"He's a Marine."
"He's a dead Marine. I don't get sentimental about the dead."
Craig stared at her for a long moment. "You get angry," he said at last.
"Sometimes," she admitted.
He nodded although she wasn't entirely certain what he was acknowledging. "Well, the sergeant here's not going to get any fresher. Throw out one segment while I suit up again, would you."
With a last look at the body, Torin moved to the pilot's chair and called up the screen that deployed the salvage pen. She'd ridden in it-with the survivors of the recon team sent to Big Yellow-and even if the sergeant had still been in a position to care, he'd likely had rougher rides over the years.
"So who do you think dumped the poor bastard out here?" Craig asked. She could hear the creak of his HE suit going back on.
"I'm hoping pirates."
"Hoping?"
"I don't like the alternative." She didn't need to voice the alternative; Craig had been there for the reveal. If the gray plastic aliens had maintained an interstellar war for generations in order to use it as a social laboratory then they could easily torture a few individuals in order to provide more context. "The sergeant's spent a lot of the last few years in space. His feet have no calluses and there's a scar on his hip where a suit's rubbed." Glancing up as the segment began unfolding, Torin muttered, "They can come up with broccoli in a tube and yet they still can't design a plumbing hook-in that doesn't leave a mark."
Her fingers drummed against the inert trim of the control panel. One more unnecessary mark on the sergeant's body. This one placed by bad design rather than cruelty, but still.
Then she realized the only sounds she could hear, other than her fingers, were the distant booms and scrapes of the pen moving into position against the hull. "Craig?"
Half into his suit, he stood and stared down at the body like he was seeing it for the first time. Then he stepped over the sergeant's splayed legs, the suit's bright orange arms flapping around his waist, and reached past Torin to tap the control panel. His lips were pressed into a thin line, and a muscle jumped in his jaw.
Torin breathed shallowly through her mouth-the insides of HE suits worn as often as CSOs wore theirs emitted a distinctly pungent aroma-and waited. Ships the size of the Promise were too small for secrets. He'd tell her in time.
When Craig straightened, a man's face filled one of the screens. The image had light brown eyes, a broad nose, salt-and-pepper stubble, and an expression that suggested he didn't think much of having his image recorded. "Is this him?"
"Is this who?" Torin asked.
"The dead Marine."
She twisted and stared down at the body on the deck. The chin, at least, was the same. "Probably. Who is he?"
"Rogelio Page."
They found Page's ship, Fortune's Fancy, drifting by the far edge of the debris field, two sections of pen deployed, both half filled with scrap. Plastics in one, metal in the other.
Craig zoomed in on the trailing safety line. "They took him while he was securing the load. That line's been cut."
Torin could think of no good reason why a man might cut his own line although a few bad ones occurred to her. "Pirates?"
"Pirates would take the pen."
"Whoever took him didn't want what he had, they wanted something he knew."
Page's ship was smaller even than the Promise.
"If we tighten his salvage into one pen, power Fancy down, and deploy all our panels…" Craig's fingers danced over the screen; the complex mathematics of maneuvering unique parameters beyond Torin's current skill set, "… we can take ship, salvage, and Page to the Warden at Sulun. Dying's one thing," he said in answer to Torin's silent question. "What Page went through, that's not part of the accepted risk package. And you're right. Dealing with this kind of shit is what the Wardens do."
"So to sum up…" One Who Maintains Order at the Edge, rested long, golden-furred forearms on her desk and laced gleaming claws together, "… you believe that two Civilian Salvage Operators-Jan Garrett-Wong and di'Akusi Sirin-were killed for salvage they had gained possession of and another-Civilian Salvage Operator ex-Sergeant Rogelio Page-was tortured in order to elicit information and although you do not know if Civilian Salvage Operator ex-Sergeant Page had been in contact with either Civilian Salvage Operator Garrett-Wong or Civilian Salvage Operator Sirin…"
Craig shifted, and Torin closed her hand on his arm, shaking her head when he glanced her way. Experience had taught her that the Dornagain could not be hurried. Would not be hurried. Their obsessive attention to detail and insistence on considering every possible variable before coming to a decision made them the perfect civil servant. At least from the government's point of view.
"… you postulate that these terrible crimes were somehow connected." Highlights rippled slowly across her fur as she shook her head. "Your service in the Confederation's defense has perhaps made you paranoid, ex-Gunnery Sergeant Kerr."
To the Dornagain, titles and names were one and the same. Torin gritted her teeth and let it stand. Besides, being paranoid had been part of her job.
"Civilian Salvage Operator ex-Sergeant Page clearly had a falling out with someone, of that we can agree."
All Dornagain sounded vaguely patronizing. Torin reminded herself not to take it personally.
"But to extrapolate his unfortunate fate into something larger is distinctly premature. We do not yet have his post mortem…"
Page had been so lovingly brutalized the odds were good his torturer had left DNA behind.
"… or any forensic evidence from his ship or salvage that might connect this to the previous incident-which, I must remind you, did not occur in my jurisdiction."
It would have only muddied the waters to admit that the other murders hadn't been reported. Given the distances, it would take some time before the Wardens could compare notes across sectors.
"We are able to recognize coincidence," One Who Maintains Order at the Edge continued. "But I assure you, we will conduct a full investigation once all the evidence is in. Thank you for bringing this to the attention of the Wardens' office." Unlacing her claws, she tapped out a fast sequence against an active screen on her desk. "If you provide the pertinent data to my assistant, you will, of course, be compensated for the fold."
"Feel free to say I told you so."
Craig turned far enough to see Torin's profile. She didn't look particularly angry. If he had to say, she looked weary. "What about?"
Her snort had no force backing it. "The Wardens."
"I told you so."
"Fuk you." There wasn't a lot of force behind her laugh either, but at least she was laughing.
Leaning out over the railing, Craig swept a critical gaze over the station's central hub. He could smell chilies cooking although he couldn't nail where the smell came from. Not that it mattered; most Taykan food was hot enough to fry Human taste buds-ghost peppers had been an early Taykan import-and he'd be willing to bet he could get decent tucker anywhere on the station. "We've got a hookup paid for by the government until tomorrow, might as well eat out."
"Can we afford it?"
"We can. There's a card game in maintenance with my name on it and it's bangers to bust that someone's going to put their faith in trip nines." Torin was a competent player; if she joined the game, he had faith in her ability to break even. When he turned to face her, she was staring off into the middle distance, one finger tapping on a plastic plug cover. "Beer and tomagoras." He nudged her shoulder with his. "Maybe go crazy and have a little armee on the side. What do you say?"
She frowned. "Can you hack Fancy's system?"
Not what he'd expected her to say, that was for damned sure. "You want to use Page's credits?" When Torin turned to face him, Craig raised both hands and took a step back, fairly certain she wouldn't take a swing at him but not one hundred percent positive and definitely not willing to find out. "Hey, I talk about replacing what we spend on food in a card game and you ask if I can hack his ship. I jumped to the logical conclusion. Now I've had a chance to think about it, what I should have asked was: What the fuk are you talking about?"