Redoubtable

13

Jackie Jackson stood on her balcony, scowling at the roofs of the mansions two blocks over from her. She’d heard shots and listened as the roar of State Security machine pistols were silenced by the puny barks of the strange rifles.

She had expected better of her minions.

With a grin, she produced the small box with its bright red button. Kris Longknife probably thought that the growing silence meant she’d won another round against the idiots who worked for that wimpy Peterwald the twelfth.

That self-styled princess was wrong. Dead wrong.

Jackie pushed the red button.

Nothing happened.

She waited much longer than she was accustomed to. The technician had explained that even at near the speed of light, it took time for electricity to go from her button to the explosives.

“How long?” she screamed.

None of the men and women standing behind her had an answer for her question,

“Find the idiot who rigged those explosives. Jam this down his throat, then see that his assistant makes sure the next line of buildings blows when I want it to blow. I don’t care if he has to be over there lighting the bombs off himself.”

“Yes, ma’am. Yes, ma’am,” one of her boys said nervously as he backed away.

She shot him dead.

“I understand, Your Terribleness,” a smart young girl said, stooping to pick up the detonator and racing from the room.

“Don’t ever ‘ma’am’ me,” Jackie said, turning back to the view from the balcony.

Captain Jack Montoya shot the thug nearest him before the dirtbag even knew he was in a fight. Surprise was total, and a big chunk of the gunslingers died no more the wiser.

Unfortunately, there were a lot of people with guns, and some of them did not wait for orders before spraying the people scattered around the playing field and lower bleachers.

Even as Jack took aim and fired as quickly as he could, somewhere deep inside a question was demanding an answer. Where did people like this come from?

For now, all he could do was kill them before they could kill more.

Beside him, Tilly drew a bead and shot. Switched target. Aimed and fired. Found another one, aimed and fired.

Jack wasn’t keeping count, but it seemed she fired just as often as he did.

They ran out of targets before Tilly’s magazine ran empty.

“Some of them are getting away,” the young local said.

“Huh?”

“There are small exits, other ways down and out. You mind if I take care of them?”

Jack didn’t.

While Marines began the slow process of seeing who was alive, who was faking it, and who was sincerely dead, Jack followed Tilly. The young woman fed rounds into her rifle’s magazine as she trotted out to the access ramp.

Sure enough, a small trickle of people with guns was exiting the stadium at the lower level and sprinting across the parking lot.

“Are there similar rats on the other side?” Jack asked.

“Nope, this access was for reporters and VIPs. None of them wanted to have to walk by the smelly garbage canisters on the service side of the place.”

“Are you going to let them run?”

“Nope,” the gal said, wrapping the rifle sling expertly around her arm. “I just want them to all get out where I can get a shot at them.”

“Get all the fish in the barrel.”

“You got it.”

There was no one closer than fifty meters to the stadium. Apparently the rat race was over. Tilly took aim and dropped the last one out, then the next and the next.

That got people who’d slowed down to a walk back to running.

Tilly switched her aim to the farthest one out. One crack from her rifle, and he dropped. Then she started working her way back. It was rare that she needed two rounds to drop a target.

A couple headed back to the stadium.

“You mind if I get the ones that want back in?” Jack asked.

“Be my guest.”

Jack spent three rounds getting both of them.

People quit running back.

They didn’t quit running; some took off to the right or left, presenting Tilly with a deflection shot. That didn’t save them.

Not one of them dropped their weapons or tried to surrender.

Some did start shooting back. That showed the weakness of the State Security machine pistol. Pistol rounds quickly lost accuracy and didn’t do all that good shooting up at the fourth floor of a stadium from a hundred meters out.

Tilly adjusted her target choice to get those shooting back. She ran out of targets well before she ran out of ammunition.

“Are you feeling any better?” Jack asked.

“I think I knew a few of those dirtbags out there. Maybe not. The range was long,” she said coldly as she shouldered her rifle.

“Ever thought of joining the Marines?”

“Never really wanted to kill anyone before now.” She paused for a moment to consider the idea. “You think I’d make a good Marine?”

“Marines only shoot when they’re told, and at whom they’re told.”

“I might have a problem with that. Now, mister, if you’ll excuse me, I have a boyfriend I want to find.”

With that, she took off. Her first couple of steps were actually half skips. Jack shook his head. Even if that gal did ask for papers, he’d really need to see what the head shrink said about her before he’d sign her in.

So he arrived at the entrance of the stadium alone . . . and had to take the ugly sight in by himself.

Civilians were dead and down. Some thrashed in the mud of the grass field. Others lay sprawled on the lower bleachers. Troopers had shot the gunslingers as fast as they could, but some of the bad guys had still spent the last few moments of their lives spraying death on innocent, unarmed women and children.

Jack felt the strong need to empty his stomach.

Instead, he punched his commlink. “Kris, have you got a second.”

“As it happens, we’re in between shoots. How are things at the stadium?”

“It’s ours. That’s what I need to talk to you about.” He explained what he was looking at.

“I’m looking at innocent hostages shot here, too, Jack. With an added twist.” She explained about the explosives.

“Sal,” Jack said to his computer, “get me Lieutenant Stubben and Sergeant Bruce and his computer.”

“On the line,” Sal quickly said.

“The houses the commander just liberated had been rigged with explosives,” Jack said.

“Buried in sacks of fresh-roasted coffee,” Kris added.

“That’s a sacrilege,” Sergeant Bruce snapped.

“So you can’t just send out sniffers,” Chief Beni said, joining the party line. “I had to send out nanites looking for the power cord. I’ll have Da Vinci pass you through a design. Chesty and Sal can spin off a few fast.”

“We’ve spun off quite a few. I feel like that’s myself all over the place,” Sal said.

“It will be done,” Jack said.

In a minute, it was. When Jack was back to having just Kris on the line, he went on. “Kris, I know you’re not going to like what I have to say next.”

“Then don’t say it,” Kris suggested, maybe half-seriously.

“I have to,” Jack said, then paused. “Kris, I know you’ve been the target of way too many assassination attempts. I know you have better reasons than most to hate that whole process. But do we really owe this Jackie a straight-up fight? Wouldn’t we all be better off if we had a nano plant a bomb in her ear. She’s a monster.”

“Your Terribleness,” Kris said softly.

“What?”

“She styles herself Your Terribleness, like it was some kind of title, like my Your Highness. I found that out from a little girl, maybe ten. One of her friends had been taken over to the big house to sing. She told her that Jackson wanted everyone to call her Your Terribleness. About a week ago, the little girl went over to the house and didn’t come back. Maybe she’s still over there,” Kris said, but she didn’t sound all that hopeful.

“Kris, human shields. Bombs. Stealing food. If we took her out, would this whole house of cards collapse?”

“I don’t know, Jack. I’ll think about it. I’ve got to go. We’ve still got a row of houses between us and Her Terribleness’s big house. Stubben says he’s ready to take another layer off this onion.”

“Good luck,” Jack said, and turned his attention to the human misery before him.

Command Master Chief L. J. Mong walked toward the stopped trucks and tugs. He kept his empty hands in plain view. Ahead of him, several men with weathered faces and worn work clothes got out of the trucks.

Halfway to them, Chief Mong halted. “You want to tell me who you are?”

“We work here at the port,” one of the men from the first truck answered. “If you want, we can show you our ID cards.”

“What’d you come out here to do?”

“They just want us to bring your shuttles up to the terminal. That’s all we’re gonna do.”

“And once we got there?”

“They got guns. Lots of those squirrelly little machine pistols they brought from St. Pete.”

“Why are you working for them?”

“They got our wives and kids locked up, some in the main hangar, others at the football stadium. Do what they tell you, or they shoot you, then line your family up after they’ve dug their own graves, and shoot them. A really nasty set of baggage.”

“I hear they don’t hold the stadium anymore. The gunmen there are all dead.”

That lit up some eyes. “How’d that happen?”

“The captain of our Marine company saw to that bunch personally.”

“Who’s seeing to Her Terribleness?”

“We brought our very own Longknife to take care of her.”

That started muttering going through the listening workmen. As if to verify the accuracy of the chief’s intel, three trucks in front of the terminal filled rapidly with men carrying guns.

Quickly, they headed for town.

The command master chief turned. “Guns. Drop a warning shot across their bow. Smoke and noise.”

A petty officer first class took expert aim and a few seconds later a smoke cloud full of fireworks appeared ahead of the lead truck. It made a crash stop, only to be rear-ended by the second, which was violently smashed into by the third.

“Better than I’d hoped for,” the command master chief said.

“A whole lot better than we could have hoped for,” the work leader said. “You want to borrow our trucks?”

“Don’t mind if I do,” the chief said. “Sailors, on your feet. We got a mess to clean up.”

With an eager cheer, the sailors moved out for the trucks.

Lieutenant Commander Kris Longknife kept her royal butt well back from the smashed window. That limited her view of the last row of houses between Her Highness and Her Terribleness. It also limited the chance someone across the way could get a shot off at Kris. Nelly had no problem projecting Kris’s words.

“You snipers on the roof. You saw what we did to the snipers on the houses across the street from you. They’re dead, and their hostage wall didn’t do them any good. Put down your guns, and we’ll let you live. Keep working for Her Lousiness, and in a few minutes, you’ll be as dead as they are.”

Kris divided her attention between the shooters on the roofs as they looked guiltily at each other but terrified as they glanced over their shoulders.

The hostages stood as straight as they could and whimpered. A few of the younger ones openly cried despite grown-ups hugging them and otherwise trying to comfort them.

Kris was really getting to hate this day’s business.

The other half of Kris’s attention was locked on the visual feed from Nelly’s scouts. There were several clumps of interest, but Kris kept getting drawn back to the balcony over the driveway of the big house. There were a number of people there.

A few might be hostages; they stood like statues on the edge of the balcony, facing out. Others lurked in the doorway, passing back in and coming back out in random moves that Kris had yet to determine.

Three women seemed to be the center of everyone’s attention.

Which left Kris with two questions. Which one of the three was Her Terribleness? And did that really matter? With the target group reduced to those dozen, should she just blast the balcony and let God sort them out?

Across the way, two of the snipers put down their guns and started moving away from their human shields.

Across from them two other gunslingers opened up on the dropouts, shooting them down where they stood.

Above Kris, Marines dropped the shooters before they could celebrate their fratricidal killings.

Now it looked like all the shooters were fleeing or just ducking. Hostages took the chance to drop out of sight. Shooters on the roof of the big house in the next block started shooting up the roof, hitting both hostages and now-reluctant gunslingers.

“Put smoke in the next block,” Kris ordered, and soft popping sounds told her smoke was on its way.

It took half a minute before the street between the big house and the next row of houses was smoke-covered, and the shooting stopped. Kris took that opportunity of distance between her target row and Her Terribleness to try further negotiations.

“We’re trying to cut the power cord between Her Terribleness and the bombs she has installed in the houses you’re in.” Kris let the speaker amplify her matter-of-fact words. “When we occupied this row of houses, we found explosives hidden in bags of fresh ground coffee. I suspect you’ll find the same bags of coffee scattered around your houses.”

Kris knew very well that her sniffer spies had found the coffee sacks. No need to tell the other side just how much she knew of them.

A sack of coffee sailed out an upstairs window. It was followed by several more. Kris glanced at Chief Beni.

“They’ve only found about half of them,” he said.

Kris passed that information across the way. Hostages disappeared from windows as gunners and their shields found themselves in the same desperate search against the same killer. More coffee bags came out of more windows. Many broke open, showing clear proof of blocks of gray explosives among the ground brown beans.

“Now come out with your hands up,” Kris said, “and you’ll live.”

“Aren’t you gonna shoot them?” came from behind Kris. The volunteers had arrived, many of them sporting weapons and ammunition acquired from bodies in the houses that Kris had captured.

“They are my prisoners. I will treat them under the Laws of War,” Kris said forcefully.

“But they’ve murdered and raped and stolen,” a gunslinging volunteer pointed out.

“If you can make a case for that against a specific individual, there is a judge up on my ship who will give you your day in court.”

“Why do we have to use your judge? We have judges hereabouts. At least we used to. Don’t know if we still do,” the gunner said, looking around uncomfortably.

“When the time comes, we can make arrangements,” Kris snapped. “What we don’t do is take the law into our own hands. Now stand back. POWs are coming in.”

And Marines were advancing in short bounds, from houses to fences to trees, to across the street, then from trees to fences to open doors.

“Spy eyes show gunners advancing from the big house to try to retake the next row of houses,” Chief Beni reported.

The sharp snaps of M-6 fire told Kris that Lieutenant Stubben had beat the bad guys to their goal. She watched via the spy eye as thugs dropped.

Some of the hostages died, too. High-powered rounds went right through the unarmored gunslingers.

Kris made the decision to end this.

“Lieutenant Stubben, do you have rocket launchers on your front.”

“Three, Commander.

“Aim for the balcony on the big house. Take it down.”

“Understood, Commander. The balcony is a legitimate target. Grenadiers target it. Fire on my order. Fire.”

Moments later, the spy eyes recorded the front of the house disintegrating in a cloud of flame.