Storm Force: Book Three of the Last Legion Series by Chris Bunch Page A

they’d taken over.
    “
Mil
Jaansma,” she said. “Admire large head, sir. Admire very large head.”
    “The drone’s back?”
    “Not only back, but nobody sniffed nahthing,” she said. “Admire large head.”
    “Okay, crew,” Garvin said. “Set up the holo, so we can figure out where we want to start tickling them.”
    • • •
    Kura Four had been picked because prewar intelligence suggested that was the most heavily populated of the worlds in the system, although none of the four habitable planets would have to worry about population pressure for a millennium or so.
    The drone had initially made eight passes, pole to pole, out-atmosphere, on a mapping run. The runs were repeated at night, using infrared sensors as well as amplified light.
    The team watched the projection of Kura Four, a holograph about a meter in diameter, spin in front of them.
    “Eleven main cities,” Monique Lir said.
    “Twelve,” Froude corrected. “There’s another light-smear down near the south pole.”
    “Bring each of those areas up one at a time,” Garvin said.
    “Yessir,” the technician said, and the holo closed in on one area, then another.
    “That one’s NG,” Dill said. “Looks like it’s built on the only patch of open ground on the planet.”
    “Bust that one out, too,” Lir said. “Right on that peninsula — no running room there, either, when things start blowing up.”
    “What about that one?”
    “Possible.”
    Three others areas were considered possibles, and those four studied.
    “That one,” Garvin decided, blinking tired eyes. “That city’s about the biggest on the planet. Maybe, what, a million?”
    “Maybe a bit more,” Froude said. “In fact, probably. I ran close-up scans on all the possible targets. That one’s got a good complement of landing fields, warehousing, what looks to me like military depots, so you can project the population probably a bit higher than a mill.”
    “Sitting right there where these two rivers run together,” Jaansma said. “Then the valley widens, with the sea, what, fifty kilometers below? Mountains back of the city, which’ll give us good hiding places.”
    “What’s the plan, boss?” Lir said.
    “I think,” Garvin said slowly, “if we come in back here, letting that ridgeline mask us, then hump over here … we hit this dam. Blow the shit out of it, hope there’s enough of a shock to take out this other, bigger dam further downstream.
    “With any luck, we put a nice wave down the main valley, maybe fifty meters high, through the middle of that city and wash everybody out to sea.”
    The medic, Jil Mahim, bit her lip, but didn’t say anything. Garvin saw her expression.
    “If it bothers you to probably be drowning women and kids,” he began.
    “No, boss,” Mahim said. “It just took me a minute.”
    “ ‘Kay,” Jaansma said, pretending he didn’t notice her embarrassment. “That’s the tentative first target. As the op order said, we’ll take out the first target, extract, and depending on how battered we are, reinsert on another part of the world and mess with them there.
    “That’ll give Protector Redruth something to worry about protecting, I hope.
    “Now we’ll have the tech chance another sweep with the drone over those mountains, see if we can’t see where the local soldiery hangs its hat, the size of the dam’s garrison, where the local villages are, and like that.”
    “Second target,” Lir said, “if the first dam doesn’t take down the big one, we’ll get it ourselves.”
    “That’ll make the countryside nice and hostile,”
Tweg
Nectan said.
    Lir shrugged. “You wanted an easy life, you didn’t have to do something dickheaded like volunteer, now did you?”
    There was laughter.
    “Actually,” Froude said, “if we were serious about pursuing war to the hilt with these people, we’d be better advised to abort this commando business, pull back to Cumbre, and then return with the best defoliants science can