Kaspar's Box

VIII: A DEVILISHLY FOUL FELLOW

They were named Sanchez, Ndulu, Rosen, and Nasser and they all looked like they liked bending barbells with their bare hands as warm-up exercises.

Sanchez and Ndulu were female, but you could hardly tell that until you were pretty close, and in the case of the strike team seemed irrelevant anyway. These were not in any way the kind of folks Captain Murphy thought of as normal.

He met them only briefly, as Chung and her tech team set up in an aerovan they had rented and then definitely violated the lease renovating. He would remain with them, and watch and hear the action secondhand. Chung would coordinate wearing the same sort of virtual command helmet she’d used to fly the shuttle; it would augment her senses and abilities sufficiently to effectively monitor all of the automated backups for the team at once, and to effectively watch the combat personnel’s back. Darch would insure that all of those things, including Chung’s apparatus, were deployed and working properly and he would manually back her up; Broz would oversee the equipment they’d assembled in the van as well as the shuttle’s own protective systems just in case they were spotted, even though they would be several kilometers away and in the middle of nowhere when it all went down.

Murphy was surprised they didn’t use robotic soldiers for all this, maybe controlling them like Chung ran the show, but then, he thought, these people were the closest thing to combat robots that he knew and probably both biologically designed and cybernetically augmented for just the jobs they had. He felt helpless, though, just sitting there in the van watching and listening as others determined everything, even though he had no desire to be one of these people.

Maslovic had hoped to put this sort of thing off until he had the full navy task force at his disposal, with any personnel, supplies, gimmicks, and whatnot backing him up, but he felt now as if events were overtaking them. The fact that Macouri hadn’t destroyed the Order’s headquarters when he’d left pretty well said that he expected to return to it, but the manner of his leaving and the totality of the lockup said that he had no plans to return soon.

That left the question of where the rest of the members of the Order were, for there were surely quite a number of them, and also what the hell three pregnant girls from a rural backwater world had to do with all this.

It was his call and he’d made it. They were going in.

The objectives were basic. Incapacitate and capture for interrogation anyone who might be likely to yield information on this business. Seize as much in the way of records and other intelligence as might be available. And, if possible, get those damned jewels, any and all of them, but insure that they were not in the position of being used by wearers against the team. It was that last that worried them all, but at least now they knew the power of the things and they respected it. The order was clear: anyone, and that included the girls, who tried to use the power of those things against the team or any of its members or in aid of anyone in the Saint Phineas group would be simply eliminated. They could not afford to take a chance.

Each of the team members wore a combat suit made for them and for no other person. The suits were almost like living exoskeletons, usable only by their matched wearer and, in fact, were grown in tanks and wedded to individuals through a kind of symbiotic connection that only those who oversaw the process knew.

They had several means of propulsion, but in cases like Barnum’s World, where there was a very strong magnetic field, they were able to literally float above the forest floor and, using magnetic pulses, propel themselves with no more than a low whining sound just about anywhere their wearers wanted to go.

The suits were also thin and plastic, like a thick second skin, and they covered the whole marine save for the face itself. Cybernetic implants throughout the body allowed not only for full control of the suit’s range of functions but also allowed for near silent communication between team members as well as between themselves and the tech coordinator, in this case Chung.

They followed the basic rules of those who created and deployed these teams, a cardinal one of which was to never do anything in the daytime if you could avoid it. The marines’ eyes, from a biodesigner and included in their very DNA, allowed them an amazing visual acuity in dark areas, taking in light at such an efficient rate that they were often nicknamed for big cats. In this case they were Tiger One through Tiger Five, with One being Maslovic himself. With augmentation from the suit electronics, they could if need be also see in spectrums ranging from the infrared to the ultraviolet.

The ferrets had done a nice preliminary recon of Macouri’s lodge and camp, but they could only go so far here. Unlike the house, which had to contend with everything from city power and broadcasts to air conditioning and such, defenses out here could concentrate on the abnormal, which would be anything of any significant size and mobility approaching the compound. Even the ferrets would have been noticed, as they would have shown up as small but potentially threatening animals yet without biological signs. They simply weren’t designed to fend off the kind of probing rays that fed any signs of danger, natural or human generated, to the security people there.

The ferrets could, however, tell the military team what kind of probes and guards were there, and the away team could compensate pretty well for them. They would probably be noticed when they breached the perimeter, but they’d be pretty damned hard to find once they did.

The same went for the team. Once they found a way in, they could make themselves next to invisible to people and virtually all known electronic monitors. That was how they’d surprised the captain back in the alley. The suits could so attune themselves to backgrounds that they were virtually invisible, and because they also masked body heat and emissions if the faceplate was in, they simply didn’t show up as life-forms.

Several kilometers away, completely suited up, Maslovic floated near the compound and observed it through all the filters he had available.

The place itself was as luxurious as he and the others might expect. Built out of a combination of synthetics and real jungle hardwood, it was almost half the size of the big house in town, although far more rustic and exotic looking. It was also round and anchored in the swampy soil on sturdy stilts of the best building support materials, probably anchored to bedrock far down in the earth. The panoramic windows looked out on a jungle lake so unspoiled that it might have been out of some ancient naturalist’s book, and light was not only artificial and direct inside but also outside, again for atmosphere, given by external blazing torches on long poles. These also marked and illuminated well-manicured trails down to places like the boat dock, supply sheds, stables, and whatever else was there.

There was a strong electronic fence around the main compound as well, but it was basically designed to keep things out that might wander in with feet or tentacles or whatever on the ground. This was an area where ancient animals of Old Earth had been released after being brought back from extinction, so there were hippos and crocodiles and a lot more about that might well wander into camp. Those the fence would discourage.

More imposing was the aerial protection. Using the full capabilities of their viewers, the marines could see a vast spiderweb of crisscrossing lines covering the place like a dome, all in the spectrums invisible to the human eye.

“We’re not gonna squeeze in there without being noticed,” Sanchez commented, merely voicing what the others already thought.

“Yeah, anybody bring anything for tunneling?” Rosen asked, only half joking.

“Knock it off, team,” Maslovic responded. “Nothing we haven’t seen before there.”

“Maybe, but when you look at the amplitudes they’re using, they could short out these suits breaking through,” Ndulu put in. “To get through we’re going to have to break the web ahead of time.”

Maslovic concentrated on the main lodge. “A number of people in there. I wish we could tell how many. Broz, what about the ferrets?”

“See if you can drop one between the fence and the shield,” the tech responded from the command center. “They might be plastic enough to breach that web at some point. No place to climb, though, so we’re talking going straight through on the ground.”

“No good, then,” Maslovic replied. “There’s a base band that ties the webbing together. No way a ferret’s getting through at the base. Whoever did this knew their stuff.”

“Schwartz,” Darch put in from the command center. “That sort of thing is what she’s good at. It should also absorb a pretty good series of energy bolts, I’d say, and the moment they know they’re under attack, webs like that automatically go to lethal strength.”

“Maybe. But why have the perimeter fence if you have that?” Maslovic wondered.

“Maybe the thing’s a series of waves going to that central cap,” Nasser suggested. “That would mean that right at that base would be the weakest point. Your lethal pulses would come from that ring up until they met that cap and were dissipated. I think the distribution’s uneven in any event. You can almost see it.”

“Not much room between outer and inner, though,” Ndulu pointed out. “Which of you wants to volunteer to try it?”

It was an interesting point, and a potentially lethal one. If you blew the outer fence, the alarm would go off all over and then, even if the inner web was as weak as the theory went, there would be time for it to concentrate lethal energy on that small area.

“I think maybe we’re going at this wrong,” Maslovic said after thinking a moment. “One missile and this place is history. This isn’t designed to repel an army, or anything like one. It’s a defense against spies, thieves, and large animals. Too bad we don’t have some large animals around. We might be able to panic them into all that and short it out.”

Back in the command center, Captain Murphy moved forward. “Darch? You got a high-up view of the animal life in the area?”

The tech frowned at the interruption but switched one of the screens to a broader view. “Yeah. So?”

“Hmmm… Forget them big suckers in the shallows there. They’re hippos. They’d do the job but they don’t exactly herd. But there’s some grasslands off to the east of the lake. They wouldn’t generally come into the jungle, but they could probably be convinced. See ’em?”

“No, I—oh, yeah! Look mostly asleep, though.”

“Indeed they would be. They’re daytimers mostly. Still and all, I don’t think we’re gonna sneak into that pretty place out there. That means we either just watch it or we take it down. What do you say, Sergeant? Take it down?”

Maslovic heard the exchange and examined the options. “I think he’s right, troops. But it’s going to take a while to set up, and in the meantime maybe we ought to sit it out for several hours. See who appears tomorrow morning. By then, maybe, we’ll be in position to take this damned place and all that’s in it.”

They both looked like something out of another world and a far earlier age. Georgi Macouri wore a lightweight but semiformal coat and tie and matching dark Bermuda shorts; Magda Schwartz was in a long flower print dress. Both wore substantial chukka boots that provided substantial if incongruous protection.

“What a gorgeous morning, darling!” Schwartz gushed, looking at the sunrise over the lake beyond.

“Indeed. Shall we have some breakfast, my dear?” Macouri asked her.

“Oh, yes. Out here, of course.”

Marcouri turned towards the front door and called, “Joshua! We will take our morning repast on the porch!”

Within a minute, a huge bearded man, easily two meters tall and dressed in white jacket and black pants, emerged from the house carrying a silver tray with two pitchers and twin cups and saucers on it. Only his gunbelt and holstered pistol seemed unusual. He approached the duo now seated at a small table on the porch and professionally put the cups and saucers on the table and then poured for both of them.

Magda Schwartz turned and looked out to her right, frowning. “Frightful noises over that way, darling! I wonder what in the world that can be?”

Marcouri nodded and turned in the same direction, cocking his ear, as he sipped his morning coffee. “Can’t say, but it’s not quite anything I’ve heard before from here.”

“Goodness! You can feel the ground shaking a bit! If I didn’t know better, I’d swear that was a herd of elephants approaching at full gallop! I hope the vibrations don’t set off all the alarm systems!”

“Elephants! Yes, that’s exactly what it sounds like!” Marcouri was on his feet. “Joshua!” he shouted. “Come at once! Everyone else to their places! I don’t like the sound or feel of this!”

Schwartz looked confused and concerned. “A herd of wild elephants? Why would they be coming this way? My god, there’s swamp and dense forest between their area and here! They must be frightened as hell of something!”

“Or being driven! Joshua! Bring me the shotgun!” He turned to his companion. “You wish anything, my dear?”

Magda Schwartz pulled up her flowered print dress along her left leg and withdrew a nasty looking energy rifle from a leg holster. “Not exactly in period, but sometimes one must do what one must do.”

Joshua emerged, handing a double-barrelled shotgun of the type approved by the Barnum’s World gamekeepers to Macouri and then drawing his own very large pistol. It looked exactly like a large caliber projectile sidearm of the approved sort, but in reality it was a powerful tight-beam ray device that could burn a hole in a hippo at short range. Its only drawback was that its power was quite limited by the need for imitation; although he had more powerpacks in his jacket, he would have only a few seconds of sustained shooting before he’d have to manually eject the dying cartridge and insert a new one.

Georgi Macouri stared in the direction of the steadily increasing sounds and vibration and shouted over the rising noise, “Magda, what would happen if a dozen full-grown elephants hit that outer fence?”

She looked suddenly at a loss and shook her head. “I don’t know. It wasn’t designed for an entire herd. More worrisome is the inner grid. At that speed, while the lead couple may well be barbecued, it might displace the connector foundations and bring the whole thing down!”

Macouri looked over at Joshua. “Get most everybody out here, now! Leave somebody to look over the guests, but otherwise, emergency! And call in the aerobus!”

The sound and vibration were almost unbearable now, and there was, in addition, the cracking noises and shaking of trees just beyond their direct view, telling them that whatever was coming was almost here. They almost wished that whatever it was, in fact was already here. The suspense was worse than fighting off a threat.

A half-dozen burly gunmen burst from the lodge and began fanning out along the porch, heavy weapons in hand. They were huge brutes, heavily tattooed from head to foot, mostly dressed in work pants and sleeveless undershirts. They looked like nothing so much as a cartoon of someone’s vision of an old pirate crew; one or two even had nasty-looking side swords to complement their much more modern laser pistols.

Macouri felt better just seeing them there. Any one of them could blow a couple of rampaging elephants to the next planet.

Magda Schwartz looked very nervous now, waiting for the attack to come at any moment. “Oh, and it was such a pretty morning!” she said, mostly to herself.

Joshua, the clear leader of the staff and guards, frowned suspiciously as he looked out at the trembling bush. “There’s something bloody strange here,” he said loudly.

“What?” Macouri shouted over the increasing din.

“I said that something’s not right here, sir!” the big man shouted. “Nobody controls elephants like that except they be ridden by experts! Particularly not through that bloody swamp! It’s a trick of some kind, I swear!”

At that moment, they were all knocked over as a huge blast seemed to strike the lodge from the rear, followed quickly by a series of small, sharp explosions. Instantly, a circular arc of bluish energy was formed by the security grid and seemed to pour to the rear, and there was an incredibly loud clap of thunder and the smell of ozone.

Macouri tried to pick himself off the porch and find where he’d dropped his gun. “All of you! Up and to the back!”

“No!” Schwartz screamed at them as the din of charging elephants continued. “That was the grid shorting out! We’ve got no security fence!”

That got everybody’s attention. “Good god! We’re sitting ducks out here, then!” their boss said loudly but as much to himself as to them. Finding his shotgun, he got to his feet. “Everybody spread out! Joshua! You and Spilver to the rear to see what happened! The rest of you stay at your post and be prepared to shoot anything that approaches!” He ran over and helped Schwartz to her feet. “As for us, my dear, I think we’d better retreat inside!”

She looked a bit dazed and shaken, but managed to nod, and with the help of his arm made it back inside the large lodge doors.

At the back, Joshua and the scruffier-looking but equally imposing Spilver made it to the back by opposite routes at almost the same time, weapons drawn and ready. There was nobody obviously there, but something clearly had happened. The whole rear grounds had been scoured almost as if a meteor had struck.

Going to the railing and looking down, the two guards saw a massive black basalt rock that had to weigh a ton or more sticking half in and half out of the earth. It had clearly had no problems with the outer fence and had been flung in by someone or something with enough force that it had come to rest on the anchor of the grid, and had gouged enough ground to take out the whole circular base for the entire width of the great rock. It looked scarred and now had several deep fractures, the result of both the landing and the massive energy that had come in and concentrated on it just after it had broken the plane, but it had done its job.

Joshua looked over at Spilver. “Get inside to the security console and cut the exterior power on this thing! Otherwise it could flare up at any moment and fry any of us!”

“Aye, sir!”

“And make sure the internal controls are still viable!” the big security chief added.

As Spilver ran to do his assignment, Joshua got to work with the old-fashioned kind of duty he felt most comfortable about. Calling the security people together, he positioned them around the entire lodge but on the porch, warning them not to step off until Spilver reported that it was safe to do so, and placing them in such a way that each one could see the man or woman on each side of them all the way around. Somebody had gone to a lot of trouble with this, but so far they hadn’t taken advantage of it. Well, let ’em come! He felt confident that his people could take anybody else human one on one, and most of them preferred it that way anyway.

Off to the east, someone quite deliberately and somewhat mockingly killed the noises of a herd of charging elephants in such a way that the sounds slowed to a stop, betraying their phony origin.

Joshua fingered his weapon and looked out at the bush. Okay, he silently called to whoever it was, you want to come to me now, come on! Even on elephants!

“Got both ferrets in,” Broz reported. “One of them went in the front door with those two characters! They never looked up! Talk about roughing it! The damned lodge is even air conditioned!”

“They’ve still got power, then?” Maslovic asked.

“Yes, sir. Full power and water on. They’ve got internal security systems, too, but with all those people there they have to be on minimum.”

“Still, best not to disregard them,” the team leader said, both to himself and as a reminder to the others. “They’re almost certainly keyed to anybody not in their data banks.”

“I wouldn’t worry about them too much,” Broz responded. “They haven’t spotted either ferret yet and they had to be easily updatable if the girls are in there, let alone anybody else.” She whistled. “Quite a place in there. Not a lot of privacy, but lots of atmosphere. I’ll feed it to you.”

It was luxurious, all apparent hardwoods and polished floors and walls. The main living area was a single great room entered from the massive front doors, filled with antique but comfortable-looking furniture, faux wicker tables and settees, a formal dining area that could seat at least twelve, a big central fireplace that looked real but was betrayed as a simulator by the lack of an outside chimney and, along the walls, the stuffed heads of all sorts of exotic wild beasts, mounted on ornate plaques. Although large, the great room clearly wasn’t as big internally as the lodge itself, and there were openings at strategic intervals for entryways into a series of surrounding rooms. Most had push-away netting over their doors, but one near the rear and behind the dining table was a true hinged double door, and next to it a window opening and ledge. Clearly that was the kitchen.

On either side of the central fireplace there were curved stairs leading to a second floor and, up there, a balcony and entrances to what must have been modest-sized but ample bedrooms.

Maslovic did a mental count. Let’s see, ten guard-staff personnel, eight of which were now around the exterior of the place, Magda and Georgi, of course, at least two more guards inside, including the big fellow who was clearly the chief bodyguard, the three girls and at least one other referred to when they came out who, it appeared, was a tough-looking woman with fiery snake tattoos on both arms and maybe different subjects on other places as well, acting as a chief cook and personal waiter to anyone inside. She didn’t look all that old, but a big mane of woolly hair was almost snow white, and there were visible scars on her face, arms, and back. She’d lived a hard life, no matter if it had been a long one or not, and it showed.

“Have one of the ferrets get a peek in each of those rooms, up and down,” Maslovic ordered. “I want to know where those girls are, if they’re here, and if they’re the only ones we haven’t accounted for yet. I don’t want any surprises if we bust into the place.”

“Will do.”

It didn’t seem large enough for there to be any more unaccounted-for staff or guests, but the place was larger than it looked and the downstairs staff rooms were quads, four hammocks to a room, and could easily have handled another four or more staff people. Behind the incredibly realistic simulated fireplace was the full cooking kitchen, complete with a small but adequate walk-in refrigerator and a full replicator unit of the type the navy people recognized from their own ship—but much, much fancier. At the far end was a huge single wooden door with a vacuum-style handle on it. It might have been some security door, but it seemed more likely that it was a small wine cellar.

The girls that had brought them all there were also not hard to find. Irish O’Brian was sitting in one of the plush chairs in the great room thumbing through pictures of some sort and looking nervous. Mary Margaret McBride was pacing around near the front door, even more nervous. Only the quiet and somewhat flaky Brigit Moran was out of sight, possibly upstairs.

What was most noticeable about the two they could see was that both seemed in excellent health and strength, neither seemed a prisoner and, most astounding of all, neither looked pregnant.

“Doesn’t make sense,” Murphy said from the control van. “Even if they’re better healers with superhuman strength, where’s the babies? A crash like we give ’em shoulda woke the little darlin’s up into a screechin’ frenzy. It ain’t normal, I tell you!”

Darch, the overall technical manager for the team, shrugged. “Can you tell me just what is normal about these people? Any of them? Not just your girls.”

“I get your point.”

Broz studied the two they could see. “At least they’re not prisoners or unwilling participants. Look at those faces. As someone with a lot of experience in these kind of operations, Captain, I’d say that if you walked in there now they wouldn’t exactly greet you with hugs and kisses. More likely they’d blow you away without a thought.”

As much as he hated to admit it and only partly believed it, looking at those two in the viewscreen, it seemed very close to the truth.

“Well, no apparent sacrificial altars and the like,” Maslovic noted from his point of view in the trees just beyond the compound. “This isn’t a rescue mission.”

“Praise be for that much!” Murphy muttered to himself.

Darch wasn’t in such a good mood. “Look, it took half the night and more than half the energy pods in this thing to pick up and fling that rock and then get back out of the way. We fooled ’em last time with some jungle terror but they won’t be suckers like that again, and I don’t dare risk bringing this thing in close again. Not to mention that none of you have the power packs to be able to clear this region without us. Either we take ’em, and soon, or they’re going to have somebody in close that will pick them up and we’re off to do this all over again someplace else. Both that big fella before and now our two subjects now are on the horn to somebody. Either we’re gonna have a friggin’ army show up, or they’re getting a lift. Better decide and quick.”

“How much notice can you give us?”

“At best, maybe ten minutes, maybe less. There are busses and vans and shuttles flying all over here at all sorts of altitudes. It’s the only way to get in or out of these places. They don’t have to come from one of the cities or the small freebooter towns here. They can divert at any moment,” Darch reminded him.

Maslovic thought it over for a moment, then sighed. “Okay, so we take them. I don’t want any chances with the ones outside. They all go down. No exceptions. Knock them cold for an hour or kill them if we have to. But inside, stun grenade and heavy stun shots, no lethal force. We need them alive if we can manage it. You see any of those gems on them, you take them. Rip them off with whatever force and by whatever means you need to. Put them in the secure sample pouches and close up tight. You remember what those girls did on the ship. If they get half a chance with us, we’re all dead.”

That’s eight defendin’ against you just outside, Murphy thought. Cocky bald-headed bastards, aren’t they?

Maslovic acted as the spotter. “Okay, everybody, no use for a countdown here. When I give the word, I want each of you to drill the sentry closest to you. Ideally, it’ll be when the other two aren’t looking, but we all know how that drill goes. Sanchez, as soon as you hit yours, cover your left. Rosen, you do right, Ndulu, left, Nasser, right. And don’t shoot each other! I’ll cover from here as best I can and when we get them all, we converge on the main doors but don’t enter. Repeat, do not enter until I join you. The odds are, the first person through without the magic password dies, got it? Okay, the ones outside are beginning to look bored and a couple are just staring out into the jungle waiting for us and wishing we’d attack. Let’s oblige… now!”

One of the guards near the back thought he heard something in the trees and looked up, bringing his weapon up as he did so. At that instant a part of the wooden lodge wall behind him shimmered and seemed to move, and before the sentry knew what hit him there was a sharp electronic thwang! and he got a rough shove over the railing and onto the ground five meters below.

The moment this happened, a female sentry, sensing movement and hearing the report, turned to check on her companion. At that split second, Sanchez whirled left and shot her full in the chest as Rosen emerged from the wall and fired a wide spread on the same hapless sentry from the other side. Even as the woman went down, an expression of total bewilderment on her face, her hands still clutching the rifle, Sanchez was to her, kicking away the weapon and joining Rosen in a near simultaneous firing on the next sentry who was just now turning to see what the hell was going on.

Ndulu and Nasser had the same good fortune on their side of the porch, but the next one in line was able to yell out a warning and even get off a shot before being brought down. The noise of the shot was deafening and unexpected; it had been a long time since any of the marines had heard a real concussion and projectile firing.

Ndulu was forced backwards by the power of the shot, and her left hand went to her right shoulder and came back with blood. “I’m all right! Left-handed! Let’s get the rest of the bastards!” she yelled, and she and Nasser opened continuous fire on the next one in line on their side.

They were now down to three foes on the porch, and the trio weren’t waiting to be picked off. One each crouched on either side of the door, using the porch furniture as shields, while the third, the smallest and most acrobatic of the guards, ran partly down the steps to the ground and then turned and crouched there, able to cover either of her companions or shoot in either direction.

None of them had spotted Maslovic above them and in the trees. “They’re waiting for you on both sides,” he warned them. “I’ll take the one on the stairs.”

Without even thinking about it, Sanchez on one side and Nasser on the other leaped over the railing and landed with rolls on the ground below, then got up and made their way out from the building and then forward, just ahead of their companions still on the porch but at just enough distance to be able to shoot anything that presented itself.

“No good, everybody stop!” Maslovic ordered. “Now, at my command, I’m going to take the stair shooter and I want the two on the ground to use their floater packs, go up and shoot low and wide on either side of the front door. Got it? Darch, you come forward as soon as you hear our shots and finish them off. Okay… Now!”

It was almost a textbook exercise. Although neither of the marines on the ground could see the nearly prone ambushers above, both could see the door and simply rose up and squeezed off an energy clip towards the lowest point on the porch. Maslovic fired as soon as he’d given the order, hitting the woman on the stairs squarely in the back before she even realized he was there. Nasser nailed one on the porch but did not put him completely out of action; the other sensed Sanchez and rolled on the porch as she came up to it. They both fired nearly at once, and both hit their marks. Sanchez dropped like a stone, but the man on the porch was going nowhere, either.

Rosen and Ndulu could see each other as the wounded but still dangerous last guard started firing in wide bursts. He barely missed Nasser but the marine was forced to drop back below the porch line. Shooting out, though, made the guard a perfect target for the two marines closing on his position, and in a double burst he was nearly fried.

As soon as all the opposition was clear, the discipline of the team showed as Ndulu and Rosen kept the door in their sights allowing Nasser and Maslovic to rush to Sanchez. Maslovic kneeled down, checked his companion, and saw that she was still breathing, although shallowly. The shot had been a lethal charge but had been mostly absorbed by the combat suit. It was pretty well shorted out, though, and that meant just insuring that Sanchez didn’t suddenly die from shock. He gave her an injection that would help but didn’t try the stimulants to bring her around. Without the suit capabilities and having taken that kind of shot, she’d be more a danger to herself than a help to the team if she came around right now.

“Darch, bring the van in closer but keep it out of visual range of the lodge. We still don’t know if they have any nasty surprises in there,” Maslovic called. “Sanchez is down on the ground to the west of the exterior stairs. She is out but will recover. Pick her up as soon as I call you in. Got that?”

“Aye, sir,” Darch responded.

Broz immediately began the report from the ferret camera. “The cook and chief bodyguard inside are on either side of the door ready to blast anyone who comes in, but Schwartz is just sitting, apparently unarmed, on one of the big sofas there and Macouri has that gun in his hands but it’s being held in a more or less relaxed position. He doesn’t look very confident and may be deciding what to do. The two younger women have backed off to the kitchen area but appear to be just looking nervously back at the door waiting to see what will happen.”

“Can you risk exposing a ferret?” Maslovic asked.

“I think so. I wouldn’t want to expose the wide-camera one I’m looking at now, but the recon one’s expendable if necessary. There’s no obvious sound system to broadcast into that’s on, but I could probably get the internal speaker levels loud enough to be heard. I think now’s the time or they might take a stand. You want to do it or should I?”

“You go ahead. You can see what’s going on in there better than I can. I don’t want to obscure vision out here now. You never know when something’s going to pop up.”

“Very well. I’m going to try and position it for maximum effect and minimum target, up and to one side of the fireplace. The acoustics with that high ceiling should do, although I wish that damned ceiling fan was off.”

“Just do it!”

Broz cleared her throat. “Attention! You inside! We are a marine field-strike team. All of your support outside has been neutralized.”

Everybody inside jumped and began looking around to see where the sound was coming from. It wasn’t booming or threatening, rather it was thin and distant, but they definitely could hear and understand it.

“By whose authority do you invade my property and wantonly kill my people?” Macouri shouted out, defiance in his tone.

“We are a special force unit under the command of Captain Kim of the naval cruiser Thermopylae,” Broz responded. “Your—guests—can tell you more about it if they already haven’t. You are engaged in illegal commerce with unknown alien forces.”

“Alien! Poppycock! I deal in no forces that mankind hasn’t been familiar with since its very beginning! You have no right to do this!”

“We have every right under our commission from the Earth System Combine, also known as the Confederacy of United Worlds.”

“The Confederacy is dead! You are nothing but a bunch of pirates and thugs!” Georgi Macouri shouted, still looking up and around, trying to locate the speaker but being defeated by the diffuseness given to sound by the great room’s design.

Got you there! thought Captain Murphy, watching the whole thing from the van.

“I am not going to argue with you, sir,” Broz responded to the outburst. “We are in position. You have one minute. We may move at any time after that. If we continue military action we will continue it to its end. You will not be permitted to cause us harm and then give up. You understand that? I see that you do. No more debate. Your choice. Your free minute begins… now.”

“Now, wait a minute…” Macouri began, but he suddenly realized that the point of no return was upon him. He looked over at his remaining guardians. “Joshua? What do you think?”

“We can take a few of ’em with us, sir!” the big man responded confidently.

“Perhaps, but a fat lot of good that does us.” He was sweating in spite of the air conditioning, and his face showed real anguish. He turned to his companion on the sofa. “Magda?”

“What can they do, darling? Let them play soldier, then we’ll buy them another spaceship or something to play with and everybody will be happy.”

His teeth clenched, Macouri hissed, “Yes,” although he clearly didn’t like the choice. He turned around and looked at the ceiling again. “All right! All right! Resources are the better part of valor and all that! Joshua, Natasha—just put down your guns and stand by. I’m putting mine on the floor.”

Joshua looked almost disappointed. “Whatever you say, sir,” he responded, and both he and the hard-bitten cook put down their rifles and knives as instructed and walked over and stood behind their boss.

“I think you can go in now,” Broz told Maslovic. “They look like they’ve given up.”

Even with all that, the sergeant opened the door as if the ambush was still waiting, and Nasser and Rosen flanked either side of the double doors, weapons at the ready.

Maslovic took a deep breath and walked in. The two on either side followed him, still at the ready, and Ndulu, who was still bleeding but not badly from her earlier wound, brought up the rear directly in back of him.

“Ndulu, think you can collect the weapons and still be okay? That’s not a good-looking wound,” the sergeant asked, concerned.

“I’ll manage.”

The drill was then to cover those standing and sitting in front of them while the other two took the sides and explored the rooms, then went up both stairs and did the same upstairs to insure that there were no ugly surprises waiting for them there that the ferrets had somehow overlooked.

Nasser emerged from the far room on the right and said, “Clear!” Rosen was only a few seconds behind on the left. They started for the nearest stairs, but at just that moment Brigit Moran emerged from one of the rooms, yawned, then looked down into the great room and the scene below.

She looked puzzled for a moment, then spotted and recognized Maslovic. “Oh, hi!” she called out, sounding very friendly. She even gave him a little wave. “Can we play with your spaceship some more?”