The Reaches

'Yes. .' he said. 'The ships embargoed here, the Clerambard and the Daniel III, lifted off five days, Earth days, ago. A courier had brought orders from Montreal countermanding the previous orders.'

'It was only a clarification,' Dimetrio said. 'Really, it-'

Dole, acting with the freedom of a man who'd served with Piet Ricimer for fifteen years, tapped his carbine's muzzle on the bridge of the fiscal's nose. 'I hear liars' noses grow,' Dole said. 'I know sometimes they get shot off.'

Piet gestured his bosun back with a glance.

'However, the ships had been stripped of their weapons and all spares and tools,' Kansuale continued. He'd obviously decided that his safest course lay in telling the full truth in as flat a tone as possible. 'Also, three crewmen and the captain of the Daniel III had been killed when the ships were captured.'

Piet looked at Larsen and raised an eyebrow.

'I understand that's correct,' the prefect said miserably. 'It was before my arrival, you realize.'

'The guns and gear was all sent off to Asuncion before,' said an official. The tag over the pocket of his blue tunic read supervisor, but there was enough grease in the fabric and under his fingernails to indicate that he actually worked on ships as well as supervising a crew of Molts. 'Then they tell me to put the bitches back the way they were tout le suite and send them home-and how am I going to do that, I ask you, when they've taken the gear to Asuncion, huh?'

'How much warning did you have that we were coming?' Stephen asked. There were more spies than honest men in the Governor's Palace.

Stephen held the opened lemon to his lips, squeezing as he sucked in more of the tart, luscious juice. He watched Larsen over his hand and the fruit in it.

'Ten days,' she said in a dead voice. She was looking in his direction, but her eyes weren't focused on anything so close. 'Send the Venus ships back, get all the other shipping off to Asuncion or Racine where there's defenses. Everybody to scatter from the settlements here and hide out until the, the-'

The struggle in Larsen's mind brought her back to the present. 'Your squadron,' she said simply, meeting Stephen's gaze. 'The pirates. We were to hide in the wild until you were gone and not give you any help. What would that have done? You'd have burned and blasted everything on Lilymead to a crater, that's what it would have done!'

The prefect had gone beyond fear to acceptance of the worst possible event. 'Well, maybe you'll do that anyway,' she said bitterly to Piet. 'But I didn't come to Lilymead to be prefect of craters and burned fields, so you can just go ahead and shoot me before you start!'

Piet smiled and slung the double-barreled shotgun he carried as a personal weapon. 'I don't think we'll need to do that,' he said mildly. 'Prefect Larsen, you'll supply provisions and reaction mass to my squadron at prices I will set after consultation with my officers.'

He nodded to Sal Blythe.

'We will pay for these items-' Piet continued.

Fiscal Dimetrio blinked in surprise as great as that of seeing his life hang on Dole's 3-kilogram trigger pull.

'— in Venerian consols, after deductions for damages to the ships detained in violation of your government's safe conduct.' His smile hardened momentarily as he added, 'These damages will include death benefits for the men who were murdered. Do you understand?'

There was a stir in the crowd of civilians. Those near the front could hear Piet's clear voice. They repeated the words to their fellows farther back, whether or not they believed the statements.

'Yes sir,' Prefect Larsen said, though that probably wasn't true. 'We'll-may I radio my people? Quite a lot of them are hiding in the bush without proper shelter or provisions.'

Piet nodded. 'Go about your affairs, all of you. Major Castle,' he said to the commander of the contingent of soldiers, 'secure the west end of town. There's to be no looting or mistreatment of residents. Dole, you and your men cover the east. Confiscate weapons, but no trouble.'

The troops dissolved into half squads under the bawled orders of their officers. Piet entered the Commandatura with the Fed officials. The flaccid remains of the lemon lay in the street. Stephen, his flashgun in ready position again, followed Piet because he couldn't force his way to the front in time. The hallway was frescoed with scenes of the planet's settlement.

'I thought. .' Sal Blythe said beside him. 'I mean, if we're at war. .'

Piet turned around and gave her his brilliant smile. 'We're at war with President Pleyal,' he said. 'We're at war with a system that strips the Reaches of pre-Collapse remains without building anything new. A colony like Lilymead is just what mankind needs if we're to grow until we're so widely dispersed that there can't be another Collapse, not one that threatened all civilization.'

'There's the problem with where their orders come from, of course,' Stephen said. He instinctively looked in both directions along the corridor. The Commandatura appeared to be empty except for the officials who'd waited outside.

Brave folk. All those who'd stayed were brave folk.

'Oh, we'll take care of that the better way, Stephen,' Piet said cheerfully. 'You and I and Venus will, with the help of God. We'll cut off the tyranny at its head!'

And if you feel cheated of your chance to see real war, Captain Sarah Blythe, Stephen thought, then wait till our next landfall on Racine.

RACINE

November 11, Year 26

0745 hours, Venus time

The Gallant Sallie, overfull though not overweighted by her cargo of soldiers, bobbed in the wake of the Wrath's transsonic passage. 'Don't touch those controls, you cunt brains!' Sal screamed to Harrigan and the two men with him at the attitude control panel.

The artificial intelligence-the new AI configured for atmospheric control, separate from the navigational unit- brought the ship steady with microburns from the attitude jets. Humans, even the picked men Sal had on the manual boards for backup, would have overcorrected and set the Gallant Sallie looping in a yo-yo pattern.

Though the new AI worked perfectly, the quick oscillation at 200 kph was too much for the stomachs of a dozen of the soldiers. One of them slammed his helmet visor closed to avoid spewing across the back of his neighbor; a kindly reflex, but one he was sure to regret until he got to a place where he could hose his suit out.

For that matter, the way the Gallant Sallie shuddered was frightening to anybody who knew the starship was roaring toward New Windsor, the planetary capital, at only a hundred meters above the ground. The soldiers packing the hold and too much of the cabin didn't realize the situation, thank God.

Several of the squadron's vessels fired from orbit. Plasma charges wobbled and dispersed in the kilometers of atmosphere. The bolts flickered like heat lightning rather than slashing cataclysmically, searing hectares without destroying any target of metal or masonry.

That sort of bombardment might keep the Feds' heads down or at least draw their attention away from the ships coming in on the deck with companies of soldiers. It wouldn't seriously harm the defenses. The Wrath was designed to accept damage to her thrusters without corkscrewing out of control, so Piet Ricimer was taking her point-blank past the starport to deliver smashing blows.

Since the big warship's wake hadn't spun the Gallant Sallie into the ground, Sal was glad for the support.

The display Stephen had provided was crystal clear, amazingly clear to somebody who'd been used to optronics from the generation before her own. The AI projected digital information onto rushing terrain. The brown rock slashed with gullies of lush blue-tinged vegetation seemed too real to be an electronic image; but that's what it was, just like the map spread across the display's upper left quadrant.

Sal waited, her hands splayed and ready to take control from the guidance program. The Gallant Sallie had been chosen for the assault because of her state-of-the-art electronics, but Captain Ricimer