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  She pulled out her comm. “Police.”

  The response came almost immediately. “Assistant Chief Tanaka here. What’s the problem?”

  “I need someone arrested,” Mele said, while Spurlick stared at her. “Inciting riot, failure to comply with lawful authority, and trespassing on official property.”

  “Someone will be there within a few minutes.”

  Mele pocketed her comm, keeping the corner of her eye on Spurlick, so that when he suddenly rushed her she was prepared. Spurlick’s reaching hand closed on air, and his fist swung at nothing. As Mele dodged and pivoted, she tripped Spurlick with one leg while her stiffened hand landed a blow that left him unconscious before he hit the ground.

  Mele shook her hand lightly to relax it after the hit, noticing that the volunteers were all staring at her in gape-mouthed admiration that made her uncomfortable. “Never give your opponent an even break,” she told them. “We’re not practicing for a game here.”

  One of the virtues to living in what was still a small city in what was still a small colony was that when called the police were able to arrive quickly. Val Tanaka herself climbed out of the ground vehicle, eyeing Spurlick’s prone body.

  “He attacked her!” Riley called. “It was self-defense!”

  Tanaka looked at Mele and shook her head. “He attacked you? He’s that stupid?”

  “Yeah, he’s that stupid,” Mele said. “I’m not interested in pressing any charges. I don’t have time for that. I just want him off the training area with a clear understanding that he better not show his face here again.”

  “Are you sure that’s all you want?” Tanaka asked. “He knows you’re working on something to do to with that Scatha camp. If we let him go, he might decide to go to them and sell whatever he knows.”

  Mele paused, wondering if she should insist on Spurlick’s being arrested. What if he did go to Scatha with what he knew?

  What if he did? She stepped closer to the officer and lowered her voice. “No. I want him free to go. Did you ever hear that the things you don’t know can be dangerous, but the things you think you do know that are actually wrong are a lot more dangerous? If he goes to that Scatha camp, he might do something worthwhile for us.”

  Tanaka raised both eyebrows at her. “How is that?”

  “He has no idea what my plans are, but he’s made it clear he thinks I’m incompetent and incapable. He’ll tell Scatha that, and that I’m planning on hitting them head-on like some dumb grunt. And he believes it, and thinks he couldn’t possibly be wrong, so if they scan him, he’ll look truthful. I’d love for Scatha to think all that is true and base their own plans on it.”

  “Good thinking.” Tanaka nodded toward Spurlick, who was beginning to stir. “We’ll read him the riot act, let him go, and if he disappears from the colony, I’ll let you know.”

  “Thanks.” Mele watched as Val Tanaka cheerfully cuffed Spurlick and hauled him to his feet before shoving him toward her vehicle.

  Mele turned back to the others, hoping she had handled Spurlick in the right way to reinforce her authority. “Now let’s do this right.”

  Grant Duncan came by as she left that team to their drills. “Permission to speak?”

  She snorted at the formal request. “What do you got?”

  “I think you handled that guy right. Just in case you were wondering.”

  “I was,” Mele said, grateful for the reassurance.

  “Are they going to hold him?”

  “No. Just make it clear he’d better behave.”

  “That kind of guy could make trouble,” Grant warned, his expression serious.

  “I know. The cops are going to keep an eye on him. If I make you first squad leader, who would you recommend for second squad?”

  “Ummm . . .” Grant hesitated as he thought. “I’m not sure. Riley shows promise, but he’s totally new at this sort of thing and shows it. Obi is looking really sharp even though she only knows this stuff from gaming. I’d say one of them.”

  “Train both so we’d have one as a backup if something happens to you?” Mele suggested.

  “Or use both as we expand to three squads. We’re going to have to expand, you know. Thirty ground apes, some of them tech types, aren’t nearly enough to defend a colony this size. Scatha’s base has a lot fewer people in it and covers a lot less acreage, but they’ve got a full company of ground forces.”

  “About a company, yeah.” Mele nodded, as much to herself as in acknowledgment that what Grant said was true. She stood looking out across the field to where mountains loomed. The wind coming down from the heights carried scents of something like pine but with a sharper edge, and a chill snap from snow-laden peaks. She had thought about becoming an explorer or scout, being the first to walk places like that and augment orbital surveys. The colony hadn’t been able to focus on that kind of surveying yet, but hopefully that option would exist once she’d finished helping out with this problem. “Yeah, this place will have to get a lot more serious about defending themselves. But I’m only in charge right now because I’m all they’ve got. I’m figuring they’ll bring in some officers sooner rather than later to run this outfit, and I’ll probably be out on my ear again. Until then, we can build a decent basis for a bigger outfit.”

  “And then those officers will take credit for it,” Grant said.

  “Yeah,” Mele agreed with a laugh.

  The next morning, Mele took a break from leading training when a police vehicle pulled up at the edge of the field. Worrying that Spurlick had done something superstupid, she jogged over to it.

  “Hey, Marine. No problems this morning. I’ve just got a load for you,” Val Tanaka said, stepping out of her vehicle. “This is what the colony has been able to collect for you.”

  Mele reached the vehicle as Val began pulling out a variety of weapons. Mele hefted one of the hunting rifles, putting it to her shoulder and turning to sight along it across the open land beyond the city. “Not bad.”

  “One of the best we got,” Val said. “Four hunting rifles, two target pistols, and a half dozen shockers. That’s the rest of it.”

  Twelve weapons for thirty volunteers including Mele. And only four of those able to deliver lethal blows. The in-theory-easy-to-reprogram construction bays were having problems with the available designs of military-grade weapons, so this was all they’d have for the near future. Mele shook her head. “It’ll have to do.”

  “Can it?” Val Tanaka asked. “Seriously. I’ve got no idea, but I heard you say those Scatha soldiers have battle armor. I’ve seen that stuff. It’s bad news.”

  “It is,” Mele agreed. She gestured toward the rifle she still held in one hand, the barrel pointed at the ground. “But if I can get close enough, this can handle that armor. I know that gear. It’s the same stuff Brahma imported from Old Earth, so at Franklin we drilled on how to combat it. I wouldn’t be surprised if Brahma resold it to Scatha.”

  “It’s got weak points?”

  “Everything has got weak points.” Mele set the rifle down carefully, then grinned at Val. “Armor. Weapons. People.”

  “You’re the expert.” Tanaka looked down at the small arsenal, then back at Mele. “I was thinking.”

  “That can get you into trouble,” Mele said.

  “I know,” Val agreed. She pointed at one of the shockers. “I’ve spent a good chunk of my life working with these. Weapons designed to disable, not to harm. Oh, they can be misused. Anything can. But basically, the idea is not to kill with them.”

  Mele nodded, letting her own expression grow serious. “Whereas I’m in the business of killing and need weapons that do that.”

  “Does it bother you?”

  “Sure it does. But I don’t do it because someone ordered it or because I want something,” Mele said. “I do it because if I don’t, people like you would get kill
ed by apes like those guys from Scatha.”

  “Yeah,” Val agreed. “I just found myself wondering where it all might lead. I know a little bit of history from Old Earth, the sort of junk that happened there.” She looked up at the sky as if the already-legendary globe of Earth would be visible above them. “And I thought, what if we ever get to the point where it happens here? Wars like they had back on Old Earth, where nobody uses shockers, and it’s just about killing. What if our descendants forget that once upon a time we thought not killing was important?”

  “I don’t see how it could ever get that bad,” Mele said. “Glenlyon is not happy to be doing this. I can feel it. They’re only getting into military options because that’s all there are with Scatha playing hardball.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Val Tanaka said. “But look at what’s happening now. How many times back at Franklin did you use your training in earnest?”

  “You mean actual combat?” Mele shrugged. “Once. A hostage-rescue operation. The hostage takers were some paramilitary bunch, though, not a real professional outfit.”

  “But here you are facing a bunch of soldiers, and we’ve already dealt with a warship threatening us.” Val shook her head. “This isn’t like the Old Colonies. Everything has gone off the rails. Who knows where we might end up?”

  “All I can promise,” Mele said, “is that as long as I’m calling the shots, we’re not going to end up anywhere you’d be unhappy with.”

  “How long will you be calling the shots?”

  “Probably only until they can replace me.” Mele slapped Val on the shoulder. “But until then, I am going to lead this outfit in the right ways. Hey, I need to get over to the mining offices. Can you give me a lift?”

  Getting to Scatha’s base without getting shot to pieces meant coming in on the ground was out. Coming in by air, using one of the available shuttles, would just have been a more complicated form of suicide than a ground approach.

  Which, Mele knew, left one available option. And that led her to the tech offices of the newly named Glenlyon Mining Corporation.

  Not so long a time ago on a planet far, far away, Gunnery Sergeant Chopra had explained to a younger Mele how to get things done even if whatever it was apparently couldn’t be done.

  “You don’t go to the boss,” Chopra had advised. “And you don’t go to the admin people who approve stuff. You go direct to the techs. The engineers. But you don’t go in and say, ‘The equipment can’t do what I need. Can you make it do that?’ Because if you do, the engineers will say, ‘No, it can’t do that,’ because people tell them to do crazy stuff all the time, and they’ll be tired of that. What you do is go in to them and say, ‘I just want to confirm this gear can do this,’ and the engineers say, ‘Yeah, it can do that.’ Then you say, ‘What I really need is this other thing, but the scientists I talked to said it can’t be done.’ And they’ll look real annoyed and say, ‘Scientists? You mean theory guys? What is it you need done?’ And then the engineers look at the specs and start talking to each other, and figuring out how to do it, because there’s nothing an engineer loves more than doing something that a scientist says can’t be done. Nine times out of ten, they’ll figure out a way to do it, or a way that ought to do it. And they’ll build it.”

  Gunnery Sergeant Chopra had paused to give Mele a warning look. “What you got to look out for then is that whatever the engineers built might not meet everyday rules for safety and common sense. It if looks like that to you, make sure you’re outside any potential blast radius before they try it out the first time.”

  That was why Mele was walking into the tech offices, where two men and a woman looked up at her with open suspicion.

  “Hi,” Mele said. “I’m Sergeant Darcy, working on dealing with that base that Scatha set up. I figure I need to approach it belowground, so I came to you guys to make sure one of your mine snakes can handle it.”

  “A tunnel dig? Where at?” one of the engineers asked, still eyeing Mele with mistrust.

  “Do you have data on the area around where Scatha landed?” She knew they did but waited for them to look it up. A layered display revealed the surface geography as plotted by orbital mapping. “I need to keep Scatha’s people from seeing it, so I figured we could come in on the far side of these hills and start digging down about here, going to about here,” Mele said, indicating a point short of Scatha’s sensor field.

  “Yeah, that’s easy,” the female engineer commented. “A two-meter snake can handle that without any problem. Why are you stopping the dig so far out?”

  “It’s this sensor field,” Mele explained, sweeping her hand across the image. “It’ll pick up vibrations from the digging if I get too close.”

  The third engineer shook his head. “There’s a big river running right through there. All that water is going to be putting a lot of vibrations into the environment. And the coast is, what, twenty kilometers to the west? What are the waves like?”

  “Fairly strong,” Mele said. “It’s potentially a good harbor, but until a breakwater is built up along this row of submerged rocks, the waves can roll right in off the ocean.”

  “So you’ve got good wave action hitting the area, too. What’s the subsurface like?”

  The woman engineer answered as she called up the data. “We’ve got satellite scans showing an average of four meters of topsoil. That’s a floodplain, isn’t it? Under that is several layers of sedimentary rock.”

  “Sandstone?” the third engineer asked.

  “Overhead scans saw a mix of siltstone farther inland and limestone closer to the coast.”

  “That’ll conduct vibrations from the wave action and the river pretty well,” the first engineer remarked.

  Mele feigned surprise. “Do you think there’s a way to get the dig closer without its being detected? The approval office told me that was impossible.”

  “Approval office?” the third engineer said with disgust. “How close do you really want to get?”

  “In my dreams? Here,” Mele said, pointing to a spot inside the sensor field.

  “How good are the sensors?”

  “Here are the specs on them as best we know.”

  The three engineers huddled, calling up diagrams and schematics and soil-characteristic data. “That’s doable,” the first engineer finally said. “We bring the snake in along that line. Not the one you thought of. This will make better use of the geology. The snake sends out worms ahead to monitor the vibrations in the environment and send that data back to the snake so it can adjust digging speed to keep the noise low enough. You’re going through topsoil, so it won’t require eating rock.”

  “Rock eating can get noisy,” the female engineer told Mele. “The snake seals the tunnel sides as it goes using instacrete, so you won’t have to worry about tunnel integrity.”

  “We ought to modify these parts to reduce the operating noise,” the third engineer suggested.

  “Yeah, good idea since it’s only going through soil. Add that in and . . . How soon do you need this dig started?” the woman engineer asked.

  “Yesterday,” Mele said. “I’ve got to hit Scatha before they get more stuff landed. You guys can really do this?”

  “Sure we can,” the first engineer assured her. “It’s an interesting challenge. But it’ll take a day or two to get this ready, and you’ll need someone to tell the front office the council will pay for it.”

  “You guys are lifesavers!” Mele said, not having to fake her relief. “Oh, I’ve got to tell you, this needs to be kept really quiet. If Scatha finds out I’m planning to go in this way, they’d be waiting for me and . . .”

  “Yeah,” the third engineer said, nodding. “So this is real top secret stuff, huh?”

  “It really is,” Mele said. “Once we’ve hit Scatha, they’ll search for and find the dig, so you can talk about it then. You said the
tunnel will be two meters in diameter? That’ll be a little tight, but we can run.”

  “No,” the woman engineer said. “Use a tunnelpede.”

  “Tunnelpede?”

  “Long, low, lots of little soft wheels. Designed to go into tight places where you might not want a lot of vibrations, you know? Like checking on cave-ins or unstable areas. Just get a tunnelpede long enough for everyone in your group to ride. How are you planning on getting the snake there? One of the WinGs?”

  “Yeah,” Mele said. “Can one of the smaller ones handle the snake?”

  “Sure can,” the first engineer advised. “Don’t talk to Don. He’s supposed to be in charge of scheduling the WinGs, but Bettine is the one who really handles that. She’ll set you up.”

  As Mele walked out of the building, she looked up at the sky in what she hoped was the general direction of Franklin. “Thanks, Gunny!”

  The WinG park had been set up down near the coast. All three Wing-in-Ground vehicles were there when Mele arrived. The WinGs only flew a few meters above the surface of the water, but the ground-effect cushion that lofted them allowed WinGs to transport waterborne ship-sized cargos at aerospace craft speeds, and the WinGs could land on water or on beaches or other unimproved sites, making them perfect for new colonies on new worlds.

  The big WinG loomed over the others, roughly cylindrical, thirty meters wide and over a hundred fifty meters long, with broad, stubby wings mounted low and propulsion mounted high, and large aerospace craft maneuvering surfaces aft. The two smaller WinGs were each about forty meters long and ten meters wide, shaped similarly to their larger sister.

  None of them carried any armament, but because they flew so low, one of the smaller WinGs could easily come in from the right direction to remain hidden from the Scatha base behind the low hills as it delivered the mining snake. As far as improvised combat-delivery vehicles went, the WinGs were as good as it got.

  Mele went into the small office attached to a maintenance hangar, looking for Bettine.

  • • •