"Yes, Sergeant!"

  Torin really wished people would stop shouting. She had one fuk of a headache.

  Opening her eyes, she squinted her surroundings into focus and slowly realized something was wrong.

  No, right.

  Most of the wreckage continued to follow the blast radius, moving out and away.

  She was on her way back.

  That was good.

  Four hours and six minutes of air.

  Okay, the concussion she seemed to have wasn't optimum, but as long as she could avoid slamming into anything else that massed out significantly higher than she did, she could work around it.

  Evidence seemed to suggest an HE suit full of semi-solidified foam made collisions remarkably elastic.

  Unfortunately, because her tanks had hit first, she'd lost enough energy during the crash that she'd slowed considerably. She pinged the Promise-114 kilometers-then waited five minutes and pinged again-113.27 kilometers. She'd traveled.73 of a kilometer in five minutes,.146 in one minute, so in sixty minutes she'd travel 8.76 kilometers.

  "These things need a fukking speedometer," she muttered, redoing the math.

  Math never lied.

  When she ran out of air, she'd be a little under 80 K short of the ship.

  She needed to be moving three times faster. Roughly three point three times faster, but who was counting.

  Not entirely convinced she could keep it down, Torin took a sip of tepid water and swallowed carefully. Ignoring the unpleasant reality of-she glanced down-three hours and forty-one minutes of air-the two liters of water would recycle for days until the laws of diminishing returns caught up to her. The concentrated sludge in the emergency food pouch would keep her from starving. Craig had mocked her when she filled it. His was empty.

  Mouth moistened, she tongued his codes into her implant. Her comm was working, but his might have been damaged in the explosion. "Craig! Answer me!"

  Still nothing.

  Torin ran her magnification back to full, trying to see between the pieces in the thicker parts of the debris field, but she had a bad feeling she wouldn't find him without the ship's scanners.

  She froze. Barely breathing.

  One of the charges hadn't blown. A ping read it at 2.6 kilometers away at 320 degrees to her zero. Without maneuvering thrusters, it might as well be in the next system.

  Three hours and thirty-seven minutes of air.

  If she could get to the charge, she could use it to shoot herself at the ship.

  Shoot…

  Her brain must've taken more damage than she'd thought.

  Forcing her arm down to her side, she slid the first finger of her right hand through the trigger guard and pulled the tagging gun free of the holster. Still ninety-seven tags in the magazine. She drew a mental line along the path the piece of debris carrying the charge would take. Another along the line she'd have to take to meet up with it.

  Aimed the barrel back along that line.

  Adjusted to account for the debris' speed.

  Adjusted to account for her speed.

  Adjusted to account for any additional speed that might be added by the tagging gun during the course correction.

  Realized there was no way in hell she could do that kind of math in her head.

  And pulled the trigger.

  Better to die attempting the impossible.

  A full magazine held a hundred tags. She'd used three while they set the charges. She used another twenty-two before her path looked like it would cross the debris' path. Maybe. Probably.

  "Fuk it."

  Three hours and four minutes of air.

  Two hours and fifty one minutes.

  It was going to be close.

  Another six tags made it closer.

  Moving slowly and carefully, Torin stretched out her left arm…

  Two hours and forty-seven minutes.

  … and closed her thumb and forefinger on the edge of the debris.

  At this point, spin didn't matter-she'd have to aim herself at the ship regardless, so she moved as quickly as she could, arming the charge and then using the remains of her tether to strap the piece of debris across her back. By the time she managed it, she'd used up another forty-nine minutes of air.

  Fourteen tags lined her up facing the Promise's lights.

  Fifty-one tags left to adjust her course-she was aiming a projectile at a target almost a hundred kilometers away by eye-and to keep her from slamming into the ship at a speed that would do neither her nor the ship any good.

  It all came down to whether or not the blast would supply enough push to get her to the Promise's tanks before her air ran out.

  "Fire in the hole!"

  Teeth together, tongue safely out of danger, she detonated the charge.

  "Escape pods…" Captain Farmer slapped the curved metal of the pod beside her. "… are not designed for comfort. They are designed to get you away from your transportation and the battle that's destroyed it as quickly as possible. You will be pulling close to 4 Gs during the initial thrust, so if you've taken any injuries during the time the Navy has been getting the shit shot out of it, it's going to hurt." She smiled out at the training platoon. "Here in the Corps, we feel a little pain is preferable to going down with the ship."

  When Torin came to, a nosebleed had gummed her lips together. She checked the time-she'd been out for twelve minutes-worked her lips apart, and licked them mostly clean. Good thing she'd never minded the taste of blood.

  Most of the debris field had moved past her at this point. This was a good thing because slamming into random pieces of wreckage currently filled the top spot on her list of things she'd rather not do.

  A ping put her at 84.6 kilometers from the ship. She'd traveled 14.4 kilometers in the twelve minutes she'd been out. That was 1.2 kilometers a minute and 67 kilometers an hour.

  She'd reach the Promise in an hour and thirty-six minutes.

  This left her a little better than thirteen minutes to get inside and hook up to the ship's tanks. At full magnification, it appeared that only the cabin had been holed, but she couldn't be a hundred percent positive the tanks were intact until she actually got there.

  Decelerating would also eat up some time, but she had a plan.

  If not for the concussion, she'd catch a quick nap-setting her comm to wake her in an hour. As that wasn't an option…

  The Susumi radiation they'd read on arrival had undoubtedly come from the other CSO's ship, destroyed more thoroughly than the Promise. That explained why there'd been no answer. Nat, the cargo jockey who'd pointed them at this field, had been on station because her ship had taken a bad fold. Not a huge jump to suspect it hadn't been a bad fold at all but that they'd been caught in the blast radius. No one deliberately put themselves in the radius of a Susumi blast. The destruction had been an accident.

  Rogelio Page's injuries told her they wanted information from a CSO.

  The blast had destroyed any chance of them picking up a new operator.

  So they'd had to look elsewhere.

  Craig wasn't answering his comm or his implant.

  There was always the chance he'd died when the charges blew.

  Torin didn't think so.

  Didn't want to think so.

  Nor did she think she'd find him when she finally got to the ship's scanners.

  The pirates needed him. They-Nat and her crew-had scooped him up and left her for dead.

  She was more than a little pissed about that.

  Turned out, an hour and a half later, her course didn't need much correction.

  "Let's hear it for paying attention on the heavy ordinance range."

  Torin took three shots to slightly change her angle of approach and spent the rest of the tags to slow herself as much as possible. She hadn't aimed herself right at the ship but just over it, her boots barely clearing the metal. As it passed under her, she took a quick look at the hole in the cabin. The control panel looked intact and the odds were very good the main cabin had been sealed off immediately from the rest of the ship. There'd be air. If she could get to it.

  The moment her body cleared the ship on the far side, she remagged her boots. Full power. They slammed her down onto the ship working against her forward momentum.

  To a certain extent, the foam continued to protect her.

  Swearing seemed like a good idea except she had to concentrate on basic functionality. Given that she was in the cabin, she assumed she'd managed to stay conscious through docking maneuvers, but she wouldn't have bet her pension on it. And the tank hookup seemed stupidly complicated until she realized she still had the piece of wreckage tied to her back.

  Things started to spin while she worked it loose and she only just got her mouth over the puke tube in time.

  "You haven't had fun until you've had a helmet full of puke." Staff Sergeant Beyhn frowned down at her. "You're sucking carbon dioxide, Kerr. Get your gods-damned tanks in the fill position."

  "Work… ing on… it, Staff."

  "Work faster."

  "Yes, Staff Sergeant."

  She didn't so much push her tanks into the fill niche as collapse back into it.

  "Lucky these things are idiot proof," the staff sergeant muttered.

  Torin turned off the scanners, started to sit, and remembered her suit didn't exactly bend anymore. She'd been right. The scanners had picked up no sign of Craig. If he'd been blown to pieces, they'd have picked up the DNA signature. The pirates had him.

  The way they'd had Rogelio Page.

  But Craig had something Page hadn't.

  He had her.

  All he had to do was stay alive until she came for him.

  FIVE

  "I are not hanging around here indefinitely. I are having more important things to be doing than to be watching her breathe, so for the last time before you are suddenly being part of your own not very complimentary vid about medical personnel who are being deliberately obstructive to the media, you are needing to be telling me when she are waking up."

  Imperious, demanding, and self-righteous with an order of scrambled syntax on the side; Torin knew that voice. Couldn't figure out how Presit a Tur durValintrisy, ace reporter for Sector Central News, had managed to push her way into Med-op but figured the duty noncom would have her furry little ass out of there so fast it wasn't worth worrying about.

  Torin couldn't hear the response to Presit's demands, but she did hear the reporter's reply.

  "Fine. But I are not going anywhere until you are telling me where Civilian Salvage Operator Craig Ryder are being. His ship are here, and his ship are being damaged, and he are not with his ship. Or with her."

  And it all came back to Torin in a rush of sound and light and pain.

  She'd punched up the Susumi engines, hoping that the panel she'd spot welded to the hole in the control room wouldn't throw off the equation too badly. As the patch's sole purpose was to bring Promise's external variables back to the dimensions in the default equations, it was a long way from airtight. Torin would have to remain suited up during the short fold back to the station and help. She had water and could easily go a day and a half on her emergency rations.

  Not pleasantly, but easily.

  The military had done tests on the protection an HE suit offered against Susumi radiation by strapping a suit filled with sensors to the outside of a ship during a fold. After twenty-seven hours, the suit had begun to fail. After thirty hours, levels were fatal for di'Taykan. After thirty-two hours, for Humans. After thirty-seven hours for Krai. Torin's fold would take thirty-four hours, but she figured she had two things going for her. First, the military had never performed testing on live subjects and while thirty-two hours might be fatal for a Human, that didn't necessarily mean it was fatal for this Human. Second, the patch would block a portion of the radiation, buying her time.

  That was the last thought she could remember. The silent hope that the patch would buy her enough time had segued right into Presit's less than dulcet tones.

  Torin had messaged the reporter back on Salvage Station 24. If Presit had time to both find her and get to her out on the edge, then how long had she been out?

  Fuk!

  Craig had been taken by the pirates. She had no time to lie around.

  Her eyelids felt like they weighed a hundred kilos each. Forcing them open, she dragged her tongue over dry lips, and asked, "How long?"

  A startled med tech spun around toward her, feathers ruffled, pale green crest rising. "You're awake!"

  "She are obviously awake!" Presit snapped, moving closer to the bed and gripping the railing with a small hand that looked like a black latex glove emerging from the cuff of a thick fur coat. "You are being unconscious in this medical facility for seven hours. I are being here for three of them."

  "The pirates have Craig." Teeth clenched, Torin sat up.

  "You are having proof of that?" Presit demanded. Behind her, the tech spoke into her slate.

  Torin stared at her reflection in the reporter's mirrored glasses. Even taking the curve of the lens into account, she looked like hell. Fuk it; she'd given sitreps in worse condition. Her brain was still too scrambled to separate out time spent sideways of reality in Susumi space and apply it to time passed, so she settled on listing the events that had brought her here in order of occurrence. "Recently, two Civilian Salvage Operators were killed attempting to keep their salvage from pirates." Her voice sounded like she'd been swallowing glass. Her throat agreed that was a valid observation. "This is not standard operating procedure; salvage operators drop and run, but these two found something worth dying to protect. A short time later, another CSO was tortured to death. The only thing a living CSO would have that a pirate might want is information. His death suggests they didn't get it."

  "And you are knowing these two things are connected because…?"

  "I don't believe in coincidence."

  "Oh, well, that are all I need to be knowing."

  Torin ignored the sarcasm and continued. "Approximately thirteen hours ago, pirates captured another CSO-Craig-in what is most likely a second attempt to get the information they did not get from Rogelio Page. I was left for dead."

  "They are leaving you for dead? They are being fools for not being sure. And all that," Presit added, tapping one metallic-blue claw against the railing for emphasis, "are being a theory, not proof. Word around this station are being that you were attacked by the Primacy. You were being in a debris field very close to the edge, were you not?"

  "I saw the ship," Torin said tersely, forcing the railing down and Presit back. The bright pink skin on her hand startled her and startled her again when she swung her bare legs out of bed. Right. The foam. The color would fade in time, but time was what she didn't have. "It wasn't a Primacy ship."

  "And your word are being good enough because you are being Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr."

  The floor beside the bed was freezing. "The Promise's computer wasn't damaged. There may be a record of the attacking ship in her data stores, but it doesn't matter if there isn't. I know the ship. It was docked here, at the station, repairing damage from Susumi radiation at the same time we were here selling salvage. Our sensors picked up residual Susumi radiation when we first arrived at the debris field. The debris field one of the crew of the attacking ship suggested we check out."

  "That are perhaps being a few too many coincidences."

  Torin grinned; she knew that tone. Presit sensed a story. "No shit."

  The room spun when she stood and she sat back down considerably faster than she'd risen.

  "Speaking of damage from Susumi radiation," Presit added, "they are telling me you are having been damaged yourself when you are arriving. If you are having to be in Susumi space much longer, they are not being able to fix things. As it is, you are being mostly fine. Oh, and they say you are smelling terrible when they are peeling you out of the suit," she added with a toothy grin as the doctor fluttered into the room and came to a sudden stop.

  Katrien were omnivores, but Presit had an impressive mouthful of sharp, white teeth, and Torin didn't blame the doctor for not moving any closer.

  "You…" A slender finger pointed at Torin. "… shouldn't be out of bed." He snapped the halves of his residual beak together in irritation.

  "Will it kill me?" Torin asked.

  "Being out of bed? No, but…"

  "Presit, that pile on the chair looks like my clothing. Pass it over."

  "What are your last slave dying of?" She trilled something to a slightly larger Katrien, bringing him out of the far corner of the room and into Torin's field of vision. "I are lending you Ceelin a Tar guPolinstarta…

  Confirmation of gender; a Tar was the male designation. Secondary sexual characteristics were hard to read on a species with fur a minimum of ten centimeters deep.

  "… but you are understanding he are being my assistant, not yours."

  "I just want my clothes," Torin pointed out, taking them from Ceelin with a nod of thanks. "I don't need…" The pile slid out of her hands as her thumbs refused to work properly.

  Ceelin caught the clothes before they hit the floor and set them beside her on the bed. "I are not minding helping you," he said quietly, muzzle crinkling in a tentative smile. "If I are handing you one thing at a time, it are maybe being easier." The darker fur on his brow folded into a deeper vee, dipping down behind the top edge of his dark glasses, as he frowned at her bra. "But I are not knowing what this is."

  "It's a place to start," Torin told him, peeling off the medical shift.

  "Excuse me!" The doctor snapped his beak again, the dark green feathers of his crest now at full extension. "This one just said you shouldn't be out of bed! If you'd been in Susumi space for any longer, you would have taken irreparable damage."

  "I are having told her that already," Presit murmured.

  The doctor ignored her, continuing to glare at Torin. "This one has only just been able to clear the radiation from your system and repair the effects."