Redoubtable (5 page)

Given a bit of encouragement, Kris strongly suspected the gunless types would happily run.

All Kris had to do was figure out a way to let them. Something told her the gun toters were there as much to intimidate their hungry partners as to impact the Marines.

I THOUGHT WE DIDN’T WANT TO START A BLOODBATH TODAY, Nelly thought.

KEEP REMINDING ME OF THAT. IT’S VERY TEMPTING TO LET THE CHIPS START FLYING. YOU KNOW OF ANY WAY FOR ME TO GET A GOOD ESTIMATE ON HOW MANY REALLY BAD GUYS ARE OUT THERE?

I HAVE NOT THE FOGGIEST IDEA. I COULD GIVE YOU AN ACCURATE COUNT OF THE NUMBER WITH GUNS, BUT INTENT IS PURE GUESS.

THAT’S WHAT I THOUGHT, Kris said with an internal sigh.

Across the way, the boss man still stood with the truck cab between himself and Kris’s Marines. Did he really think something that thin would do him any good if it came to a fight? Now he was talking to a cluster of youth.

Kris was about to order a nano spy over to get a listen when one kid pulled his dirty white shirt over his head and started trotting toward Kris’s battle line. Every couple of steps, the shirt got waved.

“I think they want to talk,” Kris said.

6

The
youth stopped halfway between Kris and the boss man’s truck. He squatted down, occasionally gave the shirt a wave . . . and waited.

“Looks like they insist we meet them halfway,” Kris said.

“You are not going out there,” Jack said, and moved to put himself between Kris and any chance of her going farther down the road.

“I had no intentions of doing so,” Kris answered.

“Besides,” Penny slipped in, “princesses do not negotiate with street urchins. It’s unseemly.”

“Thank you, Miss Protocol,” Kris said.

“She does have a point,” Jack insisted.

“Who do we send?” Kris asked.

“How about me?” Sergeant Bruce said on Nelly net. “After all, I work for a living. No skin off my nose talking to a kid.”

“You listening in on us now, Sergeant?” Captain Jack Montoya asked with a bit of sharpness underlying his voice.

“No, but I think Chesty is, and he brought me up to speed when it looked like you needed the helping hand of a workingman.”

“Nelly?” Kris said.

“My kids are curious. They can keep track of a lot more than you humans can,” the computer said with one of Abby’s sniffs.

“You’ve got the computer,” Kris said to the Marine sergeant. “Use it as you see fit.”

“But don’t let your skipper fall out of the loop,” Jack said in defense of the chain of command.

“And you be careful,” Abby put in from orbit, proving that Jack and Kris’s conversation had a whole lot of gawkers following it.

“I will, honey. Now, Captain, would you mind putting a request in to Lieutenant Stubben about me and your assignment.”

“Ain’t it the truth. The poor working boss is always the last to know,” Jack said.

“You could give him an upgraded computer,” Nelly suggested.

“No way,” came in unison, from both live and on net.

In the back of Kris’s head, Nelly felt very poutish. Kris left her to stew in her own computing juices.

Jack said a few words. Lieutenant Stubben said a few words. Then Sergeant Bruce said a lot of words. Some were directed at his LT, accepting his assignment. Others were to his squad, arranging for a corporal to take over. Finally, he spoke to his fellow sergeants as he passed through their sections of the line on his way to the road.

“You mind if I take a bag of biscuits?” he asked as he reached Kris’s team. “That kid out there looks way past hungry.”

“Might put him in the mood to listen to us,” Kris said. The sergeant drew a bag of famine rations from the pushcarts that had come up behind Kris. He slung it through his web gear, made sure it did not interfere with the swing of his rifle, and ambled out to meet the kid.

The youngster kept squatting in the dust until the sergeant paused ten meters from him. Then he stood up. He couldn’t take his eyes from the biscuit sack, but he had his script, and he remembered it.

“The boss says for you to get out of here,” the youth shouted, waving a hand for emphasis. Sergeant Bruce sent back a high-res picture of the kid as he talked. Kris got to look at every lick he gave of his dry lips. Every time his pupils expanded or contracted, Kris got the picture. And the running commentary from Penny and her Mimzy.

THIS KID IS SCARED. SCARED AND STARVED. READING HIM WILL NOT BE EASY. IT IS VERY LIKELY HE BELIEVES WHAT HE IS SAYING, Mimzy reported.

“The boss says that this is none of your business. This is none of Kris Longknife of Wardhaven’s business. This is Greenfeld internal affairs. Buzz out. You ain’t wanted.”

THE KID BELIEVES ALL THAT. HE’S JUST A CHILD SENT TO CARRY A MAN’S MESSAGE. AND HE’S HUNGRY. VERY HUNGRY. I CAN HEAR HIS STOMACH GROWLING FROM HERE, Mimzy concluded.

LET’S SEE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN I FEED HIM, thought Sergeant Bruce. He kept one hand on the trigger of his weapon. With the other, he pulled the string on the ration sack. Several biscuits escaped to fall in the dirt at his feet, but he still held a handful. Those he tossed at the kid.

The kid went for the food with both hands, fumbled the catch, then grabbed for them as they fell to the ground. He ended up with one in his mouth and two in each hand. That left him in a poor situation to continue the bargaining.

Sergeant Bruce took the opportunity to jack up his voice via Chesty’s speaker. “I am a Royal Wardhaven Marine. I can be your best friend or your worst nightmare. My king considers Kaskatos as neutral territory, claimed by no one but the folks who work the land. Word is that you’ve come on hard times. The Red Cross, Red Star, and Red Crescent have loaded a lot of food on our ship and asked us to distribute it to those in need.” He paused for a moment to look up and down the line facing him.

“I think they include you folks.” He turned to Kris. “Princess Kristine, would you roll the food carts out here, please?”

The local laborers looked terrified at the thought of going any closer to the armed thugs, but Mr. Annam motioned to them, and they stepped forward. Each of the carts had two handles. It took two people on each to get the carts moving. Kris considered ordering Marines to do the work but dropped the idea as the carts trundled past her.

For the rest of her life, Kris would wonder why she didn’t listen to her first instinct.

The eight laborers pushed the carts and their load of famine rations out into the no-man’s-land between the Marines and the townspeople. The laborers were exhausted by the work they’d done already today. The road was rutted and made for hard going.

It jostled the cart.

Someone with the best of intentions had piled sacks of rations as high as they could reach.

About the time the carts reached Sergeant Bruce, all the good intentions came apart.

First a single sack fell off to burst in the dust of the road. Then a couple of dozen bags tumbled as one whole side of the pile gave way.

For a long moment you could hear the sound of sacks sliding, bouncing off the carts’ wheels, plopping onto the dusty trail.

Then there were shouts from the milling mob across the way. Shouts and screams. Like a stampeding herd of desperate animals, they broke ranks and charged for the food.

“Bruce, get out of there,” Kris ordered on net. “Get the locals and get out of there.”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m moving.”

The sergeant didn’t need to say a word to the locals. They could see what was headed their way and bolted for safety before the Marine could even turn around.

Starved and exhausted they might be, but if Kris had had a timer, she suspected the record for the mad hundred-meter dash would have fallen that afternoon.

The laborers didn’t stop running when they hit the Marine line but kept right on going. Kris hoped they remembered to stop when they hit the plantation, but she wouldn’t bet on that.

Kris had no time to follow them; her eyes were on the on-rushing mob. Sergeant Bruce backpedaled fifteen or twenty meters past the food carts, then, rifle at the ready, stood his ground.

The kid who’d given the speech took the opportunity to load up on five or six sacks, and made a run back to the truck line. Of course, to do that, he had to pass through the onrushing mob.

One guy swinging a machete took his head off.

Four or five of the closest people grabbed for the blood-spattered sacks and ripped into them. They didn’t bother reading the instructions, so it took them longer to get at the ration biscuits than it should have.

The scene when the mob hit the carts was just as bad. They bowled them over. People went down, screaming as they were trampled. Clubs swung, machetes hacked.

It was a bloodbath.

Sergeant Bruce was closest. He saw it all. He and Chesty transmitted none of it. But he did risk a quick turn back to Kris. His plaintive shrug said it all.
What do we do now?

Doing nothing had seemed like a good idea. Now, doing something seemed like a much better one.

“Jack, advance two squads of Marines to reinforce Sergeant Bruce.”

“Yes, I think we better,” he said, and the orders were quickly given.

Twenty Marines rose from cover behind the paddy dike and, rifles ready, moved quickly to support the sergeant. Kris reached for her automatic, and announced on general net, “I am about to fire one shot in the air. Be prepared for any reaction.”

Beside Kris, Penny made a sour face but said nothing. Jack moved to put his body between Kris and the opposing forces.

Kris fired three shots straight into the air. “Everybody calm down,” she shouted. Nelly enhanced her voice, causing Jack and Penny to do a bit of a jump. Behind Kris, Mr. Annam and his wife hit the ground.

“Calm down, everyone. We’ve got food enough for all of you,” Kris repeated.

For a long moment, it looked like it might work.

The slaughter around the food carts stopped as people looked up to see where the noise was coming from. Maybe some even understood the words Kris shouted. For a long moment, Kris could hear the moans of the injured.

But the decision for what would happen next depended on those who carried the machine pistols and rifles. Most of them still lay prone on the flanks of the line and in its dead center. Those 140 or so gunslingers hadn’t moved.

Yet.

Among the seven to eight hundred club and machete swingers who had broken for the food carts were maybe fifty gunmen, say the precinct bosses who had produced the cannon fodder. They held back when the rabble broke. Now they looked for instructions from the boss man on his perch on the central truck.

Then the undecided silence was shattered.

Someone let loose on full rock and roll.

Kris thought it came from the far right of the opposing line, but a quick glance in that direction showed no stream of bullets knocking people down like tenpins. And one quick glance was all the time Kris had. A roar of fire, single-shot and fully automatic, swept the battlefield.

One of them, probably an old-fashioned .30 caliber, took Kris right in the chest, almost knocking her down. If she hadn’t been wearing a spider-silk bodysuit, it would have drilled her through the heart.

As it was, the force of it left Kris struggling to keep her footing even with the cane’s extra help. Around her, screams came as first a few, then more of the milling rabble around the overturned carts were hit by small-arms fire.

Then Jack hit Kris with a football tackle, and she went solidly down . . . taking Penny with her. They ended up in a pile, Jack with his back to the firefight, Kris sandwiched between him and Penny.

Penny was talking to herself . . . or someone on net more likely . . . but she interrupted herself to complain. “Hey, you two could have given me some warning.”

“You work for a Longknife,” Jack snapped. “Consider yourself permanently warned.”

Kris found herself staring at the Annams. Husband and wife clutched each other . . . but they clutched the ground even more as they stared wide-eyed at Kris.

“Stay behind me, bullets can’t get through me,” Kris said.

“Of course,” the husband told her wife. “She is a Longknife and cannot be killed.”

“She can be killed,” Jack spat, and used his hand to force Kris’s head back down even as she twisted around and tried to sneak a quick look at the developing battle. “You aren’t wearing an armored wig, are you?”

Jack was right, Kris wasn’t. And now Kris knew why the Marine’s usual high-and-tight haircut had looked a bit shaggy this morning. He
was
wearing an armored hairpiece.

“First platoon has not fired,” came from Lieutenant Stubben, “but we are taking fire.”

“Second platoon the same,” followed him in only a second.

“Permission to return fire,” Lieutenant Stubben said.

Kris got her head up for a quick look around. Jack put her head back down, then snapped off a stream of choice words as his elbow took a hit. The spider-silk bodysuit kept the bullet from doing major damage. It didn’t keep it from stinging to beat all hell.

Somewhere to the right, a Marine wasn’t so lucky. The shout of “Medic. Medic!” came down the line.

Kris didn’t want a fight. She didn’t want to conquer this planet. If she did, she was letting herself in for all kinds of headaches.

To her left, a medic bent low as she trotted down the line to where her duty called. A bullet hit her battle armor and knocked her down. She got up and kept trotting.

Kris drew in a deep breath. “Captain, put an end to this slaughter.”

“Yes, ma’am. Platoon leaders, put down anyone shooting at us or unarmed civilians.”

“Aye, aye, Skipper,” came back in a second, followed by orders.

A moment later, the racket of small-arms fire was punctuated by one sharp volley as Marines entered the battle.

There was a hiccup of silence as the realization dawned on the other side that this wasn’t a one-sided turkey shoot . . . anymore.

Then the orchestra of sundry weapons went back to making racket: revolvers and automatics, long rifles and automatic pistols, assault rifles and submachine guns.

“Fire at will,” came over the net from two Marine lieutenants, and the unique staccato of the M-6s joined the symphony like the roll of a snare drum.

Kris listened to the sound of the bullets whizzing by. Most seemed well above her. “These guys are shooting high.”

“Easy to do with a machine pistol,” Jack said. “But they could get lucky. How much luck do you think you got left, Your Highness?” he said, pushing her head back down. “You really should think about the chance that there’s a bottom to that pot of gold.”

“I’ll just rob another rainbow,” Kris muttered as she tried to crawl away from Jack. He crawled right along with her, keeping his back between her and the hostile fire . . . and his arm ready to push her face back into the dirt. He seemed to like rubbing her face in the fine yellow dust of the road.

Marine fire was getting more sporadic. Other shots were getting downright rare.

“What do you say we get up and look around?” Kris said.

Jack rolled over and did his own look-see at the wreckage. Apparently it was quiet enough for him to stand up and dust himself off.

Kris rolled to her feet. Across the field from her, the truck with the boss guy riding it was backing up, turning around, and heading back to town.