The Better Part of Valor by Tanya Huff Read Free Book Online

And she was seeing it. In spades.
    When he reached the officers, he smiled broadly, spread his hands, and said something too low for Torin to catch.
    “The exact same thing happened to me.” Captain Travik’s voice carried clearly over the room’s ambient noise. “That’s the Navy for you, can’t draw a straight line between two points. You ought to come stay with the Marines.”
    Torin glanced at Captain Carveg, who gave no indication she’d overheard the comment. If Parliament wanted to promote a Krai, why didn’t they start with Carveg? A Navy captain held rank equivalent to a Marine colonel; Travik had a way to go to even catch up.
On the other hand
, Torin mused, her gaze flicking between the officers,
if they leave Carveg where she is, she can keep doing a job she’s good at, and if we’re very lucky, they’ll stuff Travik where no one on the lines’ll miss him.
    General Morris moved out beside the large vid screen at the front of the room and various conversations trailed off into an anticipatory silence. “We all know why we’re here,” the general began without preamble. “A vessel belonging to no known species has been discovered drifting in space. It is, or rather will be, our job to find out everything we can about this vessel. At this time, I will turn the briefing over to Mr. Craig Ryder, the CSO who made the discovery.”
    CSOs, civilian salvage operators, haunted the edge of battle zones where they dragged in the inevitable debris. Some they sold back to the military, the rest to the recycling centers. The overhead of operating in deep space being what it was, even the good ones never made much more than expenses.
    Like all scavengers, they performed a valuable service and, like all scavengers, they profited by the misfortune of others. Since most of that misfortune happened in combat to people who were never strangers, Torin decided she didn’t much care for the man now crossing to General Morris’ side.
    “Thank you, General.” As the general moved back to thesmall knot of officers, Ryder turned to face his audience. His eyes were deep-set to either side of a nose that had clearly been broken at least once away from medical attention. Brown hair curled at his collar, and he wore a short beard—unusual in those who spent a lot of time in space and therefore expected to be suiting up regularly. He had a deep voice and an accent Torin couldn’t quite place. “G’day. I hope you all understand why I’m unwilling to give out specific coordinates at this time but I can assure you, this ship is a good distance off the beaten paths. I found it by accident…” His smile suggested further secrets he wasn’t ready to share. “…thanks to a small Susumi miscalculation…”
    Torin heard several near gasps and even the Ciptran’s antennae came up.
    Susumi miscalculations usually ended in memorial services.
This guy’s got the luck of H’san.
    “…that popped me back into real space some considerable distance from the system I’d been heading for. After I got my bearings—and changed my pants…”
    And the sense of humor of a twelve-year-old.
    Behind her, Marines snickered.
    He acknowledged the response like a seasoned performer and continued almost seamlessly. “…I thought I might as well have a look around. Imagine my surprise when I read a very large manufactured object a relatively short distance away. Which was, of course, nothing to my surprise when I went to have a look…” Half turning toward the screen, he ran his thumb down the vid control. “…and found this.
    “That little shape down in the lower right is the
Berganitan.
I pasted it in to give you lot some idea of scale.”
    It was bright yellow. And it was big, close to the size of the OutSector Stations, longer than it was wide—20.76 kilometers by 7.32 kilometers—with a high probability of the dimpled end representing some kind of a propulsion system. The Confederation database had declared it alien, but—in