Free Valour's Choice by Tanya Huff Page A

“You’re not gambling back there, are you, Drake?”
    “Uh, no, Sarge.”
    “Glad to hear it. Outside, now. The sled’s here from the VTA, and it needs unloading.” His smile broadened. “Bring your friends. And if you...” A finger jabbed at Haysole. “...aren’t back in uniform in three seconds and heading up to the sled, I’m coming over there to kick your bare butt. You’re standing down, you’re not off duty.”
    “But, Sarge, it’s hot.”
    “So.”
    “The Silsviss aren’t wearing clothes.”
    “Grow a tail and we’ll talk.” As the dice players filed past him, he frowned thoughtfully. “In the interests of expediency, you three...” The frown lit on Hollice, Juan, and Ressk. “...can join the detail, too.”
    “Aw, Sarge, I’m fixing Mysho’s fukking tunic.”
    “What’s wrong with it?”
    “Cooling system’s fukked. She’s getting too warm for her masker to handle.”
    “That’s just what we need. All right, Mashona, up top in his place.”
    Binti dropped off her bunk, muttering under her breath just low enough for the sergeant to ignore.
    “What’re we unloading, Sarge?” Ressk asked, shoving his boots back on.
    “Personal effects and rations,” Glicksohn told him. “Not that it matters, you’d be unloading it regardless.”
    “So you find out what the Silsviss drink for fun yet, Sarge?” Ressk asked as they started up the stairs to the courtyard, side by side.
    “Beer. Local brewery supplies the army with its own brands. There’s a light and a dark and a green.”
    “Green?”
    Glicksohn grinned. “Maybe they’re Irish.”
    “Irish?”
    “Skip it. Alcohol content’s low by our standards and since there’s nothing in any of it that’ll hurt us, once we get used to the taste, we’ll be able to drink the Silsviss under the table. Officers and ranking civilians’ll be drinking a distilled, fruit liqueur that packs more of a punch but smells like socks after a month in combat boots and will build up toxins in both Human and di’Taykan. You Krai, as usual, can handle it.”
    Following close behind, Hollice and Binti exchanged an identical, questioning glance.
    “We’ve only been here a few hours, and we spent most of that time playing toy soldiers. How did the sergeant find that stuff out so fast?”
    Hollice shrugged. “It’s a gift. Let’s just hope he never uses it for evil.”
    “Half the time, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Binti muttered, shaking her head.
    * * *
    Although the door was open, the lieutenant wasn’t alone. Moving quietly across the wide hall—an action made more difficult by the steel-reinforced heels of her dress boots—Torin paused in the open door. Rank had gotten Lieutenant Jarret a pair of adjoining rooms on the upper floor. Out of the half dozen available, he chose two at the top of the central stairs and Torin had to admit she liked the symbolism. Enemies of the Confederation would have to go through him to get to the civilians.
    She liked the symbolism of the doctor and the corpsmen setting up shop directly across the hall a little less.
    The room the lieutenant had decided to use as his headquarters was huge, painted a deep, under-the-canopy green, and mostly empty. It held what passed for a desk on Silsvah, a long, low table along one wall, a number of stools of varying heights, the lieutenant, and a Silsviss male. At least Torin assumed it was a male; it was difficult to tell the genders apart without either a size comparison or an inflated throat pouch.
    He was standing with his back to her, facing the lieutenant across the desk. A pair of scars ran parallel across the dark gray of his right hip and another marked his right shoulder.
    Left-handed, Torin thought. Weaker on the right.
    He wore three narrow metal rings spaced evenly around the lower end of his tail and a military-style harness with about half the hardware that had been attached to the soldiers who’d met them at the landing