Foster stepped back to Piet, with whom he'd been watching the proceedings. This was the last of the six pens, all of them full of slaves captured on worlds in which Molt culture survived though the human colonists vanished after the Collapse.
Racine, a Near Space planet with a relatively easy passage to the Reaches, was a convenient nexus for the slave trade. Most of the Molt-occupied planets were found in Near Space. The greatest need for slaves was on the planets of the Reaches where automated factories had built up huge stockpiles of microchips immediately after the Collapse, and where a few of the production lines were still operable, capable of turning out chips optimized for specialized needs. Because of the Molts' genetic memory, the Feds could use the superb ancient facilities without having the least understanding of them.
'Mind, I don't blame him,' Foster said, shouting to be heard over the Molts' chitinous moans. 'The way these filthy animals fight and shove when we're only trying to help them would try the patience of a saint, and I don't claim sainthood for my boys.'
'The slaves were grabbed up from maybe twenty worlds,' Stephen said, a fraction of a second before he consciously knew he was going to speak. 'All their normal clan and rank gradations were erased with their capture. They were brought here, packed in the holds of freighters with no light and too little to eat, shifted into these pens-which broke up any status relationships that might have started to form during the voyage-'
Stephen was speaking loudly of necessity; but though he didn't really intend it, he knew his voice had a mocking lilt sure to put the back up of anybody toward whom it was directed.
'— and then not fed at all for three days,' he continued, 'because the guards went haring off into the hills when they heard the pirates were coming. You know, if that happened to me, I might not be at my most civilized either.'
'The only thing I would add to that, Stephen,' Piet said, stepping between his friend and Major Foster, 'is that the Molts are free now, not slaves. Before we leave Racine, they'll have weapons and a rudimentary social structure.'
Piet smiled. 'Quite apart from the justice of the matter,' he added, 'I think this will prove a better way to disrupt an evil Federation commerce than burning the city down would be.'
The newly freed Molts spread to either side around the provisions. Most of them drank first, ducking their triangular heads into the troughs, then moved to the piles of foul-smelling yeast cakes to snatch food into their mouths. The aliens' metabolism was lower than that of similar-sized human beings, but their exoskeletal bodies didn't have a layer of subcutaneous fat for energy storage. Three days was very close to the point at which the slaves would have begun dying of hunger.
'I meant no disrespect to you, Mister Gregg,' Major Foster said stiffly. His face was mottled with tight-held emotions. Like Piet, he wore only a helmet. Stephen's half armor increased his already considerable superiority in size. 'If you'd care to treat the matter as one requiring satisfaction between gentlemen, however-'
'I wouldn't,' Stephen said. He stepped sideways so that he could take Foster's right hand without pushing Piet out of the way. 'I apologize, Major Foster. For my tone and for any negative implication that could have been drawn from my words.'
The Molts ate with a clicking buzz like a whispered version of their speech. The sound was much slighter than that of the moans that preceded it. The relative silence was equivalent to that of drips falling from trees in the minutes following the passage of a deafening rainstorm.
Foster let his breath out with a rush. 'That's very handsome of you, Mister Gregg,' he said. 'But there's no need for an apology, none at all. I just wanted to be clear that I intended no offense.'
Foster had obviously thought he was about to be challenged to a duel by Mister Stephen Gregg, an event Foster expected would be short and fatal for himself. That wouldn't have prevented the soldier from accepting the challenge-he was a gentleman, after all, one of the Fosters of Solange-but the relief he felt at being given his life back was as clear as a desert sunrise.
Stephen shook his head in irritation at his own behavior. 'Piet,' he said, 'we'd better find some Feds who want to fight soon. Or you're going to have to lock me away until we do. I don't-'
He squeezed Foster's hand again and released it. 'I haven't been sleeping well, Major,' he said. 'I'm irritable. But that's no cause to take it out on an officer controlling his men as ably as yourself.'
'When we start making sweeps of the surrounding territory, Mister Gregg,' Foster said in an attempt to be supportive, 'then I'm sure we'll all find our fill of action.'
'Have you been to see the
'Thanks, Piet,' Stephen said. 'But I think if you don't need me here just now, I'll go get myself something to drink.'
Quite a lot to drink. Possibly enough that he'd be able to sleep without being awakened every few minutes by the cries of people he'd killed over the years.
RACINE
November 20, Year 26
1214 hours, Venus time
With Sal piloting, Brantling at the attitude-jet controls, and fifteen soldiers aboard, the cutter was packed and sluggish. Sal spotted the farm in the valley a thousand meters below and started a shallow turn to starboard. Her first concern was not to collide with Tom Harrigan's cutter; her second, not to lose control and spin into the ground. Cutters weren't ideal for use in an atmosphere; they were simply what the squadron had available for the purpose.
If telling the soldiers what was going on had a place in her calculations, it was as a bad third. She didn't need Lieutenant Pringle hammering on her shoulder and shouting over the roar of the thruster, 'There! Go back now! There's one of their farms!'
'Get back, damn you!' Sal said as she spun the wheel to adjust the nozzle angle. A cutter couldn't hover on its single thruster, but an expert pilot could use a combination of thrust and momentum to bring the craft down in light fluttering circles like a leaf falling.
The farm was situated in a swale several kilometers long, narrow and steep-sided at the top but spreading wide at the shallow lower end. The farm buildings-house, barns, and the pentagonal Molt quarters, all within a stone-walled courtyard-were at the upper end. The sharp slope provided more shelter from the fierce winds that swept Racine in spring and fall.
Sal caught sunlight winking from Harrigan's cutter as it slanted toward the bare plains above the head of the swale. She hauled her craft in the direction of the vegetated lower end.
Sal and Tom Harrigan had long experience maneuvering the bigger and equally cranky
'They're shooting!' Pringle cried. If he'd jogged her shoulder again, she'd have taken a hand from the thruster's shuddering control wheel and elbowed him in the throat. 'Christ's
There were a dozen figures in the farm's courtyard. The cutter's optics weren't good enough to show weapons, but flashes indicated some of the Feds were indeed shooting at Harrigan's cutter as it circled down nearby.
Sal raised her craft's nose for aerodynamic lift as they thundered up the swale. Initially the vegetation was of crimson-leafed local varieties, stunted to the height of moss by the winds of the month before the squadron arrived. Closer to the buildings were fields of some thick-stemmed grass, corn or sorghum. The cutter's plasma exhaust shriveled the crop to either side and gouged a trench through the soil.
A line of junipers planted along the courtyard wall screened the buildings from the fields. Sal flared the thruster nozzle and brought her cutter down just short of the trees. It was a landing any pilot would have been proud of, given the load the cutter carried, but soldiers cursed as the impact slammed them into their fellows and the bulkheads.
The cutter's dorsal hatch had remained open throughout the flight. The soldiers piled out, chivied by their lieutenant. Pringle, in the far bow, couldn't reach the hatch until most of his men had exited. Because they didn't expect serious opposition on patrols like this, most of the troops wore only their helmets. Full armor would have
