Assuming she was alive to fill it out.
And to think, she’d been bored on the flight down.
“Nelly, show me the front view.”
In a moment, Kris was looking at it, adding her and Nelly’s eyes to the four up front. They were still far off and way up.
“Nelly, highlight the four ranch stations.” Suddenly Kris’s vision had three green spots scattered across the horizon ahead.
“Kris, I have a hot spot on the map. No, I have five warm spots and one hotter spot.” Now they showed up on Kris’s view as four red spots and a fifth that pulsed.
“Zoom in,” Kris ordered. Three of the warm spots were trucks radiating heat more from their backs than from the engines.
“I think those are cook trucks,” Nelly said. “Notice the people riding horses around them and the large herds of cattle.”
“What’s the other one?”
“It’s moving quickly over the ground. Notice the dust behind it.”
Which begged the question why. “What’s the hottest one?”
“It is just lying there, Kris. I think we may have our LAC.”
Visual showed nothing, but it did rest in the shadow of the bank of a dry riverbed.
“Jack, have you been following this?”
“Yep, you want to put a cordon around that hot spot?”
“Yes, he’s had over an hour to make tracks. Ron, how fast can an Iteeche move over that kind of terrain?”
“Philsos is not what I would call speedy. He’s been in the court too long to do anything fast. Assume six or seven of your miles per hour.”
“Jack, put a cordon down at ten miles out.”
“Okay, boys and girls, we got a little work to do. Sergeant Bruce, I want you to paradrop your team of four right where we think the LAC is. You give us an immediate report on what you see. And if you find your computer, please turn it on and put Chesty to work.
“The other two teams, drop on the coordinates I’m giving you now. But hang in the air as long as you can for further instructions. Bruce, your team is to do a fast search for footprints leading off from the LAC. Let’s see if you can give the folks in the air a chance to head him off.”
“One important word,” Kris added. “You’ve been issued sticky grenades for your rifles. Use them if you can. We want to take this fellow alive. His space suit is not armored, so standard rounds will go right through him. Sleepy darts have never been proven to put an Iteeche to sleep. For all we know, they might kill him just as dead as a hard round. We want this fellow alive.”
“He may not care all that much about being captured alive,” Ron put in, having been added to Kris’s net. “By his actions, he has dishonored himself and his family. If he is brought back with nothing to show for this dishonor, he might well prefer death.”
“Dead Iteeche are a matter for the Iteeche,” Kris said. “I would very much prefer that we humans had nothing to do with the dying of anyone with more than two legs and two eyes. Understood?”
The reply was mumbled.
“Understood?” Kris demanded in a clear, loud voice.
“Yes, ma’am,” came back at her just as loud.
“The princess and I will be on the net at all times,” Jack cut in. “If you have a situation developing that you aren’t sure you can handle, bounce it direct to us. Any questions?”
“No, sir,” came loud and clear.
“Prepare to drop.”
The Marines went to their stations. Jack turned to Kris.
“Are you dropping?”
Kris would have liked to, but she had Iteeche in the longboat, and if they ran into any humans, it seemed better that Kris be with them. “No, I’m staying aboard with Ron.”
“I’ll stay with you. I can monitor things quite well from here.”
They were still at thirty thousand feet when the rear of the shuttle opened, and the Marines leapt into nothingness.
27
The view ahead of the shuttle showed big clumps of brown grass being chewed on by widely scattered brown cows with absurdly long horns. The clumps of grass would be hard on the shuttle’s landing gear.
What the cows and their horns would do to a longboat and the people in it did not bear thinking about.
“There’s what looks like a dry riverbed,” the pilot said on net. “I’ll try to stretch our glide that far.”
It was a close-run thing.
Kris didn’t realize just how close it was until she dismounted and saw the copilot pulling prickly tumbleweed from one of the main landing gear.
Kris had other things to worry about.
“This is Sergeant Bruce, and we are at the hot spot. It is our LAC-2, and it’s much the worse for wear. I think he intentionally ran it into the side of the dry wash to try to hide it. No computer in sight. It’s dry and rocky ground. No obvious tracks. My techs are trying to find a heat trail or something. Wait one, please.”
It was a very long wait even if it did go less than a minute.
“Folks, we got a problem here,” Sergeant Bruce said as he came back on the line. “On the ground above the dry wash, it looks like someone ran a herd of cattle through here. Say a day ago from the dryness of the cow patties. The ground’s turned up, and we can’t spot an Iteeche footprint among all the cow prints.”
“So we do this the hard way,” Jack said. “Those of you still in the air, you got anything to add to this?”
“This is Private Zenger,” came in an amazingly chipper contralto. “I’ve got the cattle trail in sight. That fast-moving rig cut right through the hoof-marked area, and I can see it making tracks. Would you like to have me follow it and maybe catch up with it?”
“You do that, Cindy Lu,” Sergeant Bruce said.
“Let’s see how far I can stretch this glide,” she said, voice heavy with strain as she worked the shroud lines of her para-glider. “If I pull this off, I don’t expect to hear any more complaints about how small I am.”
“That’s a promise, Cindy,” came from an unidentified male voice on net.
Kris found herself pacing back and forth . . . considered its impact on Ron and her Marines . . . and kept pacing.
“I got a pretty good visual on the rig, Sergeant,” came in that pleasant contralto again. “Looks like there’s a guy driving an open four-wheel-buggy kind of thing, and there is definitely something big in his passenger side, filling the back and front. Can’t tell if it’s a package or something else.”
“Marines in the air, home on Zenger if you can,” Jack ordered.
“Can you reach it before it gets out of your glide range?” Kris asked.
“I don’t think so. That rig is really moving.”
“Do you think you could put a round in it?” Kris asked.
“Clarification, ma’am. Put a round in what? The driver, the thing in the passenger seat, or the rig?”
“Any chance you could put a shot through a tire?”
“Ma’am, I qualified sharpshooter, but that thing is moving fast, and I’m fighting the shrouds. It would be a crapshoot.”
“What about popping a sticky net on those folks?” Kris asked.
“I’m game, ma’am, but I’ll have to concentrate on my aim. I’ll pretty much land where I land.”
Jack turned to Kris. It would be her call. And she’d better make it fast. “Use the sticky grenades.”
“Loading my first one. Sighting in. Damn, I hit an updraft as I pulled the trigger. Now that don’t happen all that much at the range.”
“Can you try again?”
“Ma’am, I got two more grenades. One’s loaded. . . . Fired. . . . Landed just ahead of the rig.”
“Anybody know what tangle net does to a rig’s suspension?” When that got no answer, she reported, “Last round loaded.”