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

break down that rapidly on its own. It had been broken.
    â€œDumped in the tunnels, away from food. I . . .” He seemed to fold in on himself and wouldn’t look at her.
    â€œYou survived,” Torin told him, struggling to keep her growing rage from her voice. The last thing she wanted right at this moment was for Kyster to think she was angry with him. He’d survived. Alone. All those tendays while his foot was healing. No wonder he was having trouble talking. “I suspect only a Krai could have.”
    â€œMarines don’t eat other Marines.”
    And that answered the question of how he’d survived. A limited diet indeed. “Were they dead?”
    â€œ Chrick . . .”
    When he didn’t go on, when he stared down at his misshapen foot, lips still off his teeth, his whole bearing a combination of abject misery and defiance, she nodded and said, “But one of them was very badly injured.” Kyster had been scooped injured off a battlefield; it didn’t take a genius to figure it wasn’t the only time it had ever happened. “So you sat with them until they died, and then you ate them. They were chrick . Edible. Is that what happened?”
    â€œYes, Gunnery Sergeant.”
    â€œWell done, Private.”
    The words jerked his gaze up onto her face.
    â€œUnder these circumstances,” she continued in a tone that left no room for argument, “those Marines would be proud to have kept you alive. And when we haul ass out of here, they’ll be going with you because they’re a part of you now. You’ve seen to it that we don’t leave them behind.”
    He didn’t quite believe her.
    â€œIf I’d died,” she said, reaching out and gently grasping his shoulder, “I’d have been honored to have you eat me.”
    Kyster made a noise somewhere between a whimper and a wail and, shaking like a leaf in a high wind, began to slide off his rock.
    Torin caught him before he hit the ground, held him while he sobbed, and murmured what Krai words of comfort she knew. He was very young, and he’d been through one hell of a lot, and they needed to get this breakdown out of the way so that she could get on with kicking Colonel Harnett’s ass—currently holding top position on her to do list.
    Kick Harnett’s ass.
    Escape.
    Let the relevant parties know that the Others fukking well did take prisoners.
    It wasn’t a long list.
    Kyster was too worn out to be embarrassed when he managed to hiccup his way to quiet, and Torin would have loved to have given him time to recover, but they’d barely touched on the information she needed.
    â€œLet’s go back a bit,” she said as he rubbed his nose ridges up and down either side of his bent knee. “Who’s running this place?”
    He looked up at that. “Harnett.”
    â€œNo, who’s running the prison? If we’re prisoners,” she continued when he frowned, “then this is a prison and someone has to be running it.”
    â€œStuff comes down the pipe.”
    No point in asking who put the stuff into the pipe; the poor kid had been stuck out away from things trying to survive. He wouldn’t know if all twenty-eight species of Others showed up every afternoon at 1730 and led an hour’s PT.
    â€œAll right, then. How did you get here?”
    The story emerged in bits and pieces. Sometimes he had to be gently prodded to speak out loud. In the end, what he knew was that he’d been pinned down with his platoon on Sa’tall Three, defending a mining station from a snatch and grab by the Others—“Sometimes want raw materials, you know?” His squad had taken a hit from one of their fliers, and a chunk of the big mine bore they’d been sheltering behind had come down on his foot. He thought he’d maybe passed out for a minute. Next thing he knew, he’d woken up in one of the little caves just the way Torin had,