The Reaches

Governor Halys had provided to the expedition. 'This time, however, we voyage not as raiders but as the champions of Venus and mankind. Our purpose is to harm our enemies rather than to enrich ourselves as individuals.'

Ricimer wore half armor, the helmet and chestplates of a hard suit. He was under no threat here, but the gleaming metallized surfaces made his floodlit figure splendid.

'What's he mean, then?' Cooney asked in a whisper loud enough to be sure that Sal heard it. 'Does he mean we're supposed to get our knackers shot away for bare wages?'

Tom Harrigan clubbed Cooney silent with the side of his knobby fist. If some of the Betaport sailors standing nearby had heard the question/complaint, they might have used a length of pipe instead. In Betaport, you didn't argue with a statement of Piet Ricimer's.

The Gallant Sallie was docked in Betaport now because Stephen Gregg chose to have the refit work done by workmen and suppliers who knew him well. The ship had been gutted to the bare hull and built back again with the newest and best equipment. It wasn't just a ploy of the co-owner to run up the assessed value of his share, either. Sal had gone over the figures. She knew that she couldn't have gotten the work done herself for anything close to the amount Stephen claimed to be paying.

'I hope to make you all rich,' Ricimer continued, as though he'd been listening to Cooney himself. The general commander had been a sailor all his life, and he knew how his fellows thought. 'But nothing can take precedence over the needs of Venus and God on this expedition.'

The Wrath and most of the squadron's bigger vessels were carrying soldiers, landsmen whose specialty was war instead of being sailors with guns. Stephen Gregg, the expedition's vice commander, was no sailor, but neither was he merely a soldier. Like Piet Ricimer himself, Mister Gregg wasn't merely anything.

Stephen waited in the back of the hold behind his friend and commander now. His head was barely visible from where Sal stood.

'My comrades, my friends,' Piet Ricimer boomed. 'We go out as a flame-a beacon to all friends of freedom, and a torch to the enemies of God! Let us pray for His help in our endeavors!'

As she bowed her head, listening to the deeply felt sincerity of the general commander's words, Sal wondered what it was that Stephen Gregg might pray for.

LILYMEAD

October 10, Year 26

0247 hours, Venus time

The fields to the north and west of the community grew Terran crops irrigated from deep wells, but the street was shaded by local succulents that spread their thick leafless stems in intricate traceries against the sky. To Stephen, it was like walking under cool green nets.

Besides Piet, Stephen, and Guillermo, the Venerian 'embassy' consisted of Sarah Blythe-for her local knowledge-and the mates of the other two freighters, comparable to the Gallant Sallie, that had set down with the flagship.

Locally, it was mid-morning. Members of the colony's government were drawn up in front of the Commandatura, a modest building distinguished from its neighbors only by having a coat of stucco over the adobe brick.

Close to three hundred people, a good percentage of the town's population, sat or stood in the street beyond. The humans, generally in front, wore their best clothes, an odd assortment of Terran and locally made finery. The Molts were naked except for an occasional sash-of-office. The tone of the aliens' chitin ranged from yellow-brown to near purple.

A few Rabbits, human by genetic inheritance, sauntered from alley to doorway or back. Their patent unconcern was in contrast to the sharp tension of the rest of the crowd.

Four of the six Fed officials wore white tunics; only the sixty-ish woman and the much younger man at her side had uniform trousers to match. The five Molts standing behind the humans were probably principal clerks in their departments, since they wore varicolored sashes.

There were no weapons visible.

Stephen grinned with inward humor at the thought: there were no Fed weapons visible. The Venerian contingent was escorted by fifty soldiers and an equal number of armed sailors, the Wrath's B Watch close-combat team. The warship's broadside of 20-cm plasma cannon dominated the community from the nearby spaceport.

'I don't guess they're going to try anything, Mister Gregg,' said Dole, who commanded the sailors. He was the Wrath's bosun and a companion of Piet's from the days Piet was the mate of a tiny intrasystem trader.

'Did you think they would?' Stephen said. He scanned the shuttered windows up and down the town's single street. His palms tingled on the grip and fore-end of his flashgun, a heavy monopulse laser.

There'd always been a chance that some fanatic would decide that shooting the devil Piet Ricimer was worth the total destruction of the colony that would surely follow. At the least hint of a threat, Stephen would act, as he'd acted before.

Piet, wearing a complete hard suit except for the gauntlets and lower-leg pieces, faced the uniformed woman and said, 'Are you the Fiscal of Lilymead?'

'Ah!' the woman said, blinking in confusion. She was terrified, they were all of them terrified. 'I'm, I'm-'

'Factor Ricimer, I'm Fiscal Dimetrio,' the young man at her side blurted with an anguished expression, 'but Prefect Larsen is in charge. Mister Beck was merely filling in during the vacancy and-and I've been sent to replace him.'

Larsen bobbed her head in agreement. 'There's no quarrel between Lilymead and the Free State of Venus,' she said. 'The ships that were, ah, detained, they've all been released. The two here and the others elsewhere, I'm told, a week ago. Mister Kansuale here will verify that. He's, he's from Venus too.'

'Won't you have some fruit?' said another Fed official. He was a gangling lad who seemed to have outgrown his uniform tunic. He gestured the Molt behind him to come forward with a basket of lemons the size of oranges. 'Our Lilymead lemons are exceptionally large and sweet!'

He was more like a puppy than a puppy was. Stephen started to laugh. Everybody looked at him, but he was used to that. Holding his flashgun muzzle-up in one hand, he took a lemon, examined it, and bit one end off to suck some of the juice.

'He's right, Piet,' Stephen said. To Prefect Larsen he added, 'You know, you folks here ought to stick to agriculture and leave piracy to experts.' He smiled. 'Like us.'

'There was confusion, but it's been resolved, truly,' Larsen said, wiping her forehead with her cuff. 'Kansuale, tell them. Tell them.'

Kansuale was stocky, bald, and dressed in civilian clothes of dull blue with patches of electric green. The style had originated on Earth and been picked up by fops on Venus some three years since. Heaven knew how this trader came by it.

Kansuale bowed to Sal, then to Piet, and said, 'Captain Blythe, gentlemen. I've been trading on Lilymead for seven years, but I was born and raised in a smallholding at the base of Mount Cypris.'

'Can you identify him, Captain?' Piet asked Sal.

She nodded. 'By communicator from orbit,' she said. 'He was my contact. I suppose he arranged for the lighter to transfer cargo.' She sniffed. 'The old screen wasn't very good, but the voice and the general features are right.'

Sal looked uncomfortable in the helmet and breastplate of the hard suit Stephen had insisted she take as part of the Gallant Sallie's refit. In the past, the vessel had carried a single hard suit for operations in heat or corrosive atmospheres. It was a shoddy piece of work as well as being larger than Sal could wear comfortably.

She needed better than that. Especially out beyond Pluto, where bullets were as likely a hazard as the natural ones.

Kansuale had been wary but not frightened the way the Fed officials were. When the trader saw that he wasn't being accepted as an unquestioned friend, his eyes drifted guardedly across the harsh faces before him.