Undaunted

34

Kris slowly surfaced to consciousness. Gradually, she became aware of herself.

Legs. She had legs. Feet were supposed to be attached to them. She thought about moving them, but the effort seemed too great.

Mouth. She had a mouth. It was dry as hell’s own desert, and something was holding it open and jammed down her throat. She wanted to choke, but that reflex had gone out to lunch for the moment.

She ordered her arms to reach up and pull the thing out of her mouth.

Her arms wouldn’t move.

She concentrated on her right arm, right hand . . . but it seemed wrapped in something that held it in place. So she tried her left arm. It wouldn’t move either.

Where was she? With that question came a memory. No, memories. She’d gotten herself in a lot of bad spots. Was she in one of them again?

She tried to open one eye. It was glued shut. So was the other.

What kind of bad guys glued a victim’s eyes shut?

Doctors taped eyes shut; she’d seen that in a vid. Maybe. And eyes that hadn’t been opened in a while glued themselves shut.

With an effort, Kris managed to force one eye open.

And shut it immediately. The glaring sunlight hurt.

And the bad guys might notice.

She opened the eye just a crack.

White ceiling. White walls. Tubes, blinking lights. Those added up to a hospital. She risked a sniff. Yep, it even smelled like a hospital.

Bad guys don’t put their victims in hospitals. Kris remembered that. Rule one, you can end up in a hospital if a meeting with the bad guys goes bad, but the bad guys themselves don’t want you in the hospital.

They want you in the morgue.

Kris risked opening both eyes. And found Jack dozing in the chair next to her. That was nice.

She rested her eyes on him and just let herself drift in the comfort of his presence. It was good to have him here. Course, he needed a shave and a change of clothes and a smile. Yes, Jack would look a whole lot better with a smile on his face.

From the looks of Jack, whatever she’d been up to lately had not gone well. Wonder what I did to end up here with Jack looking like a truck ran him over? Might as well get this over with.

Kris said “Hello.”

Nothing came out.

Kris tried it again. This time she at least managed a noise.

Somewhere beside her a beep, beep, beep noise went from a slow cadence to rapid. Jack woke up, looked at something across the bed from Kris, and shouted something.

Or not. Kris heard nothing. Were her ears not working any better than the rest of her?

Another part of her couldn’t help but notice that Jack totally ignored her.

She tried another “Hello.” She got out something like a frog croak.

Then the room filled with medical people doing medical things, and Jack backed up against a wall.

But now he was smiling at her. Not his lopsided smile, but a kind of worried one.

The docs did things. Kris ignored them, watching Jack’s smile and hoping it would get just a little bit lopsided. Maybe it got less worried.

The beep, beep, beep noise started to slow, and Kris found her eyelids drooping. Darn it, they were putting her back to sleep.

She didn’t want to sleep. She wanted to know what she was doing in the hospital. Why Jack was wearing his worried smile. She wanted to get back in the game.

She fell asleep.

“Are you putting her back in a coma?” Jack asked Doc Diem.

“No. She doesn’t seem to want to go there, and it’s not good to fight her. Her brain is coming back online and wants to be active. Is she always a fighter like this?”

“If she weren’t, she wouldn’t be here.”

“Huh?”

“Usually she has a Marine squad for an escort. She got ahead of us and wouldn’t slow down. We should have been there with her.”

“Soldier, if you’d been there with her, you’d be in the next bed over. That’s assuming you were wearing that damn stuff we had to use a diamond saw to cut her out of. She was way too close to way too much explosives. I think somebody was planning on your being there to take a chunk of its power. Be glad you weren’t.”

That was something Jack hadn’t thought of. Maybe he should chew on it when he had a second.

“When will she wake up?”

“Two, three hours. Maybe a bit more. Or a bit less, knowing her. You’ve got time to get a shave and a shower. You might want to.”

“This morning, I’ve got problems besides her, Doc.”

“I’ve often wondered if going into medicine was the right idea, soldier, but I’m glad I don’t have your job.”

Jack had no reply to that. He went hunting for Penny.

He found her in the waiting room, staring at a wall that her computer had divided into several maps. The Wasp had just made a pass over the lodge, and its pictures were interesting . . . to say the least.

“How are the bears?” Jack asked.

“Momma bear just found a honey tree, and she and her cubs are having it for breakfast. The other bares are taking a morning swim. I checked real close so you wouldn’t have to.”

“I can’t tell you how grateful I am,” Jack drawled.

“Your sniper over there offered to help me make sure and was quite upset when I declined.”

“Joe would,” Jack said to a Marine’s rigid back. Joe didn’t so much as glance away from the door he guarded. He did crack a smile.

“What about the trucks?”

“They are also interesting,” Penny said. And one of the pictures enlarged to take up the entire wall. “They didn’t get moving until well after sunup. Notice anything different?”

Jack frowned. “The lead truck is about a mile ahead of the rest. You think someone’s trying to get his beer to us a tad sooner than the rest?”

“Wouldn’t be soon enough to jack up the price,” the colonel said on net. “No, I think someone wants that truck to hit our checkpoint a bit ahead of the rest. I wonder why?”

“None of the answers I come up with make me all that happy,” Penny said. “Colonel, do you have the picture I’ve got?”

“Yes, Lieutenant. I’ve got it, and I can’t say that I like it much either. Are there any religions on this planet that allow or encourage suicide drive-bys?”

“No one here,” Jack said, “seems very religious, unless square dancing qualifies as a devotion.”

“So, this is just a driving anomaly, or some poor dumb driver has been set up with a bomb he probably doesn’t even know is aboard,” the colonel finished.

“Looks that way to me,” Jack said.

“We shall prepare for just such an opening gambit,” said the colonel, and rang off.

Colonel Cortez took a deep breath of morning air. It was clear and clean, too nice a morning for dying. Yet he’d rousted the Marines out of bed at Oh Dark Early to come out here and kill or die trying. That was the business they’d chosen. Lovely or not, that was the business they’d do today. His job was to decide who did what and who took the greatest risks.

He turned to the young man beside him on the road. “Lieutenant Troy, withdraw most of your men from the immediate area of this roadblock. I’d suggest setting up a CP back in those rocks,” the colonel said, pointing to a rocky outcrop a hundred meters up the hill to the left of the checkpoint. “Leave me a shooter and a tech with good sniffers here, and the rest of you get well back.”

“Begging the colonel’s pardon, sir, but I was about to make the same suggestion to you. Those rocks would give you a good observation point for controlling matters after the truck explodes. I figure we’ll be charged by the other dozen trucks.”

Colonel Cortez found himself grinning at the young Marine lieutenant. “Mister, my suggestion was intended to carry the weight of an order.”

“I kind of figured it was, Colonel. But I also remember that in my trade school they taught me that senior officers don’t belong up on the line. I figure your school taught you the same, so, sir, I respectfully suggest that you get your ass up there where it won’t be blown into little bitty pieces in the first second of this fight. Respectfully. Sir.”

“What is it about this Longknife girl? Everybody who spends a few seconds around her gets totally insubordinate,” Cortez said, totally failing to swallow his grin.

“Very contagious, sir. I’m told it was just as bad around her great-grandfather General Trouble. General Ray Longknife, too.”

“Bad family. Makes you wonder how they kept from all being hanged.”

“Yes, sir, now, if you will get the hell out of my roadblock, I’ll see what I can do about finding a couple of hidey-holes for me and my fellow forlorn hope.”

“What’s a lieutenant doing on a roadblock, Mister? Shouldn’t you delegate it to a sergeant?”

“Yes, sir. No, sir. I’d never order one of my men to go where I wouldn’t, sir.”

Colonel Cortez shook his head. The young man was giving all the right answers to all the worst questions. He was about to prove that you can be right, but dead right.

“Carry on, Mister. Find a good hiding place,” the colonel said, and began the climb to his new command post. From it, he did have a very good view of his borrowed command.

First platoon with its lieutenant was two squads of troops spread out on the hill above the roadblock. Second platoon, under Gunny Brown, was another two squads spread out in the trees below the road. There wasn’t a lot of room there before the land dropped to a rocky stream. Both platoons were shy a squad. They were still in Denver standing guard over the princess’s sickroom. But the heavy-weapons squad had bulked up the two platoons as much as they could.

On the road, the lieutenant, a rifleman, and a woman tech rummaged around the ditches on both sides, testing them for depth. A tree lay across the road to stop traffic. A sheet of spikes would halt any traffic that didn’t take its hint from the tree.

The Marines uphill and down were digging themselves in, getting ready for the opening shots of what they expected to be a very short exchange of small-arms fire. After all, they were Marines. Cowboys didn’t really stand a chance against them.

Only one thing was missing. Body armor.

Oh, and reloads. Most Marines were carrying two hundred rounds per rifle. A shuttle had taken off to get more ammo and armor from the Wasp, but it wasn’t due back for two orbits. If they shot themselves dry in the meantime, matters could get interesting.

Colonel Cortez had lost his last fight when he went up against these Marines. Then, they’d been led by the princess.

It would be a crying shame if he couldn’t do any better than she.