The Reaches

must have decided he could overlook it. The job of removing thruster nozzles-without dockyard tools-after they'd been torqued into place by use was just as difficult as Winger had grumbled it would be when we were on Clapperton.

'They've got seven,' Stephen said quietly. 'This last one and we're out of here.'

'If we don't take spares,' I said, deliberately turning my head toward the Oriflamme to avoid Piet's eyes.

He glared at me anyway. 'The prisoners can get back to Riel on four out of twelve thrusters,' he said. 'They can't get back on two. We aren't going to leave forty-three men here on the chance that somebody will come by before they all starve.'

Twelve humans and thirty-one Molts. All of them 'men' to Piet, and you'd best remember it when you spoke in his hearing.

'You could manage on two, Piet,' Stephen said with a grin. 'I'll bet you could take her home on one, though I guess we'd have to gut the hull to get her out of the gravity well to begin with.'

I knew Stephen was joking to take the sting out of Piet's rebuke to me. I'd promised Winger that I'd try to get him a spare nozzle, though.

Piet chuckled and squeezed my hand. 'All things are possible with the Lord, Stephen,' he said, 'but I wouldn't care to put him to that test. And, Jeremy-'

He sobered.

'— I appreciate what you've tried to do. I know the motor crew is concerned about the wear we'll get from tungsten, and they have a right to be. But if these nozzles don't last us, we'll find further replacements along the way. We won't leave men to die.'

I nodded. I looked up at the femur of a creature more ancient than mankind and just possibly more ancient than Earth. Black stone, waiting for the sun to devour it.

A tiny, intense spark shone in the sky where the thigh pointed. I jumped to my feet.

'There's a-'

'Incoming vessel!' Piet bellowed as he rose from a seated position to a dead run in a single fluid motion. 'Don't shoot! Don't shoot! If she crashes, it could be anywhere!'

Stephen and I followed at our best speed, but Piet was aboard the Oriflamme while we were still meters from the cockpit steps.

'This is close enough,' Stephen ordered, dropping into a squat a hundred meters from the strange vessel's starboard side. 'This swale doesn't look like much, but it'll deflect their exhaust if they try to fry us. Can't imagine anything else we need to worry about, but don't get cocky.'

Piet and the rest of us knelt beside him. Stephen, commander of his county's militia before he ever set foot on a starship, was giving the orders for the moment.

Dole's ten men were still jogging to where they'd have an angle on the stranger's bow. Fifty-tonne freighters built like this one on the Back Worlds weren't likely to have hatches both port and starboard, but we weren't taking the risk.

Stampfer was half a kilometer behind us, aligning the 4-cm plasma weapon 17 Abraxis carried for use against Chay raiders. The Oriflamme's guns were useless while she was in the gully. Salomon, Winger, and the bulk of the crew weren't going to be ready her to lift for an hour or more despite desperate measures.

'You'd think,' I said, 'that they'd have signaled they were coming in.'

Stephen shrugged. 'Maybe they don't have commo,' he said. 'The Feds'd leave the air tanks off to save money if they could get away with it.'

'Southerns, sir,' Lightbody said unexpectedly.

Stephen and I looked at him; Piet grinned and continued to watch the strange vessel. 'This one's Southern Cross construction, sir,' Lightbody amplified. 'Not Fed. The pairs of thrusters are too far apart for Feds.'

The vessel's hatch clanged twice as those inside jerked it sideways by hand rather than hydraulic pressure. Six figures got out. They jumped as far as they could to clear the patch of thruster-heated ground.

One of the newcomers was a woman; common enough for a Terran crew, though I heard Lightbody growl. None of the strangers was armed, and their assorted clothing was entirely civilian.

Piet got up and strode to meet them.

'Guide a little left, Piet,' Stephen said as he trotted to Piet's right side. Stephen's left index finger indicated a 30° angle. I moved over to give Piet room but he ignored the direction.

'Piet,' Stephen said calmly, 'Stampfer will have that plasma cannon trained on the open hatchway. I trust Stampfer, but I don't much trust junk he crabbed out of a Federation freighter. I'd really rather you didn't take the chance of something unlikely happening.'

From the tone of Stephen's voice, he could have been asking where to place a piece of furniture.

Piet clicked his tongue, but he bore to the left as directed. 'Where would you be without me to fuss over, Stephen?' he murmured.

Possible answers to that falsely light question rang through my head like hammerblows.

'Sirs?' the leader of the newcomers asked. 'Are you from the North American Federation?'

He spoke Trade English with a distinct Southern accent. A good dozen additional people, including a few more women, climbed from the vessel behind him. They moved with greater circumspection than the initial party.

The ten of us spread slightly as we bore down on the strangers. We weren't being deliberately threatening, but a group of grim, armed men must have looked as dangerous as an avalanche.

'We are not,' Piet said in a proud, ringing voice. 'We are citizens of the Free State of Venus.'

'Oh, thank God!' cried the woman at the leader's side. She knelt and kissed a crucifix folded in both her hands.

I grabbed Lightbody by the front collar and jerked him around to face me. 'No!' I shouted.

I held the spacer till the light eased back into his eyes and he began to breathe normally again. 'Sorry, sir,' he muttered, bobbing his head in contrition.

Everyone was staring at us. I flushed and lowered the cutting bar in my right hand. Lightbody hadn't done anything overt.

I think Piet understood. I know Stephen did, because he gave me a slow smile and said, 'If you ever change sides, friend, I'm not going to let you get in arm's length alive. Hey?'

In context, that was high praise.

The newcomer's leader embraced Piet. 'Sir,' he said, 'I am Nicolas Rodrigo and these are my people, twenty of us.'

I eyed the group quickly. If there were only twenty, then they were all in plain sight by now. There were no Molts in the group, surprisingly.

'Until forty days ago, we maintained the colony on Santos,' Rodrigo said. 'Then two Federation warships, the Yellowknife and Keys to the Kingdom, arrived under a beast named Prothero. He-'

The woman had risen again. At Prothero's name, she spat. Our eyes meshed, then slid sideways. Quite an attractive little thing in a plump, dark-haired fashion. Young; 18 or 20 at the outside, as compared with Rodrigo's 35 or so.

'— told us that the Southern Cross had been placed under President Pleyal's protection, and that he was taking control of Santos on behalf of the Federation. He-'

'What do you have aboard your ship?' Stephen interjected abruptly.

'What?' Rodrigo said. 'Nothing, only food. Ah-we took back the Hercules, this ship, on Corpus Christi. There was confusion when a freighter crashed into the Yellowknife.'

Kiley chuckled. 'I wonder if them poor bastards'll ever figure out quite what happened,' he said.

'Come along back to our ships, then,' Piet said. 'We'll be more comfortable there, and I don't want my men I've left there to be concerned.'