Intrepid

''Yes, ma'am,'' he said, but there was no salute with the words. He reached for Kris's suit and began tightening this, moving that to where it belonged. ''Don't you hate the way high gees make a mess of your web gear,'' he muttered.

Kris stood patiently through his inspection and corrections. Officially she should be doing the same to him. She did do the proper eyeball check, but, as she expected, there wasn't a single item of equipment out of place on Gunny's battle rattle.

It wouldn't dare.

Shipshape to Gunny's high standards, Kris turned to the four-Marine squad that would ride down with her while Gunny turned his mothering eye on the LT. Maybe Gunny had been down them before. Or maybe Sergeant Bruce had acquired Gunny's eagle eye for anything out of place. Kris's inspection yielded nothing.

''Abby know you're dropping with me?'' Kris asked the sergeant as she finished up her inspection.

''Now, why would I be worried about what an Army LT, and an intel weenie at that, wanted?'' he said. But he said it with a smile.

Lately, the two had spent more than their usual workout time together. Make that three; Cara was usually underfoot. Was this Marine trying on the role of dad in a ready-made family?

Kris found a word of personal concern on her lips. She swallowed it and settled for, ''Sergeant, board the troops.'' Which the Marines did, smartly and by the numbers.

Sergeant Bruce checked his team, then took the last seat. Kris did a double check before taking the pilot's slot on what the Marines optimistically called a Light Assault Craft. Kris thought a racing skiff was the least vehicle for going from orbit through the fire of reentry and landing on a planet.

Then she'd been introduced to a LAC.

The landing craft was the very epitome of ''just enough.'' Just enough wing to slow it down and fly it to the ground. Just enough controls to get it somewhat close to where you wanted it. Nothing else. The canopy over the crew made paper look thick. It was only there to confuse radar's searching eye. Oxygen, cooling, water … came from the space suits Marines wore.

But Kris had yet to meet a Marine who complained about the accommodations. When Sulwan released the LAC to space, the Marines behind Kris greeted it with a confident ''Ooo-Rah.''

Kris could only smile. They'd been fully briefed, even if it had been painfully brief. The mission was a search for a needle in a haystack. A needle that didn't want to be found. Oh, and there was a gunboat in orbit ready to blast them from space if it could spot the Marines. And an unknown-size force of trigger-pullers ready to collect anything the gunboat left alive.

The troops had taken their brief with a shrug. One wag seemed to sum it up. ''Sure beats hanging around the boat with nothing to do but hit the chow line.''

It was good to be back with line beasts, Kris thought.

16

Kris's job was a bit more complicated than the Marines riding behind her. She had to put the LAC into a small lake about fifteen klicks north of the Fronours' latest homestead.

And do it well before Thorpe's ship came over the horizon.

Also, it would be nice to do it without heating up the LAC so much that it just screamed their location to anyone who might want to laser them from space.

Oh, and there might be radars in at least two of the big river towns. Might be. The radars had, like everything on this planet, not shown themselves. But if Kris was running the show, she'd have put at least a platoon in each of those towns and given them radar and antilander rockets.

Some might consider that nasty of her, but she hadn't found herself all that much worse than others who'd chosen her profession.

And definitely no worse than Captain William Tacoma Thorpe.

Kris made her initial approach steep, then went into soft S curves to bleed off excess energy. She did all this while keeping the inland mountain range between her LAC and the potentially deadly towns. Their radars stayed silent until the last moment. Just as Kris was finally able to duck into the shadow of the mountains, she got a beep out of the dime-store radar detector that had been taped to the instrument panel.

So, her sonic boom had gotten someone's attention, at least enough to have them risk their radar. Kris passed the radar information along to Jack. His LAC was farther back and still high. He was also headed for a river closer to those radars.

And his LAC had been modified to carry two antiradiation missiles. The plan called for him to loft them at anything Kris found. It didn't call for him to say anything to her.

She would just have to bite her nails and wait to find out if this bit of their plan worked, failed, or headed for points unknown.

Battles were just so much fun.

Kris skimmed the mountains, balancing height with speed and hoping she was bleeding off the heat buildup that came with reentry. Her butt told her that her seat was cooler than usual; that was the full extent of her instrumentation.