Valor's Trial by Tanya Huff

because her belief that these were Marines was the only reason this was going to work.
    â€œAll right, you can . . . What the fuk? Go on, move!” Edwards charged a couple of steps toward the crowd, and they scattered. They didn’t scatter far, Torin noted. By the time Edwards returned to her side, muttering under his breath, they were already shuffling back.
    â€œColonel says to bring you in.” A jerk of a bristling chin at Kyster. “He stays out here.”
    Where more Marines would gather to look at him and note he had been recently well fed. Starving people—and if this lot wasn’t starving, they were close to it—maintained a very specific focus.
    â€œPrivate Kyster.”
    â€œGunnery Sergeant!”
    â€œRemain here until I return.”
    â€œYes, Gunnery Sergeant!” His anger over the staked Krai had added a carrying edge to his voice, banishing the last of his fear.
    Torin flashed her teeth as she passed, a promise as she followed Edwards into the tent.
    She saw no supports—the fabric clearly had some kind of tech woven in—and the rooms were open to the sky. To the roof. Edwards led her to the right, through three narrow passages, and into another open area around the center pipe. The pipe was a lot bigger up close than she’d originally thought. Maybe three meters in diameter, it ran from the ceiling down into the floor. At the two-meter level or just above, a variety of pipes emerged hanging over niches pressed into the metal. Food, she assumed. And water. The smell of unwashed flesh was weaker here and the smell of waste stronger. The latter was an interesting observation she’d have to take the time to figure out later.
    Standing by the pipe with seven—no, eight—goons, spread out to his right was the alleged Colonel Harnett. He stood a little taller than Torin with brown hair and a red-brown beard and no indication he’d been missing meals. More the opposite. A slight paunch strained against his combats, but Torin wouldn’t make the mistake of thinking a little belly fat had made him weak. A weak man wouldn’t have been able to maintain the kind of control he had. He knew how to fight and would do it ruthlessly. The fact that his goons were armed and he wasn’t just drove that point home.
    He could have been any age between thirty and seventy—impossible to tell and irrelevant anyway.
    He retained his sleeves, but his collar was missing.
    No surprise that.
    Not a colonel, then.
    The goon squads meant he didn’t do his own dirty work. That sounded like an officer. But he appeared to have no clear delineation between himself and the goons who carried out his orders. Officers learned early on that removing themselves by the distance of at least one NCO from the more unpleasant orders was more than a good idea; it was virtually a necessity if they were going to command.
    She watched him watch her as she closed the distance between them. His eyes lingered on her collar tabs and narrowed slightly in resentment.
    A staff sergeant, then.
    Probably passed over for promotion.
    Torin would have bet her pension that Harnett’s belief he knew best had first slowed and then stopped him, keeping him off the promotion list entirely in spite of the war and need for experienced replacements as Marines were lost. Senior NCOs didn’t think they knew best, they knew the Corps did and, as the voice of the Corps, that omnipotence then devolved onto them. It was a fine distinction but a necessary one.
    An officer in charge would have created a situation she needed to deal with for the sake of the Marines his ego had fukked over. For the sake of the Marines left to die in the caves. For the sake of the Marines slowly starving to death under his command. The crap going down in the node was a more extreme example of abuse of power than usual, but finding a solution would still be part of her job description.
    A staff sergeant, though . .