Tanya Huff - The Truth of Valor (Valor Novel)

Table of Contents

The finest in Science Fiction and Fantasy by TANYA HUFF available from DAW Books: The Confederation Novels:

THE TRUTH OF VALOR (#5)

VALORS TRIAL (#4)

THE HEART OF VALOR (#3)

A CONFEDERATION OF VALOR Omnibus

Includes:

VALORS CHOICE (#1)

THE BETTER PART OF VALOR (#2)

THE ENCHANTMENT EMPORIUM

SMOKE AND SHADOWS (#1)

SMOKE AND MIRRORS (#2)

SMOKE AND ASHES (#3)

BLOOD PRICE (#1)

BLOOD TRAIL (#2)

BLOOD LINES (#3)

BLOOD PACT (#4)

BLOOD DEBT (#5)

The Keepers Chronicles:

SUMMON THE KEEPER (#1)

THE SECOND SUMMONING (#2)

LONG HOT SUMMONING (#3)

THE QUARTERS NOVELS, Volume 1:

SING THE FOUR QUARTERS (#1)

FIFTH QUARTER (#2)

THE QUARTERS NOVELS, Volume 2:

NO QUARTER (#3)

THE QUARTERED SEA (#4)

WIZARD OF THE GROVE

OF DARKNESS, LIGHT, AND FIRE

Copyright 2010 by Tanya Huff.

All Rights Reserved.

DAW Book Collectors No. 1520.

DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

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eISBN: 9781101452868

First Printing, September 2010

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Acknowledgments

Apparently, it takes a village to get the holder of B.A.A. through high school physics. Id like to thank Bill Roper, Bill Sutton, Tom Wiegand, Paul Kwinn, Bruce Schneier, Peter Alway, Vicki Farmer, and a good chunk of my live journal friends list whose full names I dont actually know, for helping me bounce Torin through vacuum. Also, thanks to Sgt. S.K.S. Perry for adjusting Presits signal so it couldnt be discovered.

Special thanks to Violette Malan who helped with Pedros Spanish and warned me that I might have to defend my choices. Languages drift, people. Thats my defense.

All help gratefully received. Any mistakes that made it into publication are my own.

ONE

EMERGING BACK INTO SUNLIGHT AFTER 5K of trails through old growth forest, Torin eyed the forty-five degree incline up to the top of the bluff and knew shed been spending too much time in space and too little time paying attention to her training. In spite of having been dirtside for the last tenday, she could feel the effect of the run in both legs and lungs.

There was a time, back before she joined the Corps, when shed end her 20K run with a six-meter dive into the lake and swim a good fifteen, twenty meters underwater before having to surface to breathe.

Diving straight into the lake today would be stupid bordering on suicidal. The gravity here on Paradise, Torins birth world, was 1.14 oldEarth norm while ships and stations both maintained artificial systems at .98

a small difference but telling after a few years.

Although, Torin admitted, throwing everything she had left into the last 100 meters, it could be the mileage. The distance between nineteen and thirty-six was one hell of a lot farther than the distance between Paradise and the OutSector station where Shquo Company had been based.

The top of the bluff hadnt changed; a silver-gray cap of limestone curved out over Lake Serella, worn smooth by wind and rain. Her older brother Mohan and his friends used to hunt for fossils in these rocks; spiral-shelled creatures from an ancient sea trapped in time. She wondered if he ever brought his kids out here and tried to teach them the names the Human colonists had given some of the oldest of Paradises original inhabitants.

The narrow fissure that ran across the rock at the two-thirds point marked the exact end of the 20K.

Torin crossed it and stumbled less than gracefully to a stop, the stiffer soles on her trail shoes sliding a little on the rocks smooth surface. Regaining her balance, she walked over to the edge and stared out at the view while she caught her breath.

The lake gleamed more green than blue in the sunlight, a little chop whipped up by the morning breeze.

It looked cold and, being spring fed, probably was. Only the hottest of summers made any noticeable difference in the lakes temperature, and if this past summer had been unusually warm, no one had mentioned it to her. A small flock of Barnards ducks paddled about in one of the quiet coves and a pair of blue-footed hawks swooped around each other overhead. Strictly speaking, they were neither ducks nor hawks, but the colonists had reused the names theyd brought from home. That familiarity hadnt been quite so necessary on planets settled later, Torin knew, but Paradise had been the first, gifted to oldEarth after theyd not only agreed to join but to protect the Confederation.

Come on out, the Elder Races had said. Well give you advanced technology and brand-new planets to live on. We just need you to do one small thing for us. It seems were in the middle of this war we cant solve diplomatically and, well, funny thing, we dont actually fight, so we need you to do it for us.

Seems like a fair trade, Humans had replied. Later, the Taykan and the Krai had said the same.

Essentially.

Maybe it had been a fair trade. With no idea of what life had been like on oldEarth so many years ago, Torin couldnt judge. Shed been a career Marine and a damned good one until shed discovered that the entire war had been a social experiment by sentient, polynumerous molecular polyhydroxide alcoholydes, so it was definitely 20/20 hindsight that made her think her ancestors should have locked the doors and told the Confederation to go fuk themselves.

Better than being screwed over by hyper-intelligent shape-shifting plastic.

From the top of the bluff, Torin could see past the edge of the forest to where the land flattened out and green changed to the gold of harvested grain. The familys flock of hah-hahs had been turned loose into the field for gleaning although they were too small for her to spot them from here. If shed had a helmet with her, shed have been able to pick out individual feathers and, with one of the KC-7 sniper scopes, make an easy kill. Not that she would. No matter how obnoxious the damned birds could be.