“News travels that fast?” Kris said.
“The only good thing I can see is that there’s nothing on the net about any Iteeche.”
“Thank God for small favors,” Kris said, and pushed herself for her quarters, leaving Ron to take care of his own problem and Jack to turn the Marines over to Gunny.
Well, at least if Kris had to go to a party tonight, Jack would have to be at her side the whole time.
Which caused a strange thought to slip into Kris’s mind. What would it be like to have Ron at her side for the dance?
Strange thought. Strange day.
Hopefully, it wouldn’t get any stranger.
So, of course, it did.
Formal clothes on Texarkana did not involve long dresses. They did involve many petticoats under a knee-length dress.
Which in zero gee had a bad habit of popping up.
Abby suggested Kris wear nice underwear.
And a pistol.
Not her small service revolver in its usual out-of-the-way place. No, Abby strapped around Kris’s waist a huge .44 pistol with a barrel fit for a howitzer. Dirtside, that would have to weigh a ton. Oh and the fine-tooled leather belt had lots and lots of bullets.
“They expecting a herd of elephants to rampage through?” Kris asked.
“Big iron’s the style, girl. Didn’t your momma tell you nothing about ‘when in Rome’?”
Then Abby handed her a short sword. It went all the way down to her hemline.
“You’re kidding!” Kris said as she surveyed the ensemble in the mirror. It was insane. The petticoats tried for all they were worth to fluff up the dress. The heavy metal would flatten it down in all the wrong places once gravity did its thing.
“Are you sure this is the latest fashion on Texarkana?”
“Everyone wears a gun, Kris. Man, woman, and child.”
“Child?”
“Kids start with toys, then progress through air guns with soft fluffy shots, to BB guns, to the real things.”
“Please tell me the education system includes nonviolent conflict resolution along with gun safety and target practice.”
“You can ask a parent at the hoedown,” Abby said, handing Kris a large white hat. “It’s called a Stetson, and the locals are right proud that it can hold a full ten gallons when they use it to water their horse.”
“It looks awfully expensive to get soaking wet,” Kris said.
“It’s the custom. Hopefully, you won’t have to water any horses tonight.”
Kris put the hat on and examined herself in the mirror. She’d worn worse. And a whole lot less.
“Tell me, Abby. How did you know that I’d need to wear something like this on Texarkana?”
“You know all that intelligence I sell about you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I buy a lot, too. Now get moving. You’re gonna be late.”
The trip down was much calmer than the last one. Kris’s main concern was getting her seat belt around the big iron and the short sword. Jack was in the seat across from her. His dress red and blues absorbed the .44 much easier. His sword was standard Marine issue.
Kris’s escort for tonight included Private Zenger, who was just a slip of a woman. The .44 would have looked like a cannon on her. It was replaced with a very authoritative .38. Somewhere out of sight behind Kris’s back, some wag suggested that if you could mix the two of them up and pour them out, you would get two mighty fine women.
Since Kris would gladly trade half her net worth to have just half of what Cindy Lu had in her bra, it didn’t sound like all that bad an idea.
Still, Kris judiciously ignored the comment. No doubt, some NCO gave the joker a look that froze any further comments about the princess they would be guarding tonight.
Kris drew her .44, checked it . . . it was loaded . . . made sure the safety was on and her finger was nowhere near the trigger, then held it out at arm’s length. If she had to, she could use it, though only having six rounds would be a handicap. She’d qualified at OCS with a .45. How different could it be?
They landed on a dry lakebed, several miles from what might pass for a town. At least it had several buildings, and they were well lit up.
The runway was lit, and parked in rows were quite a few aircraft, ranging from small prop jobs to four-engine planes capable of handling a hundred people or more. The lander looked like a hawk at a sparrow convention. Course, Kris had witnessed many sparrows driving hawks away from the sparrows’ nests.
Kris glanced around and saw no land transportation.
“Should we have brought our own rigs?” Kris muttered to herself just as something with one headlight came barreling around the end of the nearest flight line.
“We gonna ride a motorcycle,” came from somewhere among her escort before Kris said it herself. And saved her from saying it as the deepening dusk revealed a truck with one headlight out.
A vehicle that had never come off the assembly line of any major manufacturer rolled to a stop in front of Kris. The hood and front windshield looked familiar. There were three rows of seats behind it under the open sky that looked like they’d come from three different sources. Behind that was a truck bed made from wood and wire.
Still, the engine hummed, the brakes did their job with authority, and, no doubt, this collection of junk flying in loose formation met the needs of its driver.
“You Princess Longknife?” a young man of maybe eighteen asked.
“I answer to that name when I have to,” Kris said.
“Then you and your friends pile in. I’m late for the hoedown, and if my girl ain’t missing me, I’m going to be brokenhearted.”
Kris took the middle front seat, with Jack holding on to the outside. Holding on with whitened knuckles. There was no door on that side.
The Marines boarded the next two seats with expressed bravado and suppressed trepidation. There was a coin toss to see who got to share a seat with Cindy Lu. The other female Marine was broad at the hip and looked fully capable of throwing any and maybe all of the male Marines. That was great in a fight, but in a narrow seat with no doors, and no seat belts . . . not so good.
As soon as all were aboard, the kid took off in a cloud of dust.
There was no actual road, or even trail, leading away from the airstrip, just a collection of ruts that were used more often than the rest of the prairie.
Despite mumbled fears and a few desperate shouts, there was only one casualty of the trip. A jackrabbit which, when caught in the headlight, chose to freeze when it should have bolted.
“The buzzards will take kindly to that,” was the boy’s only comment. He only slowed down when they drove into town.
He pulled up to a well-lit barn, the largest barn Kris had ever seen, and, campaigning on South Continent, she’d toured some pretty big farming facilities.
This barn was huge.
It had also been swept clean of anything left behind by its former occupants and fairly shone in the light.
The dancing had begun. A band composed mainly of fiddles and guitars plunked away, with one fellow loudly calling out things that made no sense to Kris but seemed to keep several groups of dancers pretty much doing the same thing.
Kris’s driver let out a yelp and made a beeline for a certain someone sitting out the dance against the wall with a few other couples of the same age. After hugs and other greetings, the eight of them headed for the dance floor and were soon flowing along with the music no different from the rest.
That left Kris a full minute to contemplate the local folk dance before she spotted three middle-aged couples bearing down on her with the intent and purpose of a battle line in full sail.
Kris allowed herself a shallow sigh . . . and prepared herself for war by other means.