''I understand, Your Highness. If you don't mind, I'd like to take this team, ma'am. Once we're down there, we can set up our watch on the road. Let you know if anything comes up it and do something about anything bite-size and chewy.''
Kris glanced at Gunny. He had a fatherly smile on his face for the young officer, and a quick nod for Kris.
''Set up some tight-beam repeaters along your path so we can keep in touch,'' Kris said, and left the youngster to organize his first command. No, second. He'd had half the company dropped in his lap when the last CO nearly bought the farm on a lovely and violent evening back on Eden.
The LT was whistling softly as he went off to do his duty.
Kris turned to Gunny. ''It seems there is a magic door to all the glorious treasures under the hill if we but go there,'' she said, pointing at the hillock.
''I had a good friend who swore by the little people. Or at them, depending on which way he thought they were leaning,'' Gunny said.
''I had a good friend like that, too, once upon a time,'' Kris said. ''Word is, these people under the hill are our friends. Let's hope they stay that way. See what you can do about getting our troops in there without leaving anything pointing too blatantly at where we went.'' And with that in mind, Kris signaled Andy to lead the way.
Behind her, Gunny went noisily about the business of getting the platoon in single file and having the engineers sweep down their tracks. Kris would have to tell Grampa Ray about this next time she saw him and they were on speaking terms. The Marine engineers were using brush to sweep away the tracks just like Apache warriors of old Earth. It had worked for them in their desperate battle against the odds. What ain't broke, hardheaded Marines didn't fix but stole from with pride.
As Kris approached the cool room, she had to smile. At least the door into the hill was a solid, respectable rectangle. That lowered Kris's expectations for meeting halflings or elves. On the way, she had removed her helmet and gauntlets. It didn't seem quite friendly to make her first acquaintance with an ally encased in armor.
The first man she saw caused her to double-check that the door wasn't round. The short, round fellow, with bald pate and white whiskers looked like he'd be right at home in some fantasy epic. If the tall, thin woman beside him had offered Kris an apple, she would not have taken a bite out of it. Instead, the woman eyed Kris as if sizing her up for some cauldron and let her pass.
Kris's move on down the rabbit hole was brought to a quick halt as, in a flash of gingham skirts, a young woman raced out the door Kris was obviously being directed toward. With wonderfully golden hair and an improbably pale complexion, the young woman easily met the local role of Snow White.
A second later she hit Andy with all the force of the irresistible object. That had to be painful, and the poor kid was bound to find black-and-blue marks on herself in the morning where tender human flesh met the hard, unyielding tools of war. But Snow White's mouth had found Andy's, and the only sound to escape them was pure yearning.
Kris assumed it was pure. This had to be Andy's wife. Otherwise, matters were going to get very interesting very soon.
''Mommy,'' came from the door at the end of the cool room as a grandmotherly type, gray hair in a tight bun, carried a handful up what Kris now saw were dirt stairs.
''Mommy. Mommy!'' came again as the cutest meter of humanity struggled to escape adult control and then did. Perched on her own two feet in defiance of gray hairs and the law of gravity, the little girl drove her pudgy feet forward, one half-balanced step at a time, to what had to be Mommy.
Kris thought Snow White's hair was the fairest and most golden she'd ever seen, but the small version of her was golden almost to white. The toddler reached her mother's skirts and gave them a puzzled look.
Mom was fully off the ground, her pale legs wrapped around the armored and camouflaged waist of the man holding her and showing no interest in letting go. The tiny tyke studied this image of her mom, a setup of skirts and legs Kris suspected was never seen before by these young eyes. After puffing up her lips into the most determined look ever worn by someone with only six teeth, the girl reached high above her head, grabbed a handful of motherly skirts, and pulled. ''Mommy!''
Awareness seemed to dawn on Snow White quite suddenly. Awareness at several levels. First, of her daughter making absolute and personal demands. And secondly of the adults around the room. Kris wondered if she was wearing anything like the silly grin that seemed to have infected every witness to this reunion, which had managed to stop, just barely, short of full conjugal relations.
Suddenly demure, the mother dropped gracefully to her feet. Momentarily, a look flitted across her face that told of legs in hard contact with a sharp and unyielding object … and now hurting.
Settled gracefully on her own two feet, she reached down for the child, who … levitated … into her arms. Clearly, levitation is not a human skill. Of that Kris was sure. Even two-year-olds didn't do that! But that was what Kris saw.
It was either time for glasses or a rewrite of the physics books. Or maybe Kris was looking at such short miniatures of the human condition as something nice to have around.
I am too young to have a ticking biological clock, Kris warned herself and forced herself to grit her teeth against the little invader. But around her, several hard-case women Marines were showing soft, round eyes. And even Gunny was grinning like a proud grampa.
The woman held up her little darling. ''Andy, may I introduce you to Gracie Ann, the youngest of the Fronour family and your daughter.''
''Glenda Sue? No.''
''Yep, she's yours. She goes straight for my breasts, just like her dad.''
Which brought on a laugh from the locals, so Kris did her best not to blush. They were farmers, and things were done in front of them every day that Kris had been protected from until she was twelve and confronted with the red proof of her womanhood … in the quiet privacy of the girls' restroom at school.
At least the principal had been quick to assure Kris that she was not dying of some horrible disease. Mother's only reaction had been to agree that maybe the chauffeur should lay in a supply of female sanitary napkins, what with Kris's age and all.
Thank heavens Henry's wife Lotty had corrected the education Kris got from the girls out behind the gym.
Glenda Sue slipped Gracie Ann into Andy's arms. Maybe it was the armor, but the two-year-old went just as quickly back to mother. But once her well-padded rump was safely held by mom, the toddler began to play with the strange man now in her world.
She yanked on his hair, pulled the mike from his helmet ring, gave it back, and pulled it off again as soon as Andy had reinstalled it. A tech took it this time and, with a smile, draped it over his shoulder out of the reach of pudgy fingers.
''It's getting a mite bit crowded in here,'' the whitebeard said, joining the group around Andy. ''And Grampa wants to have a word with whoever is in charge of our rescuers.''
So saying, he led the way through the door and down dirt stairs. Whoever said that dirt here got hard as concrete once it got in contact with the air had it right. Kris was careful with her weight, but the stairs showed no tendency to crumble.
Too bad Kris couldn't be equally careful with her height. Both the floor and ceiling were uneven. Kris divided her time, half watching her step, the other half looking out for her head. As luck would have it, she was watching her head when she stumbled and looking out for her feet when she banged her head.
Surely, there is no justice. At least, not for Longknifes.