The Reaches

17 Abraxis. Piet had held the switch down for thirty seconds to call the crew aboard. Men were scattered from here to the Hercules. Hell, some had probably wandered off in the other direction for reasons best known to themselves.

When the alarm sounded; Fed prisoners returning the sledge to the 17 Abraxis slacked the drag ropes to see what was happening. The Molts continued to pace forward. Maher, one of the pair on guard this watch, punched a Fed between the shoulder blades with his rifle butt.

The prisoner yelped. He turned. Maher prodded his face with the gun muzzle. The Feds resumed the duties they'd been set.

'We don't want to screw up the navigational equipment when we lift this,' I said to Guillermo as I tapped the freighter's communications module. 'Do you know if any of the hardware or software is common?'

'No, Jeremy,' the Molt said. 'I could build it from parts, of course, since one of my ancestors did that a thousand years ago.'

Guillermo's thorax clicked his race's equivalent of laughter. His three-fingered hands played across the navigation console. 'What we can do, though, is to bring up the AI and keep it running while we separate the communications module and attempt to run it.'

'Right,' I said. Molts were supposed to operate by rote memory while humans displayed true, innovative intelligence. That's what made us superior to them. You bet.

I bent to check the join between the module and the main console. The speaker snapped, 'Presidential-

I jumped upright, grabbing my cutting bar with both hands to unhook it. The only reason I carried the weapon was I hadn't thought to remove it after we returned from the Hercules.

'— Vessel Keys to the Kingdom calling ships on St. Lawrence! Do not attempt to lift. You will be boarded by Federation personnel. Any attempt at resistance will cause you both to be destroyed by gunfire. Respond at once! Over.'

The commo screen was blanked by a nacreous overlay: the caller could, but chose not to, broadcast video.

'Stay in the image!' I said to Guillermo. Venerian ships didn't have Molt crew members.

The voice had said, '. . you both. .' The Feds had made the same mistake as Captain Cinpeda: they'd seen the metal-hulled vessels, but they'd missed the Oriflamme in her gully.

My fingers clicked over the module's keyboard. It was an excellent unit, far superior to the normal run of commo gear we produced on Venus. I careted a box in the upper left corner of the pearly field for the Oriflamme.

Piet looked at me, opening his mouth. I ignored him and said, 'Freighter David out of Clapperton to Presidential Vessel, we're laid up here replacing a feedline and our consort's commo is screwed up. What the hell's got into you, over?'

Guillermo stood with his plastron bowed outward. He scratched the grooves between belly plates with a finger from either hand. I'd never seen him do anything of the sort before. The activity looked slightly disgusting-and innocent, like a man picking his nose.

'Who are you?' demanded the voice from the module. 'Who is this speaking? Over!'

Piet nodded approvingly. At least he thought we looked like the sort of folks you'd find on the bridge of a Federation merchantman. .

'This is Captain Jeremy Moore!' I said, tapping my chest with the point of my thumb. 'Who are you, boyo? Some bleeding Molt, or just so pig-faced ugly that you're afraid to let us see you? Over!'

Through the open hatch I saw men staggering aboard the Oriflamme. Sailors' lives involved both danger and hard work, but their normal activities didn't prepare them to run half a klick when the alarm sounded.

The sledge sat beside the 17 Abraxis, ready to receive the eighth and final thruster nozzle. It had taken an hour, minimum, to transport each previous nozzle, and another hour to fit the tungsten forging into place beneath the Oriflamme.

Guillermo balanced on one leg and stuck the other in the air. He poked at his crotch. I noticed that he'd dropped his sash onto my cutting bar on the deck, out of the module's camera angle.

The pearl-tinged static dissolved into the face of a man who'd been handsome some twenty years and twenty kilograms ago. At the moment he was mad enough to chew hull plates, exactly what I'd intended. Angry people lose perspective and miss details.

'I'll tell you who I am!' he shouted. 'I'm Commodore Richard Prothero, officer commanding the Middle Ways, and I'm going to have your guts for garters, boyo! My landing party will be down in twenty minutes. If there's so much as a burp from you, I'll blast a crater so deep it goes right on out the other side of the planet! Do you understand, civilian? Out!'

Prothero's three quarters of the screen blanked-completely, to the black of dead air rather than a carrier wave's pearly luminescence. Piet nodded again and crooked his index finger to Guillermo and me.

I didn't imagine that Prothero could intercept the laser link I'd formed between us and the Oriflamme, but we needn't take unnecessary risks. The necessary ones were bad enough.

'You'll need more than your helmet,' Stephen said in a voice as if waking from a dream. 'Put the rest of your armor on, Jeremy.'

'When we lift, I'll put my suit on,' I said. I wondered what I sounded like. Nothing human, I supposed. Very little of me was human when I slipped into this state.

'The Federation warship orbiting St. Lawrence is an eight-hundred-tonner mounting twenty carriage guns.' Piet's voice rang calmly through the tannoy in the ceiling of the forward hold. 'We'll be lifting on seven engines, so we won't be as handy as I'd like. In order to return home, we must engage and destroy this enemy. With the Lord's help, my friends, we will destroy them and destroy every enemy of Venus!'

Twelve of us waited in the hold. Kiley, Loomis, and Lightbody carried flashguns, but Stephen alone held his with the ease of a man drawing on an old glove.

We'd had time to rig for action, but it would be tight working the big guns with everybody in hard suits. They were probably cheering Piet in the main hull. None of us did. For myself, I didn't feel much of anything, not even fear.

'They must've landed on Riel just after we left,' Maher said. 'The Keys must. Pity they weren't another month putting their pumps to rights.'

'We'll lift as soon as the enemy ship is below the horizon,' Piet continued, 'and our marksmen have dealt with the Federation cutters. The enemy is in a hundred-and-six-minute orbit, so we'll have sufficient time to reach altitude before joining battle.'

Even on seven thrusters? Well, I'd take Piet's word for it. Aloud I said, 'Lacaille says that the Keys is falling apart. You've seen the sort, older than your gramps and Fed-maintained as well. We'll give her the last push, is all.'

'Too right, sir!' Kiley said, nodding enthusiastically. He knew I was just cheering them up before we fought a ship with enough guns, men and tonnage to make six of us. All the sailors knew that-and appreciated it, maybe more than they appreciated me standing beside them now. They expected courage of a gentleman, but not empathy.

Two exhaust flares winked in the sky. I lowered my visor. For the moment, the riflemen and I were present to protect the flashgunners from Feds who managed to get out of the landing vessels. I'd wear my suit when it was that or breathe vacuum; but I wouldn't put on that jointed ceramic coffin before I had to.

'I'll take the right-hand one,' Stephen said in a husky, horrid whisper. He clicked his faceshield down. 'Wait for me to shoot. If anyone jumps the gun-if you survive the battle, my friend, you won't survive it long. On my oath as a gentleman.'

'Almighty God,' said Piet. 'May Thy hand strengthen ours in Thy service today. Amen.'

Lacaille was suited up aboard the Oriflamme. He'd repeated that he wouldn't fight his own people; but he'd asked not to be left on the ground, either.

We owed him that much. The prisoners locked for the moment in the hold of the 17 Abraxis would identify him quickly enough to survivors of the Federation landing party. Besides, Lacaille was