The Truth of Valor (35 page)

Nadayki glanced over at Cho and when the captain didn’t respond said, “Yeah, almost always, but we know shit about the people who set this.”

“You know the name of their ship,” Big Bill sighed. “A little research into public databases and you’d learn several possible dates I’m sure. However, in the interest of saving some time, which you seem to believe I have an indefinite amount of ...” He nodded past Nadayki at Craig. Torin turned to follow the gesture. Enough to see Craig’s face but not enough to remove her primary focus from Cho. “He’s a salvage operator. Perhaps he knows them?”

Craig rolled his eyes; all familiar attitude, like he hadn’t just been tortured. Torin began silently listing the parts of a KC-7 to keep herself from doing something stupid. “Oh, sure, all salvage operators know each other,” he muttered. “It’s not like space is big or anything.”

He was right, Torin realized. The sons of bitches who took him had no reason to believe he knew the CSOs who’d lost the original cargo. Space
was
big. Trite but true. And Craig could bluff a table off a substantial pot while holding nothing more than trip eights.

Cho muttered something in a Human dialect Torin didn’t know, then took a short, jerky step toward Craig and snarled, “I should have left your toe where it was and cut off your useless fukking nuts.”

Craig saw a muscle jump in Torin’s jaw and decided to save Cho’s life.

More importantly, he was saving Torin’s.

“It’s a long shot, kid, but try 23, 14, 1552. Date of the first big civilian salvage find,” he explained as they all turned to stare at him. Where
all
did not include Torin; she continued to stare at Cho like she was deciding how to cark him. Odds were high she was doing exactly that. “The first find that wasn’t just scrap. We . . .” He snorted, remembering what side he was supposed to be on. “
They
use it for luck.”

In point of fact, he had no clue when the first salvage find had happened. The date he’d given Nadayki was the day Jan and Sirin had finally saved enough dolly to buy their license. He’d just happened to have been on station for the party and knew the date only because it had also been the day Jeremy’d been born. If that wasn’t the code, well, he knew a couple of other dates it might be and, more importantly, he’d distracted Torin long enough for her to get a grip.

“Aren’t you helpful,” Big Bill said.

“Aren’t I?” he muttered, watching Torin’s fingers flex. He knew her rep. He knew her life before joining him had been spent dealing with the kind of shit that would have most people bringing engines on-line to get away. Hell, he’d seen her get her people off a sentient space-ship and then attempt to save her surviving enemies as well. He’d seen her angry, but he’d never seen her so close to losing control.

He supposed he should be flattered that she gone this close to the line for him. All things being equal, not so much.

“What if he’s decided to blow us up?” Nadayki asked, taking a step toward the armory then a step back toward the group at the hatch.

“He’ll be blowing himself up as well,” Big Bill pointed out. He stared at Craig for a long moment while Craig attempted to look like his foot hurt so fukking much he didn’t give a H’san’s ass about what Big Bill thought.

Not exactly acting.

Big Bill didn’t look convinced.

“He doesn’t want to blow himself up.” Torin made it a definitive statement. No others need apply. If Craig hadn’t known he didn’t want to blow himself up, she’d have convinced him.

When Big Bill turned to look at her, so did Craig. The station manager . . . head pirate . . . everyone’s chum . . . whatever the fuk his actual title was,
Big Bill
stared at her for a long moment and she looked away from Cho long enough to meet his gaze. Craig had no idea what game Torin had to play to get onto the station, but in spite of maintaining a mere fingertip hold on her temper, she seemed to be playing it well.

Of course she was playing it well.
Ex
-Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr was still the walking definition of overachiever.

And as possessive as all hell.

He wanted to tell her he was good, now she was here. That he’d known she’d come for him. He hoped she already knew all that.

Big Bill finally nodded and spread his hands. “There you go, then,” he told Cho genially as Torin locked her narrow-eyed gaze back on the captain.

Cho looked like he smelled something foul. “She can’t know . . .”

“I say she can.”

“But . . .”

“I can’t provide free air to this part of the station indefinitely,” Big Bill sighed.

“Nadayki!”

“Captain?”

“Do it!” Cho snapped, unable to stop his eyes from flicking toward Torin.

Yeah, Craig acknowledged, the captain had pressing personal problems that put merely blowing up into perspective. Under the circumstances—and he could only see part of Torin’s expression—Craig gave him credit for not pissing himself.

Nadayki entered the eight numbers—he didn’t need to have them repeated and Craig made a mental note about the kid’s memory to go with previous notes about his unfortunate powers of observation—then jerked back, propelled by an ominously final sounding click.

The CSO seal split and dropped to the deck.

The Marine seal, still securing the armory, beeped once.

After a long moment that did not end in being blown to his component atoms, Craig started breathing again.

Big Bill cocked his head. “Can you get into it, Gunnery Sergeant?”

“No.” Not a refusal. “My codes have been retired.”

Craig wondered if he was the only one who heard,
You’re a dead man
when Torin opened her mouth, regardless of what she actually said. Cho twitched randomly, so probably not.

“Retired codes,” Torin continued, “will initiate the armory’s self-destruct.”

“The government doesn’t trust anyone,” Big Bill said with exaggerated distress. “And that’s just part of the problem. How long to get in?” Playacting done, he whipped the question at Nadayki.

Nadayki flinched, his eyes lightening. “Twenty-eight hours.”

Big Bill glanced at his slate. “It’s 0230 now. You have until 1630.”

“Station time?”

“Unless you were planning to leave.” When Nadayki made no response, Big Bill turned to Cho. “Of course, as you owe me fifteen percent of what’s in that armory, I wouldn’t advise it. You have fourteen hours. Gunnery Sergeant ...”

Torin didn’t want to walk away and leave Craig in enemy hands, but she couldn’t just grab him and go. With no exit strategy, even if they got off the ore docks, they’d be dead before they got back to the ship. She could tell Big Bill that she wanted Craig as part of her payment for the job she wasn’t going to do, but that would give Big Bill a weapon he could use against her.

Putting Craig in an entirely different kind of danger.

She paused at the pod’s hatch and, before he could look away, locked her gaze with Cho’s. Jerking her head toward Craig, still sitting on the deck by the armory, she snarled, “What happened to his foot?”

“It was an accident,” Craig said before Cho could answer.

Why was he defending the son of a bitch? Torin actually felt her lips pull back off her teeth as though she had no control over her expression.

Cho’s pupils dilated. “An accident,” he agreed. “Couldn’t happen again.”

Big Bill’s footsteps placed him almost halfway to the exit. Torin ignored him and listened to Craig breathe. She wanted to say that she’d get him out just to hear him say he knew it. She wanted to hear him say a lot of other things. She needed to touch him.

Wouldn’t be able to let go if she did.

“It couldn’t happen again?” She watched beads of sweat form along Cho’s hairline. “Good.”

Cho waited just inside the storage pod until they heard the hatch leading into the station close, then he took a deep breath. Craig half suspected it was the first breath he’d taken since Torin’s final comment.

“He’s going to try for more than his fukking fifteen percent.”

Not what Craig had expected the captain would say. While he hadn’t thought Cho would suddenly spill his last will and testament, some acknowledgment of the danger Torin posed to him might’ve been a more
aware
response.

“He’s up to something,” Cho continued, fingers tapping against his thigh. “Big Bill thinks we’re all going to end up working for him.”

From Craig’s understanding of how the station worked, Cho seemed to have come to that realization a little late. Big Bill might be blatant about taking his fifteen percent off the top, but the station master grabbed fifteen percent off the back and sides as well. The pirates paid fifteen percent to Big Bill, but so did every service on the station, and they got their money from the pirates with prices adjusted up to cover Big Bill’s share.

Nice gig.

“You.” Cho’s attention jerked suddenly back to the here and now. He pointed at Nadayki. “What the fuk are you looking at? Get to work. Big Bill thinks he’s getting into this armory in fourteen hours. I want it open in twelve.”

“But . . .”

“I thought you were good at this?” Cho sneered. “The best, they told me. That’s why I agreed to take you and your
thytrins
on. Fukking di’Taykan, lie soon as fuk you.”

Nadayki’s hair flipped out. “I am the best!”

“Prove it!”

The young di’Taykan glanced down at his slate and then up again, squaring his shoulders. “You’ll have it in eleven,” he said, turned, and bent over the seal.

Funny how
young
and
stupid
were so much alike.

“And you . . .”

Craig could tell Cho wasn’t really seeing him. Suspected he hadn’t seen Nadayki either in spite of the crude manipulation. That he was still worrying at what Big Bill might be up to. Or Torin had rattled him, and the Big Bill reaction was a cover. Wouldn’t do to look rattled in front of the two junior members of his crew, would it? Might give them ideas.

“You get over here.” Cho pointed to the deck at his feet. “Anyone comes through that hatch . . .” He pointed down the docks. “...
you
let me know immediately. No matter what happens, the kid keeps working.” Pivoting on one heel, he stepped out of the pod without waiting for a response.

Interesting,
Craig thought, listening to the captain walking quickly back toward the
Heart
. He’d seen Torin make that exact same move and that made him think Cho was military. Navy, though, not Corps. Craig had been up close and personal with ex-Corps long enough to be able to eyeball their ticks. Navy might explain Cho’s reaction to Torin. Junior officers defaulted to terrified by senior NCOs and, unless the Navy was a lot more fukked than was safe, Cho had never held anything close to command rank. Maybe he found the kind of terror Torin evoked familiar. And so ignorable.

Holding his left leg up, sucking air through his nose, teeth clenched on the whimpers that threatened to escape, Craig scooted across the deck on his ass—dignity be damned—until he could see out the hatch. It just happened that Cho’s orders dovetailed with what he’d planned to do anyway. Watch the hatch Torin had left through. And would return through.

For him.

And for the armory.

She’d no more leave weapons with these people than she’d leave him.

When he finally stopped feeling like he wanted to cut his whole fukking leg off—it was just a toe for fuksake, moving two meters shouldn’t make him feel like shooting himself—he glanced at the stripped slate he’d been given. Twenty-six fifteen ship time. No wonder he felt stuffed. It had been one fuk of a day.

He looked up to see Nadayki watching him, eyes so dark barely any green remained. With the light receptors that open, he wondered what details the di’Taykan could see.

“Twelve hours,” Craig reminded him.

Nadayki blinked, and his eyes lightened enough they looked green again. “She’s fukking scary, isn’t she? I mean . . .” His hands sketched impossible meanings in the air. “She doesn’t look that scary in the vids.”

“Yeah, well . . .” Craig stretched out his legs, sucked some air in through his teeth, and set his left heel gently down on his right ankle. “The vids add almost five kilos and a veneer of civilization.”