Redoubtable by Mike Shepherd

a place to sight this puppy in. I only used three rounds. You get me a target. I’ll hit it. I’m good to two hundred meters.”
    Jack didn’t doubt she was.
    He concentrated the spy eye on the line of manhole covers stretching from the shipping entrance across the smaller parking lot to the road behind the stadium. He followed more sewer lids until he came to a tree-lined residential street not two blocks from the parking lot.
    “Sergeant Bruce, get ready to spin off some small scouts. I’ve got a sewer line I want mapped.”
    “Oh joy,” the sergeant replied. “When my DI said to suck it up and soldier, he warned me there’d be days like this.”
    Jack pounded on the roof of the truck cab and shouted instructions.
    Beside him, Tilly caressed her rifle like she might her firstborn.

    Colonel Cortez operated the risers on his chute. It had been a long time since he’d made a jump, and somehow it had gotten a whole lot harder to control one of these things since then. Still, he landed only twenty meters from his stick mate . . . and did so at a sedate walk.
    As he spilled his chute, he took in his situation. He was in a farmer’s field, trampling green wheat not yet ready for harvest. The field consisted of several gently rolling hills. Off to his left, a four-lane road hugged the trees, which hid a decent-size river.
    Unless he was blind, he was exactly where he was supposed to be.
    Traffic on the road at the moment was nil. A dozen Marines who had landed closer to the road spread out along the shoulder and prepared to stop anything going in either direction.
    Colonel Cortez joined the fifty or so Marines humping their gear toward the road. Word was he’d have transportation along soon.
    It was unusual, but it looked like everything was going according to plan.

    Private Lotermann hadn’t expected to have his very own command, not with just six months in the Corps, but here he was in charge of three trucks, responsible for getting them to Colonel Cortez.
    He was on his own. It was a beautiful day. This was kind of fun.
    “Turn left up here,” he told the driver.
    The local riding shotgun for him had given up his seat in the cab, preferring to ride standing up on the truck bed. Now he stooped down to the vacant window.
    “You want to turn right here,” he said.
    “The map the princess gave me said we turn left,” Private Lotermann said, turning toward the volunteer.
    And found himself facing a machine pistol with the arming bolt already pulled back and the safety off.
    “I could care less about your princess. The Dragon Woman wants us to head for Tranquility Road, so that’s where we’re going.”
    The gunman fired; the Marine private heard nothing.

    Lieutenant Commander Kris Longknife signaled the driver to turn off six blocks short of Tranquility Road. Three hundred meters up the quiet, tree-lined street, she had him stop.
    The other two trucks full of Marines spaced themselves at hundred-meter intervals as they halted. Quickly, Marines dismounted and began filtering through the yards, covering for each other as they bounded forward.
    “Penny, go with them. Get some scouts out,” Kris ordered, then turned to motion the trucks full of volunteers to come up to where she stood.
    “Good luck with that bunch,” Penny said, looking around. She spotted Lieutenant Stubben and jogged to join him.
    It took a lot of waving to get the trucks to join her. By the time they reached her, some of the volunteers were already walking along beside them. A few had tried to follow the Marines and seemed very unhappy when Marines paused in their advance to quietly send them back.
    “What’s going on?” “Aren’t we going to fight?” “I came here for a fight, and I’ll fight those hard hats if they get in my way again.”
    Kris would dearly have loved to turn this bunch over to a good DI and wash her hands of them. She doubted a harangue from her on discipline would do any good.
    “Get out of the trucks. I’ve