Kris Longknife: Intrepid

by SHEPHERD, MIKE

  “Spoken like a true topkick,” Bobby Joe said, and followed Gunny in heading for someplace to bed down for the night.

  “You find your roll, too, if I may say, Your Highness,” Gunny whispered as his mouth passed close to her ear. “Tomorrow will come soon enough.”

  Kris must have been getting too experienced with times like these. She actually did sleep.

  32

  Cortez waited until the ever-seeing eye in the sky had passed below his horizon before he formed his troops. He’d woken them before the ship came over but left them in their bedrolls, showing the ship warm bodies just where they belonged.

  As the troops made their way out of camp, the dozen stay-behinds began feeding wood into the campfires. They and the busted-ankle detail, along with the hostages, would keep the fires burning. Maybe that Longknife girl wouldn’t get any warning that Cortez’s little army was on the move until it was too late.

  It would be nice to have luck break his way for a change.

  But luck and hope couldn’t pass for a strategy.

  Cortez assigned Major Zhukov command of the reinforced company of Guard Fusiliers from Torun. They’d take the wet road and come out of the swamps at the rear of the ditches. Their sudden appearance would be a major surprise for those hayseeds.

  The psalm singers would take a more direct route, but they’d have to keep to cover and spread out. No matter how much Cortez pushed them, he doubted he could have them ready to assault the ditches before the next orbit. No, he’d have to spread out, stay cool in the morning dark, and do his best to be out of sight.

  Nobody had ever told Colonel Cortez that soldiering was easy. He doubted he’d have taken the job if they had.

  No, he had a tough leadership challenge and, to tell the truth, he was enjoying it. That Longknife brat had been calling the shots for too long. Now he’d name a few tunes and see how she liked dancing to his music.

  Sergeant Bruce found the island he’d picked out for his observation post. It was little more than a tree and a couple of bushes holding on to a scrap of dirt to keep their trunks above water. But it would do.

  The water flowed fast and deep around his little island OP, giving him a good place to retreat to if he needed to hide out awhile. And it gave him a bit of a view if he was reduced to using the old Mark I eyeball for intelligence gathering.

  For the moment, what with the range and endurance limit on Nelly’s nanos, he chose to use the eyeball. Unless he saw something exciting, he’d keep the nanos huddled around his computer, conserving energy.

  It would be nice if Nelly talked Kris into getting the Marines some decent personal computers. Not that the one on his wrist didn’t do all the Corps expected. But what the Corps expected and one princess demanded were not even close.

  But wish in one hand and spit in the other, and see which you get the most out of. Bruce did not ration himself a laugh at his own joke. He was busy studying what lay before him in the light of a quarter moon. Panda’s only moon was a bit bigger than Wardhaven’s, so the light was fine. And he could smell and hear.

  What he heard were small animals making nice if not familiar noises. They had fallen silent at his arrival; now they were back to full volume. The smell was something all its own, no hint of man or his things. Bruce kind of liked that.

  What he saw was marsh grass, mirror-flat water, unbroken by wind. No, something just flopped into the shallow water. There was some thrashing about before silence returned. Some small hunter had gotten breakfast.

  Bruce smiled grimly. Some much larger hunters would be making a whole lot more noise real soon now.

  Flat on his back, under a bush, ready to push his face mask down and himself silently into the water at the first sign of business, the Marine sergeant lay like some primal beast at the water’s edge. A Marine was patient.

  Matters would get lively soon enough. The Marine waited.

  Kris roused her task force and had them mounted up and rolling as soon as Captain Thorpe dropped below the horizon. Outside, it was still night, but ahead of them was one last pair of farms that would hide them from Thorpe.

  Ninety more minutes to keep up the game of “not here.” After that, they’d be in the open, and the cat would be out of the bag.

  Kris had to shake her head as she watched her task force form up along both sides of her in three loose rows. Farmers nodded at the wheels. Even with their lights on, trucks had a hard time keeping properly in their place.

  Maybe not all the drivers were awake.

  A freckled gal with a pair of pigtails almost sideswiped the rig next to her. The catcalls she collected were no worse, nor any better, than the ones got by a guy who bumped the rig next to him. Maybe all the shouting put an end to sleepy driving. The task force spread out, and the bumper-car competition ended.

  A few minutes later, the Wasp raced into the sky above them and Kris mashed her comm. “What’s it look like, Captain Drago?”

  “Like someone’s trying to play with our sensor suite. They got the fires jacked up at the camp. If I didn’t know better, I’d say the cooks were planning on burning the coffee.”

  “Or burning your sensors.”

  “They’d have better luck with the coffee, my boys are on the job. Anyway, some of the bedrolls are occupied warm, others are cooling warm, and a whole lot of them are way below warm.”

  The captain paused before going on. “You know, if I didn’t know that Your Highness’s opposition were all lazy bums, I’d suspect that they’d broken camp and were out causing mischief on this fine morning.”

  “Those good boys would never do that,” Kris said, letting sarcasm flood her answer. “Can you tell me where they are?”

  There was a long pause at that question. “I’m not sure I can,” Drago finally said. “We’ve got a bit of heat on the trail to the dugouts, but I’m not sure if I hadn’t drawn a line between their camp and them that I’d notice it. They’ve figured out a good way to go to ground. Good way.”

  “Dig a hole, put a cool cover over it, and you’d be hard to see, too,” Kris said.

  “Ah, there you go using words no self-respecting sailor would ever use. Dig a hole. Hide in the dirt. No. No. Not our way. Not at all.”

  Kris suppressed a chuckle at the weird looks her starship captain was getting from dirt farmers. “Well, how about this. Things are going to get decisive in the not-too-distant future. I want you to creep up on Thorpe’s orbit. Get in a position so in a minute or two you could come over his horizon.”

  “I pop into his gun sights all suddenlike and he might take a shot at me. Not with any malice, you know. Just kind of accidental-like.”

  “I didn’t think you’d want us down here to have all the fun,” Kris chided him.

  “What gave you that idea? Oh, no, you go right on and have it all,” Drago offered.

  “I’ve already computed a course,” Navigator Sulwan Kann put in over the comm. “Do you want us coming up his tail or dropping back from ahead of him?”

  “Let’s allow for the tail chase,” Kris said.

  “Yes,” Captain Drago said, now deadly serious. “Yes. Let’s position us for a long tail chase.”

  “Let me know if you pick up anything at all while you’re overhead.”

  “We will. Bye for now.”

  And Kris found herself once more alone in the dark night driving into a day that had not yet begun to dawn. But before the sun set, all the questions before her now would be answered.

  Colonel Cortez spat out the dirt he’d nearly eaten and tossed aside the thermal blanket as soon as the sensor tech called “Sky Clear.”

  “Everyone up. Get moving. You’re wasting daylight,” he shouted. Someone pointed out . . . in a whisper . . . that it was pitch-dark. Like a smart colonel, he ignored the wag.

  “Don’t wad up that thermal blanket,” Cortez shouted at a psalm-singing private who had begun to do just that. Colonel Cortez was well aware that colonels do not correct privates. However, three sergeant
s in their white beanies were standing around doing nothing as at least one private destroyed his ability to hide from orbital spotting.

  “Sergeants,” Captain Sawyer said, climbing out of a hole behind the colonel. “See that the men secure their property properly. This may not be the last hole we need to skulk in.”

  “Yes, sir,” the sergeants answered, and began moving among their troops, turning wadded balls into squared-away packages.

  “I’m sorry, Colonel,” Sawyer said. “The men had been briefed on the thermal blankets but not since we landed.” Which was a polite way of reminding the colonel that sometime in his copious spare time, he should have issued just such a reminder.

  He hadn’t. Nothing could be done about that.

  “Captain, your Third Company is the center. I want you to hit those ditches fast and hard. First and Second Companies will come in from your flanks,” Cortez said, glancing around. If they were not exactly milling about, they certainly weren’t moving toward the enemy. “What do you say Third challenges First and Second to a race to the ditches?”

  The captain grinned. “Yes, sir. Sergeants, form the men. Form on me.” And with only the briefest of pauses: “Follow me,” Captain Sawyer said, pulling out his compass and taking a reading. He altered course slightly to the right.

  Colonel Cortez trotted off to the right and found the young captain commanding First Company. “Third Company says they intend to beat you to the ditches.”

  The Ever Victorious officer glanced up from where he and a sergeant were warming tea, from the smell of it. “In Joshua’s dreams,” he said. The semiwarmed water went into the grass, and the sergeant dashed off, shouting to his subordinates. In a moment they were formed and trotting off after Third.

  Except for two troopers. One had stepped into a hole. The second stayed behind to render aid. Cortez paid little attention to them. He was already trotting for Second Company.

  Someone had his eyes open. The youngest captain had mustered his troops and was already jogging after the other two.

  Colonel Cortez swung himself around and followed in the tracks of Third Company. It was good to get this bunch moving toward contact. It would be very bad if they just kept running until they ran right into the fool farmers. Captain Sawyer probably had the smarts to halt his men at the last tree line on their side of the ditches. Probably.

  Cortez would be a lot happier if he was there to make sure.

  Sergeant Bruce waited an extra ten minutes after the Wasp was out of the sky before releasing Nelly’s nanos. The wind was coming from behind him and toward the dugouts. It should add extra range to the computer’s handiwork.

  Nelly had also programmed the nanos to look for something to rest on. Some of the ones intended to cover the swamp and its approaches settled onto saw grass, reeds, and swamp scum. They reported their presence to the display on the sergeant’s eyepiece, then went silent. It showed good coverage.

  A dozen or more nanos rode the wind, reaching out for the distant tree line. If he could get them caught near the top of a few broom trees, he’d have a good view of all the approaches.

  For a good part of an hour, the Marine watched nothing happen. Then his wrist unit reminded him that the hostile spaceship would be overhead soon. Bruce closed his visor and pushed himself back into the water. He found a log, pinned a whip antenna on it, and slipped himself under it.

  Something was already there, under the log. Something sharp and strong worried the Marine’s boot for a second. Bruce pulled his foot out and smashed out with it. That settled the argument. Unless it returned with its big brother or five, Bruce figured he had the log for the duration.

  “Hernando, things are going well.” Thorpe was glad to see.

  “We should have them whipped before you get back next orbit,” the ground pounder said.

  “Colonel, you sound out of breath.”

  “I am running. My command is running, William.”

  “Just so long as it’s toward the enemy,” Mr. Whitebred said, smiling. Thorpe wondered if the idiot had any idea of the insult he’d just given to the ground half of the operation.

  Hopefully, Colonel Cortez hadn’t heard him.

  If he had, the colonel showed no interest in it. “Have you got anything better on those other hostile groups?” he asked.

  “Nothing. One on the other side of the river. One or two north of you. I’m not sure if they haven’t all gathered at that area you call the ditches. Hard to tell from orbit to orbit and at night. But there’s no activity south of you. Wipe out these terrorists, and the rest will follow like sheep.”

  “I’m glad you think so,” Cortez said.

  The colonel’s age was beginning to show. He did sound winded.

  “Since I have nothing more to report, I’ll click off and be waiting for your count of killed and captured. By the way, if you can capture that Longknife girl, I hear some people are willing to pay a pretty penny for her. More alive than dead, but whatever,” he said diffidently.

  “We will count what we have to count,” Cortez said, and the commlink went dead.

  Kris took a drink from the bucket of freshwater hanging in front of the barn door. The sensor tech looked up from his gear.

  “Hostile is out of our sky, ma’am.”

  “Mount the troops, Gunny.”

  Others beside Gunny moved to obey. A gray-haired woman in a long wool dress of many colors walked quickly among the farmhands, a rifle held comfortably in the crook of her elbow. “We’re wasting daylight,” she said in a firm voice.

  “I don’t see no daylight,” some wag, a guy, shot back.

  “Jacob, don’t be more stupid than you usually are,” put an end to that.

  Drivers were more awake this time. The rigs rolled out of the barn, garage, and other outbuildings and quickly re-formed in the three lines that had become the norm. Inside of ten minutes, the wing from the other ranch formed on Kris’s right.

  The east was starting to show color. The assault on the dugouts wouldn’t be long now. If Kris was in charge of that attack, she’d try to get at least part of the way across the killing ground before good light turned matters deadly.

  That was the right way to do it . . . and despite the miserable choices she’d given Cortez so far, he done as well as he could with them.

  33

  Colonel Cortez raised his hand and signaled a halt.

  Officers and noncoms of the Third Company passed the halt signal along. Through the trees, Cortez watched the other two companies go to ground. He’d been half-afraid that some idiot would keep running, wanting to be first at the ditches. At least no one in his rented command was that stupid.

  The colonel surveyed his target through night gear. The moon had set, taking most of the light with it. That left him studying the ditches only by starlight. But the farmers were not likely to have any night-vision gear. They’d be hurting.

  Unless that Longknife girl had Marines on his front.

  Cortez shook off the thought and studied his target. No one stood guard, paced rounds, did anything for security. There were not pickets or outposts anywhere in the thousand meters of flat ground between this tree line and the ditches. Unbelievable. If this was the Longknife girl’s idea of security, how had she lived so long?

  In the ditches there were one, maybe two heads. From the looks, they were totally devoted to snoring. The wind blew from the trenches, bringing with it a whiff of open latrines. Had they fouled their fighting positions? Cortez shook his head.

  Then caught himself. Thorpe had underestimated that girl, and look where he was. Cortez would not make the same mistake.

  He checked his watch, and the color of the sky just starting to brighten behind the ditches. His troops would have the shadows with them for another five minutes or so.

  Best to make good use of the time.

  The colonel pulled out his commlink, switched it on, and immediately switched it off.

  Major Zhukov answered with two clicks. The proud
Guard Fusiliers were ready.

  “Captain Sawyer, advance your company at a low crawl, by platoons,” Colonel Cortez whispered. “Signal to First and Second Companies to do the same. Keep low and quiet.”

  Cortez gave Major Zhukov a single click on his commlink. Around him, a long thin line, first platoon, First Company, advanced at a bent walk for twenty meters, then went to ground in the field. No one had cut this field, and the crop came to a standing man’s waist. At a low walk, there was little to see.

  Captain Sawyer signaled the second platoon to advance with him and led them twenty meters past the first platoon. When the long line of third platoon started its bound, Colonel Cortez went with them . . . and led them forty meters past second platoon.

  So it went, about every minute, the last platoon back would rise to a low walk and bound up to and past the forward-most platoon. When Cortez wasn’t moving forward with his platoon, he studied the trenches.

  No movement. No action. No nothing.

  They could as well be empty as far as he could see.

  They were at about midfield, and Cortez was beginning to think he’d be able to get everyone up to the three hundred-meter mark before a shot was fired when things began to happen.

  Somewhere in the ditches, there was an explosion. Had one of the Guard Fusiliers tossed a grenade?

  For a second there was dead silence as even those around Cortez held their breath. Then some kind of a bomb with a sputtering fuse arched up out of the trenches toward the psalm singers, to explode among them.

  Now there was rapid fire coming from the ditches. Cortez couldn’t make out the weapon from its sound, but there was lots of it. Above him, shots whizzed through the air. Most of them high, but one man screamed as he was hit.

  “Medic! Medic!” echoed up and down the line.

  To Cortez’s left and right, troopers returned fire enthusiastically, if with no evidence of something to shoot at. The colonel studied the ditches for targets, but bright flashes of light caused back flares on his night gear.