Kris Longknife: Tenacious (Kris Longknife novellas Book 12) by Mike Shepherd Page B

understanding of the real problem.
    “Yes, Kris. I do seem to need some diplomatic intervention. Or maybe your playing what you call your Princess Card.”
    “I’m glad you’re beginning to understand the need for coordinating your activities with the rest of us,” Kris said.
    “I do seem to have overplayed my hand concerning hijacking that surveyor, but you must admit, Kris, without its discovery, we’d still be in the dark.”
    “Yes, Nelly, you got that one right, so you get the medal. However, you have to understand if you take chances like that and don’t get the right answer, you get court-martialed.”
    “I have gained a better understanding of that old military saying.”
    “Good, Nelly. Now, what do you make of this anomaly?”
    “Kris, it’s too soon to attempt a guess. The professor is quite right about our not jumping to conclusions. It’s an anomaly that may prove important. Then again, the present data do not support any real conclusions.”
    “But if it’s more recent . . .” Kris started, and failed to stop herself short of a long jump. “If this planet has been attacked more recently, but with more specific targeting, it will be interesting. We will also need to see if we can identify more about the target. For that, we need a ground survey.”
    Time passed at a frustratingly slow pace. Kris knew she had outposted the system effectively, but she couldn’t shake the fear that an alien base ship, complete with escorts, might pop into the system at any time. It wasn’t rational, but it was a real worm, gnawing at her gut.
    Jack seemed to sense it, too. He went about his job, preparing the Marines for a landing party, but he was there every evening, listening to her share her day, what little there was, then filling her in on what the Marines were up to.
    On day four, Professor Labao informed Kris that the planet was as safe as any for human visitation. “We’ll keep the science teams in sealed capsules for now, and we’d suggest that any Marines who go down stay in fully armored suits and breathe our oxygen. We can breathe what’s down there, we just don’t know yet what might have slipped past our monitors.”
    The longboats cut loose from the ships and dropped into the atmosphere. The scientific teams dropped in their own mobile labs, which were rolled out of the shuttles and paraglided into some flat area. They then drove to where they intended to hide and set up shop.
    This provided Nelly with another interesting datum. Out on the plains, a tribe was moving from one water hole to the next. When they heard the sonic booms and spotted the contrails of the arriving shuttle, they changed course and took off in the opposite direction to where the shuttle was headed.
    Nelly dropped this bit of information as an interruption to a meeting Kris was having with Amanda Kutter and Jacques la Duke. She replayed the reaction of the local tribe as Jacques watched thoughtfully.
    “It seems our locals have some experience with noise from the sky and something that can scratch the sky as well. Let us wonder what that could mean.”
    “They’re on the same continent as the glass plain,” Kris said. “I wonder how those on the other continent might react.”
    “Sorry, Kris, we don’t have any good telemetry from there right this moment,” Nelly said.
    Kris had kept the ships of the fleet moored within a few thousand kilometers of each other. If she had to fight, she wanted a battle force, not a bunch of pairs scattered around in low orbit. So what the
Wasp
saw was pretty much what everyone saw.
    “We’ll have to see how the other folks take to the follow-up longboat passes,” Kris said. “Nelly, make a note of this question and tell Professor Labao I want to arrange the next drop to take place when the squadron is over the western landmasses.”
    “I will tell him,” Nelly said.
    Kris shook her head. “More questions. No answers. When will we get some answers?”
    No one filled in the