An Ancient Peace (7 page)

“And we head out to save the day with a picture of a biscuit warmer and the unsupported assumption we're stopping a potential warlord and not a rogue archaeologist.” Craig leaned back in the pilot's chair and scowled out the front port as the last three berths on delta arm passed by. He hated giving over control of his ship to the Docking Master, but he had no choice within the Ventris perimeter. Although, this time, he supposed he'd given control to the Intelligence Service. Because that made it so much better.

“There's also the irrigation tubing and the cheese tray,” Torin pointed out.

“I can see why they called us in.”

“Rogue archeologists?”

“Mad scientist subset.”

“I see.” She turned the copilot's chair until she could rest her bare feet on his leg.

“Private vessel
Commitment
, this is Ventris perimeter. Control will be returned to your board in fifteen seconds.”

Dumbass name for a ship, but no one had asked him. He faced the board, hands above the screens, Torin's feet still on his lap. “Once I've got the course to the traffic buoy locked in, we could . . .”

She dug her toes back into his thigh. “We have the watch in the control room until we jump.”

“We used to have sex in the control room.”

“It used to be the only room on the ship.”

Back before the refit, when it was just him and Torin on the
Promise
, they'd have only had to cover four meters to make it to the bunk. If they'd bothered. Both pilot's chairs were a lot sturdier than they looked. Now, a row of suit lockers filled the bulkhead where the bunk had been and four other seats had been bolted into what had been open floor—albeit not a lot of it. The payout from the mining cartels for taking down the pirate fleet had attached an actual galley and a full-sized head as well as crew quarters and a small gym. From the outside, the added units looked like miniature versions of the Marine packets the Corps attached to Navy cruisers; boxes grouped around an engine, aerodynamics irrelevant in vacuum. Their Navy surplus shuttle was small and heavy and dropped through atmosphere like a rock, but, so far, the heat shields had held and the way she threw herself back up into the air—seemed the Navy disliked being dirtside as much as he did—had endeared her to him. He'd called her
Glee
and, in spite of protests, it had stuck.

He still had the occasional moment where the thought of sharing his ship and her limited resources with five other people tightened his sphincter and backed the shit up to his brain, but they had room enough he could convince himself during those occasional moments that it was still just him and Torin.

“Private vessel
Commitment
, this is Ventris perimeter. Control will be returned to your board in three, two, one. You have control.”

“Roger, Ventris perimeter, I have control. Pr . . .
Commitment
, out.” A two-second burst from one of the port lateral thrusters moved them onto the correct heading. Jumping OutSector was point and shoot and pray the math had been dummied out to the necessary decimal point. Jumping toward the Core meant a three-hour registered burn from Ventris and an assigned jump time issued from the traffic buoy. He double-checked the numbers to the buoy, locked them in, and sat back working the tension out of his shoulders.

“This isn't the life you expected to be living.”

It wasn't and Torin knew that as well as he did; thus the complete lack of a question in that statement. He'd assumed . . . he'd
expected
that the two of them would make a success of salvage, build a home on one of the salvage stations, have a family. “True that. But then who actually expects they'll end up buzzing around known space doing the Justice Department's dirty work?”

“Or the Corps'?”

“No, that you expected.”

He laughed when she shrugged. Of course she had. Stopped laughing when she asked, “Do you mind?”

“Honestly?”

“Please.”

He turned, looked her in the eye, and said, “I don't really care what I'm doing as long as I'm doing it with you.”

Her gaze sharpened, looking for the lie.

After a long moment, as she relaxed, he added, “There's things we do that I hate, not denying it, but they're necessary and, truth, I hate that they're necessary, but as long as we're doing it together, I don't
mind.
”

The corners of Torin's mouth lifted in the soft almost-smile only he got to see. “Good.”

“Yeah.” As there were now rules about having sex in the control room and he was an adult, God damn it, he tapped down the rising heat. “Tell you what I do mind. I mind the nasty feeling that we're making this job up as we go because the Intelligence Service has fuk all in the way of intelligence and hey—surprise, surprise—we're making it up as we go.”

Her smile twisted into the more familiar, weaponized curve. “Doesn't matter. What matters is that a lot of people who might die, don't.”

“It's that simple?”

“Sure.” She dug her toes into his thigh. “Simple's best. Just don't mistake it for easy.”

“I can't decide whether to be flattered at Intell's opinion of our ability to make
mertain
out of a single leaf or astounded at their tenuous grasp on reality.” Ressk set his slate down on the galley's small round table and sat back, reaching for his half-empty pouch of
sah
. “We've
got the name of the Rakva who sold the artifacts to the collector. We've got the names of the planets where he bought them and the names of the intermediaries he bought them from, but we don't have anything on who sold them to the intermediaries, which is, of course, the information we actually need because that's who knows where the fuk the dig site is because everything they sent us about the H'san is myth or hyperbole and in the entire visual history of dead H'san and the planet they destroyed and the system of origin they buggered off from, there isn't one single record of the night sky we could match to current star charts.”

“After sifting through two millennia of variables,” Werst grumbled, eyes half closed.

Forehead on the table, Alamber poked at an empty pouch without looking up. “Data crunching. We just set up the parameters.”

“Except . . .” Ressk raised his
sah
in a derisive salute. “. . . we don't have the parameters.”

“We know that almost immediately after they'd formed the Confederation, the H'san abandoned their world of origin before it was engulfed by the spreading photosphere of a star phasing red.” Torin's shoulders cracked as she rolled them back. Three days of combing the Intell upload had left her stiffer than three days of combat. “The timing confirms the cemetery planet was in that same system, only orbiting far enough out to have avoided destruction.”

“No offense, Gunny, but do you know how many red giants there are in known space?”

“Not a clue.”

“And there we have it. Where
it
stands for nothing at all.”

“Yeah, because it's not like we were fighting a war or anything.” Binti tossed her own slate down. “Where a shitload of buried weapons might've come in handy.”

Alamber poked at the empty pouch again. “I've got a question . . .”

“I've got nothing but questions,” Ressk muttered.

“. . . How do we know it's the Younger Races doing the grave robbing?”

“The colonel said . . .”

“Yeah, but how does
he
know?” Alamber sat up and slid
immediately into a boneless slouch, the graceful transition as much age as species. “I mean, we've spent three days establishing that the Intelligence Service of the Confederation Marine Corps knows sweet fuk all. Why blame the Younger Races for stealing a biscuit warmer? Because we're violently antisocial? Isn't that why Parliament wants to lock us away? And it's a bad thing when Parliament believes it, but it's business as usual when it's all the Corps' got? Or is because the Elder Races fart rainbows? Because I've got to tell you, there was a Ciptran on Vrijheid and that bug was a total
senak
. Elder Race.” One hand rose, one fell, sketching out a scale. “Total
senak
. Not mutually exclusive.”

Torin ignored the argument—the staccato spill of words coming from five different sides with the sides in constant flux—and went over everything Major Alie and Colonel Hurrs had said at the briefing. H'san grave goods had been found, the trail leading toward a weapon cache. Clearly the Younger Races were responsible. Because the Younger Races were inherently violent? And if they believed that, what was the difference between them—the major, the colonel, and the ex-gunnery sergeant who'd accepted every word out of their mouths without question for no better reason than rank and a uniform—and those members of the Elder Races who declaimed they should be locked up until they become better socialized?

Was there a difference?

Yes.

“He has a point.” Torin pitched her voice to cut through the shouting. Finished her coffee as it died down, then let the silence settle for a moment before continuing. “Members of the Elder Races can be assholes. They can be pompous, greedy, self-righteous pains in the collective ass, but they'd moved far enough away from institutionalized violence that when it was fight back or die, they couldn't figure out how to fight back. They had to come to us.”

“Could be they've learned from us,” Craig offered.

All three ex-Marines looked a little sick at the thought. Even Alamber who, for all the violence in his life had never seen a battlefield, was slowly shaking his head in denial.

“Do of any of you honestly believe that the Elder Races took a look
at the shitstorm we got called in to deal with, looked at the dead and the damaged, and thought, damn, we were wrong, looks like war is the answer after all? Because I don't.” She crushed her empty coffee pouch. “Cards on the table: the H'san weapons are weapons of war. Place your bets on who you think would want to put them back into play, us or them.”

“Us,” Werst growled. Four nods of agreement.

“Assumption,” Alamber began.

Torin cut him off. “There's nothing wrong with the assumption. The assumption's justified.”

“And the difference?”

“Is them assuming we're incapable of policing ourselves. And assuming we're incapable of learning from them. And assuming we won't take a swing if they push us into a corner. You can assume they fart rainbows, I don't care. I care about preventing a civil war. Which, by a happy coincidence, is also the job they're paying us to do. So we talk to this . . .” She glanced down at her slate. “. . . Bufush on Abalae who sold the biscuit maker and we find out who sold it to them and . . . Did you have something to add, Alamber?”

He grinned. “I was just going to ask what we do when the dealer won't talk to us.”

“When?”

“Strangers asking about the sale of illegal artifacts? Oh, yeah. That'll lead to a happy discussion of provenance and origins over tea and cakes.”

“Patronizing
serley chrika
,” Werst muttered.

“They'll shut up tighter than Werst's asshole,” Alamber continued, ducking Werst's swing. “Best we'll get is an offer to exchange contact information in case something comes up and they'll back run that to find out who's asking. They don't find what they like, they'll drop a worm to scrub us or they'll load incriminating data and tip the Wardens.”

The voice of experience, Torin acknowledged. Perhaps a little too experienced. “Ressk?”

He jerked, his gaze flicking up from his slate. “You asking about Werst's ass . . .
Chreen!
”

Torin got another coffee during the digression. “Can you deal with a potential information hack?” she asked, when both Krai were back in their seats.

“When you say deal, you mean back hack it, right? Use their hack to slip into their system?”

She did now. “Yeah, that's what I mean. If we can get a name on Abalae, we can get a ship. If we can't get enough for a ship, we get what we can and head for the next dealer. But
when
we get a ship . . .” Because there was no point in assuming they wouldn't, and fukking hell that word wouldn't quit. “. . . Ressk and Alamber can trace how it came into the system through the traffic buoys.”

Ressk swept both hands back over the bristles on his skull and down to cup the back of his neck. “You know that's illegal, right, Gunny? Not sliding through a battleship's firewall to mock the feed from the Wardroom illegal but the kind of illegal the Wardens understand. This is . . .”

“What it'll take to stop a war.”

Torin saluted Werst with her coffee . . . “That's exactly what it is.” . . . and turned her attention back to Ressk. “Can you get in and out of the traffic buoys without getting caught?”