Tommy shook his head. “But the raping.”
“Not always just the big men and the henchmen. Some of the hands have a lot of anger. But there’s a few women I’ve taken in whose brothers or husbands tried to stop it. They got a bullet or beat up for the trying.”
Kris eyed her prisoners. Somehow, they seemed less loathsome. “Think I have any kingpins or henchmen here?”
“I don’t know. Some of my folks still have family in the swamps. Maria, who was giving your prisoners water, has a boyfriend out there.” Kris frowned at the farmer. He shook his head. “Milo has a job here anytime he wants it. Sad part is he also has a kid brother who thinks being a gunman is what being a man is all about. Milo’s trying to keep the kid out of trouble until he can talk him down.”
“What about these?” Tom waved at the prisoners. “What will happen when we turn them in to the authorities at Port Athens?”
“Don’t know. Even if they aren’t murderers or rapists, they were running with them. The people that’ll be sitting on the juries are gonna be desperate, scared, and mad. Doesn’t make for a good combination where justice is concerned.”
“So much for the search for truth.” Tommy sighed.
Kris nodded, but she was replaying her little skirmish in the swamp. “I shot the gunmen behind the roadblock tree first off, including the man with the megaphone. I got the first ones out of the water on both sides.”
“And after that the rest didn’t fight much.” Tommy nodded “Most seemed ready to break and run. What’s that make our prisoners guilty of? Being as hungry as their victims. Looking the other way when the toughs get their jollies. Damn. On Santa Maria, no man touches a woman that doesn’t want it. A man gets that wrong, and any man or woman in hearing will help him learn that lesson fast.”
Pain ran across Tommy’s face as he shook his head. “My priest taught me a poor man has a right to steal a rich man’s bread to feed a starving family. He didn’t have much of an answer when I asked about poor stealing from the poor. Damn, Kris, this is a hell of a mess. But nobody touches a woman. No man doesn’t answer a woman’s call for help.” He glanced at the trucks now loaded only with prisoners. “Damn, this is a mess you’ve gotten me in, Longknife.” Kris only half listened to Tommy’s moaning about who was right and who was guilty. She had a bigger problem.
She’d pissed off a lot of bad guys with guns. Now what do you do, smart girl?
“How you getting back to town?” the man asked.
“Up the road,” Kris waved absentmindedly.
“Through Wildebeest Wallow?”
Kris pulled out her reader and shared her map with him. The road went fairly straight through a grove of trees. Surprisingly well-kept trees, now that Kris looked at them.
The farmer pointed at them with pride. “That used to be a bit of a swamp. We planted walnut trees in there to build up the land, change the acidity of the soil. In another couple of years, I can cut them down and double my acreage.”
“Since there didn’t seem to be a lot of standing water, I thought it would be a safe route home.”
The farmer shook his head. “Been a lot of trucks going that way this afternoon. I think you kicked over a hornets’ nest. If people like you and your food convoy can run around free hereabouts, won’t be long before the police come looking for the likes of them. Maybe they can buy a ticket off planet, maybe they don’t want to. Maybe some of them think they got enough money to buy this mud ball. I hear that squatters are already moving onto some of the farms, the ones that got shot up when they fought back.”
“We didn’t see anybody at the Sullivan place,” Kris told him, mouth running while her thinking was still elsewhere. “One of the McDowells found that their farm had been sold off planet to someone using their IDents.”
“Seems the history books are full of this year’s bandit being next year’s revolutionary and an established politician the year after that,” Tommy observed dryly.
“Yeah, nobody’s very demanding of a rebel leader’s credentials,” Kris agreed. But that was next year’s problem; right now Kris had to survive today. “How many riflemen would you say were headed for that grove of trees?”
“Maybe two hundred,” the farmer said. “Everyone they got.”
“How many of those do you think are ringleaders and their bully boys?”
“Thirty, maybe forty.”
“Problem will be separating the two,” Kris muttered. The rain started getting heavy again; the last few hours had been just gray and misty. She tapped her commlink. “HQ, this is Ensign Longknife. I need to talk to the Colonel.”
“Wait one,” was the reply.
The wait was a lot less than a full minute. “Let me guess, Ensign, you want some more advice.”
“Seems that way, sir.”
“What’s your situation?”
Kris reported on her earlier skirmish and what looked to be building up ahead of her. She emphasized the divided nature of the opposing force.
“I’d been hearing stories that some of the worst problems might be just hungry folks the local establishment here didn’t view as deserving poor,” the Colonel drawled. “You came up with some pretty cagey ideas here in town for feeding everyone, no questions asked. The level of violence went down as the number of full bellies went up. Think we can do the same out there?”
“Doubt it, sir. The murder and rapes out here have people polarized but good. A lot of them just want payback.” Like me.
“You got yourself a tough tactical problem, Ensign,” was his crisp reply.
It was nice not to face one of Father’s rants about responding with her emotions rather than thinking with her head. “Doesn’t help that I won’t know where it is until it starts shooting at me,” Kris answered, staying on the present problem, not rehashing a past that couldn’t be helped. “I’d give my right arm just now for a Stoolpigeon.”
“I figured you might be asking my advice at a time like this. Stoolbirds are too fragile for weather like this, but a big old Spy Eye can fly in a damn near hurricane. I ordered one out of storage on Wardhaven, almost a museum piece. It arrived last night. I’ll have it over you in an hour.”
“Thank you, Colonel,” Kris breathed in half a prayer.
“Don’t thank me until you’ve got yourself home.”
“Any suggestions, sir?”
“None that you haven’t already thought of. Try not to get any of your people killed. Try not to kill any more civilians than you have to. You know, the usual crap. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I got a Spy Eye to launch, and I may be the only one here old enough to remember how to wind up the rubber band. Hancock, out.”
Kris glanced around slowly, reviewing her assets and none too happy. Sleepy darts gave her the option to shoot them all and sort them out later, but the wind was kicking up. Low-powered sleepy darts would be blown all over the place and hit nothing. Face it, Princess, this is going to be a live fire exercise.
Hunching her shoulders against the rain, Kris stood. “Tom, let’s mount ‘em up.”
Tom got to his feet, shook himself, glanced around. “I think I’m glad this problem is yours,” he muttered. As he strode toward the trucks, he began the usual patter. “You heard the boss gal. We’re out of here. Truck leaders, mount your teams.” It didn’t take long. The civilians gathered for a celebration. Some of the recruits looked to have gotten invited, but when their leaders hollered, they came. Tom was standing beside the lead truck, watching as the other ones filled up when Kris joined him. “So, what’s it going to be? We going to use the Colonel’s Spy Eye to go around these guys, or are we going to kill some more rapists?”
“What would you think of a fight?”
Tom blew out a long breath. “There’s two hundred of them. There’s only thirty of us, and we showed what a great bunch of berserkers we are this morning. Still, my da would whip my butt if I didn’t come when a woman hollered for help. But my grandmother would be most disappointed if I didn’t come home.
Tell me, Ensign Longknife. What are we going to do?”
“The only thing we can do. Fight the ones that want a fight. Let the rest run if they will.”
“Even if they’re rapists? Even if they looked the other way?”
“We need to break the back of the bad guys. I want to get us home safe. I can’t afford to worry about anything else.”
“If we wanted to get home safe, we’d go around this bunch,” Tom pointed out.
“We’ve got to break them.” Kris would not give on that. “It will be easier doing it when they’re all together.”
Tom shook his head. “They’ll massacre us. Half of us didn’t get our damn safeties off. Most of the rest didn’t have the stomach to shoot. At least this morning, it was thirty of us against twenty of them. Now there’s two hundred of them!”
“That was this morning. We’ve been there once. Now we’re veterans.”
Tom looked at her like she was crazy.
“Or maybe I’ve just learned a few tough lessons. Listen, Tom, we have to do this.”
Tommy looked at her for a long moment; then, with a rattling sigh, he said, “Didn’t me da warn me. ‘You take the king’s coin, he gets you body and soul. And you do what you’re told.’ ” Tom turned and went to his side of the truck.
Kris pulled herself up onto the running board, tried to shake as much water as she could from her poncho, and settled into her place with a smile of encouragement for the three recruits in the back. They were wriggling out of their ponchos, getting ready for a long ride back to base. The woman glanced at Kris, noticed that she was not doffing her slicker. The recruit’s eyes grew wide. The friendly chatter that had started in the backseat fell to silence as the men followed her glance to Kris.
“Oh shit,” the failed hero snorted.
“Marines, I want truck six up behind me.” Kris spoke softly into her mike.
“That mean you’re gonna have some targets for us, ma’am?”
“We’ll be stopping a few klicks down the road to talk about that,” Kris advised everyone on net. Silence came back to her.
The five trees stood alone beside the road, open fields giving Kris a good view of anyone approaching. Their bedraggled canopy gave some protection from the rain. Kris gathered her crew around her by truck teams; they came quietly. She waited until they stood around her, then she told them to take a seat. She wanted them comfortable. Besides, it was harder to run when you were sitting down.
“Between us and the port are about two hundred bandits,” Kris said bluntly. There were low whistles and bitter swearing at her announcement.
“The good news is that not all of them are armed and most of the rest aren’t really interested in opposing us. Thirty, maybe forty of them are looking for a fight. The others are just part of the crowd that’s hungry and wants to eat. You saw this morning how hard our prisoners fought once their leaders were down.” That got Kris several thoughtful nods. Kris quickly filled her team in on the makeup of their opposition.
“So most of them are just hungry farmhands the farm owners here tossed out when things got hard,” Courtney said.
“Most. Not all. The guys who sold the IDents off planet, the toughs that are their enforcers, those guys can’t have us moving freely here. If we show everyone that we can, they lose, and civilization starts to win again on Olympia.” Kris paused to let that sink in. Then she took a deep breath.
“I made a mistake this morning. I threw you into the middle of a firefight without preparing you for it. Some of you may have heard about the hostage rescue op I ran a few weeks ago.” That got nods. “Me and my team had four days to prepare for that.” And most of her marines were four- or six-year vets. No need to mention that. “I should have given you more time to get ready, to familiarize yourself with your weapon. It’s one thing to be issued a rifle. It’s another thing to be comfortable with the idea of using it. That’s why we stopped here. I’m assigning a marine to each truck team of Navy recruits. I want the marine and your petty officer to take you through all the switches and doodads on your rifle. Yeah, they did that in boot camp, but how many of you ever thought you’d need to use a piece of obsolete technology like this?” she said, grinning as she hefted her rifle. “I don’t know about you, but I did some quick studying when I pulled the short straw and found myself stuck with a night drop and hostage rescue.” That drew nervous laughs.
“Finally, I want each of you to fire a full clip of darts. There’s nothing like the feel of a rifle actually kicking back against your shoulder, the sight of darts hitting what you aimed at. It lets you know you really can do this.” Kris paced off two steps, made them move their heads to follow her.
“One last thing. I’m assigning the marines and petty officers the responsibility for putting down the boss men among the bandits and their thugs. The job for the rest of you is to put rounds in the air, in the ground, knocking splinters out of trees, show anyone willing to cut and run that now would be a good time to do just that. Put the fear of the Navy in them. You send the hungry ones running, and the marines and your petty officers will put down the ones that need it real bad.”
“If we see someone not running, can we shoot ‘em, too?”
“Have at them. Just anyone who shows you their back, let them run.”
“Where can they run to, ma’am?”
“I think the last farm would be glad to take them in.”
The troops glanced around at their other team members. Some actually had nervous smiles for one another. Quiet. “We can do that.”
“Yeah, that’s not too hard.”
“If they run, let ‘em. That’s okay.”
Kris let that sink in for a moment, then sent each truck team to its own corner of the small wood. Tom seemed actually happy to take the lead for Truck One. Kris moved from one team to another, observing, encouraging, stomping firmly on one marine who exuded the impression that his survival of the Corps basic training gave him the right to lord it over his navy students. The next marine had a better handle on training. Weapons skill was a light to be shared, not a hammer to belabor the student.
Kris stood beside her hero wanna-be as he sent rounds into a clump of weeds two hundred yards out. “Good shooting,” she said.
“Not bad for a coward,” he spat into the rain.
“I don’t see a coward.”
“I locked up this morning. Didn’t do a damn thing.”
“How long did that shoot last, nine, ten seconds?”
“I don’t know. Seemed like forever,” the guy said, staring at his rifle.
“I checked my rifle’s computer. Nine point seven seconds from first shot to last. Didn’t give a hero or coward much time to react. This time, I’ll see that you get more time going in. Then you tell me which you are, coward or hero.”
“You think so?”
“I wouldn’t have you wasting my ammunition if I didn’t. How many rounds you shoot in boot camp?”
“I was only halfway through, ma’am, when they pulled me off for this. Never did get to shoot.”
Damn! Kris suppressed a snarl at herself. I should have rechecked this crew’s records before I took them on the road. “Now you have fired a rifle. What do you think of it?”
“It’s sweeter than any sim.”
“Then keep shooting,” Kris said and continued her walk. By the time each recruit, including the marines, had fired off a clip, there was an air of confidence mixing with the rain.
As rifle practice finished up, the first Spy Eye coverage of the problem woods came in. It showed a lot of thermal images and human heartbeats. At least this bunch of robber barons hadn’t thought to invest in high tech. Thank God the Colonel had arranged for the Spy Eye. While the last rounds were fired, Kris and Tom studied the enemy’s array.
“Sloppy,” Kris concluded. “They’re expecting us to come right up the road.”
“Yes,” Tom agreed. “But this bunch seems a bit smarter than the last. They haven’t cut down a tree. They wan
t us to drive into the trap before they start shooting.”
Kris shrugged. “So we make their trap into our trap.” As she turned back to the trucks, her eyes fell on one of their dejected prisoners, leaning half out of the back, trying to catch water on his tongue.
“Tom, we’re going into a fight. POWs cannot be subjected to hostile fire. Tie them to the trees here. If things work out, we’ll come back and get them. Otherwise, I’ll call that last farm, tell him to come pick them up. Any he wants to offer a job to, we’ll call it even. Any he wouldn’t hire, I’ll pick up next week.”
Tommy eyed the prisoners for a moment, then brought his hand up in salute. “Yes ma’ am.”
“Now let’s put it to some real bastards,” Kris said, returning the salute.
Chapter Twelve
Kris halted the convoy as they approached the walnut orchard. The trees were orderly, row on row, when seen from above. Ragged with leaves, none showed fruit. The road made a slight jog as it entered what had once been a swamp, setting the rows at an angle, hiding the trucks as they stopped in line.
Kris had her battle planned.
The bandits were about a klick into the woods, arranged loosely in two lines, one to the right, the other to the left of the road. The first two rows of trees closest to the road were empty. Most of the hostiles were bunched in the third, fourth, or fifth line of trees. This uncomplicated array had been invented by hill tribes thousands of years ago and used again and again for the simple reason that it worked.
If the target didn’t know you were waiting for them.
Kris did.
“Tom, take half the team and advance slowly on both sides of the road. I’ll take the marines and two other truck teams on a fast walk behind their right. We’ll open fire, driving them left and back. You can’t tell it through the rain, but there’re some hills off to the left. If we can get them running that way, they won’t stop until they’re long gone.”
“We can do that,” Tom agreed.
Dismounted, the troops spread out, the rain and wind lashing at their ponchos. Courtney’s truck team and half of another took the far left flank. Tom took the right side of the road with another seven troopers. That left Kris with fourteen, herself included, to begin the flanking maneuver.
Kris Longknife: Mutineer Page 19