Kris Longknife

by Mike Shepherd

  Kris leaned forward, rested her elbows on the table and her chin on her hands. “Okay, Longknife, talk me out of locking you in your quarters and throwing away the key.”

  16

  Lieutenant Megan Longknife and Captain Quinn Sung checked out each other’s armored space suits with attached battle gear, then waited as two grizzled Gunny Sergeants double-checked them. Megan was relieved to pass muster, and, from the sigh, so was Quinn.

  For the drop, they boarded separate light assault crafts. No need to lose all the command and intel assets to one unlucky shot. Of course, if Megan and Lily bought it, the whole mission would become damn near impossible to pull off.

  Megan and Quinn had had their battle gear upgraded to scout suits. With any good luck, they’d be invisible to the eye, radar, and infrared. If things went the way she intended, they wouldn’t have to use the extra bells and whistles a scout battle suit brought to the fight, but Kris had been adamant that they jack up their safety margins to the max.

  Neither Megan nor Quinn objected to that. Not at all.

  The LCA dropped away from the Princess Royal. For the first time in her life, Megan found herself with space all around her. The landing craft was just a thin shell with just enough heat shielding to protect the Marines from the sky-high temperatures of reentry.

  Megan was seated up front with orders to watch the instruments but not touch the controls. She did keep one eye on the colorful display, but she could hardly fail to observe the sight around her.

  The canopy was clear. She had a panoramic view of the stars above and the lovely planet below. It was enough to take her breath away, and she was breathing pure oxygen.

  Megan remembered that in Kris’s first combat jump, her LCA had been jimmied to burn her up in the planet’s atmosphere. This Longknife had gone over her LCA with a senior tech sergeant and a fine-toothed comb. She didn’t expect any surprises, but she stood ready to grab the freely moving stick and land this sucker if she had to.

  YOU AND ME? she told Lily.

  WE COULD DO IT IF WE HAD TO.

  LET’S DON’T AND SAY EVERYTHING WORKED FINE.

  The thin ionized air began to give the LCA a glow. A quick glance around showed a dozen similarly glowing lights. This was the pathfinder wave. Once they had identified the drop zone and made it secure, the rest of the company and the engineers would drop from longboats.

  General Montoya had wanted Megan and Quinn to come in with the second wave. Kris had gotten a kind of big-sister smile and sent them on their way.

  Still, Megan knew that her cousin was watching like a hawk from her flag bridge.

  So far, the drop was going according to plan. As they came out of the ionization part of the landing, Lily projected a full electronic countermeasures display on the visor of Megan’s helmet. There were several specially equipped longboats loitering over each of the six underground fortresses. They were there to spot any radar or laser that went active and call in 24-inch lasers from orbit to flatten the things before they could do anything bad. Several were also armed with anti-missile lasers of their own.

  The one worry was infrared guided lasers, but so far, they had not been heard from. Still, each LCA was dispensing tiny flares to bury its heat signature in a confusing stream of high temperature targets.

  Each of the LCAs had a different amount of ablative material to bleed off more or less heat. Thus, none of the landers showed the same temperature.

  Three lasers shot up from three different ground locations.

  Almost instantaneously, 24-inch lasers shot down from battlecruisers in orbit to turn the offending weapon into molten hell.

  Fortunately, the rebel targeteers had guessed wrong. They only destroyed decoys.

  After those sites got hell rained down on them, none of the others dared to go active. Still, the signature of the system had been marked and several dozen sites that made similar electronic noise were flamed. A few minutes later, smart rebel radar crews had flipped switches and there was no noise in that part of the electromagnetic spectrum.

  The twelve LCAs continued their descent unmolested.

  They’d intentionally chosen a bit of rough mountain terrain for their target. The LCAs could not land here, so, as the lander passed 2,000 feet over ground, they flipped over. One by one, from aft to front, the computer popped the restraining harness and a Marine fell loose.

  Megan went last. She steadied herself by spreading out her arms and legs. At 500 feet, she popped her chute and then guided it by hand to a landing spot in a small meadow where thirty-six of the assault team had landed. The other twelve were scattered in pairs, forming outposts to warn if trouble was coming.

  They’d also call in hell from orbit to mess with the trouble.

  Once the site was secure, Megan and Quinn kept close to the single engineer who had dropped with them. He was deploying sensitive monitors and making narrow holes by jamming a sharp steel rod into the ground. After filling them with explosives, he’d step off a safe distance and set off the tiny explosion.

  On Megan’s helmet a subterranean map began to form. They quickly spotted the escape tunnel a couple of hundred meters below them, but it was not as clear as the textbook Megan had skimmed through.

  “Is there a problem, sergeant?” she asked.

  “One very big one,” the tech sergeant answered. “There’s an old stream bed between us and the tunnel. If I didn’t know better, I’d say they dug the damn tunnel exactly under it intentionally. Our nanos are going to have a bitch of a time gnawing through that.”

  “Why?” Quinn asked.

  “A stream bed has a whole lot of cobblestones. You know, the nice rocks that make comforting sounds as the water rushes over and around them? The problem from where I stand is that those stones have been washed down river from a whole lot of different mountains. We got granite. We got basalt. We got flint. From the sound of things, this damn stream would be a treasure trove for a bunch of geology undergrad students. Me, it just means I need a whole lot of different nanos. I’ve called in my results, but the next jump is already on its way. It’ll be two hours or more before we can get the stuff we need.”

  “And we’ll have made three landings around this fortress,” Quinn added. “We might as well send out engraved invitations.”

  “Could the nanos be low-dropped by a longboat? A tiny package?” Megan asked.

  “Do you want to risk that bunch of eating nanos getting loose without adult supervision?” the Marine said. “I mean, I know we jarheads ain’t known for our niceness, but at least we’d know to kill those things if there’s a risk of them getting loose in the environment. No, Lieutenant. A Marine drops with that package.”

  Megan had spent enough time in the Navy to know when a Marine sergeant had respectfully and politely told her that she was one dumb-ass officer. “Thank you, Sergeant,” was her proper reply.

  The engineer stayed busy, not wasting a second. Since the Marines would be rappelling down into the escape hole, he would need to widen the hole sooner or later. Now, he used many of the nanos to widen the hole as far as he could. Other nanos ate and wiggled their way through the sand around rocks, drilling a tiny corkscrew hole through them and then headed straight down for the main target.

  He already had his first scout nanos in the escape tunnel when the second drop arrived.

  Things got rather crowded around the hole as more engineers added both diggers and scout nanos to what was going on below. Megan took a step back, but not too far. She and Lily would likely be needed before too long.

  The scout nanos in the tunnel were busy mapping the situation and checking for any monitoring devices or nasty surprises. They were not disappointed.

  The tunnel was studded with sensors. There were both passive listening microphones to detect noise and active sonic devices to spot movement. There were also lasers to back those up. If that wasn’t enough, there were cameras monitoring the place as well.

  All the stuff they found in the tunn
el weren’t nice polite sensors. There were auto cannon nests every two hundred meters ready to swivel in any direction. If 20mm exploding cannon shells weren’t enough to ruin a visitor’s day, the wall and floor showed explosives: both claymores and large mines.

  Oh, and there were gas canisters. Canisters that carried no markings on their red exterior.

  A second order was put in for scout nanos that could sense any gas residue on the outside of the cans and identify their contents.

  For now, they were assumed to be deadly.

  “You know, if I didn’t know better, I’d say these folks are paranoid,” Megan drawled to Quinn.

  “I don’t think they like us,” she answered, catching on to the Longknife way of facing death and dismemberment.

  “Now,” Megan said with a happy grin, “Lily and I get to work.”

  Quinn eyed Megan through her face mask. “Work?”

  “The combat engineers aren’t the only ones that brought nanos to this gun fight,” Megan said as she tapped a belt and satchel at her waist.

  “Help me get my left glove off,” she told Quinn.

  Once Megan was bare-handed, she stroked a finger along the belt. Instantly, a thin cloud seemed to waft from it. “Lily, get them to work,” the lieutenant ordered.

  For the longest time, all Megan saw through her helmet visor was her and Quinn getting her glove back on. For a long minute after she was buttoned up, Megan saw nothing.

  Then her faceplate came to life.

  “My nanos are down there, now,” Megan said. “We’ve found the comm lines and I’ve borrowed a few of the engineer’s nanos to bore holes in them. Oh, I’m in. Give me a few minutes. I think I’m going to be quite busy.”

  Megan and Lily seemed to be plastered to the wall of a tunnel. Lots of weird animals flowed in one direction. Only a handful of different, but just as weird critters moved in the other. The two of them began to brand each of the animals as it went by with a tiny sigil. Inside the brand were enough nanos to read the contents of the beastie as well as take control of it.

  Megan left a supervisory nano to continue that task and punched through to another data stream. One after another, she took control of the data flow through a dozen different streams. By the time that was done, the scouts had located another data cable and Megan and Lily set about gaining control of that one as well.

  About the time the third drop brought in eater nanos for the river stones, Megan had control of all the reports flowing back to the redoubt and any orders headed out into the tunnel.

  They also had problems.

  Two of the observation posts reported traffic headed up to what looked like a fire road through what didn’t look at all like trees, except they were tall and had branches.

  Kris had spread the fleet out in orbit so there were always two battlecruisers close at hand.

  In eighteen seconds of stutter fire, the convoys vanished in a hellish fire.

  Unfortunately, the trees also caught fire and the observation posts started a quick retrograde out of that area.

  Drones were rapidly knocked together in the orbiting longboats to drop down and provide solid coverage in all directions to assure that the next interloper might be spotted sooner.

  Megan couldn’t help but notice the red of the forest fire being reflected onto her helmet. She picked up the pace just in case this team needed to be underground before the fire got to them.

  Despite having what she thought was total control over the data flow, the tunnel suddenly started to fill with gas. Not only gas but also different colors of smoke. Some of the smoke particles managed to collide and stick to a few of her nanos and drop them to the deck, but most of her nano army seemed unbothered by the change in their work environment.

  Lily took control of all the scout nanos in the tunnel and assigned them to finding another data flow. Clearly, they’d missed one.

  They resorted to entering an auto cannon and following its connections. There were the two identified fiber optic cables, but well down the line, one of the cables spun off a tiny, single thread that plunged down before meeting up with a third major cable that was buried under the floor of the tunnel.

  Five minutes later, Megan had control of that bunch of animals carrying information back to the central control site.

  Of course, the Iteeche had to know they were down here. Megan doubted that anyone with half a mind would be trusting anything coming from the sensors here.

  Still, when the engineers reported they had a hole a meter wide open all the way down, it was Megan who volunteered to go, head first, down the rabbit hole. She didn’t so much rappel as she was lowered.

  There was no way that she could be lowered directly down the center of the hole. She found herself shoving off, first from one side, then the other. When her backside bumped into the wall, she’d have to use her butt to move, since both her legs were in a harness.

  Oh, and Megan discovered she was a bit claustrophobic. Maybe it had something to do with being lowered head first and feeling the blood rush to her head. Still, she was nowhere near panic, but this was a very tiny hole, and not perfect. Especially when she passed through the stream bed.

  There were nice, rounded river stones poking out from the wall. Megan called up and they did slow her down, so she wouldn’t bang herself too much on them.

  Finally, she approached the end of the drop. The nanos reported everything under control, but Megan still waved a small flag before she risked her own fair body in what the builder had intended to be a target gallery.

  Nothing fired at her flag.

  She risked a hand.

  Nothing.

  She waved it about.

  Nothing.

  She had herself lowered very slowly until enough of her head was out that she could actually see the tunnel.

  The walls and ceiling of the tunnel had been coated with some sort of concrete that gave it a reddish hue. The deck was a pleasant blue. There was a rail for the maglev running down the center of the deck, large and ready.

  That maglev was now Megan’s main concern. They might have disabled the auto cannons and already tripped the gas and smoke, but once her troopers were in the tunnel, a train racing at several hundred miles an hour could really ruin their whole day.

  Now it was time for Megan to set up her own communications network. Lily spun out more nanos from the 5 kilos her human had dropped with. They took off in both directions. First, they sought out trouble, but at a certain distance, one of them would convert from a wandering scout to a static repeater. It would stick to the overhead and send messages in both directions using either laser, microwave, or radio.

  The scouts continued to report the tunnel empty in both directions, but Megan couldn’t risk more troops in the tunnel when there was any chance that they might be turned to human soup by a rampaging maglev train.

  The maglev track was not a surprise. This escape tunnel had been specifically chosen in the hope it would have one. It was known that the overlord of this planet would want to flee from one redoubt under attack to another one that was still safe. They needed a fast way to get away.

  Thus, the maglev.

  Megan spun more nanos off her satchel. These were different, but really very simple. They could take large bites out of high quality steel, spit it out, and take another bite. A maglev needed a magnetic track to repel off of. Megan intended that any train headed their way would find a large hole in its track. The young officer smiled at the mental picture of a hurtling train shooting out onto a couple of dozen meters of track that weren’t there. It would nose dive right into the track at the other end of the break.

  Nothing like using the system against the system.

  Since a train might come from either redoubt, Megan had to send probes in both directions.

  That done, Megan ordered them to lower her the rest of the way into the pacified chamber.

  Megan ended up lying on her back. A quick release got her legs free. Cautiously, she stood up,
the M-14 carbine she’d drawn for this mission at the ready.

  Nothing moved as far as she could see, which, admittedly was not far, what with the swirling smoke and gas. Just as importantly, nothing within range opened up on the intruding Navy officer.

  Taking a few steps, Megan tested the deck and found it hard concrete. It stretched out unblemished in both directions. It was the same with the wall. There was no hint of the explosives hidden in the deck or bulkheads. They were well concealed to hide their sudden death.

  Of course, if you had hidden destruction in those walls, you’d want them to be nice and perfectly hidden.

  A Marine lieutenant rappelled into the underground chamber, followed by a Gunny, then a quartet of trigger-pullers. As soon as they’d set up a base of fire, the engineers began to drop, mixed with more sharpshooters. Somewhere in the mix, a medic showed up. Only after the Marines had things well in hand did Captain Sung get to drop down.

  “Next time, I go first, and you can wait in line,” she said, darkly.

  “Hey, I’m the Longknife. We always go first.”

  “And hog all the fun.”

  Megan tried to shrug and discovered that was one of several things you can’t do in an armored battle suit. “Really, it’s been a bore down here, waiting for all of you. Now the fun can start.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  Marines were already advancing down the tunnel in both directions. An attack was possible from either end. The Marines wanted to put quit to any assault early.

  Then the Iteeche rebels pulled their own surprise out of their hat.

  17

  “We got a problem developing up here. I’ll relay you the take,” was calm, belying the havoc the words conveyed.

  Immediately, Megan’s faceplate filled with the information.

  On the surface, the hostiles had launched half a dozen small rockets, really not much larger than fireworks. However, before any fire could be directed at them, they exploded, scattering a cloud. That cloud quickly proved itself made up of a mixture of countermeasures. Infrared, lasers, and radar sensors got hashed along with line of sight.