Free The Truth of Valor by Tanya Huff Page B

he’d have dehydrated more.”
    “So, not left over from the battle.”
    “Battle?”
    “The one that created the debris field.”
    “Fuk, no,” he snorted. “That battle happened back before you enlisted.”
    A lifetime ago. “Where’s the nearest Warden’s office?”
    “Torin . . .”
    One hand on the sergeant’s shoulder, she met Craig’s gaze. “This one’s mine.”
    “They won’t . . .”
    “Craig.”
    “Nearest Warden’s office is on Sulun Station—Sulun’s a recent di’Taykan expansion planet.” He rattled off the coordinates, but when Torin raised a brow at him, he added, “It’s a short fold.”
    “How short?”
    “About a day and a half in Susumi.” Craig gestured at the body and added in a tone so neutral it had to be deliberate. “He’ll have to be secured in the pen.”
    Torin thought about Jan and Sirin laid out for viewing in the market. “You say that like you think I might object.”
    “He’s a Marine.”
    “He’s a dead Marine. I don’t get sentimental about the dead.”
    Craig stared at her for a long moment. “You get angry,” he said at last.
    “Sometimes,” she admitted.
    He nodded although she wasn’t entirely certain what he was acknowledging. “Well, the sergeant here’s not going to get any fresher. Throw out one segment while I suit up again, would you.”
    With a last look at the body, Torin moved to the pilot’s chair and called up the screen that deployed the salvage pen. She’d ridden in it—with the survivors of the recon team sent to Big Yellow—and even if the sergeant had still been in a position to care, he’d likely had rougher rides over the years.
    “So who do you think dumped the poor bastard out here?” Craig asked. She could hear the creak of his HE suit going back on.
    “I’m hoping pirates.”
    “Hoping?”
    “I don’t like the alternative.” She didn’t need to voice the alternative; Craig had been there for the reveal. If the gray plastic aliens had maintained an interstellar war for generations in order to use it as a social laboratory then they could easily torture a few individuals in order to provide more context . “The sergeant’s spent a lot of the last few years in space. His feet have no calluses and there’s a scar on his hip where a suit’s rubbed.” Glancing up as the segment began unfolding, Torin muttered, “They can come up with broccoli in a tube and yet they still can’t design a plumbing hook-in that doesn’t leave a mark.”
    Her fingers drummed against the inert trim of the control panel. One more unnecessary mark on the sergeant’s body. This one placed by bad design rather than cruelty, but still.
    Then she realized the only sounds she could hear, other than her fingers, were the distant booms and scrapes of the pen moving into position against the hull. “Craig?”
    Half into his suit, he stood and stared down at the body like he was seeing it for the first time. Then he stepped over the sergeant’s splayed legs, the suit’s bright orange arms flapping around his waist, and reached past Torin to tap the control panel. His lips were pressed into a thin line, and a muscle jumped in his jaw.
    Torin breathed shallowly through her mouth—the insides of HE suits worn as often as CSOs wore theirs emitted a distinctly pungent aroma—and waited. Ships the size of the Promise were too small for secrets. He’d tell her in time.
    When Craig straightened, a man’s face filled one of the screens. The image had light brown eyes, a broad nose, salt-and-pepper stubble, and an expression that suggested he didn’t think much of having his image recorded. “Is this him?”
    “Is this who?” Torin asked.
    “The dead Marine.”
    She twisted and stared down at the body on the deck. The chin, at least, was the same. “Probably. Who is he?”
    “Rogelio Page.”

    They found Page’s ship, Fortune’s Fancy , drifting by the far edge of the debris field, two sections of pen deployed, both half filled