''They've got to be down there somewhere,'' he said, glaring at both his sensors and weapons leads.
''Yes, sir. The problem, as it has been with the farmers, is where?''
''We seem not to have surprised them,'' Thorpe said.
''The ones we have captured don't claim to have been warned. They haven't seen a ship in nearly a year.''
''Save this for later. I want Longknife now. Her ships just landed. Where?''
''We've searched every inch of the settlement. They didn't land on any of what they call roads. No landing runs on any fields. They could not have landed in the trees. We'd see wrecks all over the place. Could they have jumped and their landers recovered back aboard their ship?'' the young man on sensors said helpfully.
''Colonel Cortez reported no such sonic booms,'' Weapons interjected. ''Booms when they came in. Nothing going out.''
''Let's stick to the likely, shall we,'' Thorpe said. ''Longknife likes water landing for her LAC, at least she did when I knew her. What have you got along rivers and lakes?''
''Nothing, sir,'' reported Sensors. ''Those landers should be hotter than two-dollar pistols. We've got nothing on infrared either pulled up on the beach, or floating. Even if they did cool them, we show nothing on visuals. If she landed, the earth has swallowed them up.''
''Like it has the rest of these people,'' Thorpe muttered. He was tired of hearing that line.
''There is one thing, sir,'' Weapons said.
''What?'' Thorpe demanded.
''Well, sir, we know that they have to be carrying a lot of heat from reentry. Nobody, not even a Longknife, can do a reentry and stay calm and cool.'' She risked a smile at her own joke.
Thorpe allowed a thin one to encourage her. She, at least, was using her head.
''There are two heat anomalies,'' Weapons began.
''Anomalies is right,'' Sensors cut in. ''Easily explained by natural causes.''
''Two,'' Thorpe said.
''As if she had split her forces, sir, one out on the fringe in a lake, the other closer to the center but spread all over. Maybe a strike force and a reserve?''
''You're setting up a straw enemy to fit nothing but a bit of sun-warmed lake.''
''Where?'' Thorpe demanded.
The forward screen was replaced with a map of the settled areas. Weapons highlighted a section of the screen. ''This river suddenly warms here, but is cool again five klicks downriver. This lake is snowmelt cool, but down here near the river that empties it, it's warmer.''
''Less than a tenth of a degree. It could just be sun warming shallow water,'' Sensors pointed out.
''Radar says that lake is deep, a hundred meters or more. And it rises quickly at the shore,'' Weapons said softly.
''Who owns this homestead?'' Thorpe asked.
''Ah, just a moment, sir,'' Sensors stuttered. ''A Robert Fronour, sir.''
''Isn't he the original settler of this planet?'' Weapons said, her voice rising. ''Didn't that Longknife girl claim to have someone of his family and cargo for him?''
''Yes she did,'' Thorpe said, making a snap decision with no doubt that it was the one to make. ''Weapons, two targets. The Fronour farmhouse. Target with one eighteen-inch laser. Use the other eighteen-incher to hit the warmest part of that lake. Let's see if anyone is trying to hide in the bottom mud.''
''I have the target coordinates loaded, sir,'' Weapons said. Pushing off from his chair, she flew arrow-straight for her station. She snagged her station chair with one hand and made final adjustments to her firing solution with the other. ''We will lose our line of fire in five seconds.''
''Fire on the count of three,'' Thorpe ordered. His ''One, two, three'' was short, but it got the job done.
The lights dimmed as the pulse lasers drew all the power they could into two coherent beams of light and death. Thorpe's only regret was that he'd have to wait over an hour to find out if he'd finally gotten that spoiled brat.
17
Lasers from orbit are not supposed to be effective weapons against ground troops. Crowbars, rocks, all of those, according to The Book, are an effective way that an orbital force can contribute to issues that are in doubt on the surface below. Assuming, of course, that you can get rocks and crowbars to hit what you want when they're coming in at twenty-five thousand klicks per hour.
Kris doubted the smart staff weenie who so casually dismissed lasers from orbit had ever taken a good lasing.
Without warning, the main farmhouse, say ten klicks ahead of them, exploded. It just blew up in a hurricane of wind, light, and destruction, throwing flaming pieces of itself in all directions. Most of the outbuildings crumbled in the maelstrom.
The very air around Kris exploded as well. One of the supposed drawbacks of lasers from orbit was their tendency to heat up the air they passed through. This was supposed to cause the lasing beam to lose its tightly wound coherence.
Maybe it wasn't quite as coherent as when it left Thorpe's ship, but the house sure didn't notice the difference. And the air, oh the air around Kris. Some of it roared out from the beam's path. Other gusts were fighting their way in to fill the hole in the sky. And Kris's ears got battered by gusts both coming and going. Kris got off easy, she had her visor fully up. The woman beside her had only opened hers a crack. The visor crumbled and left her face streaming blood.
Kris thought the farmhouse was the only target until it began to rain: water, dead fish, mud, and really ugly-looking things with no fins.
''I think they put one shot into the lake. Didn't you say that they had two eighteen-inch pulse lasers?'' Sergeant Bruce asked.
''That's how the chief called it,'' Kris agreed.
''Well then, we know where both of them went. I hope the captain is real grateful to us for absorbing all the attention.''
''Kris,'' Nelly said, ''Thorpe's ship is below the horizon. We'll have eighty-five minutes before he comes back.''
''Let's put it to good use. On your feet, crew.''
''Can we shoot back next time, Your Highness?'' some wag asked.
''You show me a target in range, and it's all yours,'' Kris assured anyone still able to hear.
Kris spent her nap time designing a set of drifter nanos. Folks can hide but they have to breathe. Somewhere around here air was being sucked underground and blown back up again. Gently, so as not to leave anything visible from orbit. Kris figured she was closer and should have an easier time of it.
That was before someone zapped one farmhouse, its roaring fire now grabbing all the free oxygen available. Gentle drifting nanos would be sucked right into the flames.
This whole show was turning into a bloody lash-up.
Not for the first time since she'd jumped into Panda space, Kris schooled her face to command neutral, let a breath out in a soft sigh … and went looking for Plan B. Or G. Or maybe she was already down to Z.
There was one item on the map Nelly displayed on Kris's eyeball that intrigued the Navy lieutenant. The controlled burn had been started in three layers, each of them about twenty meters thick. Most of what was still burning was in the far line.
But one broom tree in the first line still showed up brightly on infrared. Why? Kris trotted for it, Sergeant Bruce and his squad not far behind.
The most noticeable thing about a broom tree was its trunk. Solid and round at the bottom, it looked like it would take three or four people holding hands to circle it. The trunk rose thirty to fifty meters straight up. At the top it was about as big around as it was at the bottom. Only there, a wild concoction of branches sprang out. It looked like someone had planted a bush on top of a stone column.
But it was the bottom of the tree that Kris now stared at.