Hardly a breath later, a head ducked out of a gallery ten meters farther on and to the left. A second head appeared ten meters farther to the right.
“You bellow, Your Highness?” the closer one asked.
“We got problems,” Kris said.
“Not here?” the nearest said in mock horror.
“But it’s been going so well,” said the farthest.
Kris rested her hands on her hips. “I thought we brought
Marines to this shindig. All I see are stand-up comics who’d never make it if they didn’t have day jobs.”
They came to her, guns at the ready, their faces all serious. “What’s the problem, ma’am?”
Kris filled them in. They didn’t need to be told twice.
“That’s just flat unkind of them,” one sergeant said.
“Don’t worry, ma’am, Junior here will take care of them.”
“Right, Pa,” said the other Marine, who couldn’t have been more than a few months the younger. “I’ll do the running around, so you won’t get your wheelchair stuck.”
“We got two fire teams in spitting distance, ma’am. Junior will get them moving up the cave. How we gonna know the place?”
“This little girl is your guide,” Kris said.
“I’m a big girl. I’ll be nine come June.” Kris didn’t have a local calendar handy, but she was willing to bet June was seven, nine months away. Oh, to be in such a hurry to grow up.
“Her mom’s holding your objective with a squirrel rifle. Relieve her and let her and the kid get out of there. One fire team will hold the OP. There’s a fifty-pound bag of rice blocking this cave about halfway to the OP. That’s your backstop, Sergeant. If they get past that rice, they’ll be shooting our farmer friends in the backs. Understood?”
“Yes, ma’am. One team will hold the OP. No retreat. The second team holds the blocking position. Again, no retreat.”
Kris knew she’d just sentenced eight men to victory or death. She hated that.
But there was no other way.
“I’ll try to get more rice bags sent up here. See if we can give you a couple of fallback positions.”
“Don’t worry, ma’am,” the junior sergeant said. “We’ll hold here. Tad, Debbie, Mary, Steve,” he shouted. “It’s ‘Go Tell the Spartans’ time, and you get to be the three hundred.”
A blond head appeared at a cave not five meters behind Kris. “You say we’re going to have three hundred.”
Heads appeared at other holes in the hill. “I said eight Marines are going to do what three hundred Spartans didn’t. We gonna hold the line,” the junior sergeant announced.
“Ooo-Rah,” greeted his chipper order.
The Marines took a moment more to recover extra rounds and rifle juice from their former position, then followed the anxious little big girl up the line at a trot.
“Sergeant,” Kris started, but the squad leader waved her to silence.
“I know, ma’am. If they get past Junior’s fire teams, they gonna have to fight past every one of mine. The threat axis just done whipped ninety degrees around.”
“But don’t ignore the other hot spots,” Kris added.
“Why do you think we sergeants have eyes in the backs of our heads, Your Highness? Any chance we could get some of third squad up here?”
Kris’s platoon here in the center was supposed to be the reserve. Third squad was Kris’s very last hole card.
“Sorry, Sergeant, but I’m taking them out of the mountain to see just how far up the valley we can get.”
“Well, support, even off axis, ma’am, is fine by me.”
And with that, the sergeant set about redeploying his troops, and Kris jogged for her headquarters cave.
40
Is that the famous Princess Longknife? Cortez asked himself as he looked at someone in Marine armor sticking her head out of his objective. Her battle dress was dirty, her face smudged by mud and powder. No rifle was evident, but clearly she’d used one today. On high power from the looks of it. Thorpe dismissed the woman as nothing but a debutante, looking for her next ball.
The powder on her face today was from honest ammunition.
“She’s fought a damn good battle,” Cortez whispered. And if she was popping her head out of his next target, that didn’t speak well for his taking any more time than he had to to start the assault on that hole in the ground.
Cortez raised his hand as the woman’s head disappeared from view. “Forward, you men of the Lord’s Ever Victorious Host. Forward to Victory or Death.”
“Victory or Death,” ran up and down the battle line.
Cortez stepped out in front of the line.
“Victory or Death,” he shouted again, wondering what kind of nutcases got off on such a shout.
“Victory or Death,” came in waves from his unarmored troops.
“Follow me,” Cortez yelled into a break in the “Victory or Death” shout, and led the men forward at a walk. Every one of them followed him. Cortez unholstered his automatic: a gift from his first command, pearl handled, match quality. He waved it.
Men behind him yelled, “Victory or Death,” and waved their rifles in the air.
Colonel Cortez tried not to grin. This was like something out of the ancient histories. Men with rifles walking into battle. He was two, two and a half klicks out from the riflemen posted on the crest of the left ridge. The right ridge seemed to have all its rifles aimed into the valley, none up the valley.
That was something Cortez strongly suspected one Lieutenant Kris Longknife, Wardhaven Navy, was busy correcting. But Cortez had troops in the farmhouse and the orchard at the foot of that valley. Lieutenant Longknife would find that getting anyone out here to face Colonel Cortez and his merry, shouting band of nuts was not going to be easy.
“Forward,” Cortez shouted, and picked up the pace to a fast walk. No need to tarry here, out of range. They’d be running soon enough when the bullets came whizzing around their ears.
“Comm tech, raise me Gunny,” Kris shouted without preamble as she strode into the HQ.
“I can’t. His line hasn’t answered for a good half hour.”
“Jack?” Kris countered, taking care to keep her game face on. No one in the room must see the fear growing like a ball of snakes in her gut. I command here.
“I can raise a girl that’s doing duty as his comm runner, but she says he’s busy. If you really want him, she’ll give him a shout, but it ain’t safe to do much moving around out there.”
Which left Kris commanding exactly what she could lay her own two hands on.
“Okay, folks, listen up. We’ve held Cortez along most of the line.” That brought a small cheer from the elders milling around her. Penny didn’t join in it, but eyed Kris.
“But he’s not calling it quits.” That ended the cheer.
“I think he’s headed down the valley behind us, looking to force one of our firing ports or observation posts. He wants to get his troops inside the caves.”
“Oh God,” “No,” and “We can’t let that happen” seemed to sum up the popular assessments of that.
Kris didn’t have time to wait until things quieted. “I’m taking the last Marines we have out to stop the attack. Mrs. Polska, will you see that the fire from this hill stays steady? We can’t go quiet here and have them come up our backside.”
“I will see to that.”
“Red, you want to come with me?” Kris asked.
“You don’t want to let me out of your sight, huh, girl?” the guy said with not quite a leer.
“No, I figured you might like to use that gun you’re so fond of,” Kris shot back. Then she looked around until she spotted the next clan elder she needed.
“Mr. Tzu, the gunners in your house are a problem. We’ll have to assault it. How hard and thick are the walls?”
“Wood,” the man said, stepping forward. “Good knotty pine, three centimeters thick. We built it about five years back. To get us out of the
old sod cabin.”
“Could you collect some of your family?” Kris said. “You know all the nooks and crannies people can hide in. We need all the trigger-pullers in that house either dead or surrendered.”
“I understand. Give me a moment,” and he rushed out.
“Penny, let me know as soon as the Wasp comes online. If Thorpe is running, I want to stop this gunning.” Penny nodded.
As Kris turned to leave, old man Fronour stepped up beside her. “You mind if I send along a couple of my boys. I can’t let Red have all the bragging rights.”
“You’re welcome to the walk,” Kris said. More than one political dynasty was based on being in the right place for the right shoot-out. Longknife, to name just one.
In the cold room, Kris found Staff Sergeant O’Mally, who’d been honchoing second platoon since its lieutenant didn’t survive Kris’s last donnybrook. She quickly filled him in on her problem. They consulted a map for half a minute and agreed the house had to be taken first.
“You take a good look at that orchard,” Kris ordered. “Give me two Marines, and we’ll take the house.”
“Ma’am, you get yourself killed, and the captain’s gonna have my guts for fiddle strings.”
“Don’t worry, Sergeant, I promise not to get suddenly dead. You take care yourself,” Kris said, trotting for the door, where Red and several of the Fronour men and women waited.
Kris slipped out the heavy cool-room door and dashed for a shed packed with twenty-five-kilo bags of rice. The first shot wasn’t fired until the next Marine was halfway through his run. The second Marine after Kris had a ricochet off his armor.
Kris waved the unarmored volunteers back.
Clicking her rifle’s safety to sleepy darts and power selector to low, she popped off three shots at the upstairs window where the fire was coming from. Someone got hit; a rifle dropped from the window and slid across the veranda roof to clatter on the dusty ground below.
Kris and the two Marines quickly put to sleep anyone visible. In the silence, a couple of farmers, led by Peter Tzu, made a run for the rice shed. Someone in the house held a rifle to the window and let it spray on full rock and roll. The last volunteer got hit in the leg and finished in hops.
Kris clicked her rifle to deadly and full power, then put three shots into the wall beside the window.
The shooter went down screaming.
Kris turned to the home owner. “Me and the Marines are going to put a deliberate fire into that house. You cross the yard one or two at a time. Once you’ve got a half dozen or more, you signal me and we’ll cease fire and let you storm the house.”
“Begging the lieutenant’s pardon, ma’am,” a Marine with corporal stripes on his armor said, “but how about I trot over there and toss a few grenades in before they charge?”
Kris considered the alternative. “Peter?” she asked the home owner.
“There goes my wife’s china, but I think she’d rather lose it than me.”
“You could be right, Dad” didn’t sound all that sure . . . but it was accompanied by a grin.
Kris sighted on the house. “Here goes,” she said, and started punching holes low on the first floor. Somebody screamed. The Marines beside her opened up and chips flew all over the house. Tzu led his son across, followed a moment later by Red and two of his boys. The Fronour crew added four to the side porch when one of them dropped, clutching at his leg.
Kris couldn’t spot any action from the house. “Sergeant,” she shouted, “I think we’re taking fire from that orchard.”
“Yes, ma’am. You heard what the lady said.” And any further words were drowned out by a barrage of fire off to Kris’s left.
She turned to the corporal, but he was already up and running. He hit the porch, let his rifle loose to dangle around his neck, and in a second had two grenades in his hands.
“Fire in the hole, folks,” he said, butted the door open, tossed in his grenades, then dove for the floor, taking Red and two other volunteers down with him.
For a slow three count, nothing happened, except Red complaining about a dumb Marine lying on top of him. Then the house exploded. One of the grenades was fragmentary, the other flash bang. Good choice.
In seconds, the Marine and the volunteers were up and charging in over the blown-out door. There were shouts that mainly seemed to say, “Reach for that gun and die.”
There were no shots fired.
Kris tapped the other Marine to follow her, and they headed to the next shed, full of drying hay bales, to see what the staff sergeant had laid out for them.
“Captain, we got company,” Sensors reported.
“You got a visual?” demanded Captain Thorpe of the good ship Golden Hind.
“On main screen, sir.”
Thorpe only saw a disk. “Zoom in,” he ordered.
The image grew and centered on the screen. It certainly was a silver disk. With a striped tiger bounding toward him, growing to cover more and more of the disk, its mouth, full of teeth, roaring silently.
“What the . . . ?” said his XO.
“Someone has a sense of humor,” Thorpe said dryly. “Sensors, tell me what you can about that ship.”
“Not a lot, sir. It’s jamming us now. But it has two large, 2200 series reactors. Sir, I’m not getting any readout from a trickle track.”
Ships under boost generated electricity by running the superheated plasma headed for their engine through coils. That not only got them reaction mass but electricity for the ship and its lasers. In port or orbit, ships kept a small trickle of plasma running around a small track to generate the juice they needed.
It had taken Thorpe forever to reload his eighteen-inch lasers after firing them at the landing because he’d only had the track-generated electricity to draw on.
What kind of a ship would have no track?
Thorpe studied this ship charging his lasers. Ship or disk?
“Correct me if I’m wrong, XO, but aren’t there ships now that use Smart Metal™ for a protective umbrella in front of them?”
“You know very well there are, sir. You tried to get the consortium to rent us one for this balls-up.” The XO scowled at Mr. Whitebred. “They said we didn’t need anything so expensive.”
“What’s that?” Thorpe asked no one. He pulled a tiny laser pointer from his command chair. “Is that a notch in the shield, or a mark?”
There was something at one point on the edge of the disk. It revolved around it rapidly. Thorpe counted slowly . . . and didn’t get past three. “That disk is revolving at twenty revolutions per minute.”
The financier’s rep looked at Thorpe blankly. It meant nothing to him. The XO blanched.
“Warships with ice armor rotate themselves at twenty rpms to keep a laser hit from burning through,” Thorpe told Whitebred.
“That’s armor,” the XO breathed softly.
Now Thorpe scowled at the moneyman. “And whoever sent Princess Longknife out here with a company of Marines and top-of-the-line Smart Metal™ for her ship’s defense, do you think they’d scrimp on her gun power? Do you think so, Whitebred?”
“N-n-no,” the man stuttered.
“Sensors, can you tell me anything about the capacitors on that ship? Anything?”
“Not a thing, sir. We are well and truly jammed.”
“So, they’re just sitting there, waiting for us to take a swing at their kitty cat with our popguns before they swat us like a fly with two, no, four twenty-four-inch pulse lasers. Right, XO?”
“The ship we wanted to rent had four twenty-four-inch pulse lasers and a pair of five-inch long guns. And it had Smart Metal™ armor. There was only one ship in the yard, just fitting out, but they’d built a half dozen like it and sold them all, sir.”
Thorpe breathed in an angry breath and let it out like fire. He wanted that girl. She’d taken one ship away from him. Now this. Two choices gaped before him. One meant death for him and his ship. The other . . . To run away from that Long
knife girl. Would that be anything less than death? Long. Slow. Without honor.
If it was up to Thorpe, he knew which he’d take. But his crew had not signed on for suicide.
The words scalded as he spoke them. “Helm, get us out of sight of that ship. Hard break from orbit. Skim the atmosphere as close as you have to without burning us up. Get us out of here, then set a course for the nearest jump point. I don’t care which one. Just jump us out of this system.”
Too many emotions were battling in Thorpe’s gut. “XO, you have the conn. I’ll be in my cabin if you need me.”
Thorpe pounded the release buckle for his chair restraints hard enough to half knock the air out of himself. He launched for the bridge hatch and would have bashed his brains out on the passageway wall if he hadn’t expertly caught himself and redirected his passage.
Again, the Longknife brat had ruined his plans. Twice.
It would not happen a third time. Next time, he’d kill that woman.
41
Lieutenant Kris Longknife did not like what she saw. In the far distance, white-clad figures in a well-spread-out line moved down the valley, stopping here and there for a moment to shoot, then hurrying to keep up with the flow.
On her left, the line hurried faster, aiming itself at the painfully vulnerable hole into the hill.
Higher up the hill, a couple of those two-wheeled carts were also being pushed toward the obvious target.
Cortez had spotted the chink in her armor and was aiming everything he had left at it. Kris was tempted to start shooting from where she lay now, but it was a good six or seven hundred meters. Nearly two hundred yards closer lay what was left of a clump of trees.
And the surviving enemy riflemen.
Staff Sergeant O’Mally pointed at his enemy. “We’ve got ’em lying down, acting very dead, but I don’t trust ’em any more than I’d trust a Marine in that situation.”
Kris eyed the lumps of intermingled dirt, bodies, and fallen branches in what once had been a lovely orchard. No way of telling now what had grown there. Up the valley, the white shirts were now running. Some fell to the fire from Gunny’s position on the ridge above. Not nearly enough.
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