“What about that aide of his—what’s his name—Toller, Toleman—?”
“All he does is carry the reports back and forth and tell Kimberly who to open the door to. Another MBA. Pigs’ll fly stealth bombers before he questions an order.”
“Okay,” says Tacoma, bringing the conversation back to the map and the advancing enemy. “Manny’s going to take care of air recon. We need some boots on the ground, too.”
Maggie nods approvingly. “Make the assignments when the birds get back.” She turns her attention to Wanblee Wapka. “What are your defense caps?”
His eyes, as startlingly blue as his daughter’s meet hers. “Sixty able-bodied adults with small arms and the skill to use them. Another twenty or thirty for support. If this force gets past you, though, our only real defense is our feet.”
Maggie taps the end of her marker against the map. Multi-task, Allen. Contingency plans. “All right,” she says. “When the time comes, I’ll have two Tomcats fueled up and ready to go. One to cover Rapid City, one to cover you guys if the bastards flank us and turn north. If the droids keep their forces all together, we’ll have them for our ace in the hole here. With distances that short, we won’t need guidance systems for the ‘Cats, and most of our ordnance has been reconfigured to laser.
“Meanwhile, we need an accounting of assets. Tacoma: get me an inventory of all armor, artillery, small arms and foot soldiers and your assessment of the best use we can make of all of the above. I already know what we can put in the air and who can fly it. When we know more about what we’re facing, we can talk deployment.”
“Meet them on the road if we can,’ says Dakota. “Block them off before they can reach the Base or the city.”
“Exactly. And we need to keep our options open to do that.” Maggie folds up the map and hands it to Dakota. “You and Tacoma know the ground better than anyone else here. Choose at least three provisional points where we can cut them off. Kirsten—any luck with that droid fragment Jimenez brought you?”
“Not yet—” Kirsten’s head turns abruptly toward the window, where a shadow crosses the blinds, accompanied by the rich, sweet scent of pipe tobacco. Tacoma reaches a long arm behind her and opens the door to admit Fenton Harcourt, a briar between his teeth and a sheaf of papers under his arm.
“Well,” says the Judge. “How unassuming. Foxes have lairs and birds have their nests, but the Wing Commander operates out of a middling small closet, and the President of what’s left of these United States has no office at all.”
Maggie eyes the folders warily. “What can we do for you, Judge?”
“Nothing you’ll enjoy,” he answers, sifting three of the thin portfolios from the stack. “General Hart saw me after a lengthy wait this afternoon, then told me to take the matter to you.”
“And the matter is?”
“McCallum. Petrovich. Kazen.” Harcourt punctuates the names with the slap of each file as it hits the desk. “They are presently back in the guardhouse, since there are no facilities for holding them in Rapid City. Neither are there any facilities for carrying out their sentences. You do not,” he adds, “seem pleased.”
“I am,” she says precisely, meeting Harcourt’s, “just as pleased as I would be if Ms. President’s dog had made me a present. Asimov would, however, be too polite dump it on my desk.”
Unexpectedly, Harcourt’s face splits in a grin, pipe still tight between his teeth. “Colonel,” he says, “I am sorry I underestimated you. Unfortunately, there is no one else with either the authority or the means to handle this problem. Civil institutions remain in suspension.”
“Unfortunately,” she says, “you’re right. Tacoma.”
“Ma’am?”
“When you get me the list of troops, pick out twenty-five by lot. We’ll cut them down to fifteen in a second round. Tell Major Grueneman to see that the indoor firing range in the gym is set up, and make sure we’ve got lighting there. Better get started now.”
“Ma’am.” Tacoma salutes and squeezes his large frame around Kirsten and the Judge, making for the door. Kirsten moves over by one seat, offering her chair to Harcourt.
“I take it there’s something else I can do for you, Judge?”
“Not you, Colonel. Rivers,” he says, addressing Wanblee Wapka. He takes a long draw on his pipe, and smoke streams out his nostrils. “Can your settlement accommodate a new widow and her orphan daughter?”
Wanblee Wapka contemplates Harcourt’s face for a long moment, his eyes blankly amiable. Then the laugh lines around them fold into wrinkles, and he says, “Fenton, you do know how to ask a leading question, don’t you? ‘Poor little match girl out in the snow.’ You’re referring to Ms. Buxton, I take it?”
Another puff and river of smoke. “I am.”
“Have you consulted the lady about these arrangements?”
“I will inform her of the possibility when I have your answer.”
“You have it, then. Tell her to be ready.”
“Mrs. Rivers?”
“Themunga wouldn’t turn away W. T. Sherman himself if he showed up on her doorstep hurt or hungry.”
“No,” Dakota says wryly. “She’d nurse him back to health, then take his hair.”
Maggie catches a small, alarmed glance as Kirsten’s eyes shift from Koda to her father and back, and she allows herself to wonder how the Rivers matriarch will take to a white daughter-in-law. Not easily, by all indications. But she says only, “Any other business?”
There is none, and as the rest file out her door, she sets grimly to making arrangements for a triple execution. Not for the first time, she wishes for a good stiff drink.
Damn Hart.
Damn Harcourt.
Damn the three bastards who made it all necessary.
Most of all, damn Peter Westerhouse and his droids.
*
The wolf cub wriggles in her hands as Dakota lifts him gently away from his mother and places him at the back of the crate that will carry them to their new home. Kirsten kneels alongside, holding his attention with a finger drawn along the wire mesh, so that all his small body wags, and he stands on his hind legs, nipping at the elusive prey and yapping sharply. The sound brings his mother out of her run, straight into the carrier with him. Kirsten withdraws her finger abruptly.
Dakota lifts the small hatch on top of the carrier and bends to scratch the pup under his chin one last time, and smooth the fur on the mother’s head. “Go safely,” she murmurs. “Live well.”
“They’ll be all right, won’t they?” Kirsten asks.
Koda slides the hatch closed and reaches across the top of the crate to take Kirsten’s hand in her own. “The place where Ate will release them has a stone outcropping for shelter and a spring for water. With only one cub, the mother will have no trouble feeding him until he can join her on the hunt.”
“He’s going to release them on your ranch?”
“Han,” Koda says, squeezing her lover’s hand. “I wish we could go with him now. I wish you could see it.”
“When this is over, we’ll go. I still need to meet your mother.”
Koda says nothing, only tightens her fingers around Kirsten’s. Wanblee Wapka’s easy acceptance will make the meeting easier, when it comes. It occurs to Dakota that she probably should have written a letter for her father to carry home to Themungha, but there is no time now. Coward, she berates herself. You can run across a ruined bridge straight into an army like a freaking idiot, but you can’t manage to face your own mother. Aloud she says, “I think I hear the truck.”