Intrepid

Gunny looked at the farmer with honest sadness. Jack glanced away. It was left to Kris to admit. ''I don't know. No battle plan survives contact with the enemy. Only a fool will tell you in the morning how a battle will go that afternoon.''

The farmer shrugged. ''Well, at least you're honest.''

Kris took a long moment to survey what her people were up to. The hill where she stood rose gently a hundred meters or so from the narrow flats that cut a small ribbon between the swamp and the beginning of the rolling hills behind Kris. The road sliced through the middle of that bit of flatland, separating the Tzu farm buildings from their rice paddies.

Most locals were quite happy to grow the hybridized grass/grain crop planted once and harvested as often as they came in season. Acres of it covered the hills behind Kris. However, Mr. Tzu, a short man whose face still reflected that his family hailed from old Earth's Asian continent, liked rice.

He'd claimed a holding close to the swamp and laid out some rice paddies. And found a market for a break from the usual. As his clan grew, the paddies expanded along the road and into the swamp. Today, the dikes between the paddies offered Kris some interesting options. Most everyone loved the gophers and the their valuable droppings; Tzu and his clan hated the little rats.

The four-legged beggars loved rice.

A pack of them could eat a rice paddy empty, root and stem, in a day. To keep them under control, the Tzu clan had been forced to dig caves through the centers of their paddy dikes.

The gophers could come tunneling along and burrow right into the caves. There, they'd meet up with the other Tzu import. Mongooses from old Earth prowled both above- and belowground.

The gophers could be mean when cornered. The mongooses seemed to love cornering them. The gophers usually lost.

But for Kris, it meant that she had a whole lot of rice-paddy dikes within easy rifle range of the road just begging to be pierced with loopholes.

Which work parties were now doing with sledgehammers and rods. Others were expanding the cool room under the hill Kris stood on. In an hour, two at the most, they expected to have firing positions popping out of this hill.

Anyone who marched up that road would walk right into a cross fire. And the flats left them with little or no cover.

It would be murder.

''If they walk into it,'' Jack said, reading Kris's mind.

''You think he's had enough of walking into things?''

''You done a good job of teaching him that lesson, Your Highness,'' Gunny said.

Kris snorted. ''I've got more trigger-pullers than this Colonel Cortez, but, except for the Marines, I can't trust any of them to maneuver under fire. If I deploy them in the paddy dikes, in the hill, they can just sit there, firing when I tell them to.''

''I don't remember anyone telling you battles were supposed to be easy on anyone,'' Jack said.

''If you put our people in the paddy caves,'' Peter Tzu observed slowly, ''they won't be able to get away if things go wrong. What are those things … hand grenades …? If they throw a few of them in the caves …'' He ran out of words.

Kris had to put an end to that thought. ''The paddies are at angles to each other.'' She put her hands together to form a ninety-degree angle. ''The rifles on the right keep the enemy off of the dike to the left, and left protects the right. See.''

''I guess so,'' the farmer said dubiously.

''The Marines will be a mobile reserve,'' Kris said. ''They'll move to meet what we're not expecting.''

''And just what are you expecting?'' Tzu asked.

''That they are not going to march up that road in a nice long line, ready to be shot up.'' Kris glanced at Jack and Gunny. They were nodding agreement. ''No, he's not going to do anything the easy way anymore. He's going to be looking for us under every rock and crack. We'll need to cover our tracks real good.''

As if to confirm Kris's guess, Captain Drago came online. The Wasp was overhead early, working its way up behind Thorpe.

''It looks like Cortez has finished his morning tea party,'' he reported. ''They are breaking camp at the dugouts and getting back on the road.''

''What does their travel array look like?'' Kris asked.

''Similar to yesterday's. He's got his light infantry out covering his flank and forming a vanguard. His wagons and heavy infantry make up his main body. Oh, and now they have some of the light infantry riding herd on some of the animals. They didn't eat all of them.''

''It would be hard to eat all we left there,'' Jack said. ''What does their invalid detail look like? Can you see how many of the main body are hobbling, or riding in the carts?''

''Wait one'' was followed in less than a minute with ''Say fifty-seven to sixty-one of them are wounded. That's almost double what he had last night. Looks like he caught moderate casualties taking those dugouts.'' Drago laughed. Gunny and Jack joined in.

Kris grimaced at the lay of the land beneath her. ''Our ambush has a cross fire to it.''