Redoubtable

36

Kris gritted her teeth. The screen in front of her showed Dry Tortugas below. The morning sun had just brought light to Port Royal. It woke people up and brought calls from the ground. Calls that Kris did not have answers for.

Once she had complete control of the High Dry Tortugas space station, Kris started hunting for the boss of the station.

It turned out she already had him.

He was the big fellow with a bad heart and the worst kind of allergic reaction to Colt-Pfizer’s best sleepy darts. When Kris first heard about an overweight guy with an allergic reaction to sleepy darts, she’d wondered why he was playing at pirate.

Now she’d discovering that he was the big guy. Boss of the station. Head pirate among pirates.

What he thought he was doing taking a night out for a little personal rape and pillage would never be answered. He died despite the best effort by the docs on the Wasp.

It was morning . . . and calls were coming in . . . and Kris had no way to answer them.

She tried. Or Nelly tried. Assuming the most solicitous tone, Nelly assured the caller “Big Bill is not available. May I take your message?”

That worked the first couple of times. But apparently Big Bill wasn’t as big as Carita. When the big gal ordered them to throw whatever whore Billy was in bed with out and get him on the phone, all that was left for Nelly to do was switch to a buzz tone and announce that “This line is not in service at this time.”

Which left Kris with a bad set of choices. Was it better to leave the folks dirtside stewing in their own juices, wondering what was wrong up on the station? Or should she let them know the jig was up. Royal and Imperial Marines were getting ready to drop down and demand they surrender or die?

Kris figured she could dither for a while. Admiral Krätz and his battleships were due to dock shortly after noon.

“Nelly, Chief Beni, can you find anything out about Cara?”

“Kris,” Nelly began softly. Not a good sign. “They don’t list people by name. They just give them numbers. I don’t know if they chipped them or tattooed them or what, but whether you look for Cara or just a twelve-year-old girl, there’s nothing. So many women and so many men went down per shuttle. That’s it.”

Kris and Abby looked at each other. This was not good.

“Chief,” Jack said, “do you have access to the databases dirtside?”

“We’re getting some access. We’ve cracked the cipher for the last couple of days, though I think they just changed the dirtside code midmorning and didn’t tell us.”

“That’s not good,” Penny said.

“We’re running out of time,” Kris said. “Who was sold six, seven, eight days ago?”

“About eighty people,” Nelly said. “No names, just their ID numbers, prices, and destinations.”

“Which tells us nothing,” Abby said.

“No, hold it,” Jack said. “A twelve-year-old girl can’t be worth much. She’s too young to be useful as a bed warmer. Too inexperienced to be a good house slave and too weak to be worth much as a field slave.”

“What girl was sold for the lowest price?” Kris and Abby asked at the same time.

“Three of them, all to this same location,” Nelly said.

“A Seebrook Plantation,” Chief Beni said, beating Nelly to the final punch.

“Show me Seebrook Plantation,” Kris ordered.

Nelly flashed a map on the nearest screen. It showed a huge plot of land stretching into the foothills south of Port Royal. Several streams ran through it from the distant mountain range.

“What do they grow there?” Jack asked.

Nelly overlaid their initial survey. It grew the crop that didn’t fit into any of the established food stocks.

“One huge drug plantation,” Abby whispered.

“Captain, prepare the Wasp’s Marine company for a drop mission. We’re going loaded for bear.”

“Two questions, Commander,” Jack said formally. “Are we taking prisoners?”

Kris knew what she wanted to say. Pirates, drug lords, slavers. She saw no reason to share the same air with them.

Still, there were rules about these things. And on a practical note, dead men tell no tales.

Or answer questions, either.

Still, Kris could not help herself. “Let’s hope they resist,” she said. “Please, dear God, let them fight us.”

“I’ll tell the men. If they shoot at us, we can shoot them. Second question, Kris. We?” the Marine captain asked, raising one eyebrow.

It hit Kris like a kick in the gut. She so wanted to get her hands around the throats of the people who’d done this to Cara. This was not something she’d read about. This was up-front and personal. This was her Cara.

But she had an admiral leading in a battle fleet. She had calls from bad guys and gals that needed to be creatively fielded. As much as she wanted to be part of the landing force, duty said she belonged here.

Kris gritted her teeth. “Take Abby with you, Jack. Oh, and Sergeant Bruce. You may need his computer.”

“Aye aye, ma’am,” the Marine said with a formal salute.

She could see in Jack’s eyes that she’d passed a test. Maybe passed something more than that.

Kris was the commander, now. It was both her job and duty to lead troops. But her place was no longer at the front, leading by example. Now her job would grow harder. Now she would lead from the rear by the power of her presence.

From here on in, Kris would have the much harder job of staying in touch with her troopers’ needs not by sharing their blood and sweat but by giving them the support and guidance that let them bleed less in a fight.

Kris sighed; that extra small stripe on her shoulder board, the one that named her a lieutenant commander, meant more than a little extra pay. More than a little extra respect.

It meant she had a whole new set of challenges to face.

Kris sucked in her gut and let out a long sigh. Then she gave her first order from her new, lofty position. “Go get our Cara, Jack. I’ll take care of the elephants on this end.”