Kris ordered Chesty’s spy eye to focus on the command rig. The man was still standing though now he leaned on the cab of the truck, binoculars roving over the Marine position. Then he came back to focus on Kris.
Kris couldn’t help it; she gave him a confident wave.
Two hundred meters away, the man with the binoculars put them down and scowled at Kris. Then he turned to the trucks on either side and raised his right hand.
The trucks came to a ragged halt. Up and down the line people shouted as they leapt, dropped, or helped others from the trucks. To shouts, the general mob flowed into a line, of sorts, facing Kris and her deployed Marines.
Kris studied them. Most looked hardly better off than the refugees Kris had just fed. Some leaned on long poles with blades on their tips. Someone must have gone into business converting available metal into machetes. There were many examples of them, similarly fashioned to the ones the Marines had confiscated from the pirates in orbit.
Many of the people had nothing but a club or bat.
Of course, there were also those with rifles and machine pistols.
The two trucks on the extreme wings each disgorged twenty or so men and women who held these weapons and looked like they knew how to use them. Dressed in parts of black uniforms, they went to ground. Once prone, they settled into a steady aim at Kris’s Marines.
They didn’t bother being nonthreatening. None of that aiming high stuff for them.
The Marines returned the favor as their rifles came level.
The two trucks closest to the command rig also had heavily armed types. On close observations, some even had body armor. A few shoulders showed NCO stripes from Greenfeld State Security. Once prone, they took the same aggressive aim at Marines.
The hairs on the back of Kris’s neck stood up. From the looks of it, she needed to start a new timer on how long it had been since someone tried to kill her.
Kris moved the overhead picture to examine the prone shooters across from her.
Beside her, Penny shook her head. “Look at all the unemployed Greenfeld security troops. Wonder how good they are?”
“Something tells me we’re going to find out,” Jack said.
Kris shrugged. “I don’t recall that many times Peterwald’s State Security went up against anyone with guns, do you?”
Penny took her own good time answering Kris’s question. “Officially, the boys in black never have used their guns,” she said slowly. “Abby says there are unofficial reports of several public protest gatherings that got sprayed with automatic weapons fire. There are no reports of anyone shooting back. The Peterwalds keep pretty tight control of guns in their backyard.”
“Keep, or kept control of guns?” Jack asked.
Penny just shrugged.
Kris completed her study of the opposition. It seemed to fall into two distinct groups. Those with guns were well fed and focused on threatening the Marines. Those without guns were emaciated, formed small groups to talk among themselves, and seemed a whole lot less interested in being close to all this firepower.
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.