Redoubtable by Mike Shepherd Read Free Book Online

about what they got. No reserves,” Penny said.
    “And we could end up owning most of the spare rolling stock on this planet,” Kris mused.
    “No. No. I don’t want to own this planet. Vicky Peterwald is never happy to see my smiling face. Definitely she’ll be unhappy if I drag in with a couple of planets chained to my ankle that her father considers his.”
    “You talk as if you knew the Peterwalds personally,” the plantation owner said. “Could that be so?”
    “They’ve met on several occasions,” Penny said. “So far, everyone has survived the experience, but it’s been close a few times.”
    The farmer and his wife exchanged astonished glances. “Next time you see them, could you ask them to please stop sending refugees to our poor planet?”
    “I could ask them, but I don’t think they’d pay me any attention,” Kris said. “Also, I doubt many of these refugees bothered to ask permission to leave. They are just running. Running from something worse.”
    “How could anything be worse?”
    Kris glanced back at the shelters where the starving refugees were having their first meager meals in way too long. “I don’t know,” she said, “but running must have seemed like a good idea when they started moving.”
    The last squad of second platoon trotted up and joined the others at the first paddy dike. They were followed by several less emaciated locals pulling wheeled carts piled high with food sacks. Kris told them to halt in the road where she intended to stand. Everyone was in position by the time the first truckload of gunmen came around a small hillock and headed toward them.
    The Marines had taken cover, using what the dikes offered. Squad sergeants made the rounds of their teams, checking them out, correcting where necessary, and offering good examples of calm. Platoon skippers and their sergeants did the same.
    Hopefully, this would keep buck fever on a tight leash. About half the platoons’ troopers were replacements, facing their first live-fire experience. The standing officers and NCOs also gave a clear signal to the opposition of how many they faced even if the individual trigger pullers stayed low.
    Now it was time for Kris to find out what had come out to meet her.
    The trucks were a mix of different three-to-five-ton rigs with flatbeds or strake side boards. They came up the road in single file, forty-five exactly. Four hundred meters out there was a cross trail. The lead truck drove past it, then stopped. A man standing on the bed of that truck used hand signals to send alternate trucks left or right. When he had twenty-two trucks on either side of him, he waved them all forward.
    In a ragged turn, the other trucks moved off the trail and started to bounce across the field, trying, in a very imperfect way, to dress on each other.
    “Not a bad effort,” Jack said as he watched the evolution. Then one truck fell out with a broken water line spewing steam. Another came to a halt for no apparent reason.
    Kris eyed the central truck, the one she’d tagged as the command vehicle. The standing man waved his arms and shouted at the breakdowns. Clearly, he wasn’t the calm sort.
    Just how professional was the guy across the way? What was he trained in? How good was he? How good were his troops? Kris had a long list of unanswered questions.
    Her list of answers was very short. Too much was just one big question mark.
    “When do you think he’ll stop?” Penny asked.
    That was a question Kris hadn’t gotten down to. How close would she let this joker get to her Marines?
    “Jack, pass The Word, if the trucks close to 150 meters, I want the tires shot out. But wait for my order.”
    Jack passed along The Word. To Kris’s right and left, officers and NCOs glanced at them as they got it. A moment later, squad leaders went down their Marines, picking their best shooters for tire detail.
    The chosen Marines showed clear intent as they dialed in their sight pictures. Others around them,