Redoubtable

35

Kris surveyed the wreckage before her, then had Nelly scroll through the take from critical observation points on the station. The watch standers at the command post and the reactor were still lost in their card game. Except for the spaces around the grog shops, the station was pretty much asleep.

“Greenfeld Marines, will you secure the prisoners now on our ships and stand in reserve?”

“Yes, ma’am,” came back with only a hint of disappointment.

“Wardhaven Marines. Each company will send two squads to secure the three ships presently docked at the station. Take along a team of Navy types to set up a port watch on the captured ships. Go for the ship nearest you. Wasp, you take down the freighter. It’s farthest away from all of us.”

That drew the expected, “Aye aye, ma’am.”

“Dauntless, your Marines will seize the reactor. Put together a team from your engineering department to take over the watch there.”

“Standing by,” Lieutenant Kitano replied.

“Wasp will follow me to the command post. Captain Montoya and I know space stations well.”

“Defending or attacking?” Commander Campbell asked.

“Both,” Jack supplied.

“Okay, Campbell, for that you get the grog shops. Them and the sleeping quarters. Secure them and see that we don’t have any trouble from that direction.”

“I think I can handle a few drunken sailors,” the temporary skipper of the Bucket of Blood assured Kris.

“One suggestion before we move out,” said Kris. “We can’t go parading around this station looking like a bunch of squared-away Marines. The neighbors will talk.”

Jack glanced around at his company and gave Kris a rather nonplussed look.

Kris went on. “I want everyone to strip as much of the outer clothing as you can off the sleeping pirates and put it on over your Marine battle rattle.” The armor had the ability to change its coloring to match most any background. The designers had never imagined a pirate station.

“Grab any civilian clothing. It doesn’t have to fit well, just enough to fool someone glancing at the monitors while contemplating whether or not to bet on an inside straight.”

“And you will get in some armor yourself, Your High-Handedness,” Abby insisted, pulling Kris into a side compartment, where she had full battle dress waiting for Penny, Kris, and herself.

“You sure you aren’t a mind reader?” Kris said, getting busy putting on her play clothes for the next funnest thing in her life.

“Great minds think in the same gutters,” the maid insisted. “I knew you’d lead the panic party. It was easy to gauge where you’d lead it to. The Wasp doesn’t offer a lot of options.”

Penny shook her head. “I say she either reads minds or is a witch.”

“You calling me a bitch?”

“Witch. Witch!”

“Which one?” Abby demanded.

“Get dressed, girls. The target is thataway,” Kris said, swinging a thumb over her shoulder toward the station. “If we’re going to kill someone tonight, let’s make it count.”

“No one ever died of a good pun,” Abby insisted, turning her back on Kris so her princess could finish lashing up the back of her armor. Since Abby was doing up Penny, and Penny was taking care of Kris, it served to keep their hands busy and . . . for the moment . . . their mouths closed.

A minute later, the three turned around in unison so they could give each other’s fronts a final check.

“Okay, girls, let’s go kick some pirate butt,” Penny said. They managed a three-way high five, which took all six hands, and headed out, grinning from ear to ear.

“You all having fun?” Jack asked.

“Yes, we are. Everyone ready to ride?” Kris answered.

“On your orders,” Jack replied.

“Let’s see. I can’t go prancing across a pirate port looking like an armored princess,” Kris said. “Oh, and I need booty. Plenty of booty.”

“Yes,” said Abby and Penny.

“Jack, I want that guy’s hat,” Kris said, pointing at the fallen boss pirate fellow who was snoring softly at Jack’s feet. “And that cute vest and those pants, too. Roll him out of them.”

“As you wish, Your Highness,” said Jack, none too sure of the premise.

“Come on, Jack. A ragtag mess charged onto this boat. We need a ragtag mess prancing out of it.”

“Carrying plenty of loot,” Penny said. “I’ve got just the thing. A batch of cosmetics I ordered a month ago came in this really cute-looking cask. Perfect for jewels and diamonds and pieces of eight.” In a flash, the lieutenant was off.

“You heard the commander,” Jack ordered his Marines, “strip these dudes. Put what you can on over your armor and find something that looks like you’re hauling loot.”

The Marines responded with strange looks, but they did as ordered.

Penny got back with a lovely treasure chest just as the lieutenant colonel who commanded the Greenfeld Marine battalion arrived with his own Marines to take over the prisoners . . . many of whom were now stripped down to nothing since they’d failed to put on underwear that morning. Maybe any morning.

“You Wardhaven Marines have strange proclivities,” the colonel said darkly.

“Anything that will get us across the killing grounds without us getting killed is fine by us,” Jack said, firmly defending his own.

“You are weird people,” the colonel said, shaking his head. “We would charge across, guns blazing, rockets going off. We’d have this place in a blink of an eye.”

“When we get finished,” Kris said, “this station will still be holding air and ready to go back to work tomorrow.”

“Hmm, there is that,” the colonel admitted.

“Okay, crew,” Kris said, raising her voice. “Let’s go get ourselves one pirate port.”

“Ooo-Rah,” came back at her.

The Marines moved out behind Kris in general mob formation. They lugged boxes and crates alone or in pairs. Several of them waved empty whiskey bottles they’d retrieved from the several pubs in boffin country.

At least Kris assumed the bottles were empty.

The way to the command post led along the station’s main deck and past several grog shops. The early-morning denizens of those dives waved their own bottles and mugs at them as they strode by, but saw nothing amiss.

They also lacked the wherewithal to get up and join Kris’s little parade . . . thank heavens.

Kris spotted the tail end of one similar mob. She suspected it was Kitano’s team going for the reactor. She wished her the best of luck but concentrated on her own target.

The command center controlled the station. It also must have any records that existed that would tell Kris what captured human cargo had passed through the station and where it was sent.

Kris needed the station computer intact and cooperating. Not shot up and blown apart like the Greenfeld colonel had offered.

Still, it was going to take a lot of luck to get the controls and computers in pristine condition.

A glance at Nelly’s feed from the command center showed four still playing cards and one wandering around, glancing at different stations. He didn’t look all that interested in doing watch-standing duties. Maybe he’d just lost all he had to lose.

Kris raised the delightful-smelling treasure chest of skin and facial products that Penny had given her and waved it above her head.

Yep, the guy in the command center had been looking at the monitors. He turned to the others, and the game quickly broke up as others came to look at the pictures from the main deck.

Kris’s legs wanted to hoof it; she held the urge in check. That would be totally out of character. Instead, she shouted, “We’re rich! Richer than God,” and the Marines behind her shouted their own claims to wealth, too.

The organized mob behind Kris got rowdy. A couple of Marines hammed it up by starting a fight. They came to the ramp up to the command post. The two fighters managed to slip away into a side passageway and set up to cover the rear of the team.

The steel doors up ahead looked designed to withstand a full-on assault. To its right and left were autocannons ready to mow down just that attack.

Kris reached up. Her right hand waved the fake treasure chest with its sparkling plastic jewels and gold coins at the watching camera. With the other fist, she pounded on the steel portals for admittance. That wasn’t necessary; the bombproof doors began sliding open before she gave it her first good rap.

Proving bombproof wasn’t necessarily boobyproof.

“You wouldn’t believe what we found,” Jack shouted.

“Make us believers,” came back as the doors slid open wide.

Four pirates stared at Kris’s service automatic . . . and a whole lot more.

The fifth guy was farther back.

He had time to react.

He bolted for the command console. Kris busted through the four pirates standing dumb as oxen and put three darts into the fifth one’s backside. He went down with his hand still reaching for the controls.

Kris checked him out, then turned back to the silent four.

“Gentlemen, you have three choices as I see it. You can step outside and see how good you are at breathing space. We can turn you over to the Greenfeld Marines for what passes as justice in these parts, or you can start working for the Wardhaven Marines and make us happy. Don’t think too long. That last offer is on a short fuse.”

Not surprising, they quickly accepted Kris’s job offer.

Nelly and Chief Beni went through the center’s workstations, checking them out, determining that they were safe to work and that they did do what the enthusiastic new employees said they did.

There was only one bad moment.

One of them sidled up to a station when he thought no one was looking and tried to activate something. A Marine spotted him, yanked him away from the station, and put him to sleep upon Jack’s orders.

Three out of five cooperating wasn’t a bad score.

Kris went down her to-do list quickly. The reactor control center reported itself under new management and operating in the capable hands of the Royal Navy.

Kris ordered the agreed-upon signal sent to the jump buoy. Admiral Krätz and his crew were welcome to join the festivities.

Then Kris turned to Chief Beni. “Tell me what you now know about the planet under us. Also, is there anything in this computer about a twelve-year-old girl being sold recently?

Cara cried herself to sleep. She didn’t want to; it upset her bunkmates, the twenty young women she shared a hut with. “We all have it tough,” growled Betty, the hard-as-nails one who claimed the right to speak for the rest. “Quit bawling like a baby.”

Betty had also warned Cara that she didn’t have it as bad as the others. None of the overseers had taken her out behind the barn.

Not yet.

Yet, it was bad. The work was sunup to sundown. Cara was sunburned and blistered. The food left Cara just as hungry after she ate it as before.

But there was something else. Back on New Eden, people were dirt poor. Cara had often gone hungry when Gamma Ganna was too busy to cook or broke between men. Still, people looked out for each other. What little they had, they’d share with a skinny kid left to run the streets.

Not here. What did Betty call it? “Dog eat dog.”

Cara tried to stifle the sobs that started deep in her empty belly and seemed to wrack her whole body on the way out.

She tried, and she prayed silently.

Please, Aunt Abby. Please, Aunt Kris. Come and find me. Come and get me. If I can just go home to the Wasp, I promise I’ll never do anything you don’t want me to do. Never talk back. Never skip my homework.

Please find me. Please, please, please.