Undaunted

26

The Wasp made orbit above Texarkana, and all gravity went away. Any other planet that had been inhabited this long would have a space station to provide aid and comfort for the passing trader.

Not Texarkana.

The industrial interests wanted a station. The cowboys absolutely refused it. The House of Dukes voted it down every time it came up.

Even if Kris had not been briefed on the place, that story alone would have told her all she needed to know about Texarkana.

She was headed for trouble.

Then it got worse.

In the middle of a talk with Ron, Nelly blurted out, “Kris, did you authorize the launching of a light assault craft?”

“No, why?”

“Because an LAC just busted out of the drop bay.”

“Did anyone authorize it?”

“Nope. You were our last hope.”

“Who swiped it?” Kris asked, launching herself for the door.

“We don’t know. The cameras in the drop bay went off-line a minute before the launch. We haven’t heard from the watch.”

At the door, Kris gave herself a hard push down the passageway, Ron just behind her.

In the drop bay, a drifting Sergeant Bruce was just starting to shake himself back to consciousness. “What happened?” he muttered.

“We were hoping you’d tell us,” Kris said, taking him in tow and anchoring him to a wall.

“Let’s see,” Bruce said, feeling his head and wincing. “An Iteeche came in here in a space suit. I asked him what the hell he was doing, in a nice kind of way, ma’am, and you gathering me gently to your breast and pushing me over here is the next thing I remember. Don’t tell Abby about that last part, will you?”

“Don’t tell me what?” said Abby as she shot into the bay and came to rest next to the sergeant.

“We’ve got a stray LAC with a wandering Iteeche,” Kris said. “Sergeant, where’s your computer?”

He reached for his chest. “Not present or accounted for, ma’am.”

“Uh-oh,” Nelly said.

“Bridge, drop bay here. Do you have an LAC on radar?”

“No. We can’t paint one of these little stealthy things. We usually track its squawker, and we got nothing squawking.”

“How could an Iteeche fit into one of those?” Sergeant Bruce asked no one in particular. “There’s barely enough room for four Marines to sit their asses down in one.”

“And how’s he flying it?” Kris asked. “He doesn’t have a computer, at least not one he knows how to use and has the programs for a racing skiff. Is this a suicide?”

“Not likely,” Ron said. “Philsos is an expert board rider. He’s won many green ribbons riding those things from orbit to the ground.”

“How accurate is he at landing one of those boards?” Kris asked.

“If a boarder hits the planet and is still alive, it’s considered a good day.”

“Bridge, keep searching for that LAC. The cockpit canopy may not still be attached.”

“We’ve got radar and opticals locked on that area, but you got to remember, we’re leaving it at a pretty fast clip. If that LAC is braking, it could be below our horizon by now.”

“You going after him?” Ron asked.

“Nelly, could we do any kind of drop and turn?”

“I estimate the last chance you had to do that was about the time you tackled Abby’s sergeant and pressed him against your breast . . . I mean that wall. Bulkhead.”

“Stow it, Nelly. Ron, what was your guy doing with a space suit on my ship?”

“You didn’t expect us to come aboard a strange and unknown ship and not bring minimal survival gear.”

“You could have told us.”

“You didn’t ask us.”

“Enough of that. Why is your guy running and how did he manage to turn off the security cameras in here?”

“I have no idea about the cameras, but I think he’s decided that he has to do something to make this mission fail, and since you are in a Troubled Times of the Many Emperors, he saw a chance to break free of us and did it.”

“Troubled Times of the Many Emperors. Ron, we don’t have emperors.”

“But your Society of Humanity has broken up into many warring factions.

“I didn’t tell you that!”

“The sudden silence about the Society, starting five years ago, shouted that something had happened. You are a serving officer. There are Marines on this ship. It is obviously a warship. My counselors are stupid, not dumb. All the data says there is war.”

“Perfect logic. Totally wrong conclusion. We are not at war.”

“Right, Princess,” Jack said, joining them. “You’ve worked your tail off stopping five or six of them in as many years. What’s this about the security cameras not working?”

Kris waved at the tiny cameras in opposite corners. “They cut off.”

“Sal, get me Professor mFumbo.... Professor, you know that floating crap game your boffins have going that you don’t think I really need to worry about. . . . Yeah, that one. It’s worrying me. Would you please check with the joker who you don’t think I know is running it and ask him if his device for bamboozling the security cameras is still in his possession. . . . Yeah, I think he lost it. And I want to know just how much trouble it can do us in the wrong hands. Oh, and tell him he’s on the Marines’ shit list. Top of it, to be precise. He really wants to do something to make us like him in the next half hour. Bye.”

“So, Phil got a ‘never mind little old me’ black box from one of our boffins, got in his space suit, slugged a Marine, swiped his state-of-the-art computer, and dropped onto Texarkana,” Kris said. “Does he know where he wants to go and what he’ll do when he gets there? Ron, talk to me fast, I’ve got a drop mission to plan and only sixty minutes to do it in.”

Ron pulled the mike of his commlink from his robes and spoke into it quickly. “I have just asked the herald to bring your human translator to me. It has all that we know about the planet below. I asked Captain Teddon to search Philsos’s room for anything he may have left behind that will hint at what he intends to do. I have asked both of them to come here with their space suits and to bring mine. Princess, if you are dropping in pursuit of my Imperial counselor, I am honor-bound to assist you in any way I can. It is a matter of my honor, and the honor of the Imperial master I serve.

“So Phil hasn’t just screwed himself, he’s got everyone above him in trouble.”

“I am not sure I understand what you said, but I think you have the general situation correct. He has broken the ties that bind us together. Much must be sacrificed to correct that.”

“Jack, I want this Iteeche taken alive if possible. I want every Marine we can mount in the landing boats ready to drop in sixty minutes. Locked and loaded.”

“Do I fill all the seats?”

“No,” Kris said, looking up at Ron. “Three Iteeche will be traveling with us. At least, they will be if Phil didn’t drop himself in the middle of the largest city on this planet. Please tell me he didn’t.” Kris paused for someone to say something.

No one did. “Will someone show me a map of what was under us when that nutcase took off. Please.”

Nelly flashed a map on the wall beside Kris. It showed vast plains covered in grass. Three or four human residences flashed red on the map. Maybe this time Kris had gotten lucky.

Seventy minutes later, Kris was in full battle rattle and strapped into her seat in the longboat. Ahead of her, a sailor finished bolting some arrangement that promised to secure an Iteeche just as well as a standard-issue seat.

Or so she said.

Kris would have loved to pilot the lander, but she was doing ninety different things at once. And a distracted pilot was a dead pilot.

Kris very much wanted everyone aboard to survive this drop.

A sailor helped Ron get the strapping right around his body and lock it in as Kris took another call.

“Penny, do you have any report yet on who owns the property we’ll be landing on and trampling about?”

“Chief Beni has Da Vinci hacking the local net. Problem is, each dukedom has its own net, and most use different systems.”

“So?”

“And our damn Iteeche landed between two different dukedoms with really different systems. The northern two ranches in our search zone are owned by a Deafsmith and a Leon. I’ll need some time on the two southern ones. I’m sending Nelly the full info.”

“Thanks.”

“Oh, and Kris, I’ve got a call from Austin wanting to know when you plan to land and suggesting it be tonight. They want to throw a hoedown for you. I think that’s a dance. Square dance.”

Kris considered her chances of finding an Iteeche and getting back up to the Wasp and down to Austin before dark and sincerely doubted that was possible.

“Penny, you better tell them I’m going to be delayed. Tell them we’ve got the Wasp under quarantine for the day for smallpox or bubonic plague, or something like that.”

“I’ll try to come up with something not at all like that,” the intel officer said.

“I trust you,” Kris said, and went on to her next problem. “Have you got any idea where the guy landed?”

“No, Kris, and we’ll have to drop you before the search zone comes up on our horizon. We’ll send you pictures as soon as we have them. I’ll have Mimzy do a search as fast as she can.”

“Start with the areas close to the settlements,” Kris said. “If he’s there, we have to stop him fast. If he’s not, we can take a little more time.” Kris could just imagine an Iteeche wandering into one of these ranches. The briefing on Texarkana said many people wore guns. Probably every adult on one of these isolated stations carried one.

“I was doing that, Kris. Now would you shut up, belt yourself in tight, and go away,” Penny said, sounding like she meant it.

Kris shut up and had Nelly call up a map. The data on the map was very skimpy, so Kris asked Nelly for the photos made during the first orbit and an analysis of the terrain and vegetation.

“It’s flat, Kris, except when it’s not. And it’s grass covered, except where the grass died or won’t grow.”

Apparently, Kris had managed to piss off everyone with her nervous questions, even Nelly. Especially Nelly.

From Kris’s point of view, she’d been amazingly flexible. When Jack had suggested that she might have gotten carried away with the idea of launching all the shuttles and the remaining LACs next orbit, Kris had readily agreed that it might be wise to land the landing force one orbit at a time. That way, if one force found itself in a long stern chase, they could land a new team to head him off next orbit.

Jack put Gunny in charge of organizing the separate teams for their drops and settled down next to Kris. “Princess, you really need protection just now.”

That was so not fair. Kris had kept her temper when the errant LAC did not squawk, and when Chesty, Sergeant Bruce’s purloined computer, stubbornly refused to come online and give away its position.

“Kris,” Nelly pointed out, “he’s been turned off. And when you turn off one of us computers, there’s not a whole lot we can do for you or anyone. There’s a reason why I don’t like an on/off switch.”

Kris’s attention was focused on the present, when the pilot announced, “Launch in thirty seconds.” The sailors pushed themselves hurriedly for the exit hatch. A moment later the small spaceship pressurized. Kris listened as the pilot and copilot quickly went through their final checks.

Only a moment after they fell silent, the longboat dropped free of the Wasp, did a quick flip, and started braking hard.

Kris found herself in the unusual position of nothing to do while someone else bore the burden of getting her from orbit to ground in one piece. She didn’t much like it.

She gritted her teeth, got a death grip on the seat arms, and tried to hang loose as the shuttle’s maneuvering knocked her from right to left, up to down, and from bothered to irritated.

Maybe that was irritated to irrational.

Finally, a full set of pictures came in of the search zone. “Nelly, please do a match against this and the last set of pictures. Please find a fire, or scorch mark, or something that tells us where our lost puppy has gotten to.”

“I am working on it, Kris. Now, for crying in the weeds, would you please leave me alone.”

“Crying in the weeds?”

“Yes. The boffin helping Cara with her literature interpretation is also trying to break her of her foul mouth. Cara has taken quite a shine to Ms. Burgess, and is adopting the terms she uses to avoid stronger terms.”

So, of course, Nelly was following Cara’s lead.

“Just find me a four-legged pilgrim who doesn’t want to be found.”

“There are no new fires, no new scorch marks. Wherever he set the LAC down, he managed the heat problem very well.”

“Are there lakes or rivers down there?”

“At the moment, every form of drainage is dry as a bone,” Nelly said equally dryly.

Which presented Kris with a major problem. She might have acted a bit hastily. If a runway wasn’t available, a shuttle could land on a lake or river. If none was available, things could go badly.

“Nelly, do any of the ranch stations have a runway?”

“All of them do.”

“How long are they?”

“Very short. Far too short for an orbiter.”

Kris said nothing more. In wartime, risks were required. She could probably argue that the present situation with a rambling Iteeche who wasn’t supposed to be here required taking more risk than normal. Still, Kris had a bad feeling she’d be filling out a ton of paperwork if this landing went bad.

Assuming she was alive to fill it out.

And to think, she’d been bored on the flight down.

“Nelly, show me the front view.”

In a moment, Kris was looking at it, adding her and Nelly’s eyes to the four up front. They were still far off and way up.

“Nelly, highlight the four ranch stations.” Suddenly Kris’s vision had three green spots scattered across the horizon ahead.

“Kris, I have a hot spot on the map. No, I have five warm spots and one hotter spot.” Now they showed up on Kris’s view as four red spots and a fifth that pulsed.

“Zoom in,” Kris ordered. Three of the warm spots were trucks radiating heat more from their backs than from the engines.

“I think those are cook trucks,” Nelly said. “Notice the people riding horses around them and the large herds of cattle.”

“What’s the other one?”

“It’s moving quickly over the ground. Notice the dust behind it.”

Which begged the question why. “What’s the hottest one?”

“It is just lying there, Kris. I think we may have our LAC.”

Visual showed nothing, but it did rest in the shadow of the bank of a dry riverbed.

“Jack, have you been following this?”

“Yep, you want to put a cordon around that hot spot?”

“Yes, he’s had over an hour to make tracks. Ron, how fast can an Iteeche move over that kind of terrain?”

“Philsos is not what I would call speedy. He’s been in the court too long to do anything fast. Assume six or seven of your miles per hour.”

“Jack, put a cordon down at ten miles out.”

“Okay, boys and girls, we got a little work to do. Sergeant Bruce, I want you to paradrop your team of four right where we think the LAC is. You give us an immediate report on what you see. And if you find your computer, please turn it on and put Chesty to work.

“The other two teams, drop on the coordinates I’m giving you now. But hang in the air as long as you can for further instructions. Bruce, your team is to do a fast search for footprints leading off from the LAC. Let’s see if you can give the folks in the air a chance to head him off.”

“One important word,” Kris added. “You’ve been issued sticky grenades for your rifles. Use them if you can. We want to take this fellow alive. His space suit is not armored, so standard rounds will go right through him. Sleepy darts have never been proven to put an Iteeche to sleep. For all we know, they might kill him just as dead as a hard round. We want this fellow alive.”

“He may not care all that much about being captured alive,” Ron put in, having been added to Kris’s net. “By his actions, he has dishonored himself and his family. If he is brought back with nothing to show for this dishonor, he might well prefer death.”

“Dead Iteeche are a matter for the Iteeche,” Kris said. “I would very much prefer that we humans had nothing to do with the dying of anyone with more than two legs and two eyes. Understood?”

The reply was mumbled.

“Understood?” Kris demanded in a clear, loud voice.

“Yes, ma’am,” came back at her just as loud.

“The princess and I will be on the net at all times,” Jack cut in. “If you have a situation developing that you aren’t sure you can handle, bounce it direct to us. Any questions?”

“No, sir,” came loud and clear.

“Prepare to drop.”

The Marines went to their stations. Jack turned to Kris.

“Are you dropping?”

Kris would have liked to, but she had Iteeche in the longboat, and if they ran into any humans, it seemed better that Kris be with them. “No, I’m staying aboard with Ron.”

“I’ll stay with you. I can monitor things quite well from here.”

They were still at thirty thousand feet when the rear of the shuttle opened, and the Marines leapt into nothingness.