The Heart of Valour Read Free

Torin fell into step beside him. “So, since it’s unlikely they promoted you for just doing your job, I’m guessing you’ve got blackmail material on that General Morris who seems to like you so much.”
    As it happened, she did, but since her old DI wasn’t actually digging for information, she merely said, “Ours is not to question why, Sergeant.”
    He snorted. “Yeah, that’s what they keep telling me.”
    *Your 0930 briefing has been moved to L6S23C29.*
    Torin tongued an acknowledgment and checked the time.
    *0858*
    No need to hurry.
    “New implant? You half winced just there,” the sergeant continued when she raised an inquiring brow. “Like you were reacting to the memory of pain.”
    She fought the urge to cup the left side of her jaw, recently cracked by the techs back at Battalion who’d installed her new unit during the short time she’d spent with her company on the OutSector station before being ordered coreward to Ventris. The bone ached and the skin over it felt tender. “Good call.”
    “Not really. Automatic upgrade when you hit Gunny,” he reminded her. “Been a long time since I got cracked, but I seem to remember them saying it wouldn’t hurt.”
    “Yeah. That’s what they say.”
    “Lying bastards. Where you heading?”
    “L6S23C29.”
    “You remember how to find your way around?”
    “I do.”
    An ability to negotiate Ventris Station was a hard-earned skill. The word
tesseract
had been mentioned on more than one occasion. Other, less scientific words were used more frequently, the Corps having a long history of creative profanity and two new languages to practice it in. Torin had refamiliarized herself with the more unique aspects of station navigation early that morning on her five k run.
    “Well, if you find your way to the baby-sitter’s club sometime when I’m not hand feeding the future of the Corps, I’ll buy you a drink.” Then he glanced at the half dozen chevrons surrounding the crossed KC-7s on her sleeve, looked up, and nodded; that same single dip of the head. “Good work, Marine.”
    He’d been the first person to call her Marine. She’d just finished two tendays on Crucible, her and the rest of Platoon 29, learning to actually use all the information they’d had crammed into their heads over the first 120 days of training. They’d been in ranks, bloody but unbeaten at the pickup point, and, as the VTA’s hatch opened, Sergeant Beyhn had yelled, “Double-time, Marines. We’re moving out.” That had been—and remained—the proudest moment of her life.
    “Don’t get all choked up on me now,” he grinned as he opened the door into Hygiene and the sound of seventy-two recruits being sanitized drifted into the corridor. “I bet Sergeant Hayman you’d make Gunny before I got out and Jude’s just contributed a solid fifty to my offspring fund.”
    Torin didn’t bother hiding her shudder. “That’s the scariest thing I’ve ever heard.”
    “That I bet a fifty on you?”
    “That you have an offspring fund.”
    * * *
    Level 6, Section 23, Compartment 29—according to the station directory, she couldn’t get there from where she was. Torin snorted and headed for the nearest vertical. All routes on Ventris Station led to the main parade square. Logically, from the main parade square, it was then possible to get to any address in the station.
    They should never have let the H’san help with the design.
She slowed to let an approaching captain into the shaft first, waited for the next available rising strap, and stepped across a whole lot of nothing to catch hold of it. The public terminal was on level one, but there were fourteen sublevels under that. Her stomach did a lazy loop in the zero gravity, then settled.
    Even with the workday underway for almost an hour, the shaft was busy. She nodded at a descending technical sergeant, politely ignored a pair of officers sharing a strap while they discussed their latest liberty, and raised an eyebrow at a