A truth of Valor

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.

Fu

"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 pla

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." "What can Big Bill do with fifteen percent if we control the other eighty-five? I mean, basically it's fifteen guns to eighty-five guns, isn't it?" Nat lifted her hand to scratch, glanced across medical at Doc and lowered it again.

"Look what he's already done with fifteen percent?" Cho snarled. "Made himself his own little kingdom. Having any gu

"This lot," Doc sighed, "will challenge her repeatedly to see if she's all the vids say she is."

"Not repeatedly," Cho corrected grimly. "Once."

Nat opened her mouth, frowned; her gaze flicked across sick bay to Doc-who continued to tidy away medical instruments-and closed her mouth again. The quartermaster wasn't the brightest star in the cluster, Cho knew, not by a fukking long shot, but she had excellent instincts for self-preservation. "Like that, then," she murmured. "Good to know."

Doc had been challenged once by someone too stupid to recognize the difference between threat and certainty. The fight had lasted seconds. Doc had dropped the fool's eyeball on the body when he walked away.

Kerr's eyes held the same certainty Doc's did.

"But ex…" Cho came down hard on the ex. "… Gu

"His station," Doc pointed out mildly.

"This goes beyond the station. He says he knows where I can sell the weapons to my best advantage, that my best advantage is his because it increases his fifteen percent. I say, any sale Big Bill sets up is to his best advantage period." When neither Nat nor Doc disagreed, Cho continued. "He thinks he can sit here in his web and send us out to do his bidding. I walked away from that kind of shit once." They hadn't needed to court- martial him; he'd been all but gone when the MPs had shown up.