An Ancient Peace (47 page)

“Okay.” The corners of her mouth twitched. “So that's two shuttles you've crashed on this planet.”

“I'll cop to two hard landings, but it's not a crash if everyone walks away.”

“We're tipped over on top of a pile of crushed rock with the hatch popped off.”

He matched her smile. “Still walking away.”

“Hey, Boss!”

He turned as Torin did and saw a familiar figure standing by the wall of the cavern.

“They're light on their feet,” Torin explained, warm against his side. “I sent them out to check the stability of the stone.”

“And?”

As though he'd heard the question, Alamber continued, “Good news and bad news. Good news is, the ceiling's cracked, but likely to hold for as long as we'll be under it. The bad news is that the Mictok is missing off its plinth.”

“Zombie Mictok?” Binti moaned over by the control panel. “Gunny, I quit.”

“Never mind!” Nadayki's voice came from slightly farther away. He appeared, holding the Mictok up by one leg. “I found it. Must be hollow, it's really . . .”

The body hit the floor and rolled toward the shuttle leaving Nadayki waving the leg.

In all the time they'd been together, Craig couldn't remember Torin ever laughing so hard.

Nadayki lifted field rations off the pile left behind in the cavern and dropped them into his pack. “There's plenty of food, if you can call this food, but we're short of water.”

Torin glanced over at Craig filling the canteens from the containers they hadn't emptied on the way in. “We're good. It's two days to the exit, less if we hustle.”

“Two? Are you shitting me? It took seven tendays to get down this far.”

“Well, like the major said, all we had to do was follow . . .”

The lights went out.

Torin took a deep breath, listened to some creative profanity, and decided as she tapped her PID that yes, it had been a long day. “Werst, let's see your arm.”

The line hadn't gone higher, but two, three-centimeter–long lines had joined it. His temperature remained at two point two degrees above Krai norm. She weighed the spread of the infection against rest and food. Against the worry tightening every one of Ressk's expressions.

“Make camp. We leave when the lights come back on.”

“You blew the door.” Wen murmured the next morning as they carried him over the rubble at the top of the cavern stairs. “I wanted to blow the door, all the doors, but the major wouldn't ever let me. I have demo charges in my pants.”

“Drugs?” Torin asked as Verr smiled fondly down at him.

“Euphemism worth exploring?”

Verr looked up at Alamber and laughed. “No, he really has demo charges in his pants.”

Torin traced a mental line over their route back to the exit. “A few extra demo charges may come in handy.”

They came in handy at the door leading back into the chamber where Corporal McKinnon's remains rested.

Ressk shook his head as he stepped over the mess. “I could've cracked that, Gunny.”

“We crashed a shuttle and broke their Mictok, there's no point in subtlety now.”

Double-time would do Wen no favors. If it came to it, she'd send Ressk and Werst on ahead. As long as it wasn't necessary, she wanted them all together, all moving as fast as possible past the dead.

“She wasn't well, you know.” Nadayki stood close enough to touch as they waited for Binti and Alamber to spell Ressk and Verr on the net. “Major Sujuno, I mean. She was all twisted up inside.”

Torin brushed the back of her hand against his. Seven tendays of rejection wouldn't allow him to make even so simple a first move. “Making excuses for her?”

“As if.”

But she thought he might be.

Torin stared at Werst's arm, illuminated by the beam of her light. The skin felt hot and tight.

“Fuk, Gunny, your fingers are freezing. Respect to Ryder's warm bits.”

“Ryder's warm bits are no concern of yours. Two hours, people. Eat, nap if you can. Then we move on.”

“In the dark, Gunny?” Verr demanded.

It was a flat, straight corridor, thirteen pairs of feet hadn't found a pit trap heading in so were unlikely to do so heading out; every one of them wore a light, and it hadn't been one of the three civilians complaining. “Yes, Lieutenant,” Torin snarled, “in the dark.”

Nadayki and Alamber napped draped over each other, touching at every possible point. Very di'Taykan except that it went no further than touch. Torin wasn't sure why; two hours in the dark was certainly long enough and neither had been with their own species for a while.

On the other hand, criminal activity aside, Nadayki was a combination of acerbic little shit and clingy, so odds were high it was as simple as Alamber not liking him.

In the hall of useless old junk, Torin cleaned souvenirs out of everyone's packs. Nadayki had brought along the ceramic oval and both Wen and Verr had a number of small weapons. Wen also had a few large weapons.

“That's mine!”

“That's contraband. It stays.”

Nadayki's hair flattened into a lime-green skull cap. “Who died and put you in charge?”

“Seriously?” Alamber jerked him back as Torin's hand rose to touch the vest she wasn't wearing. “Do you have a death wish?”

Wen hovered in the gray area between lucid and drugged and let his weapons go with nothing more than a sulky protest.

Verr watched Torin stack everything beside the pile of debris, met Torin's gaze with an expression that said she knew how this adventure was going to end, and turned her attention back to her bonded.

“You're setting a dangerous precedent . . .”

“Whose blood on your pants?” Torin only knew it wasn't his.

Craig frowned. “Uh, there was a face in the blast bay. Most of a skull, part of a face.”

“Broadbent. One of Major Sujuno's.”

“Yeah, well, I touched, I wiped.”

“Good.”

“Good?”

“I didn't have time to get a sample. You're carrying him out.” Most of the blood dried on her clothes was the major's. They'd left three behind, but it could have been worse.

“Can you fly it?” Torin asked as Craig settled into the pilot's chair of the major's shuttle.

“I've flown Taykan controls before, and with a lot less sleep.”

She made a noncommittal noise and leaned over the back of the chair. “Out of a gravity well? Up that narrow protected zone? Without crashing it into the
Promise
when we arrive?”

“Hey, third time's the charm. At least we aren't leaving anything behind we'll miss on our shuttle. We hadn't had it long enough.” He turned his head far enough to kiss her wrist. “Now, set a good example for the children and the prisoners, and buckle up.”

“D
O WE BLOW THE SHIPS, GUNNY?”
Binti waited by
Promise
's board, pack at her feet. Her shoulders sagged with exhaustion, but Torin knew she wouldn't miss. She didn't miss.

Did they erase the evidence? If the H'san came by on patrol, and Torin wasn't convinced they did, they'd assume any debris remaining in orbit had come off ships taken out by the security satellites. Would they analyze the debris? Would they land? Could they tell from orbit that the weapons cache had been disturbed?

She stared at the screen for a long moment, then shook her head. “Go get cleaned up. Craig?”

“It's a universal shuttle lock, and let's hear it for disappearing diversity in engineering. It should hold. If we don't say anything, Justice may never notice we've switched shuttles. The people we deal with at least aren't exactly ship-heads.” He settled deeper in his chair. “Plenty of time to rest when we're in Susumi. Jump in ten. Don't start anything you can't finish.”

With the hum of Susumi space settling around her, an unbreakable shield, Torin made her way into their small infirmary to have her cheek bonded. Craig had argued an entire separate packet for the infirmary was a waste of space right up until their first job. When they got back to the station, he packed in as many upgrades as Justice would pay for and arranged for one or two on his own. Torin had only barely managed to talk him out of a full regeneration tank.

Wen lay on one of the narrow beds, a portable regen tank ready to be slipped over his stump as soon as Verr finished sterilizing the sealant. The tank would dissolve the sealant and include any reusable organics in the rebuild of Wen's leg. Way back when she'd had a single chevron on her sleeve, a med-tech had told Torin parts of the breakdown had been based on Krai digestion. Torin suspected he'd been amusing himself at her expense, but she'd never done the research to be certain.

Werst sat on the bed, shirt off, arm extended so Ressk could run diagnostics and determine what antibiotics were needed.

The siren was a surprise.

“The hell!”

Ressk stared at his slate, then threw it down on the bed so he could work the screen with both hands.

She flattened against the wall as Alamber charged into the room, slate in hand.

“Block it from getting into the queue!” Ressk snapped without looking up.

Verr muttered under her breath about contaminants. Torin and Werst exchanged a look of joint incomprehension. Apparently Alamber knew what was expected of him as he worked at Ressk's side.

“Torin? There's a medical alert trying to redirect us after jump!”

“We're on it!” Ressk snapped before Torin could respond. “Deal with the noise!”

“On it.”

Nine and a half minutes after the siren shut off, Ressk sighed, and relaxed. “That's got it. Good thing we were in Susumi or we wouldn't have been able to stop it.”

“Stop what?” Torin demanded.

“A warning that we had a proscribed substance on board. That infection? Any sign of it and a message goes straight to the nearest CDC base and Med-op will take control of the ship.”

“Confederation Disease Control? Why?” Binti asked, leaning against the wall beside Torin, breathing a little heavily, her hair damp.

“It's a weaponized variant.”

“Can we kill it?” The longest line on Werst's arm had nearly reached his shoulder.

“We can.” His gesture took in the four Krai. “According to Med-op, we can fight it off long enough for the drugs . . .” He reached into the bio-chamber and pulled out the assembled dose. “. . . to take it out. Everyone else . . .”

“. . . not so much,” Alamber finished, staring at his slate.

“Partition the information off and save it,” Torin told him. “We might need it.”

“Biological weapons.” Werst winced as Ressk jabbed the end of the dose into swollen tissue. “We should've hauled a planet buster up into orbit and used it.”

“I knew you weren't going to execute anyone.” Craig handed her a coffee and sat down between her and Ressk. “You're going to give the story to Presit, aren't you? Blow the secrets and the whole thing wide open.”

She'd considered it. “No.”

Her mouth twitched as the entire team except for Werst voiced personal variations of disbelief.

The expression Werst shot her was unmistakable. He knew, had probably known for a while that she'd decided not to bring Presit in at the end. Odds were high he'd worked out why.

Torin took a long drink, then stared at her reflection in the dark liquid as she tried to get the words she needed to say into formation. “We left two dead Humans, two dead di'Taykan, two shuttles, two ships, and one hell of a mess behind. Colonel Hurrs sent us in with . . .”

“A biscuit warmer? Ow.”

“Thank you, Binti. Yes, a biscuit warmer. He'd extrapolated what he knew into a terrifying situation, but, bottom line, he
knew
sweet fuk all. I don't know if the position of the Younger Races in Parliament, in the Confederation, is as tenuous as Colonel Hurrs believes. I don't pay attention to politics, but I do know there's no point in executing the survivors of Major Sujuno's expedition to keep the attempt secret when the person who sent them for the weapons, who was going to pay them for the weapons, is still out there. And only Dion and the major knew who he was. And I'm not one hundred percent certain about the major,” she added after a moment.

Binti leaned back, her chair protesting the angle. “So you're going to take the three of them to the H'san?”

Torin thought about the H'san as she knew them, as the Younger Races knew them; wise and funny, sweet smelling and kind. They sang every morning at sunrise. They loved cheese.

“Well, we can't take them to Justice, can we?” Alamber's hair rose to cover the bald stripe where the dead hair had finally fallen out. “Not after running off on a secret mission for the military.”

“Who lied to them about us,” Craig added. “At least the H'san won't start another war over it.”

Torin thought about a giant snail shell stuffed with potential death and destruction. “You sure about that? I'm not.” She drained her pouch, set it down, and laid her hands flat on the table. “This is what I want us to do; I want us to do our jobs. If I have to, I'll explain the entire situation to a tribunal. I want to trust the system and I want to give these three over to the law. I'd like to do it on the down low, just in case some part of the colonel's fear has merit. But it's a big universe and I'm going to assume we're not the center of it. After all, it's been proven that it's easy enough to hide things—like the H'san system of origin—when no one knows they're being hidden.”

She could almost hear them thinking about it.

“You want to prove that the Younger Races can act like adults rather than sneaking around hiding things from Mom and Dad.” The chair protested again as Binti shifted her weight forward, leveling it out. “Because Mom and Dad always find out. If they want to send us back to our rooms, we need to be able to argue as adults, not children throwing a tantrum.”

Ressk snapped open another pouch of
sah.
“We might want to talk to the H'san as well. I'd like to give them a chance to upgrade their security system before we have to drag another set of assholes off their planet.”

“You think we'll catch shit for not getting the name of the backer from Major Sujuno?” Alamber drummed his fingers on the tabletop until Binti covered his hand with hers and stopped him.

“She was attacked by her sergeant who'd been turned into a
zombie. He grabbed her weapon, operated by pressing the flesh of a long-dead H'san, and she blew them both up.”

“That doesn't answer my question, Boss.”

“I think we're good.”

“I think we're all going to be sent to therapy,” Binti muttered.

“And the war we were supposed to be preventing?” Werst asked quietly.

“I believe . . .” And if she was wrong, she'd be carrying millions more dead. “. . . that Colonel Hurrs has spent his whole life at war. War is his default response. We . . . I defaulted right along with him. But he's never been to the Core and he's never realized how many people barely gave a thought to the war while we were dying in it. I spent too much of my life at war and, while I'm willing to clean up the debris, I'm done with it. I refuse to believe war is the default.”

“Because the gray plastic aliens made us fight?”

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Because we're better than that. We have to be.”

Craig wrapped an arm around her shoulders. Ressk finished his
sah
. Werst and Alamber built a tower out of pretzels.

Finally, Binti grinned. “Intell won't be too pleased with us.”

Ressk matched it. “Neither will Justice.”

“Yeah . . .” Alamber pulled the lowest stick and Werst swore as the tower fell. “. . . we're going to put the
rinchas
in the
armee
for sure.”

“The ducks in the pudding?”

“It loses a little in the . . .” Alamber paused. Frowned. “Yeah, okay, ducks in the pudding is pretty close. So, Boss, how do we deal with the fallout?”

“We become Wardens.”

She sat and listened to the hum of Susumi space.

Binti recovered first. “But we already work for the Justice Department.”

“On contract,” Torin agreed. “Brought in as they need us because we have a special skill set. I want us to be actual Wardens. With the title, and support, and the responsibilities that entails. We still work as a team, we still do the job we've been doing, but we do it as a part
of a greater whole. A fully integrated part of the Justice Department, not merely weapons wielded by them.”

Across the table, Werst grinned. “That's a pretty unsubtle metaphor, Gunny.”

She shrugged and rose to get another coffee. “I'm not a particularly subtle person.”

They discussed the truth of that until she sat down again, then one by one they fell silent.

“If we all agree, we put a sitrep together and shoot it to Lanh Ng the moment we leave Susumi. Colonel Hurrs' arguments. Our arguments. Every detail we can remember and as much as the major's people . . .” Although they hadn't been the major's people, not in any way that mattered. “. . . are willing to tell us.”

Craig's thumb drew warm lines against her neck. “And if Justice doesn't see it our way? And we find ourselves facing an extensive rehabilitation?”

“For what?” she asked. “Acting as concerned citizens . . .”

“With a special skill set,” Werst muttered.

“. . . and stopping a group of mercenaries from stealing and selling ancient H'san weapons?”

“Justice isn't usually about the end justifying the means,” Binti pointed out.

“I think this time they will be. But . . .” She raised a hand and cut off further protests. “. . . if the Justice Department thinks stopping ancient H'san planet-busting weapons from reaching the black market and being used by the sort of people who make Big Bill look both civilized and restrained isn't enough of an end to justify us acting independently, if the word
rehabilitation
is even mentioned, we'll break away, guns blazing.”

“We'll be rehabilitated in their eyes by becoming Wardens.”

Torin grinned across the table at Werst. “There's that.”

“So are we telling the H'san?” Alamber dropped his chin onto his fist. “I mean, letting the H'san know we stopped a group of mercenaries from airing their dirty armaments couldn't hurt.”

Binti grabbed a handful of pretzels off the table. “They might
wonder why we didn't go to them in the first place so they could deal with it themselves.”

“H'san against trained mercenaries?” Craig leaned back and snagged another coffee. “Like that would end well. What would they go in armed with? A cheese plate?”