The Reaches

The lower quarter of the Federation vessel was a fiery cavity. The hatch had been blown completely away, but the mist of burning metal beyond was as palpable as marble.

The end of our ramp was still a meter and a half in the air. The blast of the main guns had deafened me. I couldn't even hear my own voice shouting, 'God and Venus!' as I leaped to the ground.

I crashed down on my face. The plasma cannon firing from the Montreal hit the sailor behind me instead and blew him to vapor. Bits of his ceramic armor scattered like grenade fragments.

I got to my feet. Stephen aimed his flashgun up at a 45° angle. His laser bolt, so bright under most conditions, was lost in the greater brilliance of the plasma weapons moments before.

I stumbled toward the cavity Stampfer's guns had blasted for our entry. It roiled with ionized residues of the cannonfire and the ordinary conflagrations which the bolts had ignited in the compartments beyond. With my visor down, I was breathing from the suit's oxygen bottle.

An explosion above us almost knocked me down again. Stephen's bolt had punched into the cannon's 5-cm bore, damaging the nearly spherical array of lasers within the chambered round. The lasers were meant to implode a deuterium pellet at the shell's heart and direct the resulting plasma down a pinhole pathway aligned with the axis of the gun barrel.

Instead, the cannon's breech ruptured. The blast was more violent than the one which killed the man behind me, and I doubted whether Federation armor was as good as our Venerian ceramic.

The rocky soil beneath the Montreal was glazed by exhaust and our heavy cannon. The hatch had been wrenched away, but the lintel was square and a meter and a half above ground level. Stalactites of nickel-steel plating hung from the lower edge of the wound.

The white glare of the vessel's interior had dulled to a deep red. Fluid dribbling from the ruptured hydraulic lines burned with dark, smoky flames.

I gripped the lower lip of the opening and kicked myself upward. To my amazement, I wobbled into the hold despite thirty kilos of hard suit and weakness from the days we'd spent in free fall.

The vessel's cylindrical core held tanks of reaction mass and liquefied air behind plating as thick as that of the external hull. Shock waves had started a few of the seams, but the structure in general was still solid. Dual companionways to the higher decks were built into the core structure.

The horizontal deck was 1-cm steel. Blasts generated by our plasma bolts had hammered the surface downward as much as twenty centimeters between frames. The hold's internal bulkheads were flattened, and the hatches that should have closed the companionways had been blown askew.

Five Federation crewmen in the lower hold were in metal hard suits when our first 15-cm bolt penetrated the hull. The suits remained, crushed and disarticulated. From the top of a thigh guard stuck the remains of a femur burned to charcoal. That bone was the only sign of the people who'd been wearing the suits.

I looked behind me. Several men in armor were trying to clamber up with one hand hampered by weapons. I clasped the nearest man under the right shoulder and heaved. His face was down, so I don't know who he was. He skidded aboard, got to his feet, and clumped toward a companionway.

Half the assault party still straggled between the Oriflamme and the Federation vessel. We'd landed on an expanse of stony desert, well inland of Ivestown. I doubt the Montreal's captain had chosen the site deliberately, but at least we weren't going to fry the colonists and their hundred or so Molt slaves as a byproduct of the fighting.

Stephen, his flashgun slung over the rifle on his left shoulder, heaved himself upward. I grabbed him and brought him the rest of the way. Other sailors were pairing, one to form a stirrup for the foot of the second. A plasma cannon, too light to be one of ours, fired. I saw the reflected flash but not the point of impact.

A bullet whanged down a companionway and ricocheted from the deck. I reached the helical stairs ahead of Stephen. He grabbed my shoulder to stop me, then stuck his flashgun up the vertical passage. I unclipped my cutting bar and switched it on.

Stephen fired. Sparks of metal clipped by the laser pulse spat down the shaft in reply. The bolt wasn't likely to have hit anybody, but it might clear the companionway for a few seconds. Stephen clapped me forward. His gauntlet cracked like gunfire on my backplate. I started up the steps.

The hatch to the next deck upward had either been open or blown open by gouts of plasma belching up the companionway every time our cannon hammered the hold. The compartment beyond, once an accommodation area, was a smoky inferno.

Plastic and fabrics of all sorts burned in the air the fire sucked from the companionway. The atmosphere of the sealed deck must have been exhausted within a few minutes of the moment our cannon flash-ignited everything flammable.

I could have charged into the blaze, protected by my hard suit, but there was nothing there for us. The fires would destroy all life and objects of value before they burned themselves out. If the Montreal's decks were pierced by too many conduits and water lines, the blaze here was likely to involve the whole ship.

The hatch to the third level was closed. I passed it by and continued climbing. The gunports were higher on the hull. We had to silence the Montreal's plasma cannon.

A bare-chested man with a short rifle stuck his head from the next hatchway, saw me three rungs below him, and ducked back. A Molt with a cutting bar lunged out instead. I slashed through his legs between the upper and lower knee joints. He fell backward in a spray of brown ichor. I crushed his weapon hand against the flooring, then stepped over him into the cargo deck beyond.

The Montreal's fourth deck was stacked with bales and crated goods within woven-wire restraint cages. There were no internal bulkheads. At the end of an aisle between ranks of cargo were three Molts wearing oxygen masks and padded garments of asbestos or glass fiber. They were trying to pivot a light plasma cannon away from the gunport so that it could bear on me.

The man with the rifle leaned over a row of crates and fired. His bullet hit me in the center of the chest and splashed upward, staggering me. I recovered and charged the Molts at a shambling run.

One of them swung at me with the kind of long forceps the Feds use to load their solid-breech plasma cannon. My bar screamed through the levers in a shower of sparks.

The alien scrambled away. I chopped the back of a Molt's head, then reversed my stroke through the right arm and into the chest of his fellow who was tugging on the gun's tiller.

The surviving Molt flung the handles of his forceps at me. They bounced off my helmet. I cut him in half. My bar's vibration slowed momentarily, then spun up again through a spray of body fluids.

The human stepped around a row of cargo and aimed at me. The butt of Stephen's flashgun crushed his skull from behind.

The cannon that'd exploded was ten meters farther along the curve of the hull. The blast had crushed the stacks of cargo outward in a wide circle. The feet of three Molts and another human were carbonized onto the deck near the gun's swivel, but nothing above the ankles remained of the crewmen.

I couldn't see any other Feds in the jumble of cargo. My whole body was on fire. I lifted my faceshield to take an unconstricted breath.

Stephen slammed my visor back down. He reached past me to tilt the plasma cannon toward the ceiling a meter above our heads.

I turned away. The world went white with a blast that spreadeagled me on the deck. Stephen was still standing, I don't know how.

I pushed myself to a crouch, then stood in a fog of swirling metal vapors. The point-blank charge of plasma had blown a two-meter hole into the level above. Fires burned there and among the cargo around us.

Stephen restacked one crate on another beneath the hole. A Molt fell through from the deck above. A bubble of vaporized metal had seared the creature's thorax white.

I wasn't sure I could lift Stephen, so I hopped onto the crates and raised my right foot. Stephen made a step of his hands. His powerful thrust popped me through onto the deck above.

The large compartment was Molt accommodations. I guessed the aliens were crew rather than cargo. Though the facilities were spartan, there were hammock hooks and cages for the Molts' personal belongings.

The plasma bolt had blown out half the lights. I couldn't see more than twenty Molts huddled in space meant to quarter a hundred.

I reached for Stephen with my left hand. I had to jab the tip of my bar down like a cane to keep from