“Driver’s dodging right and left, but I’m getting lower. Less of an angle. Shot’s away. . . . It’s going to miss. No, he turned into it. Oh Lordy, what a mess.”
“What’s happening?” Kris demanded, envisioning the car going rear over front, or rolling over and over as a dust cloud engulfed it. Or worse, the whole thing blowing up in flame and smoke.
She looked toward the horizon; it stayed an eye-blinding blue.
“The driver is just letting his rig coast to a stop. The package in the passenger seat is doing a whole lot of moving, and I don’t think it’s happy. Not happy at all.”
A few minutes later, Private Zenger had an open mike up beside the rig, transmitting as one cowboy cussing a blue streak about minding his own business when that thing grabbed him, then getting tangled all up and damn near breaking his neck and a whole lot of other thoughts on life in general and whatever this thing was and why people were dropping out of the sky and disturbing his day.
Ron and his herald took off in that general direction at a clip Kris could not hope to manage. She considered asking for a ride, but, since one was not offered, she suspected it was not the kind of thing that Iteeche did.
That left her all dressed up, commanding an armed force sitting in the middle of a planet she didn’t have permission to invade, and hoping nobody happened along and noticed.
Correction, nobody else happened along and took an interest in what she was doing on their planet with two squads of Royal Wardhaven Marines.
From the noise made by the local they’d made the acquaintance of, strange armed forces were not at all welcome here.
Kris did have a tiny bit of luck. Chief Beni and his amazing Da Vinci managed to get her an unlisted number on the local net, as well as one for the Wasp. Now they could talk to each other when the ship wasn’t above the horizon.
That allowed Kris to have the next shuttle drop onto the dry riverbed with two gun trucks, minus the guns. With mobility, Kris arrived at the site of the tangled-up human and Iteeche about the same time Ron did.
“So,” Kris said, looking at the pair in the sticky net. “What do we do with them?”
“You can cut me loose,” the human demanded.
“You can slit my throat,” the Iteeche said with equal force.
“I hope you folks can keep the two of us straight,” the cowboy said. “I’m the one that likes my throat just the way God made it.”
“I think we can tell you two apart,” Jack said. “Our problem is that you’ve seen way too much.”
“You mean like an Iteeche roaming around with no brand. I got no problems with a maverick or two on the range.”
“After the talking-to you’ve given us, I don’t think there’s much of a chance that you’d kind of like forget you ever saw the Iteeche and us?” Jack asked.
“Forget I’ve seen three Iteeche and a whole posse of Marines that don’t belong here. Not bleeding likely.”
“I wish you hadn’t said that,” Kris said.
“What can you do about it?” the cowboy demanded.
Kris turned away from the cowboy to raise a questioning eye at Jack. “Looks like this is another planet we won’t be invited back to,” the Marine said, with a sigh.
“Still five hundred and ninety-five to go,” Kris said.
“More if we start on the Iteeche Empire,” he said with only a slight groan.
Kris turned back to the private citizen of Texarkana. “Sir, I’d like to invite you to an all-expenses-paid vacation enjoying the fine hospitality of my good ship, the Wasp.”
“And if I don’t take all that kindly to an offer from Princess Kristine of Wardhaven? I heard you were coming to these parts. Ain’t you supposed to tell those immigrant industrialists that they ought to just shut up and take things the way they are?”
“I heard that,” Kris said. “It came as a surprise to me.”
“I also heard tell that you were going to tell us to stuff the old ways where the sun don’t shine and let them have a vote, even-steven, one man, one ballot.”
“I also heard that,” Kris said. “It came as a surprise, too.”
“I didn’t think you Longknifes got surprised all that often.”
“Lot of people think that. None of them are Longknifes, I assure you.”
“So that’s the way it is, huh? What are my chances of dodging this bit of hospitality you’re offering?”
“Pretty much the same as you making a run for the horizon faster than my Marines can put a sleepy dart in your butt.”
The cowboy eyed the distant edge of the sky and shook his head as much as the tangle net allowed. “I got a date with my Suzie for Friday night. I hope you get your problem solved before she finds a better square dancer than me.”
“We will try,” Kris said, and ordered both the human and the Iteeche cuffed, then had the tangle net sprayed so that it hardened and broke into chunks.
“Why didn’t you let them kill me?” Philsos demanded of Ron.
“If it had been left to me, I’d give you the knife myself, but the humans think enough Iteeche blood is on their hands. You will live until we return to the Emperor. He will decide what you may do to restore honor to yourself and your family.”
Kris got her command, plus prisoners, loaded and headed back to the shuttles not a moment too soon. From that far horizon her prisoner had considered making a run for came the dust of a truck, maybe two.
Then a call came from the landers. They spotted dust from two rigs speeding toward them.
The drivers of Kris’s trucks put the hammer down, and the rigs bounced from one rock to the next clod of grass with painful speed. By the time Kris rolled up to the shuttles, only the noonday heat kept her from naming the make and model of the approaching trucks . . . or them reading the numbers on the landers.
Her trucks drove into one lander as the rest of them raced for the other, hefty Marines dragging recalcitrant prisoners. The shuttles were rolling even as the rear doors began to rise. Kris helped strap in the Iteeche, then checked the cowboy before taking her own seat.
The shuttle was accelerating even as her buckle clicked shut.
Kris jacked up the power on the nose camera and swung it around to get a good view of the approaching trucks. Someone stood in the lead truck’s passenger seat, leaning on the front screen and pointing a pair of binoculars at the climbing shuttles.
With any luck, Kris’s optics were more powerful than those. And got a more steady view. And the only pictures of the situation for anyone to examine in detail.
So much for the start of this mission. Still, there was an upside. They had all the Iteeche back under control.
No one had been killed.
And likely no one on Texarkana knew who these strange visitors were and why they had come.
At least until Kris released the guy she was holding.
28
The shuttles took an hour to rendezvous with the Wasp; they’d launched when the ship was still on the other side of Texarkana and had to go high to allow her to catch up with them.
Penny was waiting for Kris when her shuttle docked. “You want the good news or the bad news.”
“Go easy on me. I’ve had a lousy day,”
“You’ve made it back in time to get gussied up and back down for the party tonight.”
“If that’s the bad news, what’s the good news?”
“That was the good news. The bad news is that the police radio bands are full of the news that a cowboy has disappeared and that some strange aircraft hauled him off to somewhere.”