Free Valor's Trial by Tanya Huff Page B

told she was dead.
    Her family had always believed the Corps would kill her—but not Craig. In spite of what he’d said about everyone being easy to kill, he expected her to come back to him.
    He’d react the same way she’d react if she got the news he’d been killed on a salvage run. He wouldn’t believe. Couldn’t believe. Not at first. He’d demand answers from the Corps, and they’d give him the only one they had: The Others didn’t take prisoners. If there was no body, it was because there was no body. Both sides had weapons big enough to vaporize rock let alone flesh. They’d tell him she was dead again and again until eventually he believed it.
    She’d just have to get out before eventually happened.
    The tag cracked inside her fist and she eased off slightly as Kyster stirred, feigning sleep until he reassured himself she was still there and then for a few minutes more while he pulled himself together.
    They drank until their bellies sloshed with liquid, then set out for the pipe. Torin had paused a moment at the rockfall, strangely certain, with absolutely nothing but instinct to back that certainty up, that this was the way out. She’d lifted a rock a little larger than her fist off the pile and set it to one side, a promise to return after she’d dealt with Harnett and his shit, then she’d turned, nodded, and they’d started walking. Kyster had limited mobility in his bad foot—Krai feet were damned near hands—but by rolling his weight along the outside edge, he set an impressively quick pace.
    The unchanging light in the tunnels made it hard to judge time, but Torin doubted they were more than an hour away from the hunting party’s glyphs when the unmistakable sound of an argument stopped them two strides from one of the cross tunnels. Kyster scrambled into one of the small caves so quickly an impartial observer wouldn’t have believed he had a crippled foot. Torin lingered in the tunnel for a moment, sifting sound.
    Three of them. A di’Taykan and two Humans.
    Just around the corner. Just having crawled out of one of the small caves.
    â€œFukking bleeders,” one of the Humans snarled. “Fukking hate them. Blood all over his fukking gear.”
    â€œAnd if we’d been ten minutes later,” the second Human snorted, “he’d have been fukking dead already, and I wouldn’t have gotten sprayed when I took off his vest.”
    â€œLooks good on you!”
    â€œAss!”
    â€œBastard!”
    The muffled thud of a fist against muscle. “Don’t fukking talk about my parents like that, you fukker.”
    Boots rang against stone as they headed for the corner.
    Kyster was right; they didn’t go careful.
    Torin slipped into the cave, bending nearly double to fit through the entrance, and calmed Kyster’s panicked grab for her arm with a touch. After everything he’d been through, he had the right to be twitchy for a little while longer. When the voices made it clear the hunting party was nearly right outside, the two of them climbed up into the rough arch of the ceiling. Even with only three working appendages, there were plenty of edges for Kyster to hold and Torin’s height made bracing herself nearly effortless.
    A silhouette halved the spill of light and a tousled head poked in through the low opening. Both Marines froze, breathing shallowly through their teeth. Di’Taykan hair was fully capable of feeling a change in the small cave’s air currents. After a long moment, which probably lasted no more than five or six seconds in real time, the head withdrew.
    â€œNothing.”
    â€œCould be worse,” one of the Human’s answered as they moved away. “Could be another fukking bleeder.”
    They were making more than enough noise to cover Torin and Kyster returning to the ground. Making more than enough noise riffing about how they’d left a Marine to