Free The Truth of Valor by Tanya Huff

you—making money off the dead. Which . . .” She held up her hand to cut off his protest. “. . . was pretty fukking hypocritical considering how I made my living. I know. But these were my dead, and . . .”
    “And I wasn’t in the club.”
    “Yeah.” It sounded petty and arrogant put like that, but Torin had long since learned to own her shit. “Then there was you, personally . . .” She rolled her eyes as he flexed. “. . . and by the time I woke up in that tank, it was clear you and me, we weren’t an every now and then kind of thing, so I did a little thinking. When they gave me back my slate in rehab, I did some research. Do you know how many families of military personnel Civilian Salvage Operators have given closure to?”
    Craig shook his head. “Nine out of ten times, it’s scrap, Torin. Maybe some retrievable tech.”
    “And that tenth time has added up to three hundred and seventy-one thousand, two hundred and twenty brought home. And counting.”
    “That’s . . .” He blinked. Frowned. Swung his feet down to the deck and leaned forward, elbows braced against his thighs. “That’s a lot.”
    “Those little gray plastic bastards have kept us at war for a long time. And that number doesn’t include the DNA evidence from the Primacy on record. As soon as the politicians stop talking out of their asses, they can go home, too.”
    Torin watched his mouth move as he repeated the number silently to himself. “That’s what changed your mind about salvage operators?” he said at last.
    “That’s what changed my mind.”
    “Made it all right for you to throw in with me?”
    They didn’t talk about what they had between them, so she shrugged. “It didn’t hurt that the sex was amazing.”
    “Was?”
    “It’s been a few hours, I don’t like to apply old intell to new condi . . .”
    She could have stopped him from toppling her off the chair and onto the deck, but as that had been the reaction she’d been trying to evoke, she’d have just been shooting herself in the foot.
    A little over two hours later, the alarm went off.
    “Ten minutes and we’re out of Susumi space.” Craig kissed her bare shoulder and sat up. “You should take the controls.”
    “I should? Why?”
    “Because either things are good and there’s nothing you can screw up. Or,” he continued getting to his feet, “things’ll be fukked and we’ll die instantly, so there’s still nothing you can screw up.”
    “Or we enter regular space next to a big yellow alien ship that turns out to be the mastermind—masterminds—behind centuries of inter-galactic bloodshed.”
    “Yeah, right,” he snorted holding out his hand. “Like that’ll happen. Again. Come on.”
    Scooping her shirt off the floor as she stood, Torin tossed it onto the pilot’s chair before she sat down. She checked the runout on the Susumi equation, then she posed her hands over the thruster controls in case they needed to avoid the unexpected.
    Promise counted down from ten, then the stars reappeared in the small front port.
    “Another trip where we didn’t come a gutser,” Craig patted the bulkhead. “I count that a win.”
    “Navigation says we’re right where we’re supposed to be,” Torin told him as the forward thrusters came on and they began to brake. Half her attention on their speed, she asked, “So where are we?”
    “Just on the edge of an old debris field. It’s big but well picked over. There’s definitely nothing left here but chunks of metal and plastic for the recyclers. No tech. No DNA. I figured it’d be best for your first time out.” Out of the corner of her eye, she could see him skimming back into his shorts. “Of course, that was before we had our talk. Maybe you’d rather ...”
    “Scrap for a first time out is fine.”
    He reached over Torin’s shoulder, and activated the long-range sensors. “There should be another ship out here. Old guy named Rogelio Page has been working this patch for