“Strategy,” she told him. “Doesn’t matter that they’re marines. They’re soft meat. I want them out in the bush with my veterans. I want them smack up front with Donovan. Eyeball-to-eyeball with the forest, death, roots, sidewinders, and fear. And when they come staggering out of the bush, you can bet they’re going to have a whole different level of respect for my veterans and Donovan.”

“What about Colonel Creamer?” Two Spot asked.

Kalico smiled. “That scum sucker couldn’t have been more accommodating.” She cocked her head. “Do my ears deceive me? Or is that a shuttle approaching?”

“Shuttle, Supervisor.” Two Spot tapped his ear. “Oh, and on com, I’ve got Turalon. Captain Abibi reports that she’s made an orbital insertion. Once the ship’s secure, she’ll be awaiting permission to begin the process of shuttling her passengers and transportees down.”

“Roger that.” Kalico rubbed her jaw. “Sucking snot, Two Spot, but it’s getting busy around here. Be sure you work out a safe rotation with Vixen before they link up with Turalon for that refit. Hard to believe, but the day is coming when we’re going to need traffic control.”

With the sound of the approaching shuttle getting louder, she shrugged on her quetzal cape, pulled the brim of her hat down tight, and headed for the door. Just out of good sense, she made sure that her pistol rode loosely in its holster. She didn’t expect Creamer to be that much of an idiot, but on Donovan, stupid was dead.

Chapter 21

  21  

In all of his days in the Corps, not since he was a boot, had Stanley Creamer known such a rage. Enclosed in his combat armor, he sat in the right-hand seat on the A-7 shuttle’s command deck as Ensign Schulyer made his approach to Port Authority.

Creamer boiled, seethed, and stared balefully out at the scrubby trees and weirdly blue-green vegetation they flew across. This was the supposed bush, as the locals called it. Reminded him of parts of Africa, or maybe the mesquite country in south Texas. Wasteland. Not a house, road, or sign that a human being had ever passed this way. Virgin fucking wilderness. And now, coming up, was a collection of hovels that looked like it could qualify for a refugee camp in Hell.

That was the fabled Port Authority?

He’d expected rustic. This looked like something out of a medieval history book. Not a single building was over three stories tall. Nor, but for the aging domes, was there any sense of architectural conformity. Not to mention that appalling and cobbled-together monstrosity of a fence.