by Terry Mixon
Julia considered that and thought she could probably do it, but it would require her to allow her implants to control her actions while firing, something she was loath to do. And the corporal was right to doubt she had the mental fortitude to do something like that. Could she kill someone like that, without being in danger herself? She just didn’t know.
After a few moments, she shook her head. “I think somebody else would be better suited to that task.”
The corporal nodded. “Then you, me, and the remaining marine are going to be the mobile force. If the fighting kicks off like I expect, we’re going to drive a wedge into the larger force to keep it back from the camp.
“We don’t really know who the bad guys are, so we’re going to lead this off using stunners. We may need to resort to heavier weaponry, but there’s no need to lead off with indiscriminate killing. The snipers won’t fire unless lethal force is called for.
“We’ve got the tools to take the second force down. If we set the stunners on wide aperture, even with mobile enemies on horses, we should be able to take out at least half their force before they get their act together. Then we have to go to tighter beams and hit targets that are farther away. Targets that are probably going to be trying to retreat.
“Horses are faster than we are, even in armor, though I’m not so sure when it comes to Raider armor. If somebody breaks free, do you think you could chase them down and stop them?”
“I’m pretty sure that I can catch up with a few of them when the horses start tiring,” Julia said. “They can’t keep up that kind of speed for very long, whereas I can do so in the armor without too much trouble.
“The problem is going to come in when they split off in multiple directions. When they do that—which they will—there’s no way that I can catch up with everybody.”
The corporal nodded. “We can only do what we can, Highness. Stick close and be ready to start stunning people when I give the order. And by the way, that was a pretty good battle plan. I think you’re better at this than you give yourself credit for.”
Julia watched the corporal marshaling her forces and dispatching them to the positions she wanted. She disagreed with the other woman’s assessment of her, but it was hard to miss the fact that she’d worked out a plan that would effectively deal with this large a force.
She was going to have to think things over again. She’d never be a Marine Raider, but maybe she could play one on TV, as her doppelgänger said. Whatever that meant.
Meanwhile, they needed to be ready to fight. Kelsey’s life depended on them. She wished the other woman luck in convincing the smaller group that she was friendly in the roughly twenty minutes that she had before all hell broke loose.
8
The two men held Kelsey at arrow point while they summoned others to search her for weapons. Which, of course, they found in plenty.
They seemed to know what the pistols were and treated them with due care, so that told her that these people were aware of how dangerous those kinds of things could be. Not a primitive people, just like she’d suspected.
There turned out to be unexpected danger when they took her swords. One of them drew a blade and was about to flick a finger across the edge when she held up her hand and drew a tense response from the people with the bows.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” she said. “It’s a lot sharper than it looks, and you could severely cut yourself without trying.”
The sword blades had an almost monomolecular edge and could cut through just about anything, if used with enough force. If somebody applied too much pressure, they’d cut themselves to the bone or perhaps even lop off the tip of a finger entirely.
Since that wouldn’t be productive for anyone, Kelsey preferred to keep her captors from maiming themselves on her weapons and developing a grudge or starting some kind of blood feud based on them not knowing how to treat her weapons.
The man she’d spoken to eyed her for a moment and then pulled his hand back from the weapon. He slid the sword back into the sheath and placed the harness with her other weapons. None of them had said anything to her, other than the calls for her to stop moving. They were obviously waiting for someone to come and take charge.
That someone else turned out to be an exceptionally tall, well-built woman with an extremely dark complexion. She’d have towered over even Angela, who at two meters, was very well-built herself. This woman was at least a head taller than Persephone’s commanding officer, and that meant that she towered over Kelsey by an obnoxious degree.
Like Angela, the new woman appeared to be a warrior. She wore armor, carried weapons, and her bare arms were roped with muscle. Her skin had some scars that certainly looked like they’d come from combat as well.
The armor that she wore was interesting, too. It was formed mostly of leather which looked as if it had been boiled and waxed to make it harder, but there were strips of metal woven into critical areas to provide extra protection while keeping the overall weight down. Based on some of the historical and entertainment vids that Kelsey had seen, she half expected to see chain mail used as part of the armor, but there didn’t seem to be any.
The woman’s helmet, which she had in the crook of her arm, was made wholly of boiled leather, though it might have had some type of metal insert that Kelsey couldn’t see. The woman’s belt held what certainly looked like a sheathed longsword. Based on the well-worn leather-wrapped hilt, the woman used it regularly.
The woman’s night-dark face showed no expression, and there was no humor in her dark eyes. Her tight, close-cropped, curly black hair seemed well suited to fit inside her helmet. Physically, she was almost exactly the opposite of the short, blonde, long-haired princess with her pale skin.
“Who are you, and how many people have you brought with you?” the woman asked in a slightly accented version of Standard, her voice low and flat.
“My name is Kelsey Bandar,” Kelsey said with what she hoped was an easy smile. “I’m not alone, you’re right about that. I’ve brought some friends along just to make sure that this meeting doesn’t go badly before we’ve had a chance to get to know one another. They’re out there watching us, but they’re not going to interfere unless they think that I’m in danger.
“Before you start thinking that they have to get within bow range, let me caution you that they have high-tech weapons like my pistols and that they’ll use them if they feel that I’m in danger. I don’t want to see any of your people hurt, and I’d rather not get into a fight with you either. I just want to know the same sorts of things you do. Who are you, and what are you doing here?”
The corners of the other woman’s lips twitched upward slightly. “My name is Clarice Beauchamp, and I command this company. As one might gather from looking around us,” she said, making a wide gesture with her free arm, “we are here to see what came from the sky yesterday. Are those ships yours?”
Kelsey considered lying but decided that that wouldn’t suit their overall plans for very long. Honesty might get them more than deception.
“They are. We had an unfortunate series of accidents, and you also may have seen a large explosion up in orbit. That was the System Lord destroying our main ship before we came down in the pinnaces. Needless to say, I would’ve preferred a gentler landing, but circumstances being what they were, I suppose that I should be happy that no one was killed.”
The woman’s gaze went hard and cold. “You are Fleet, then. We have known your kind before. You are the scourge that carries out the will of the System Lords. Give me one reason why I shouldn’t cut you down right now as a traitor to the human race?”
Kelsey felt herself tensing but forced her expression to stay calm and open. “Perhaps you missed the part about where the System Lord was trying to kill us. We’re not here as its allies. We came from far away, hoping to free the people of Terra.
“Well, to be clear, freeing your people is a secondary goal. We came to retrieve something to fight the System Lords an
d bring down their rule. We want to free all of humanity.”
The woman considered what she’d said but didn’t seem convinced. “Pretty words, but they mean nothing. You have two choices, Kelsey Bandar. You may summon your people so that I may take them into custody, or you may send them away. I give you my word that I shall cut you down first if your people attack mine.”
Kelsey shook her head. “Not going to happen. My people will never leave me in your custody, and they’re not going to surrender. Unlike you, they possess plenty of firepower to make certain that I stay safe, so let me give you the same type of warning.
“I can either speak with you peacefully or you can allow me to walk away unharmed. Any other choice risks forcing them to use lethal force. I don’t want to see you killed. Hell, I don’t want to see any fighting at all.
“In fact, I’m here looking to make friends, and I can trade valuable information with you to make certain that you understand what that can mean.”
The other woman’s cold smile widened. “And what kind of information is that?”
“There’s a force on horseback coming from that direction.” Kelsey raised a hand just enough to point a finger in the direction that the attacking force was coming from. “They have about ninety people and no remounts. They’re riding hard, and they should be here in about fifteen minutes or so. If you’re planning on defending yourself against a force three times your size, perhaps now would be the time to forget about me and worry about them.
“Or better yet, convince me that I have the possibility of becoming friends with you, and my people will help defend your group. Otherwise they’re going to stay neutral and let what happens happen. I’d rather not see your groups kill each other, but I don’t know you and I don’t know them. This is the one brief window of time that you have to convince me that I should help you.
“If I were you, I’d start talking.”
Talbot, Admiral Mertz, and Commander Roche stood around a tabletop simulation of the battlefield that was projected through their implants via their ocular augmentation. It was as if he were standing around a real table, only there was no hardware outside of what was in their heads.
It was strange, but it was damn convenient.
With the feed from the tactical drones, the display had representation for every single individual on the battlefield. Blue for friendlies and yellow for unknown. When the new group arrived, they’d be labeled in red, simply because the odds of them being ultimately hostile were much higher and Talbot had to differentiate between the two groups in some way.
It worried him that Kelsey was still mixed in with the yellow dots. If she didn’t get clear soon, she was going to be entangled in the fighting. The worst-case scenario would be that both groups were hostile and she’d be fighting against one hundred and twenty enemies with just a handful of marines as backup.
Since she wasn’t in armor—not even unpowered armor—she’d be vulnerable to attacks that the marines in powered armor could shrug off. It was also conceivable that those people had modern weaponry stashed in their gear and no one would know about it until they brought something into play. The same was true of the group that was approaching.
He hoped his marines could stand up to what they were about to face, but it was always possible things could spin out of control and all of his people—including Kelsey—could die in the next twenty minutes.
“What can we do to help?” Commander Roche asked, his voice a mixture of worry and frustration. “There’s got to be something we can do.”
“I sent the other half of the ready response team,” Talbot said. “They’re going to get there faster than the rest of my people could, but they’re still going to arrive late to the party. If things go pear-shaped, Corporal Boske knows to regroup her people and retreat toward the incoming support.
“Once our people leave the area around the camp—if they can break contact and move at full speed—they’ll join up with our other people in maybe half an hour, but I don’t expect that to happen.
“If they get forced out, they’re going to be in contact with the enemy, and breaking away is going to be impossible. Horses are faster than armored marines. They’ll have to set up a defensible position and wait for relief. That could take as much as an hour. If the enemy actually has modern antiarmor weapons, this could be brutal.”
Roche turned and stared at him, his eyes cold. “If something happens to Princess Kelsey—my Princess Kelsey—then we’re going to have a real problem.”
“If something happens to Julia, you can rest assured that the same is going to happen to Kelsey as well because she’s not going to abandon her,” the admiral said grimly. “She’s not going to abandon anyone.
“And before you forget about it, both of them have Marine Raider augmentation. If things really go bad, as much as she’d hate to do it, Julia will give her combat controller the green light and it will clean house for her.
“She’s in Raider armor, with Raider weapons, and has Raider augmentation. If anyone can survive this situation, it’s her. The rest of the marines face worse odds. Kelsey, unarmored as she is, probably has the worst downside if things go bad, particularly since she’ll be in the thick of things no matter how dangerous it is.”
Roche rubbed his face tiredly. “Sorry. We’ve only been on Terra a single day. How can they have found us so fast?”
“We do the best we can, but we always seem to catch the bad breaks and have to fight our way through,” Talbot said grimly. “Let’s look on the bright side. The odds that both groups are going to be actively hostile to the marines are small.
“The most likely scenario is that the approaching group isn’t going to open fire without talking first. There’s going to be some kind of dialogue before there’s shooting. Maybe the smaller group will surrender. We just don’t know yet.
“The most likely situation is that the smaller group is made up of people that Kelsey can convince to be friendly. She has that way about her. Then our forces and theirs are going to be playing defense against the larger group.
“Unless somebody has antiarmor weapons, the only one of our people in any real danger is Kelsey. I know that Corporal Boske is going to do everything possible to shield her from all threats, even if that means sacrificing every marine in her unit. That’s what she’s trained to do, and that’s what’s going to happen if she has to make that choice. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”
“Does the drone system have audio capability?” Admiral Mertz asked. “Are we going to be able to hear what these people are shouting back and forth?”
Talbot shook his head. “They have audio, but it’s not going to be good enough to pick up regular conversation, particularly in the middle of a battle. If somebody is shouting something that’s meant to be heard at a distance, odds are good that the drones will pick it up. If they have to get close enough to hear something said in a normal tone, they’re going to be in the open and the hostiles are going to see them.
“I’m assuming at this point that we want to keep the drones up in the air and not down where they can be detected. They’re not armed, and we don’t have an infinite supply of them.”
After what felt like forever but was probably only a couple of minutes, the yellow dots around Kelsey began moving into what looked like a defensive perimeter from above. Kelsey stayed inside the group, near one specific dot. A couple of others were stationed nearby, obviously watching her from behind.
“Can we have one of the drones provide a visual of Kelsey and the people she’s with?” the admiral asked. “It would be helpful if we could see who we’re dealing with and pay attention to their body language. That’s going to tell us a lot about how this situation is playing out.”
Talbot singled out one of the drones flying over the camp and commandeered it with his command overrides. He focused the visual down on Kelsey and zoomed in closely enough to see her standing next to a tall black woman in primitive armor.
The pair of th
em were staring off in the direction that the hostiles would be coming from, and based on how they were standing, they weren’t being actively hostile to one another. Though there were two guards stationed behind Kelsey with bows. If something went wrong, they could easily shoot his wife in the back.
Well, easily might not be the right word. They could certainly try to shoot her in the back, but he knew that Kelsey was plugged into the same drone network that he was and was undoubtedly watching carefully to see what the people around her were doing. If someone tried to ambush her from behind, she’d be all over them.
If she resorted to her full-powered augmentation to fight and escape, Talbot had no doubt that she had a very good chance of managing it. She was incredibly fast, well trained in hand-to-hand combat, and stronger than a dozen normal men. If push came to shove, his wife would escape.
But to do that, she’d have to choose to escape.
Knowing her, she was more likely to stand and fight beside people she saw as potential allies than run. That, more than anything, was likely to get her killed or severely wounded.
Commander Roche frowned. “What’s she doing? If she’s managed to convince these people to be friendly, shouldn’t she be heading back out to join the marines and get into her armor?”
Jared shook his head. “That’s not how Kelsey’s mind works, Commander. Now that she’s made up her mind that she’s going to fight, she’s going to stay beside their leader and fight. She’s not going to take the time to retrieve her armor and make herself safer.
“You’ll notice that she’s not wearing her weapons, so they haven’t decided to treat her as an ally at this point. Mark my words, once the fighting starts, she’s going to retrieve those weapons from whoever’s holding them—whether they’re ready to hand them over or not—and be in the fighting before you can blink.”
Roche shook his head. “She’s insane. Worse, I think she’s influencing my Kelsey. Or Julia, if you insist. She’s been doing things recently that I think are unhinged. I just don’t know what to believe anymore.”