Defender

34

Nelly woke Kris at 0545. “Kris, Jack’s shuttle will dock in fifteen minutes. Do you want to be there to greet him?”

It was amazing just how fast Kris shot out of bed and pulled on yesterday’s whites. She had one of those female premonitions that new whites would be wasted on her returning husband. She was at the docking bay just as Longboat 2 locked in.

Jack was first off.

At this early hour, there were few personnel around to witness their commodore and the colonel of the Marine Strike Force throw themselves at each other and lock into a kiss that showed just how much they’d missed each other.

They weren’t alone, though. Amanda and Jacques were just as tightly intertwined.

And both of the men were as muddy and grimy as if they’d been on a four-week campaign. Kris’s day-old whites would need special laundering, but who cared?

“Was it dangerous?” both women asked their men at the same time.

“No” and “Not a bit” were their answers. The lie might have held if four Marines hadn’t exited the longboat at that moment with a pole stretched between them. Dangling from the pole was the newly named kanga-tiger.

“That’s huge,” Kris said.

“You shot that?” Amanda demanded of Jacques.

“Not me. Three or four Marines took it down.”

“Not a bit dangerous,” Kris said, elbowing Jack. Since he was in full battle rattle, the armor hurt her elbow more than it did anything to him.

“It’s all in your perspective. You’re a viceroy. You go to meetings, or so I hear. I’m a Marine. I get to play in the mud and kill really nasty things that need killing. A job’s a job.”

Kris kissed him again. “Want to trade?”

“No way would I let you go for a walk in those woods. It’s not just the big things. They got little things that will take your hand off before you even know they’re there. I can’t tell you how much I admire the Alwans who’ve set up camp in those woods. Or how glad they are to find Marines willing to help them. They may have survived, but they’ve got no problems with seeing some of these ‘eat’em-ups’ get their comeuppance from a Marine fire team.”

Another big thing with lots of teeth was carried out. It had six legs.

“How many of these ‘eat’em all ups’ are there?” Amanda asked.

“I’m sure we can find a biologist willing to categorize and name them all. For me, they’re just targets . . . and chow. They make good eating,” Jack said.

Kris adjourned to her cabin with Jack. They both needed a shower, so they saved water by sharing one. Abby was sent to get a set of greens and tans for Jack. He being her security chief, it seemed only appropriate that he accompany Kris back down to her meetings.

“I don’t think there are any folks mad enough at me dirtside to start shooting,” Kris said from a comfortable position under Jack.

“But I should keep an eye on you.”

They were decent by the time Abby got back with Jack’s uniform.

Kris had never slept on a shuttle flight. Jack had no trouble falling asleep as soon as he buckled in, and Kris rested her head on his shoulder. She found herself waking up as they docked.

What Kris was starting to think of as her new staff were with her: Amanda and Jacques, Penny and Masao, with Abby thrown in for reasons that were not clear, as usual. Somehow, Sergeant Bruce had ended up leading the Marine security detachment.

Kris accredited that to his having one of Nelly’s kids. Officially, that had to be the reason. It couldn’t be that he was just as interested in staying close to Abby as she was to Jack.

Ada greeted them at the landing with the jitney. This time, Kris rode shotgun next to Ada.

“Before we get started, do you have any problems I need to know about?” Kris asked. “With the best of intentions, I know we can get off on the wrong foot.”

Beside Kris, the reason the shuttle had been so sluggish pulling away from the Princess Royal became clear. It must have had five hundred tons of extra Smart MetalTM wrapped around it. The metal was streaming from the shuttle down the pier in a thin cable to form a cube ashore. On the other side of the cube, a chief was spinning a truck out.

“So far, so good, Viceroy,” Ada said after a bit of hesitation. There was a vague tone as if she was none too confident she’d be saying that for a whole lot longer.

“I did get a visit from a delegation of elders yesterday complaining about something involving renegades in the deep woods and us helping them. Since I’d never heard that any Alwans survived in the deep woods, that was kind of a surprise. Did I miss a report from one of your survey teams about them?”

Kris glanced at Amanda, who got a look on her pretty face like she’d been caught with her hand in the cookie jar and a nod that the claim might just be true.

“I think that’s possible,” Kris admitted.

“Let me guess. Some more of your Marines. Now, I can’t complain about those Marines helping our fisherman land a lot more of their catch. Hopefully, your people can pull off these large trucks to carry the catch and other junk inland though I don’t know how he’s going to get it powered. We don’t have batteries that big, and I don’t know when we’ll get our new reactor online. They just started landing pieces of it late yesterday. Project manager won’t give me any idea when he’ll be done.”

“Your reactor is in good shape. At least the first one. We’re having to cannibalize the fourth one to get all three of them working.”

“So what I get is what I got and this split fifty-fifty may not stay that way,” Ada said with sour in her voice.

“Ada, there are a whole lot of unknowns in everything we’re doing here. I’ve got a set of factories about to go operational on the moon in a few days. That may release more Smart Metal. I’ve got a chief designing a fishing boat that can go out and harpoon the ‘eats everythings’ and other boats to trawl for fish.”

“Sounds like we’re going to be eating a lot of fish.”

“It’s better than eating nothing,” Kris said.

“Yes, it is.”

“Fish offal also makes good fertilizer. You’ve said that you got the worse land on Alwa. Imagine what it will do if we add fertilizer from fish bones, guts, that kind of stuff?”

“That report did make it to my desk,” Ada said. “Yes, it will help, but with next year’s crop at the soonest.”

“Any chance you might get a second crop in this year if you get plenty of fertilizer and water?” Amanda asked.

“Where’s the water coming from?”

“We’re working on that,” Amanda said. “Once we have power, we can pump water from the deep woods. There’s lots of water there.”

“Pipes?”

“Steel from the moon,” Kris said.

“You folks think big, don’t you?”

“I wasn’t thinking small when I took out that enemy base ship,” Kris said.

Ada sighed. “Yes, you have a point there, and it’s not one you let me forget, is it?”

“Do you want to?”

The jitney pulled into the round parking area in front of Government House. “There are times I wish all this was just a dream. That I could wake up and everything would be the same as it was before Granny Rita answered your call and we found out the kind of mess we’re in and never knew. You know what I mean?”

“Do they still tell the story about the ostrich that kept its head in the sand?” Kris asked.

“Yes, to every first grader. I know, I know, but all this change coming at me like a tidal wave, you have to let me stop once in a while and catch my breath.”

“Ada, I hear where you’re coming from, but please realize. I had no idea what I was getting into when I talked King Ray into letting me see what this great big galaxy held. It’s been one continuous surprise after another for the rest of us, too.”

The woman sighed. “Let’s go inside. If you think I’m having it bad, wait until you hear from Kuno.”

“He’s your ministry of Mining and Industry, right?”

“Yep, and you’ll never guess where they just discovered a whole mountain of copper.”

“I’ve heard about the mountain. Nobody mentioned where.”

“How about at the headwaters of our main watershed for our year-round drinking water.”

“That would explain why no one wanted to tell me where it is,” Kris said, glancing at Amanda and Penny. Both of them were making a point of not looking at Kris.

“Nelly, why didn’t you tell me?”

“The information about the water source is not in my database, Kris. I didn’t know the significance of the location.”

They had a long meeting after that, involving lots of people from the station by conference call. Yes, it was easier to dig a big hole in the ground and extract the ore, then run it through a smelter and truck the finished product to Haven, but, in the end, the miners had to settle for using Smart MetalTM to make nanos to do the extraction. It was slower, but a whole lot easier on the trees and its precious groundwater.

As for moving the scientists down to Haven, Ada and several ministers, including education, got very excited. When the full number of boffins, some 450 to 500, came up, there were a few gulps, but as Ada said, “If they don’t mind eating a lot of fish, food won’t be a problem.” Housing would be more difficult, but they’d manage. The lumber mill hadn’t been working at full capacity, and if the deep woods truly were becoming safer, there should be plenty of timber.

That would also give the Alwans more area to plant in their mixed-crops way.

Assuming the elders didn’t find a reason to object.

The meeting went into lunch. Fish rolled in thin tortillas with something like lettuce were brought in. The meeting didn’t end until well into the afternoon, leaving Kris just time enough to catch the last shuttle back and meet with her industrial team.

The factories on the Prosperity had finally been separated from what would become two frigates and a pair of mining ships. If there were no more surprises, they’d be landed tomorrow. Miners could also head out tomorrow to find the minerals needed to make batteries and other modern electronic gear . . . such as lasers.

When Jack kissed Kris good night in her day quarters, at the door to her night quarters, per regulations, Kris could claim to have had a very nice day.