"And you…"
Craig could tell Cho wasn't really seeing him. Suspected he hadn't seen Nadayki either in spite of the crude manipulation. That he was still worrying at what Big Bill might be up to. Or Torin had rattled him, and the Big Bill reaction was a cover. Wouldn't do to look rattled in front of the two junior members of his crew, would it? Might give them ideas.
"You get over here." Cho pointed to the deck at his feet. "Anyone comes through that hatch…" He pointed down the docks. "… you let me know immediately. No matter what happens, the kid keeps working." Pivoting on one heel, he stepped out of the pod without waiting for a response.
Interesting, Craig thought, listening to the captain walking quickly back toward the Heart. He'd seen Torin make that exact same move and that made him think Cho was military. Navy, though, not Corps. Craig had been up close and personal with ex-Corps long enough to be able to eyeball their ticks. Navy might explain Cho's reaction to Torin. Junior officers defaulted to terrified by senior NCOs and, unless the Navy was a lot more fukked than was safe, Cho had never held anything close to command rank. Maybe he found the kind of terror Torin evoked familiar. And so ignorable.
Holding his left leg up, sucking air through his nose, teeth clenched on the whimpers that threatened to escape, Craig scooted across the deck on his ass-dignity be damned-until he could see out the hatch. It just happened that Cho's orders dovetailed with what he'd planned to do anyway. Watch the hatch Torin had left through. And would return through.
For him.
And for the armory.
She'd no more leave weapons with these people than she'd leave him.
When he finally stopped feeling like he wanted to cut his whole fukking leg off-it was just a toe for fuksake, moving two meters shouldn't make him feel like shooting himself-he glanced at the stripped slate he'd been given. Twenty-six fifteen ship time. No wonder he felt stuffed. It had been one fuk of a day.
He looked up to see Nadayki watching him, eyes so dark barely any green remained. With the light receptors that open, he wondered what details the di'Taykan could see.
"Twelve hours," Craig reminded him.
Nadayki blinked, and his eyes lightened enough they looked green again. "She's fukking scary, isn't she? I mean…" His hands sketched impossible meanings in the air. "She doesn't look that scary in the vids."
"Yeah, well…" Craig stretched out his legs, sucked some air in through his teeth, and set his left heel gently down on his right ankle. "The vids add almost five kilos and a veneer of civilization." "What can Big Bill do with fifteen percent if we control the other eighty-five? I mean, basically it's fifteen guns to eighty-five guns, isn't it?" Nat lifted her hand to scratch, glanced across medical at Doc and lowered it again.
"Look what he's already done with fifteen percent?" Cho snarled. "Made himself his own little kingdom. Having any gunnery sergeant train his people would give him an advantage, but that gunnery sergeant? She's got a rep outside the Corps. This lot'll actually listen to her."
"This lot," Doc sighed, "will challenge her repeatedly to see if she's all the vids say she is."
"Not repeatedly," Cho corrected grimly. "Once."
Nat opened her mouth, frowned; her gaze flicked across sick bay to Doc-who continued to tidy away medical instruments-and closed her mouth again. The quartermaster wasn't the brightest star in the cluster, Cho knew, not by a fukking long shot, but she had excellent instincts for self-preservation. "Like that, then," she murmured. "Good to know."
Doc had been challenged once by someone too stupid to recognize the difference between threat and certainty. The fight had lasted seconds. Doc had dropped the fool's eyeball on the body when he walked away.
Kerr's eyes held the same certainty Doc's did.
"But ex…" Cho came down hard on the ex. "… Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr isn't our problem. Her kind's shit without an officer…" According to the vid, she'd even followed an enemy officer out of the prison, more than proving his point. "… and Big Bill's holding her leash. Big Bill is our problem. He threatened me with her. Reminded me that he's in control."
"His station," Doc pointed out mildly.
"This goes beyond the station. He says he knows where I can sell the weapons to my best advantage, that my best advantage is his because it increases his fifteen percent. I say, any sale Big Bill sets up is to his best advantage period." When neither Nat nor Doc disagreed, Cho continued. "He thinks he can sit here in his web and send us out to do his bidding. I walked away from that kind of shit once." They hadn't needed to court- martial him; he'd been all but gone when the MPs had shown up.
"We sail under no colors but our own. A phrase the ancient sea pirates used to use," Doc added when Cho turned toward him.
"Exactly." Cho might be seeing other ships move out through known space under his colors, under his command, but command wasn't like control. "You two need a drink."
Nat grinned. "Well, aye, Cap, but didn't you say we were to stay with the Heart? Loose lips and all that. Don't want folk to find out what we have until we're actually holding it and can return fire, you said. Don't want them ganging up on us."
"I know what I said!" He wiped the grin off her face with his tone. "Now I'm saying get out there and find out what the fuk Big Bill is up to. Something this big, there has to be someone who can't keep their mouth shut."
"Someone who knows what's going on." Nat nodded. "Loose lips in our favor. So, we won't be actually drinking then?"
"You'll keep your fukking mouths shut." Huirre had hit his bunk and couldn't keep his mouth shut besides, Krisk was a brilliant engineer and a useless shit if dragged from the engine room, but the di'Taykan… "Find Dysun and Almon, make sure they know they're to be listening during sex, not talking. I'm sending the code to get back in the docks to your slates, don't fukking lose it. And you all stay away from ex-Gunnery Sergeant Kerr."
"Once," Doc murmured, closing the equipment drawer and activating the lock. "That's a fight I'd like to see. "You're very quiet," Big Bill said as they crossed the Hub.
Mapping alternative routes from the docking arm to the Second Star, Torin unclenched her teeth. He'd said nothing after she'd caught up to him at the hatch; it wasn't like she'd been ignoring his conversation.
They skirted a mixed group yelling profanity at a large vid screen showing the Dar peed finals on the Taykan home world. Torin had watched the finals on Paradise. With her family. And Craig.
"You must have questions, Gunnery Sergeant."
The distinctive sound of half a dozen or so di'Taykan working out logistics drifted down from an upper level. Torin pitched her voice under the argument. "Neither the time nor the place."
"You think this lot…" Big Bill's gesture included both the seen and the unseen. Those behind bulkheads in the pubs and the shops and the pleasure palaces as well as those actually out in the Hub, drinking, dealing, and fighting. "… hangs on our every word?"
It took every moment of every year of experience to plant a gunnery sergeant face firmly in place over her rage before Torin turned toward Big Bill and raised a brow.
Big Bill laughed as he stepped over a Krai lying in a puddle of mixed blood and vomit. The sound sent a ripple of imitation laughter through the Hub. "All right, then. We've covered that we're both smarter than we look." He paused and raised his voice only little. "Can we get this mess cleaned up before the stink adds to the load on the ventilators? Remember you pay extra for repairs."
The vertical smelled of unwashed bodies. Torin hung onto a rising strap and listened to Big Bill greet everyone who passed. No one seemed too thrilled by the attention although everyone did a reasonable job of faking it. About half of them recognized her, which made a station full of thieves and murderers more observant than the general public.
When they got back to the outer office, the Grr brothers were still watching news vids. This time, only one screen had anything to do with her. Both Krai looked up as she entered, stood as Big Bill came in, and headed out into the station as soon as the hatch was clear.