Read Online Valor's Trial by Tanya Huff - Free Book Online

ridges, Kyster obediently licked the tab off his palm.
    Torin nodded once in approval and took a look out into the constructed tunnel. At some point, and not recently given the way the edges had lost the look of raw stone, there’d been a rockfall about three hundred meters to her right. The broken pile plugged the tunnel, spilled out about nine meters and left the last light dangling in pieces although the wire apparently continued unbroken. To the left, the tunnel ran about half a kilometer and then curved. No more than two meters at their widest point, the walls were rough and rounded, floor and ceiling only barely flattened. It looked like the work of a mining bore—an access shaft to the work face. Darker shadows suggested other natural alcoves like the one she found herself in.
    It smelled too much of Kyster for her to identify any other scents, and the absolute silence told her nothing at all.
    In a war that spanned both centuries and galaxies, time and space, there were three absolutes: the Navy had better food, the Corps left no one behind, and the Others didn’t take prisoners.
    When she turned, Kyster was staring up at her as if he expected her to have all the answers.
    Good thing that was part of her job description.
    â€œAll right.” Moving back inside, she sat facing the young Marine and gentled her voice to keep him from trying to bolt again. “What the hell is going on here?”
    â€œHere, here?” His gesture included her and the small cave.
    â€œStart here.”
    â€œMust’ve been a battle.”
    He paused, so she nodded. Heerik and number three squad and 744s dropping by eye and the brilliant white light . . .
    â€œAfter battles, people in little caves. Marines. Sometimes.”
    Torin forced herself back to the here and now, filling in the missing words. “Marines show up in the little caves? How?” she demanded when he nodded.
    â€œDon’t know.”
    She looked around the cave, stood, ran her hands over all of the rock she could reach, and methodically moved everything that could be moved. With her sleeve light out and only the dim spill from the tunnel, it was possible she missed a hatch or some other entrance, but she didn’t think so. Kyster stayed where she’d put him, never taking his eyes off her.
    â€œAll right. Fine.” She sat down again. “Where are we?”
    â€œUnderground.”
    Succinct, but a bit obvious. “Where?”
    â€œDon’t know.”
    An underground POW camp, then. All right, she could work with that—she didn’t like it, but she could work with it. “Where’re the other Marines who’ve shown up in the caves?”
    â€œBy the pipe.”
    â€œWhy aren’t you by the pipe?”
    â€œDidn’t want me.” He thrust his right foot forward and took a deep breath. “Said I was a waste of food ’cause I came with my foot busted.”
    Some of the words ran together, and some of the pauses between them went on a little too long, but it was an actual sentence.
    â€œWho said?” Torin asked, pleased to see Kyster’s lips curl back off his teeth. The kid had taken the rejection as a challenge. That attitude had likely kept him alive.
    â€œCalls himself Colonel Harnett. Not!” His nostril ridges flared wide. “More like a . . . a beranitac !”
    A large predator on the Krai home world. They formed packs, and the alpha male ruled by tooth and claw—both of which they had in abundance. There were theories that the beranitacs were one of the main reasons that the Krai hadn’t bothered coming down out of the trees until they’d developed the necessary weapons tech to deal with them. There were very few wild beranitacs left.
    â€œIs he a Marine?”
    He nodded. “All Marines here.”
    And this Marine had said Kyster was a waste of food because of his injury. And other Marines had allowed it. Corps structure didn’t