Valor's Trial by Tanya Huff Page B

impact pushed her from cold rage to full fury. Bending her knees, Torin let the late colonel fall across her back, hoisted him up, and heaved him at the goon squad. Paradise, her birth planet, had a gravity 1.14 Human norm. It was a small difference, but added to adrenaline, it came in handy. She had her knife out by the time he stopped bouncing, and when she blocked the next blow, she didn’t block it blade to blade but blade to hilt.
    As she’d already noticed, the flaked edge was sharp.
    Three fingers fell. She cut the scream off in his throat.
    They obviously hadn’t fought anyone who hadn’t been starved or beaten in months. Forty hours ago, Torin had been in combat.
    One of the women approached and got a boot to the side of the knee. The body armor in the vest was inert, but it depended on tech in the combats and all tech was down. As the joint cracked and she crumbled, Torin ducked in, grabbed her, turned her as a shield toward the whistle of a descending club. The stone sent teeth flying. Impact loosened the wielder of the club’s grip, and a second later Torin used his own weapon to smash in his throat. Soft tissue was always the safer shot.
    Three down.
    The other three stared at her over the body of Colonel Harnett.
    If they decided to rush her together, Torin wouldn’t stand a chance. Even one at a time, the odds weren’t in her favor, not having to adjust for both Human and di’Taykan physiognomy.
    So she smiled and said, “Don’t.”
    And like the hundred Marines who’d been ground under the heels of maybe two dozen goons, they didn’t.
    It was all a matter of perception.
    They believed she could win.
    The man with the crushed throat had died, heels drumming. The woman with the smashed mouth and the broken knee should have been alive—none of her injuries were fatal—but lips were blue and one hand still clutched at the collar of her combats. If Torin had to hazard a guess, she’d say the dead woman had choked on her own teeth. Had she lived, the pain from her knee would have been intense and the shattered bones in her jaw couldn’t have been rebuilt without tech. She’d have complicated what had to be clear and simple.
    The three remaining members of the goon squad still standing by the pipe stepped back as Torin stepped over the body.
    If there was a moment of savage pleasure taken in their fear, Torin didn’t let it show. “Weapons there!” Out in the open where they couldn’t retrieve them unobserved. “Then get these walls down.”
    â€œBut . . .”
    â€œNow!”
    From the time she walked into the tent to the time the walls began collapsing gracefully to the floor, no more than fifteen minutes had elapsed.
    Colonel Harnett had a storeroom of gear taken off dead and dying Marines. Colonel Harnett had what passed for opulent personal quarters. Colonel Harnett had three of the youngest Marines in a room by his quarters. While not as well fed as his fighters, they were less thin than the general population and the scraps of clothing he’d left them made it obvious what he used them for.
    They wore twisted fabric collars and cuffs.
    â€œWhat the fuk is going . . .”
    Sweeping Edwards’ feet out from under him, Torin yanked his left arm over his head and slammed the stone knife into his armpit, grinding it through his ribs, and driving it into his heart. The silence as he hit the ground was absolute. Fighting her way back from a blind rage that would have seen every one of Harnett’s people dead by her hand, she could hear nothing but her own blood pounding between her ears.
    The fabric walls lay in drifts around her. She could feel the weight of a hundred pairs of watching eyes from the other side of the demilitarized zone and six pairs watching from a lot closer. It was dangerous to gain a reputation for uncontrollable rage, no matter how justified. Edwards’ death would just have to be