Free The Truth of Valor by Tanya Huff Page A

years.”
    “He won’t mind that we’re here?”
    “The debris field is big enough for two tags. He has first tag but second tag is open. He’ll appreciate the company, tell us what sector we can clear, and be backup if something goes wrong. And it’ll give me a chance to check on him. He doesn’t come in much.”
    “Oh, yeah. Rugged individualists,” Torin muttered. “Alone and independent.”
    “What was that?”
    “Nothing. I just . . .” A sudden alarm from her implant cut her off. She tongued the volume down and frowned. “Strange. I’ve picked up another implant.”
    “Picked up?”
    “Turns out the upgrade the techs put in when they rebuilt my jaw has a finder in it.” The techs never left a scar. Torin rubbed at her jaw anyway. “Nice of them to tell me.”
    “You didn’t read the documentation?”
    “No one ever reads the documentation.” An alert from an implant shot down Craig’s belief only scrap remained out here. “I can link with Promise , give her the coordinates.”
    “So what are you waiting for?”
    She worked best under a hierarchy, knowing where to push and knowing where it was best to give in. This equal partners thing took some getting used to.
    As Promise brought them up to the new coordinates, Torin expected to find a piece of jaw, overlooked in the vastness emptiness of space, not an entire naked body, cartwheeling slowly against a backdrop of stars.
    Even before bringing the body on board, two things were obvious.
    The Marine hadn’t been dead long.
    And he’d been tortured.

THREE
    TORIN KNELT BY THE BODY of the dead Marine, cataloguing his visible injuries. Had she been able to download the stored medical data on his implant as well as receive the BFFM beacon, she’d have been able to list internal damages as well. As it was, she could record only what she could see. That was enough. All the bones in his hands and feet had been broken, the cartilage in his nose had been removed, and one eye had been punctured multiple times. No point in destroying both eyes—that would have kept him from seeing what was coming.
    His torturer had known how to use fear.
    His kneecaps had been twisted to the side. His genitals had been both bruised and burned. Given the purple-and-green discoloration covering his torso, the odds were good ribs had been cracked and then pressure had been applied to the damage.
    Over the years, Torin had seen a lot of injuries—limbs lost, guts literally spilled—but nothing that provided evidence in flesh and bone of such deliberate brutality.
    He had a crest tattooed on the bicep of his left arm: 3rd Division, 1st Re’carta, 4th Battalion, Sierra Company.
    “Did you know him, then?”
    Torin took a final recording, shifted her weight back, and stood. “He has a sergeant’s implant. Given his apparent age, I assume he’s been retired for more than a few years.” Which wasn’t exactly what Craig had asked. She hadn’t served with him, but she knew him. Had stood beside him on the yellow line that first day at Ventris Station. Had sat beside him on a VTA dropping for dirt. Had lain beside him in the mud, hands steady on her KC-7 as he bitched about the weather. Torin sent a copy of the file to Promise ’s data storage. Just in case. “He didn’t tell them what they wanted to know.”
    Craig rubbed at the reddened dent the plumbing hook-in from the HE suit had left on his hip. “You know that because . . . ?”
    “There’s nothing here that would have killed him outright.” She gestured with the slate. “He died of the cumulative effect of his injuries, so his death was unintentional. Also, they didn’t destroy his ability to talk—his lips are split, but they didn’t go after his teeth or his tongue although he’s bitten through his tongue himself.”
    “Doesn’t look like he carked it that long ago either.” When Torin shifted her attention off her slate and onto him, he shrugged. “If he’d been in vacuum any length of time,