Valour's Trial by Tanya Huff

Author:Tanya Huff
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Titan Books

NINE

“It’s light,” Mike said definitively. “It’s not a light.”

“So it’s a way out?”

They were standing close enough, necks craned back to stare up at the pale pinprick of illumination high above them in the dark, that Torin could feel him shrug. “It’s a way into someplace else. Can’t promise out.”

“Good enough. Werst…”

“Not in the dark, Gunny. Not if we don’t have to.”

“Stop reading my mind, you’re still a distance from that sergeant’s hook.” She frowned, hands flat against the pipe. The smooth surface, even crumpled by the collapse, would be a bitch to climb. If Werst said he’d rather not attempt it in the dark, well, it was her choice still on whether it was worth it to try. If their need to haul ass was greater than the risk to the Krai. If waiting until they had light was the best thing to do or merely the easiest.

“Gunny…”

“No, you won’t either, kid.” Werst cut Kyster off cold. “Not unless she orders it. Then all three of us go.”

“Stop reading his mind, too,” Torin muttered absently, reaching as far as she could and feeling the faint ridge of buckled metal. She gripped it as hard as she could, fingertips only, and tried to lift herself off the floor. No real surprise when there wasn’t enough resistance to hold her; she’d need suction cups. “Odds that your patch will hold come morning, Sergeant?”

Mike shrugged again. “It’s a sleeve, Gunny. Probably shouldn’t have worked at all.”

That was helpful. Make a decision, Torin. Do your fukking job. “All right. We sleep. Kyster, Werst, and Ressk are excused watch and ready to climb at first light. Sergeant, do what you have to in order to get that slate working, remembering you’ll eventually be climbing that bastard of a pipe and that, at least, is one thing the slate can’t help with.”

She dreamed that night that the pipe led into the shuttle bay of a Navy cruiser. It might have been the Berganitan, she didn’t see enough of the ship to know for certain. Haysole was there, and Guimond, and Sergeant Glicksohn, and a dozen other Marines she knew were dead. Dead Marines were a part of her life, but Craig was there, too, and when she woke, half an hour before light with the dream still in her head and the edges of the salvage tag cutting into her palm, she had every intention of blaming the fukking kibble for the soppy state of her subconscious.

“Did you sleep at all?” she asked crouching by Mike’s side, one hand on a broad shoulder for balance.

“No.”

“You sure that’s wise?”

He slipped a hand into his vest and pulled out a stim. “If we were always wise, would they give us these?”

Torin touched her vest over the inner pocket where her two remaining stims waited for inevitability. She’d forgotten about them. Another malfunction to blame on the kibble.

“Operating system’s up and running.” He turned the screen just enough for her to see a familiar pattern. She could practically hear him filtering what he was about to say, dumbing it down for the nontech-inclined.

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