The Heart of Valor

Book 3: Valor Novel

by Tanya Huff

Genres: Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Military Sci-Fi; Space Opera

Synopsis

Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr was a Confederation Marine's marine. She'd survived more deadly encounters—and kept more of her officers and enlistees alive—than anyone in the Corps, and she was determined to keep that record intact. But since her last mission, she'd been sidelined into endless briefings and debriefings with no end in sight. So, of course, she'd jumped at the chance to go to Crucible—the Marine Corps training planet—as a temporary aide to Major Svensson. The major had been reduced to little more than a brain and a spinal cord in his last combat, and he and his doctor were anxious to field-test his newly regrown body.

It should have been an easy twenty-day run. After all, Crucible was only set up to simulate battle situations so that recruits could be trained safely. But they were barely on-planet when someone started blasting the training scenarios to smithereens. Suddenly, Kerr found herself not only responsible for the major and his doctor but caught in a desperate fight to keep a platoon of Marine recruits alive until someone could discover what was happening on Crucible.

Release date: June 3, 2008

Publisher: DAW

Print pages: 432

Sample

“Fast-paced . . . The intriguing and well-designed aliens and intricate plotting keep the reader guessing.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Series fans will enjoy this fast-paced adventure, appealing to the same audience as David Weber’s Honor Harrington series.”

—Library Journal

“As a heroine, Kerr shines. She is cut from the same mold as Ellen Ripley of the Aliens films: tough but humane, fiercely protective of her charges, and utterly determined to prevail. Like her heroine, Huff delivers the goods. Valor’s Choice does not make light of war, but at the same time it is incredibly fun to read. Howlingly funny and very suspenseful. I enjoyed every word.”

—Scifi.com

“An intriguing alien race, a likeable protagonist, a fast moving plot, and a rousing ending. What more could you ask for?”

—Science Fiction Chronicle

“This sequel to Valor’s Choice, featuring a gutsy, fast-thinking female space-marine protagonist, establishes veteran fantasy author Huff as an accomplished spinner of high-tech military-SF adventure.”

—Library Journal

“This book is Rendezvous with Rama for the rest of us: exciting, mysterious and full of action and puzzles to solve. Torin is everything you want in an action heroine (or hero, for that matter), and this book will leave readers anxious for her next adventure.”

—KLIATT

Also by

TANYA HUFF

The Confederation Novels:

VALOR’S CHOICE

THE BETTER PART OF VALOR

THE HEART OF VALOR

VALOR’S TRIAL

THE TRUTH OF VALOR

***************

THE ENCHANTMENT EMPORIUM
THE WILD WAYS

***************

THE SILVERED

***************

SMOKE AND SHADOWS

SMOKE AND MIRRORS

SMOKE AND ASHES

BLOOD PRICE

BLOOD TRAIL

BLOOD LINES

BLOOD PACT

BLOOD DEBT

********

THE QUARTERS NOVELS, VOL. I omnibus:

SING THE FOUR QUARTERS | FIFTH QUARTER

THE QUARTERS NOVELS, VOL II omnibus:

NO QUARTER | THE QUARTERED SEA

********

The Keeper’s Chronicles:

SUMMON THE KEEPER

THE SECOND SUMMONING

LONG HOT SUMMONING

********

OF DARKNESS, LIGHT AND FIRE

********

WIZARD OF THE GROVE omnibus

CHILD OF THE GROVE | THE LAST WIZARD

TANYA HUFF

THE HEART
OF VALOR

I’d like to thank Steve Perry for artillery and general military advice, Steve Stavitzky, Dave Alway, and Gary McGath for helping find the words that gave the aliens a voice, and Bill Sutton and Bill Roper for assistance with metaphors. I’d also like to thank Olympic gold medalist Xeno Mueller, who graciously explained the dynamics of rowing machines.

Table of Contents

ONE

FROM HER POSITION ON ONE of the upper galleries, Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr studied the Humans, di’Taykan, and occasional Krai filling the public terminal from bulkhead to bulkhead. About half, the half who’d probably never left their home worlds before they boarded the recruiting shuttle, were gathered in clumps of their own species. The other half were showing off how much more socially evolved they were than their country cousins.

“They’re surprisingly cute when they’re young.”

Fighting to keep her expression neutral, Torin turned, came to attention, and snapped off a perfect salute.

“As you were, Gunny.”

Now she could smile. “Glad to see you up and around, Major.”

Major Goran Svensson returned the smile, carefully rearranging the muscles by his mouth. “Glad to be up and around.” Although his nose was as prominent as she remembered, his face had the shiny, unlived-in look of new tissue and the regrowth of silver-blond hair was as high and hard as any oldEarth drill instructor could want it. The fingernails of his left hand, the hand that rested on an old-fashioned wooden cane, were a pale greenish gray and, against the matte black of his uniform, his skin was an unfortunate corpse-white. Under his uniform, the major had been rebuilt almost from scratch.

That almost had wormed its way into nearly every conversation Torin had been a part of in the just under twenty-eight hours she’d been on Ventris Station. At what point did the pieces of the Marine put into the tank stop being a Marine and start being merely pieces? Had there been enough of Goran Svensson put in to get Goran Svensson out, or was this just something that looked like the major and sounded like the major but was nothing more than shaped meat?

As far as Torin was concerned, it was a no-brainer. Sh’quo Company and the Battalion’s heavy weapons company had been dropped on Carlong in support of Captain Svensson’s people, who were in imminent danger of being overrun. Unfortunately, imminent had proven to be a conservative estimate, and all three companies had fought a bloody withdrawal to the pickup point only to find the Others were keeping the Navy too busy to get them out. During the battle, the captain had proved himself a good officer and a fine Marine, and Torin had no intention of losing either.

It only validated her good opinion to later discover he was a M’taj, one of the forty percent of Corps officers promoted from the ranks. Until she had evidence to the contrary, the only change between the Marine who’d gone into the tank and the Marine who’d come out was that the former was a captain, and the latter a major.

“Congratulations on the promotion.” Major Svensson nodded toward Torin’s sleeve. “I hear you were busy while I was tanked. A few battles won, a new species courted, and an unknown alien spaceship outsmarted—I’m surprised they didn’t commission you.”

“It was mentioned.”

The major held up his hand and grinned, this second smile more like the one Torin remembered. “I don’t think I want to hear your response. Actually, I don’t think I need to hear your response, but I promise you, I don’t take it personally.” He let the hand fall but not before Torin noticed the way his fingers had started to tremble. “I also heard you took some time for romance.”

“Sir?” If he’d said he’d heard she’d taken some time to go exploring gas giants, she’d have been less surprised.

“With the civilian salvage operator who found said alien spaceship. Some of the medical personnel here on Ventris recently transferred off the Berganitan, and they’re very taken by your touching love story.”

Torin snorted. “Love story?”

“So no romance?”

“No, sir.”

“Too bad. The fine folk in PR would be all over a touching love story.” Tightening his grip on the cane, he moved to the edge of the gallery and glanced down. “How many do you think we’ll keep?”

A little taken aback by the sudden change in topic, Torin frowned. “Sir?”

“Most of them will finish their contract and go home. Some of them, the lucky ones, will never see battle even in the midst of a war. But in every new group there’s always a couple—like you . . .” The grin flickered again. “. . . like me—who find a home in the Corps and that means there have to be a couple down there.”

Ah. Keep. Now the question made sense. Torin studied the crowd again. The recruiting shuttle dropped off seventy-two recruits at Ventris every tenday—two full training platoons. 150 days later, between sixty and seventy Marines graduated from Basic. The major was asking her to distill down those sixty or seventy to the few who’d stay.

“Her,” she said after a long moment. “The di’Taykan with the lime-green hair and the orange jacket. The recruits closest to her are calmer than the rest, and she’s standing so that she can see both exits. She’s probably from a military family that’s served for generations, and she’ll stay until biology forces her out.”

“What about her?” The major raised his hand just far enough off the rail to indicate a tall, fair-haired Human staring at the inner entrance to the station as if she could open it through force of will alone. “She looks like she wants to be here.”

“A little too much. That attitude says I know what’s best, and it’ll be a fight to get her to listen. She’s probably from one of the first families, and she thinks it means something here. I very much doubt she’ll make it through Basic.” The fourteen first families off oldEarth were as close as humanity came to an aristocracy these days.

“I’ve got ten that says she does.”

“I don’t want to take your money, sir.”

“Commendable, but I’m more than willing to take yours.”

“Ten it is, then.” Torin turned slightly, not enough to draw the attention of those down below but enough to direct the major’s attention where she wanted it. “See the Human standing by the outer doors, just to the right of the terminal map? Brown hair, hands shoved in his pockets?”

“Looks like he’s wondering what the hell he’s doing here?”

“Yes, sir, that’s the one. We’ll keep him.”

“Put your money where your mouth is, Gunny.”

“I’ll give you twenty on this one, sir.”

She heard the rustle of fabric as the major turned to face her. “Now why would you do that?”

Torin watched the recruit lean back against the map and jump forward again, face flushed as the map announced where he was. “He reminds me of me.”

“Major Svensson!”

Torin kept her attention on the major as he pivoted carefully around the cane, wobbling slightly. Only when she was sure he’d successfully completed the maneuver and was now scowling down the gallery, did she look up at the Navy corpsman approaching at a run. Fuchsia hair whipping back and forth in agitation, the corpsman slid to a halt, looked into the major’s face, and clearly reconsidered taking his arm.

“Sir, you’re not supposed to be out of bed.”

For a di’Taykan, the most enthusiastically indiscriminate race in known space, to not turn that statement into a blatant innuendo, Major Svensson had to have detanked in an impressively bad mood.

“And yet here I am.”

“Sir, Dr. Sloan’ll kick my ass out an air lock if she finds out you’ve been walking around in the public areas of the station.” One hand rose to fiddle nervously with his pheromone masker, and eyes the exact same fuchsia as his hair widened pleadingly. “Please come back to Med-op with me.”

Major Svensson sighed. Torin suspected he was aiming for world-weary, but there was too much plain old weary in it. “If you put it that way, Corpsman. I’d hate for you to get into trouble on my account.”

“Thank you, sir. I’ll get a chair.”

“No. I can manage.” Before Torin could protest, or even before she could quite figure out how to phrase a protest, the major added, “But if you’d be more comfortable giving me your arm so that I don’t wander off again, I could live with that.”

“Yes, sir.” No mistaking the relief in the corpsman’s voice.

Fingers of his free hand wrapped around the corpsman’s elbow, the major braced his cane and turned his upper body just enough to bring Torin back into his line of sight. “I’m glad I happened to run into you, Gunnery Sergeant,” he said formally. “Seems fitting we should spend a few minutes talking to each other since everyone on this station seems to be talking about us. Nearly everyone,” he amended, his tone lightening as he nodded toward the recruits. “If you get a few free minutes, I’d appreciate the company.”

“I’ll come by if I can, sir.”

“Major . . .”

“I know, I know. Don’t just stand there, Corpsman, start walking.”

The corpsman wisely refused to allow Major Svensson to set the pace; they moved slowly and carefully toward the decompression doors. He glanced Torin’s way as he helped the major over the lip, and just before the door closed she heard the older man snap, “Yes, it is.”

Had he asked if that was really Gunnery Sergeant Kerr?

Apparently everyone on the station was talking about her—except when they were talking to her and then they were talking about the major. Beginning to think it was no coincidence Major Svensson had happened to take a walk in her direction, Torin frowned down at the new recruits, not really seeing them.

She didn’t like being the center of attention; that never ended well. Once certain people started overreacting to other people doing nothing more than getting the job done, life tended to get interesting. Given that she was involved in fighting a centuries-old war with an indeterminate foe, Torin figured her life was quite interesting enough.

The sound of the inner doors opening jerked her attention back to the terminal.

“Listen up, children, because I’m only going to say this once.”

Torin stared in disbelief at the familiar figure standing just inside the open doors. Hands tucked behind his back, scarlet hair moving slowly back and forth, his uniform more like a matte-black shadow than actual fabric, stood Staff Sergeant di’Allak Beyhn.

A little over ten years ago, he’d stood in exactly that position, said exactly those words and had, over the next 150 days, gone on to be one of the main reasons Torin had become a career Marine.

It couldn’t be the same Marine.

It had to be another di’Taykan trained by him, another di’Taykan with the same coloring who’d picked up the same phrases and mannerisms. An imitation, not the real thing. He’d had more than a few years in back when he’d been her DI, so Staff Sergeant Beyhn had to have moved on to qui’Taykan—the breeding phase—and left the military.

“I am Staff Sergeant Beyhn.”

Or not.

He swept a scarlet gaze over the recruits. “When I give the word, here’s what you’re going to do: you’re going to pick up your gear and move in an orderly fashion through these doors. Once inside, you’ll make a quick left, proceed to the end of the corridor, and arrange yourselves on the yellow lines. Anyone who can’t figure out how to accomplish that should consider enlisting in the Navy.”

A couple of the recruits snickered.

Staff Sergeant Beyhn’s expression made it clear he wasn’t kidding, and the snickering stopped. “This is your last chance to reconsider your decision to become a Marine,” he continued, redirecting his attention to the room at large. “No one will think any less of you if you decide to turn around and take the next shuttle home.”

Torin had never heard of anyone taking him up on the offer; the recruiters made sure that anyone who got this far would make it past the yellow lines at least, but she supposed there was always a first time.

No one moved.

She checked the brown-haired young man by the map. He was frowning thoughtfully.

“Gunnery Sergeant Kerr.”

All attention snapped suddenly to her as the recruits followed Staff Sergeant Beyhn’s gaze up to the gallery. She saw two or three heads dip together and was sure she heard a whispered “Silsviss,” the sibilants making the word carry.

“When you have a moment, Gunny.”

Fighting the urge to snap to attention and shout, “Sir, yes, sir!” Torin nodded. “I’m on my way down, Staff.” If he could use the diminutive, she could use the diminutive. She’d have to keep telling herself that.

He nodded in turn, one smooth dip of the head—it was hard to tell at that distance, but she thought the ablin gon savit was smiling, fully aware of what her instinctive reaction would be. Stepping back out of the doorway, he snapped, “Let’s move, people!”

The brown-haired young man was in the last group of recruits through the doors into Ventris Station. Torin made a note to check his name; he was going to win her an easy twenty.

The station studied her identification for a moment and then let her in through the decompression door at the end of the gallery—big open spaces in stations made people nervous, so the designers added redundancies to their fail-safes—and by the time Torin dropped down a level the recruits were moving off the lines and into the hygiene unit. Given that di’Taykan hair wasn’t hair at all but a uniform length, multistrand sensory organ and the Krai had no hair to speak of, the Corps had come up with a compromise for their Human recruits that acknowledged they were part of an integrated universe and managed to satisfy tradition as well. The hygiene unit removed dead tissue from all three species, so for the 150 days of Basic, it was business as usual for the di’Taykan, a slightly shinier scalp for the Krai, and on Human heads, stubble. If nothing else, the stubble made it perfectly clear that no Humans were going to get by on their looks.

Torin maintained her own hair at di’Taykan length, but she knew Human Marines who kept their personal hygiene units locked at the dead tissue setting. She thought it made them look like they’d just been detanked, but hell—if they were into an I nearly had my ass shot off hair style, who was she to complain?

Staff Sergeant Beyhn stood by an inner wall, watching the last recruits cross into processing. Up close, he looked tired, like he hadn’t been sleeping. di’Taykan didn’t get bags under their eyes, but he was close.

“They’re not mine,” he said as Torin joined him. “I’ve got a group coming up on one twenty I should be with right now, but for the last few days this place has been jumping like the seals are blown, and assignments have therefore been late coming down.” He turned to face her. “You wouldn’t know why, would you, Gunnery Sergeant Kerr?”

“I hear Major Svensson has recently been detanked, Staff Sergeant.”

He made a noise that from a Human would have been noncommittal but from a di’Taykan bordered on insulting. “Don’t give me that crap, Gunny. The whole station knows that you single-handedly brought the Silsviss in on our side and followed it up by outsmarting a big yellow spaceship and bringing your recon team safely home.”

“Not all of them.” Torin closed her hand around the memory of the small, metal cylinder that held the remains of PFC August Guimond.

Beyhn stared at her for a long moment, his eyes moving from near pink to scarlet as more and more light receptors opened. Finally he nodded, his expression relaxing, and Torin realized that she’d been measured and not found wanting.

A smart person would have let it go. “You thought I might be . . .”

“Getting too big for your britches.”

Torin blinked. “What?”

“Means full of yourself. Picked it up from a Marine who came through on his SLC.”

There could only be one Marine that fond of oldEarth idiom. “Hollice?”

“That’s the name.” He headed down the corridor, and Torin fell into step beside him. “So, since it’s unlikely they promoted you for just doing your job, I’m guessing you’ve got blackmail material on that General Morris who seems to like you so much.”

As it happened, she did, but since her old DI wasn’t actually digging for information, she merely said, “Ours is not to question why, Sergeant.”

He snorted. “Yeah, that’s what they keep telling me.”

*Your O930 briefing has been moved to L6S23C29.*

Torin tongued an acknowledgment and checked the time.

*0858*

No need to hurry.

“New implant? You half winced just there,” the sergeant continued when she raised an inquiring brow. “Like you were reacting to the memory of pain.”

She fought the urge to cup the left side of her jaw, recently cracked by the techs back at Battalion who’d installed her new unit during the short time she’d spent with her company on the OutSector station before being ordered coreward to Ventris. The bone ached and the skin over it felt tender. “Good call.”

“Not really. Automatic upgrade when you hit Gunny,” he reminded her. “Been a long time since I got cracked, but I seem to remember them saying it wouldn’t hurt.”

“Yeah. That’s what they say.”

“Lying bastards. Where you heading?”

“L6S23C29.”

“You remember how to find your way around?”

“I do.”

An ability to negotiate Ventris Station was a hard-earned skill. The word tesseract had been mentioned on more than one occasion. Other, less scientific words were used more frequently, the Corps having a long history of creative profanity and two new languages to practice it in. Torin had refamiliarized herself with the more unique aspects of station navigation early that morning on her five k run.

“Well, if you find your way to the baby-sitter’s club sometime when I’m not hand feeding the future of the Corps, I’ll buy you a drink.” Then he glanced at the half dozen chevrons surrounding the crossed KC-7s on her sleeve, looked up, and nodded; that same single dip of the head. “Good work, Marine.”

He’d been the first person to call her Marine. She’d just finished two tendays on Crucible, her and the rest of Platoon 29, learning to actually use all the information they’d had crammed into their heads over the first 120 days of training. They’d been in ranks, bloody but unbeaten at the pickup point, and, as the VTA’s hatch opened, Sergeant Beyhn had yelled, “Double-time, Marines. We’re moving out.” That had been—and remained—the proudest moment of her life.

“Don’t get all choked up on me now,” he grinned as he opened the door into Hygiene and the sound of seventy-two recruits being sanitized drifted into the corridor. “I bet Sergeant Hayman you’d make Gunny before I got out and Jude’s just contributed a solid fifty to my offspring fund.”

Torin didn’t bother hiding her shudder. “That’s the scariest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“That I bet a fifty on you?”

“That you have an offspring fund.”

*   *   *

Level 6, Section 23, Compartment 29—according to the station directory, she couldn’t get there from where she was. Torin snorted and headed for the nearest vertical. All routes on Ventris Station led to the main parade square. Logically, from the main parade square, it was then possible to get to any address in the station.

They should never have let the H’san help with the design. She slowed to let an approaching captain into the shaft first, waited for the next available rising strap, and stepped across a whole lot of nothing to catch hold of it. The public terminal was on level one, but there were fourteen sublevels under that. Her stomach did a lazy loop in the zero gravity, then settled.

Even with the workday underway for almost an hour, the shaft was busy. She nodded at a descending technical sergeant, politely ignored a pair of officers sharing a strap while they discussed their latest liberty, and raised an eyebrow at a Krai recruit adjusting her uniform as she passed, one foot holding the strap, both hands attempting to straighten her collar. The Krai had no problem in zero gee—no nausea, no disorientation—but other species weren’t so lucky. Human and di’Taykan recruits who’d spent their whole lives dirtside were tested in zero gee modules before they were allowed into the shafts, but even then it was pretty much a guarantee that the rest of the station would be dodging wobbly globes of vomit and the embarrassed recruit trying to clean them up at some point during the first thirty days of every Basic course. Since a new course started every ten days, it paid to pay attention in the verticals.

At Level 3, Torin grabbed the bar over the door and flipped out into the deck. The link station was right where she remembered it. By the time the link arrived, there were eight Marines waiting with her, and she had less than twenty minutes’ travel time left.

Not a problem.

Like the public terminal, the main parade square had been designated as an “outside” area of the station. On her way around to the link station that would take her to Section 23, Torin snapped off three salutes and then stopped by a recruit who stood staring around at eighteen potential exits in rising panic.

“Where do you need to be?” she asked.

Pale gray eyes holding an equal mix of determination and fear locked on her face. “Sir! This . . .”

“Don’t call me sir, I’m not your DI. Call me Gunnery Sergeant.”

“Sir! Yes, si . . . Yes, Gunnery Sergeant! This recruit needs to be at L4S12 main administration.”

She checked his collar tabs. He was still in his first fifty. “Are you cleared for verticals?”

“Yes, Gunnery Sergeant!”

“Take that shaft . . . That shaft!” She reached out and turned his head. “Take it up two levels. Turn right immediately out of the shaft. Keep moving until you get to Section 12 then take the first vertical you see back down a level.”

He glanced at his watch. “I have to be there in four minutes!”

It was hard not to smile. “Then you’d better hurry.”

“Yes, Gunnery Sergeant!”

She watched him double-time off, turned back toward her station, and saluted a Krai lieutenant wearing a Ventris patch who was staring at her with disapproval.

“The recruits need to learn their way around on their own, Gunny.”

Stifling a sigh, she stopped walking. She really didn’t have time for this. “The recruits need to learn they can depend on other Marines when the chips are down, Lieutenant.”

“And what does he learn if you tell him how to get where he’s going?”

“That it isn’t a weakness to ask for directions.”

“He didn’t ask for directions, Gunny.”

“Now he knows he can, sir.”

The lieutenant’s nose ridges flared. “You can’t ask for directions in combat!”

Torin did not drop her gaze to the lieutenant’s chest and an absence of ribbons but was so obvious about it, she might as well have. “You’d be surprised, sir.” She snapped off another salute and was in the link and gone before he realized he’d been dismissed.

She reached L6S23C29 with three minutes and forty-two seconds to spare.

And found her reputation had preceded her.

“Congratulations on the promotion, Gunnery Sergeant Kerr.”

“Thank you, Captain Stedrin. And you on yours.”

The captain smiled, pale blue hair flicking back and forth. “I suspect the general thought it was easier to promote me than to break in another aide. Besides, we’ve got an actual staff now, and he probably believes the extra bar will make it easier for me to take command.”

“I don’t think you’ll have any trouble, sir.”

Captain Stedrin’s hair sped up a little. “That’s quite the compliment coming from you, Gunny.”

“Yes, sir.” She meant it, though. When they’d first met on the Berganitan, Lieutenant Stedrin had been a typical “stick-up-the-ass” young officer—not, as it happened too different from the lieutenant she’d just been talking to on the parade square although the attitude was temperamentally unusual for a di’Taykan—but he’d made the right decisions when it mattered, and while he might never be much of a line officer, she’d been in the Corps long enough to know that a good staff officer, one who cared about the Marines more than the paperwor