Audacious (43 page)

“Ninety-eight Marines present, ma’am. Forty-seven dispatched to the hospital. Twenty-nine dead.”

It was a bloody butcher bill.

Among the Marines of the Technical Support Platoon stood Bronc and eight of his young buddies. If Gunny Brown said they were Marines, who was Kris to gainsay.

“I suspect I make ninety-nine,” Jack said.

“And I make one hundred. Kindly tell Inspector Johnson that we will be taking his blasted shuttle out of here. He’d better have the Naval Station on High Eden ready to receive us.”

“Where will we go from there?” Jack asked.

“The
Wasp
came through Jump Point Delta six hours ago,” Nelly reported. “It’s boosting for High Eden at one point five g’s. It will dock in twelve hours.”

“A bit late, but not that bad,” Kris said.

“You ordered them here!”

“I figured a couple of days ago that I’d need a ride out of this mess,” Kris agreed.

The Marine first lieutenant trotted off to let the local cop know that one Kris Longknife would go quietly.

Well, fairly quietly.

“Sergeant, will you please have the company change front.”

“Yes ma’am,” Gunny said, saluting. Kris returned the honor.

“Company” was followed by “Platoon.”

“About. Face.” And ninety-eight survivors turned to face their dead.

Kris repositioned herself to the new front of what she could only think of as her command.

Softly she said, “Gunny, prepare to render honors.”

There was nothing soft about what she said next. Her words rang out across the lawn. On the west portico news cameras from a dozen different viewpoints and persuasions recording the Marines’ farewell to Eden.

“Before you lie men and women, Marines all, who fought, and bled, and died that Eden might be free. That a new day of hope and liberty might be yours. May God have mercy on your souls if you break faith with these soldiers who gave their tomorrows for your today.”

Kris paused to let the words sink in. To let the realization dawn on millions of watchers.

“These Marines paid a price for all of you,” Kris continued. “Rich and poor. Voters and disenfranchised. Landers families and yesterday’s arrivals.”

Another pause.

“Your failed policies and attempts at dodging the obvious brought you to this night. A night of guns and bombs and murder. It brought you here with no defense for your future, your liberties, your freedom, but a handful of strangers from distant stars and those among you that were willing to step up to the plate. Tonight, neither wealth nor voter card nor history mattered.

“These men and women laid out here cared. They tried. And they paid a heavy price for you. You owe them your future. For God’s sake, make it worthy of their sacrifice.”

Kris wanted to reach through the recording cameras. To get her hands around every man and woman who had sat comfortably, uncomplaining while their nation bore down on this crisis point. There was no way she could do that. There was really nothing more for her to do for Eden. Or for her company.

She paused for a long moment, then whispered, “Render honors.”

“Hand salute,” Gunny ordered.

A hundred men and women commanded their stiffened and used up bodies to pay this final respect to those they had worked with. To those who had fought and bled beside them. To those who had stopped a bullet or thrown back a grenade for them.

From somewhere came taps.

None of the Marines had brought a bugle to this battle. But one of the caballeros had. He paid the ancient honor to the fallen as beautifully as ever was done.

On the last note, one that quivered in the morning air, Gunny Brown called, “Two,” and one hundred hands came down.

“Gunny, march the company for the boathouse.”

“Yes, ma’am” was quickly followed by the orders to make it so.
We march a dirge to graveside. But we always quick march from it. Wasn’t that the old saying?

And the Marines moved off. Kris never knew who started it. Was the first voice from among the battered ranks of her company? Or did the song start up there on the west portico? It really didn’t matter. The song started.

“From the halls of Montezuma” was a single, clear voice.

“To the shores of Tripoli” grew in volume.

“We will fight our country’s battles on the land, space, and the sea.”

59

The
killing wasn’t over. Or at least it was a close run thing for the next couple of hours.

An admiral from Eden’s fleet met Kris at the door to the shuttle when it docked at High Eden. He demanded she immediately board an outgoing liner. Kris didn’t much care for the way he was rushing her out… or separating her from her Marines. And she had at least one major deal breaker.

“Is a certain Victoria Peterwald booked on that ship?”

The admiral was nonplus toward the question. But he did check. “Why yes, she will be.”

“Then I won’t. Haven’t you heard? Longknifes and Peterwalds don’t play well together in the sandbox. People tend to get suddenly dead around us.”

The admiral failed to understand that. Gunny Brown was wise enough to have four hulking Marines, stinking from sweat and battle, edge the Navy puke out of Kris’s sight before Eden lost more of its ruling elite.

Then it turned out the Navy base was unprepared to offer hospitality to a hundred tired, hungry, and war-weary Marines.

Kris got angry when an Eden chief with a huge gut told her the mess hall would not open for anyone until 1130 hours, two hours from now. She got outraged when a voice on the phone insisted the transient barracks didn’t accepted new sign-ups until after 1500 hours.

Ever-helpful Nelly told Kris that there was a fine hotel just outside the gate that had plenty of rooms and a four-star restaurant.

But the rental cops at the gate tried to put a stop to that troop movement. It seemed that neither Kris nor any of her Marines were authorized to leave the base. For a second there it looked like matters would get downright mortal.

Fortunately, the base security guards manning the gate were puny… and unarmed. They took one look at the hulking Marines headed their way… many of them still armed to the teeth… and decided it was time for their coffee break.

All of them. All at once.

The hotel manager was a bit taken back by the arrival of one hundred filthy, tired, and evilly disposed hulks led by one very cranky princess. But the moment he got a look at Kris’s credit card, amazing things started to happen.

One entire wing of his hotel was scheduled to begin renovation that day. He shooed away the workmen and had his staff put old sheets on beds in record time.

Fifteen minutes after their arrival, half the Marines were sound asleep. The other half made a quick stop by the coffee shop for some chow before joining the others.

Kris’s last word to the manager was that many of her troopers were still heavily armed. Disturbing their sleep might not go very well for the one doing the disturbing. The manager nodded and assured her that none of her troops would be disturbed.

If only Kris had told the manager that she was in the same mood and should not be bothered either.

The
clock beside her bed said Kris had hardly gotten ten hours sleep when she was awoken by a gentle but persistent tapping at her door.

“Go away or you are so dead.” It wasn’t a very princess way to greet someone, but Kris was not feeling much like a princess.

“But you’re the one who summoned me. All the way from Wardhaven.” That got her attention. The voice did sound dimly familiar.

Rolling out of a bed that had seemed so lovely a short time ago, but now looked full of enough dirt to grow potatoes, Kris crossed to the door and swung it open.

There was Captain Drago of
her
good ship
Wasp
.

“What’s a pirate like you doing this close to Earth?” she demanded.

“I heard a princess was in distress and decided to risk hanging in her rescue.”

Kris glanced down at her dress. It was filthy, bloodied, and torn. “More likely some street urchin. I’d invite you to chow but I’m not sure they’d let me in the restaurant without sloshing me down with a fire hose and finding something else to cover my ugliness.”

“I don’t know of whom you speak, Your Highness, but I see a full bath through that door, and I have taken to carrying around clothes in your size just in case you need them.”

“Is that a proposition,” Kris said, taking the offered blue shipsuit.

The black-hearted pirate just grinned.

“I’ll be with you in two shakes,” Kris said.

Showered and dressed, she found that her shoes of the night before had settled into pumps. Those alone she salvaged from what must have been a very expensive ensemble. Less than a minute later, she was ordering a steak smothered and loaded, and a salad deliverable five minutes ago.

The hotel showed no further evidence that it was occupied by a Marine task force until Jack marched in from one door the moment Gramma Ruth, Abby, and little Cara came in the other.

They all headed straight for Kris’s table. Which the manager immediately expanded and filled with water and menus.

“Good to see you again, Skipper,” Jack said. He had managed to have his uniform dry-cleaned and his shirt washed. His shoes, however, would never again carry the shine required of them.

“Glad to be here,” Captain Drago replied, “but I hope you will excuse me. I am glad I wasn’t here earlier. I see that the princess has been up to her usual mischief without her beauty nap.”

“Look upon that face… and die,” Kris muttered.

“I suspect a lot of Peterwald troops did,” Ruth said, under her breath.

“Where is Bronc?” Cara asked.

“Sleeping,” Jack assured her. “He’s got a concussion and a sprained wrist, but he’s in a lot better shape than some. That young man came through for us when we needed him,” he said, eyeing Kris, then Ruth. “I hope we can do something for him.”

“We already have,” Ruth said through a wide grin. “Seems that the requirements for a Wardhaven passport aren’t all that clearly codified just yet. A good friend of mine in the visa section was only too happy to provide one for him and his mom.”

Cara looked terrified. “Bronc is leaving Eden?”

“Bronc and you must get out of here,” Ruth said, her face now serious. Kris knew what had to come next.

Gramma Ruth did it softly, telling as gently as anyone could a young girl that her mother and grandmother had died suddenly. Violently.

When quiet came again, the girl sat in her chair for a long moment staring at her hands. “I thought that might be why Aunt Abby wasn’t letting me go home.” Cara shook her head. “Gramma Ganna wanted so much to move uptown. And it killed her just as dead as the hood kills kids.”

“I want to take you away from the hood,” Abby said. “I want to take you away from Eden.”

“Why, you were never here before?” She was blunt but honest.

“Right, I wasn’t,” Abby said, offering all the contrition she seemed able. “But you and I are all the family we’ve got. I want you here with me,” Abby said, shooting Kris a glance that told one princess to keep her mouth shut.
We’ll settle anything between us later.

“Will Bronc be coming with us?”

“I don’t think so,” Gramma Ruth said. “My sister Mary’s youngest boy has a boy about Bronc’s age. Some folks may think Hurtford is a hayseed of a planet, but its got a good school system and Bronc will get a top-notch education there in a school where no one will try to kill him. I think the boy really needs that for a while.”

“And me?” came from Cara in a voice already lonely.

“I think your aunt has plans for your education,” Ruth said, eyeing Abby. She nodded. “And you and Bronc can send messages to keep up with each other.”

“I’m not sure I like that,” Cara said.

“All I ask is that you give it a chance for six months,” Abby said. “If it isn’t working out in half a year, we can look it over again.”

“Are you going to quit your job?”

“I don’t think I’ll have to,” Abby said, not meeting Kris’s eyes.

“Then we’ll be traveling around in space!”

“I’m never quite sure where I’ll be from moment to moment,” Abby admitted.

A waitress arrived to take orders; decisions were hastily made. And Captain Drago asked Kris what he was doing here.

“How big is your ship?” she said.

“The
Wasp
has changed a lot since you were last on her,” Drago said, “but she’s not a whole lot bigger than when you stole her.”

“I captured her fair and square,” Kris grumbled, but a schematic of the ship appeared on the table before them and it held her attention.

The ship was designed to pass for a vulnerable five-thousand-ton freighter. The command and crew space was forward. Amidship was a long spindle where shipping containers were attached to honest merchant ships. The
Wasp
could actually take quite a few.

Aft was the engine room that Kris remembered only too well.

Now, a large structure ballooned out to cover the length of the ship. And that was its secret. Smart metal could be rotated along the side of that outer skin, absorbing laser hits and radiating the heat back into space.

The
Wasp
had a warship’s hide on a sheepskin cover.

“And that’s not all. Nuu Research made a breakthrough. Our new reactors can strip electricity directly out of our fusion drive. No more having to use magnetic coils to coax electricity from the plasma blasting out our engines.” Drago grinned. “Next time we get in a fight while in orbit, somebody’s going to be very sorry they went for us.”

“How many people can you handle aboard?” Kris asked.

“Still only thirty. Maybe forty if they’re friendly.”

“I’ve got a hundred, hundred and fifty marines I need to get out of here.”

Drago paled at Kris’s words. “I’d never count on a Marine to be friendly.”

“There’s a Nuu Ship repair and modification facility here on High Eden,” Nelly said. “It lacks a full yard capability but it has some tools.”

“For what?” Drago said.