines it was supposed to teach and by defeating it—with nothing more than a platoon of trainee Marines—had discovered the hyper-intelligent shape-shifting plastic aliens who'd been collecting data on the Confederation.

Gunnery Sergeant Kerr had survived the destruction of Sho'quo Company, escaped from an alien prison, and threatened the hyper-intelligent shape-shifting plastic until they admitted they'd nurtured the fight between the Primacy and the Confederation as a sort of social experiment, and then she'd ended the war.

The poor kid's hands had still been shaking when she downed the beer Torin had bought her as an apology for the exaggerations.

Unfortunately, although the war was over, the fighting had become a centuries-long habit and it hadn't entirely ended. The plastic aliens had been happy to explain; she hadn't had to threaten them. Much. The Crucible thing was essentially true, but, in all honesty, it had been an accident of placement as much as intent that had put her between her Marines and the enemy after leaving the alien ship in Craig's salvage pen. And she certainly hadn't fought a thousand Silsviss to a standstill by herself. There'd been a platoon of Marines with her. She did, however, acknowledge that the Silsviss skull in her old quarters had probably been how the “ripped off their leader's head” rumor had gotten started.

Because she'd been out of the Corps at the time, the destruction of a pirate fleet and the station they'd used as their base with three ex-Marines, a civilian salvage operator, and a morally flexible di'Taykan seldom got mentioned on military stations although it was the first topic of conversation on the small OutSector stations where they often ended up in the course of their deployments by the Justice Department.

“They're jobs, Torin,”
Craig had sighed
. “Can you try to call them jobs? For me?”

They hadn't been back to Ventris in nearly two months, having bounced from their previous deploy . . . job to the takedown of Human's First, without a break. As
you are no longer a part of the
military
had been explicitly mentioned in every Justice Department briefing they'd been to over the last year, the department sending them in to meet with Major di'Uninat Alie had come as a surprise. Major Alie had been Torin's Intelligence Service contact before Crucible, back when she'd been the Corps' best resource on the Silsviss. Fortunately for all concerned, her battle observations had been quickly replaced by a battery of reports from xeno-ists. Biologists. Psychologists. Sociologists. Hell, maybe even xenoherpetologists; the Silsviss
were
one of the Confederation's few reptilian races.

Given that the summons had been for the entire team, not for her alone, odds were the meeting had nothing to do with the Silsviss. Unless a few of the big lizards had gone rogue.

“Yeah, that'd be fun,” Torin muttered, pausing just inside the door of Sutton's while her eyes adjusted to the lower light levels. She turned toward the sound of Craig's voice and spotted the team tucked back in the far corner near the doors to the kitchen. Exiting through the kitchen and out the staff entrance would take them to the service corridors and from the service corridors, they could get anywhere in the station. More importantly, they could get back to the
Promise
. Alamber and Ressk had hacked through the lowest levels of station security, pulled the schematics, and uploaded them to everyone's slate under a mask of false directories.

Back in the day, Ressk had made a game of getting through at least the basic security of every ship Sho'quo Company had been deployed on. Had Military Intelligence found proof, they'd have used that leverage to poach him from the infantry, but he'd always been able to cover his tracks—at least to the point of plausible deniability. Alamber, who'd spent his formative years learning how to cripple code for shits and giggles and profit, knew a number of very nasty tricks he was more than willing to apply. Torin had cut them off before they could go any deeper and had made it clear she expected Ressk to police the young di'Taykan.

“Because, in this, you're the only one who can,”
she'd snapped when he'd protested. She didn't know how, she didn't need to know how, but he'd stopped Alamber before they crossed the line between too smart for their own good and treason.

Back in the day, when she'd had the weight of the Confederation Marine Corps behind her, she hadn't needed to know the alternative exits from her favorite bar. Times had changed.

She passed a table of three di'Taykan corporals in the midst of settling their bill and arguing about whose quarters had the largest bed; passed a table holding two glasses of wine where a lone Krai lieutenant sat watching the clock; passed an empty table—although a bowl holding the dregs of congealing curry suggested it hadn't been empty long—and finally dropped into the seat left for her, one hand on Craig's arm, the other reaching for a beer, muscles she hadn't realized were tense, relaxing.

“It wasn't my fault!” Alamber protested, acknowledging her arrival with a spear of pineapple, pale blue hair flying about his head as though it were being directed by the waving fruit. It wasn't actually hair, but protein-based sensors similar to cat whiskers that grew a uniform eight-to-ten–centimeters long, its motion a fairly good indication of a di'Taykan's emotional state. Given the flourishes, it looked like Alamber'd been impressed by whatever it was that hadn't been his fault—although it was more likely he was using those flourishes to draw attention and control his companions' reaction to him. He also looked like he'd had a few of his more obvious emotional edges blunted so he'd likely found a few di'Taykan and gotten laid. “If you'd seen it,” he continued, with heavy emphasis on the pronoun, “you'd have asked if it was real, too.”

“I wouldn't have been looking,” Ressk muttered, eyes on his slate. “Some people like to piss in peace.”

“I'd have looked,” Werst said thoughtfully.

Alamber's eyes darkened as light receptors opened, and he snickered, one hand rising to the masker at his throat. “Not getting enough at home?”

Torin tapped her bottle on the table. His lower lip went out and he tossed his head dismissively, but he lowered his hand. When the di'Taykans discovered that their pheromones worked on all mammals and some nonmammals more powerfully than they worked on other di'Taykans, they took that to mean the universe intended them to have sex with most of known space. The maskers were Parliament's
solution to the problem of biological consent. They could still have sex with most of known space, but now known space had a choice.

Under cover of Werst's snarled protest that he was getting quite enough at home and Alamber's insisting he be more specific about what exactly enough meant, Craig leaned in until his shoulder touched Torin's. “So, still sane?”

“Sane enough for government work.” Torin nodded her thanks as Binti pushed a bowl of nuts closer to her hand. “Apparently, we need to take a break when the job conflicts with my appointments.”

“I thought they scheduled your appointments between jobs?”

“Yeah, well, waste management is less flexible than they think.”

“Waste management?”

“We take out the trash.”

Craig snickered, the outer corners of his eyes crinkling, and Torin shifted her leg so their thighs pressed together under the table. “You use that line on Dr. Ito?” he asked.

“I did. Distracted him from a long discussion about my feelings. Which haven't changed since the last time,” she added before Craig could speak. She believed in what they did and found a certain satisfaction in using her military training to clean up the broken pieces left behind after centuries of war. And she
hadn't
needed Dr. Ito to remind her that those broken pieces were people.

She'd washed enough blood off her hands; she couldn't forget.

Before the Justice Department had put their collective Elder Races' feet down, military brass had argued their team should be lumped in under the Special Forces' banner. But two of her people had never been military and, while he was no longer a CSO, Craig had no intention of ever
being
military and Torin had no intention of allowing the military too close a look at Alamber. The official belief was that she'd rescued the young di'Taykan before Vrijheid Station had blown and as that was within spitting distance of the truth, it was a belief Torin encouraged. Fortunately, the Wardens seemed willing to take her word for it.