Redoubtable

7

A shout of “Medic!” came from second platoon. A Marine with the Red Cross pack was there in seconds, but she was shaking her head before she knelt.

The Marine had taken a slug right between her eyes.

Not all the fire had been high.

Two of the Marines forward at Sergeant Bruce’s position were also down and bleeding. In both cases, they’d taken repeated hits in the same general vicinity. The warranty on standard-issue armor doesn’t apply to multiple hits.

“Abby, what happened to my order for four-hundred-plus spider-silk-armored bodysuits, reinforced with liquid metal?” Kris demanded of her maid and extremely good scrounger.

“In case you haven’t noticed, Princess, we are way out beyond the Rim of human space, and our mail ain’t so good. Our supply ship, the Surprise, is supposed to be bringing out those packages, but, you’ll excuse me if I say I’ll be surprised if I ever see anything from that boat.”

Abby, of course, was right about their being far off the beaten path, and the Surprise was rapidly developing a bad reputation for it being a surprise if she had what you wanted. Of course, the last time she made a trip back to Wardhaven, she’d returned overloaded with famine rations. It was hard to complain about that kind of load after mornings like today.

If it wouldn’t mean losing Abby, Kris was getting more and more tempted to activate her maid’s reserve first lieutenant commission and order her to set up her own supply service.

On the second hand, that would mean losing Abby’s services as a superb intelligence gatherer.

And on the third hand, this close to the Peterwald Empire, turning Abby loose with a checkbook might result in some really strange financial deals. Wars had been started over less.

“Kris,” Penny said, coming to her feet, “if I could get a breath in edgewise, I’ve been talking to folks on the Wasp. They’ve been interrogating our pirate prisoners.”

“Who’s doing the interrogations?” Kris asked.

On its last trip to Wardhaven, the Wasp had acquired more Marines and sailors, and, though Kris wasn’t sure, there seemed to be a lot of new faces among the civilians on board. Professor mFumbo told her that half of the boffins found the present situation too bland for their tastes. They’d been run through the National Secrets Act, solidly scared about breathing a word about what they witnessed while touring the galaxy with one Kris Longknife . . . sometime princess and inevitable troublemaker . . . and sent on their way.

Which didn’t explain who was paying the new civilians on board and what they were there for. Was Admiral Crossenshield slipping his kind of black-ops folks into Kris’s crew?

NELLY, CAN YOU TELL ME ANYTHING ABOUT THE NEW CIVILIAN MEMBERS OF OUR CREW? Kris had asked early in the voyage.

NO, KRIS. NOW THAT CAPTAIN DRAGO KNOWS I’VE GOT THE SHIP’S COMPUTER EATING OUT OF MY HAND, HE’S TAKEN TO WITHHOLDING CERTAIN INFORMATION FROM THAT COMPUTER. I KNOW HOW MANY PEOPLE WE HAVE ON RATIONS, NAVY, MARINE, AND CIVILIANS; BUT I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT WHO THESE NEW PEOPLE ARE. YOU KNOW, KRIS, I DON’T THINK THE CAPTAIN TRUSTS ME ANYMORE.

I DON’T THINK HE EVER TRUSTED ME. HE AND I ARE GOING TO HAVE TO TALK.

GOOD LUCK AT THAT, KRIS. I MIGHT ALSO ADD THAT ABBY STILL USES HER OLD COMPUTER AND TURNS MY KID OFF REGULARLY. THAT WOMAN DOES NOT TRUST ANYONE.

So it was with some trepidation that Kris asked Penny, “Who’s been doing the interrogations, and just what are they doing?”

“Don’t worry, Kris. We just sat them down in one of the civilian bistros and ordered hamburgers, fries, and beer.”

“Hamburgers?”

“Yeah. Most of them haven’t had a decent meal in three, four months. Put some decent food in front of them. Throw in a couple of beers, and our intel staff are their new best friends.”

Hmm, that’s an interesting approach. “So what are they saying?”

“Nothing,” Penny said with a shrug. “But that nothing tells us a lot.”

Confused, Kris frowned. “Such as?”

“You may have noticed that they rammed us.”

“Captain Drago made sure I did indeed notice that. And he reminds me of it every chance he gets,” Kris said dryly.

“Well, none of those intrepid buccaneers had ever been on a spaceship as anything but passengers. The sum total of experience for the gal at the helm was two summers steering a boat loaded with tourists around a lake.”

Kris winced. “And if they’d captured the Wasp . . . ?”

“They’d all get jobs as deckhands or something on the pirate ship, but Jackson, the guy running the show down here, has a merchant officer and some crew that would be running the ship.”

Kris put two and two together and didn’t like what it told her. “So none of our prisoners know where they’d be taking the Wasp to outfit it with guns or to sell its cargo.”

“Ignorant as the day they were born,” Penny said.

“I’m not following you,” Jack said. He’d been issuing orders to his Marines to do what they could to help the survivors of the slaughter while half-listening to Kris and Penny. “Are you talking about some kind of pirate base?”

“Exactly,” Kris said. “You don’t operate spaceships without a dock to handle repairs. You need facilities to overhaul reactors and engines. Why steal stuff if you don’t have a marketplace that will take anything you bring in, file the serial numbers off it, and ship it back out to the trade lanes? You’ve seen the size of the fleet-support bases that Wardhaven has.”

Jack nodded.

“Somewhere, these pirates have a support system. Probably smaller, but it’s there. We can keep chasing after this or that pirate ship, or we can find the base and squash the cockroaches in their nest. Which would you rather do?”

“Taking down a nest sounds like my kind of job,” Jack said with a grin.

“So who is this Jackson guy?” Kris asked, turning to the Annams.

They shook their heads. “I have not been to town in over six months,” he said. “It is worth your life to ask questions when the gunmen come to collect food.”

“No surprise,” Penny said. “The crew of the ketch didn’t know much, either. I doubt any survivors of this shoot-out know a whole lot, but whoever is running this show would have our klepto captain close at hand. I suggest we talk to the survivors here and see if anyone wants to talk to us about what’s going on here. Anything they tell us is more than we know right now.”

The three of them split up. Kris ordered Chief Beni to look over the trucks. One of them might have a computer, map system. Something. With a Marine guard at her elbow, Kris started her own walk through the dead and dying.

Workers from the local plantation were trying to separate the pile of bodies around the food carts. These poor souls had been between the gunslingers from the three middle trucks and Sergeant Bruce’s Marines. The thugs had opened fire on these starving people and mowed them down in droves. The bodies were piled four or five deep.

Apparently, just getting between the shooters and their Marine targets was enough to sign your death warrant. The milk of human kindness seemed to run mighty thin in this neighborhood.

Or just limped.

A few quick orders from their officers had adjusted the Marines’ fire lanes. The troopers to the right and left had concentrated their fire on the hostiles in the center. The Marines in the center had divided their aim between the shooters on the right and left.

That was the difference between being a trained fighting man and being a member of an armed mob.

Kris shook her head slowly. How could fools with guns hope to stand against a trained fighting team?

Now, out along the former gun line, Marines moved quickly to help those still breathing. One was getting yelled at for her effort.

“You’re all gonna die,” the gunslinger tried to yell. It came out little more than a croak. “Once Jackie gets her hands on you, you’re gonna die long and slow, and I’m gonna laugh and laugh at you.”

The last was unlikely as the voice sputtered down and ended with a hacking cough.

Kris turned her back on that scene and concentrated on the people who had been slaughtered while just trying to get a bit to eat.

Most were already beyond help, but one guy gasped for water as he was laid out. Kris took the canteen her Marine guard offered and knelt beside the man. Blood pulsed from a wound in his chest.

Kris offered the canteen, and the man drank from it. He coughed up water, blood and froth, then sipped a few more drops. The Marine produced a bandage and knelt beside Kris to apply it, but the man waved it away.

“Let me die in peace,” he gasped.

The Marine turned away. He looked around for someone more interested in living but didn’t seem to find anyone. He folded up the bandage and stepped back, returning to alert guard.

The dying man lifted his chin. “You’re that Longknife woman? The one that saved Peterwald? I saw your picture on the news.”

“Yes,” Kris admitted.

“I wish you hadn’t. All hell broke out after you did.”

Kris didn’t have an answer to that, so she kept her peace.

“I thought I could get my family away from St. Pete. Find a hole to hide in.” His cackle of bitter laughter turned into choking, and more blood came up.

Kris offered another sip of water. He took a swig, then spat it out. After a while, he started talking again.

“Jackson said if we didn’t come out here . . . bring back the food . . . she’d kill our families. She’s got all of them in the local football stadium.” He shook his head. “Now she’ll likely kill them all and put their heads on pikes. She’s gonna run out of pikes if she keeps this up.”

He didn’t laugh at his joke. Or maybe there was no joke in his words. Kris found them horrifying.

“Where is this Jackson?” Kris asked. “How much heat do her gunslingers have? Help me save your family.”

“Could you save them like you saved Peterwald? How many will die this time?”

The guy had a legitimate question. Saving Peterwald had cost five thousand innocent lives immediately. How many had died and were going to die in this reign of terror as he and others did their power dance?

“If I have to kill some of Jackson’s hired thugs, how many of them will be innocent bystanders?”

“Not a one,” the man said. “You gonna save my wife? My kids?”

“I’m going to give it a Longknife try,” Kris said, as the man died in her arms.

Kris stood, her dusty whites now caked with the rust of drying blood. She looked around the field. Marines moved with armored and armed purpose. Locals moved with bare legs and skinny arms, helping where they could. Kris spotted Chief Beni, unhooking his computer from a truck.

“Chief, you find anything?” she asked on net.

“This planet doesn’t have a GPS system, but this truck has a cheap inertial platform that tracks where it’s been and helps generate maps. I know where it came from.”

“And that would be?”

“Tranquility Road. That’s a small street, near the center of Lander’s Rest. When I overlay a photo from the Wasp, Tranquility Road seems to be the home of some mighty wealthy people. At least their homes are large, and there is a lot of green around them.”

Nelly pulled a picture from Da Vinci, the chief ’s computer, and hung it in the air ahead of Kris.

“Is that a nice place to live?” Kris asked Mr. Annam.

He nodded. “My father thought of building a town house there. He decided that we had always been farmers, and the money should go into our farm. Now, I am glad he did.”

“Nelly, zoom in the picture. I’m looking for an iron fence with spikes. Is there one?”

“These three houses in the middle of the block have such fences. One of our nanoscouts is in that area. Let me zoom in.”

“You might want to look away from this,” Kris said in warning to the locals.

“What are those things?” the wife asked.

“Severed heads,” Kris said. “Severed heads and the crows that feed on them. I think we’ve found where the powers that be on Kaskatos hang out.”

The plantation owner and his wife managed to turn away before they were explosively sick.