Intrepid

13

Kris woke with none of her questions any closer to an answer, splashed some water on her face, and headed for the bridge. They were two hours away from inserting themselves into orbit around the moon, something Kris expected would be a surprise for Thorpe and knock him off his game.

Unfortunately, Kris's game plan was not developing all that well, either. ''Have we found the population?'' Kris asked.

''No, Your Highness,'' Chief Beni answered. When the chief took to ''Your Highness-ing'' her, she knew she was in trouble.

''Nothing on the people?''

''Zero, nada, zilch,'' Jack said. He was standing next to the chief, hunched over the man's sensors, along with Professor mFumbo,'' who added his own conclusion.

''We've totally struck out.''

''Should we launch a better sensor suite?'' Kris asked.

''We did, while you were getting your beauty rest,'' the chief growled. ''Please, trust us, me and the prof's crew know our way around sensors.''

''Sorry,'' Kris said. She could never remember a time when the chief had been this grouchy.

''Everyone is hiding,'' Jack said.

''Can you blame them?'' mFumbo added.

Kris nodded as she gnawed at the problem. ''They know there's a warship in their sky loaded with sensors. Bad guys on the ground as well. They're hiding from them. So, of course, they're not showing off for us. Am I usually this slow?''

For a long moment, no one answered that.

''No, Your Highness,'' the chief said, ''you're not usually this slow. Me and the crew are usually able to jack up the gain on things and give you more intel feed than the other guys. Only this time, I can't do any better than they are.''

''Maybe when we get closer,'' Jack offered the chief.

''And maybe not,'' Penny said as she joined them on the bridge. Andy Fronour trailed only a step behind her.

''Yes, my very esteemed intelligence chief,'' Kris said, ''do you come bearing a rare answer?''

''Which I may keep to myself, if all I'm going to get is more maligning.''

''My, my,'' mFumbo said through a shining white grin, ''aren't our warriors touchy today?''

''As they should be,'' Kris said gently, ''since they're the ones who will do a drop mission from orbit right into one huge question mark. Please, Penny, what have you found out that the rest of us haven't?''

''What's the kind of soil down there?'' Penny asked, clearly unwilling to give up her advantage yet.

''Alluvial,'' Professor mFumbo said. ''Our soil scientist did a full workup. Not that it told us much.''

''Oh, it told you something, you just didn't hear it. I only found it myself while debriefing Andy here.''

''Alluvial soil,'' Kris said slowly.

''Is easy to dig in,'' Nelly answered from Kris's neck.

''On hot summer days, we kids used to dig into mounds, riverbanks, whatever gave us a chance, and make our own cool forts. Grampa had his own cool storage house to keep ice in.''

''The dirt came out easy,'' Penny added, ''and given a couple of days' exposure to air, the cave turned as hard as concrete.''

''In my databases,'' Nelly cut in, ''there is a story about a war back in the bloody twentieth century in a place called Vietnam, where the resistance fighters dug tunnels to hide in. The soil there was alluvial.''

''So Andy's people have literally gone to earth,'' Kris said.

''That's what I think,'' Andy said.

''And the bad guys?'' Jack left hanging.

''Got a hot message from my good friend Thorpe to do their own vanishing act as soon as he found out I was leading a bunch of hard cases through his very own jump hole.''

''Oh joy,'' Jack grumbled, ''a game of blind man's bluff. I can't tell you how much I love my modern instrumentation. Going blind into a battle with a bunch of thugs as smart as my Marines does not make my bunny jump.''

Kris let these answers cascade around in her brain for a moment, weighed what they told her, and found that she still didn't know nearly as much as she wanted to before she took strong men and women into armed battle. But she'd asked for this job. And this was what she wanted to do.

''Chief, look for assault vehicles, trucks, cars. Any kind of transportation. Hunt for their tracks if you can't find their bodies getting warm in the noonday sun. Panda's got too much settled area for a strike team to walk very far. They had to bring or steal vehicles. Where you find them, you'll find the guys holding the guns.''

''Doing it, Your Highness,'' the chief said with a grin.

''You can dig a hole and hide on Panda. We've got to accept that. So we don't look for the cat. We look for the tail on the cat that it forgot to pull into the hole. Look, boys and girls, look.''