Free The Heart of Valour by Tanya Huff Page A

tanked?”
    “That’s the one.”
    “Well, at least you’re working with an officer you
know
has a brain.”
    “I take comfort in the thought.” She was starting to think that if she got a credit for every time she heard a variation on that theme, she’d be able to take an early retirement. “Have you heard how Lieutenant Shylin is?” The lieutenant had been ejected by her pilot, Commander Lance Sibley, just before he flew his Jade down the throat of an enemy ship, his death saving the lives of those Marines who’d survived Big Yellow. Tristir had been one of the riggers for the lieutenant’s squadron.
    “I heard pysch’s still watching her really closely. She’s still talking kind of crazy.” The Krai rigger stared down at her feet. “di’Taykan don’t react well to that kind of isolation.”
    Torin couldn’t see anyone reacting well to floating in hard vacuum surrounded by half a Jade with minimum air and no control over position, but vacuum jockeys were a breed apart and, as far as she could see, a whole, working Jade provided only a difference in degree. At least ejected compartments came with a BFFM beacon.
    They sat silently for a few moments, then Tristir said quietly, “That was quite the trip, wasn’t it, Gunny?”
    “It was.”
    “You, uh…” She dropped her voice even though the yeoman at the desk had been pointedly ignoring them both. “…you ever wonder where that
serley
thing was from?”
    “I’ve done a bit of wondering.” Torin spent half a second weighing her options and then figured what the hell; when the universe dropped an opportunity in a person’s lap, that person was a fool if they didn’t pick it up. “These days,” she continued, stretching out her legs and looking a lot more relaxed than she felt, “I’ve mostly been wondering what happened to the escape pod. Commander Sibley did some fancy flying to drop it into that shuttle bay.”
    “Escape pod? What…”
    “You didn’t hear about it?” She didn’t know about it. Torin recognized the expression—she should, she’d been seeing it enough. Crossing her feet at the ankles, Torin pushed
no big deal
with her posture; the last thing she wanted now was for the petty officer to mention to one of her officers that Gunnery Sergeant Kerr was asking about nonexistent, highly classified escape pods. “No surprise. You were up to your ass in repairs trying to keep your squadron flying.”
    They talked in general terms about the fight; Torin’d had a closer look at the Black Star Squadron in action than she ever wanted to have again. When Tristir was finally called in to have her foot tended, Torin pulled out her slate.
    There was no way in hell Petty Officer Tristir wouldn’t have known about the escape pod, not when one of her Jades had been responsible for bouncing it into the shuttle bay. Granted, she might have been too busy to have thought much about it when it arrived, but after the fight, on the way home in the boredom of Susumi space, the whole ship would have been talking about carrying one of Big Yellow’s escape pods, and survivors of Black Star Squadron would have been distinctly proprietary about it, especially given the way Commander Sibley had died.
    Therefore, logically, Petty Officer Tristir had to have known about it. And now she didn’t.
    Torin remembered.
    Craig Ryder remembered.
    Why?
    What did they have in common that everyone else involved in the mission didn’t?
    What else besides the obvious?
    Was
there anything else besides the obvious?
    Sex as a defense against mind control?
    All the mission reports, including hers, had been classified. Had she been able to find a taker, Torin was willing to bet that, were she back on Ventris and able to get into the main data banks, she’d find all references to the escape pod had been removed from those reports.
    But by whom?
    There had been none of the Elder Races on the
Berganitan
, although there had been three of what the histories referred to as