Those had to be about the only thing that will drown out a Marine officer or NCO.
Kris leaned back in her seat and tried to enjoy the flight up to the Wasp. Her little battle with Jack would only be the first round of a war she’d have to win before she dropped down to Denver tomorrow.
But win it she would.
A quick call to Captain Drago and Professor mFumbo brought both of them to the docking bay by the time her liberty launch arrived.
Jack glared at them . . . at her . . . and then listened in silence as the three of them discussed the rental of the ski lodge.
“Thank God,” the professor breathed. “It’s getting to where you can hardly breathe in boffin country, the air is so thick with the last meal.”
“I would have thought your people would have quit eating,” Jack said.
“Hope springs eternal,” mFumbo said, patting his own belly. “Can we send shuttles down tonight?”
“The place is closed down for the season,” Jack put in. “No snow, no skiing. We need to wait for daylight to do anything.”
“Yes,” Drago agreed, “but I can drop a shuttle down tonight to look the place over. I had this photo blown up from our last pass,” he added, unrolling a hard copy of a very attractive and rustic compound of smaller châteaus scattered around a huge lodge. “It looks in very good repair.”
Just as she’d hoped, the professor and the skipper had joined her conspiracy to get a solid placement on Texarkana. Well, she was looking out for the best interests of their downtrodden workers.
Jack threw Kris a nasty look before he glanced at the map. Clearly, at least one of her erstwhile subordinates was not impressed. “What about its approaches?” he demanded.
“I can project a wider area map,” came from his collar.
“Thank you, Sal,” he said, and a map appeared in the air in front of them.
“There is only one road in and out,” the computer said helpfully, and highlighted said road in red. “It is at least a twenty-mile hike over mountains from any other road. It appears quite isolated to me.”
“It does to me, too,” Kris said.
“Can we land a shuttle there?” Jack asked.
“The parking lot extends into an airstrip,” Captain Drago put in. “I’ve checked the field and lot. We can do it if we don’t overload the shuttles and keep their approach speed down. It’s doable.”
“So, Jack, how heavy do you want the Marines to go for this little bit of shore leave?” Kris asked.
“Can I drop them in full battle gear?”
“I’d rather you didn’t. I’ve already invaded this planet once. If I do it twice in two days, it will start to look like a habit.”
“And we do want to go light on the shuttle runs,” Drago reminded them.
“We could just do extra runs with loaded Marines,” Jack insisted.
“I don’t know how many landings we can make down there before the runway starts to show the wear and tear,” the captain said.
“I could leave half a platoon on overwatch from up here, drop them loaded if I need them,” Jack muttered.
“But time in zero gee is muscle,” Kris pointed out. It was a basic lesson in ship handling from OCS.
“Damn it, woman, I know that.”
Kris knew he did. She shut up.
“Okay, we’ll keep one squad of Marines on guard aboard ship, supporting your stay-behind crew.” Captain Drago nodded.
“The rest get shore leave at the lodge, weapons and one base load of ammo, no crew-served weapons. You happy, Lieutenant!”
“Your plan seems reasonable,” Kris said. “If, upon reflection, you want to make any changes, please let me know.
“Now, it’s been a busy day. Tomorrow, I have another batch of no doubt howling-mad locals to try to make sense of. Good night, gentlemen.”
29
Kris was strapped in tight to her seat across from a still-angry Marine captain the next noon as the shuttle dropped away from the Wasp and started its flight to the industrialists’ principal city of Denver.
Jack had demanded that Kris put off her visit to Denver until a message came back from King Ray.
“That will take three or four days,” she pointed out.
“So.”
“We’ve got a cowpoke in our brig.”
“You think you can settle this thing in half a week. Good Lord, Kris, these folks have been at each other’s throats for eighty years! Even you can’t pull a miracle out of a rabbit’s hat that fast.”
“I sure can’t pull out a miracle if I’m sitting on my hands up here!” She then pointed out that the shuttles were ferrying crew, Marines, and boffins down to the ski lodge. They would be staying here for quite some time. “Besides, I’m not going anywhere near cowboy country. I’ll be in Denver, Jack. They don’t carry guns. They have nice civilized judges and courts. No blood feuds.”
Still unhappy, Jack doubled her guard. All were in dress red and blues except for a pair of snipers.
And he demanded she wear her bulletproof spider-silk underwear.
She reached in the collar of her undress whites and slipped a finger under her spider-silk bodysuit to prove it was there.
Even then, it was a rough ride down.
The Denver airport was very different from the one they’d used last night. The runway was paved and fully instrumented. There were warehouses bulging with boxes of goods and two beat-up shuttles ready to be loaded and sent up to any passing cargo ship.
From the age of the burn marks on the runway, it had been a while since anyone had launched to orbit.
Three black cars pulled up to the shuttle as soon as it rolled to a stop. One of them was stretched enough to qualify as a limo. A short fellow in a blue suit was quickly out of that car, his hand extended.
“I’m Tad Kordoka, mayor of Denver. I fill our seat in the House of Dukes, but if any Denver mayor ever styled himself a duke, we’d clap him in a loony bin.”
“Then maybe I’d better present myself as Lieutenant Kris Longknife, special envoy from Wardhaven,” Kris said without missing a beat.
“Smart woman. Didn’t I tell you, Ivan, those Longknifes are a bunch of smart people. Kris, this is Ivan Bogada, the president of our business counsel. He represents the interests of the people who count on Texarkana.”
Kris shook another hand. Like Tad, Ivan looked intent, driven, and expectant. Just the kind of people Kris would not buy a used car from. Kris doubted it would be long before they told her what they wanted done.
In no uncertain terms.
Hopefully, they’d learn quickly that Longknifes were not only smart but also stubborn.
Jack joined Kris in the limo, but the two businessmen ignored him. With Marines riding shotgun in the limo’s front seat and filling up the other two cars, Jack didn’t seem to mind, but concentrated on leaving nothing involving Kris’s safety to chance.
Meanwhile, Kris got a rapidly delivered tour of all the points of interest and pride around Denver. Considering they’d built all of it from scratch in only eighty years, Kris would allow that they had the right to be proud of their accomplishments and wasted no time saying so.
They preened as if they’d done it all by themselves, just the two of them.
Kris wasn’t long in finding out who really had done it.
They didn’t go to city hall, but rather to a new business park, full of gleaming buildings of glass and concrete. Tall offices reached for the blue sky. Squat factory buildings spread out to make “just about anything someone could ask for,” or to store it.