Free Valour's Choice by Tanya Huff

the middle of the small room assigned to the NCOs. “I can’t get over how quiet everything sounds in here.”
    “Old building, thick walls,” Torin told her shortly. “Power grids are all surface mounted, so this place is probably at least a hundred years old. And I wasn’t thinking so much of Mysho but of the effect on the rest of the platoon.”
    “So they’ll be miserable on duty and in the sack off duty, but they’ll survive, too. Haysole’ll probably consider it license to turn his masker off at every opportunity, but other than that I don’t see much of a problem.” Fuschia eyes narrowed. “You don’t usually worry this much about the di’Taykan. This have something to do with the lieutenant?”
    “Like what?” Torin asked, wondering if that last night of liberty was finally coming home to roost.
    “Like a little sucking up to the species in charge.”
    Hoping the relief didn’t show, Torin raised both brows. “In charge?” she repeated with heavy emphasis.
    Trey grinned. “Good point. Anyway, I wouldn’t worry about an overheated masker. Considering what we usually face eight hours into a planetfall, it’s minor.”
    Torin grunted an agreement and dropped onto a stool, grabbing the edge of the desk just barely in time to stop herself from tipping over backward. Chairs with no backs, desks with no brains, and a climate that clung—all inconveniences that could be ignored under fire but under the current circumstances... “So is it a sign of pure intentions that this ‘embassy’ is pretty much completely indefensible or have we deliberately been given the weaker position?”
    “Or are you completely paranoid?”
    “Just doing my job.”
    “Hey, Torin.” One hand on the heavily carved and overly ornate wooden door, Mike Glicksohn leaned into the room. “Sled’s finally here from the VTA.”
    “About time. Hold down the fort,” she tossed over her shoulder at Trey as she headed out into the hall. “I’m going for my slate. And you,” she threw at Glicksohn as she passed, “get a work detail together and get everything unloaded before the Silsviss offer to help.”
    The two sergeants exchanged a speaking glance as Torin’s footsteps faded out toward the courtyard.
    “Is she completely paranoid?” Glicksohn asked after a moment.
    Trey shrugged. “Apparently, it’s her job.”
    * * *
    “Hey, did any of you guys notice that some of the Silsviss soldiers inflated those throat pouch things when that big guy on the step roared?”
    “Not me.” Ressk wrapped his feet around the bar at the end of his bunk, toe joints cracking. “I was too busy trying not to overload the moisture sensors in my uniform.”
    Frowning, Juan looked up from the sensor array exposed in the armpit seam of Mysho’s tunic. “What the fuk does that mean?”
    “It means he was trying not to piss himself,” Binti explained from her bunk. “Me, I was just glad my brain came back online before my finger squeezed the trigger.” She reached up and stroked the stock of her KC. “And civilians wonder why we’re not hardwired into our weapons. Mama does like having her baby this close, though.”
    Each bunk had a weapons rack built in. Or what looked like a weapons rack. The platoon had decided, individually and collectively, that they didn’t much care what the Silsviss used it for.
    A sudden cheer from the dice game in the back corner drew everyone’s attention.
    Corporal Hollice ducked his head so that he could look through the line of bunks at the players. “Hey, Drake, you win back that fifty you owe me yet?”
    “As if!”
    “Then keep it down before one of the sergeants shows up.”
    A Human, his skin only a little lighter than Binti’s, rose up out of his crouch and flicked a good-natured finger in the corporal’s direction. “Why don’t I owe you this, too?” Then he froze. “Or not.”
    The Marines closer to the door turned to see what had caught his attention.
    Sergeant Glicksohn smiled.