made it nearly impossible to board and debark from a cutter's tight confinement.
Sal heard a soldier cry in pain; he'd probably fallen against a skid. A cutter's single small thruster didn't bake the ground to an oven the way a full-sized starship did, but the outriggers were exposed to the exhaust when the nozzle pivoted forward for landing. The bath of ions didn't damage the ceramic structure, but you didn't want to touch it till it had cooled for an hour, either.
Now that the thrusters were cold, Sal lifted the radio handset. 'Cutter Blythe to base,' she reported. She craned her neck to the side to shadow her navigational display so that she could read it. Daylight streaming through the open hatch washed out the self-luminous characters. 'We and Cutter Harrigan have found Feds at vector three- three-one degrees, nineteen point three klicks from base.'
She heard the faint popping of rifles at a distance, from or directed at Tom's men. 'There's fighting going on. I don't know how serious it is.'
She cleared her throat. Was that a proper report? She wasn't a soldier! 'I don't think it's too serious. Out.'
Brantling, holding a rifle from the
Sal checked that her revolver was still in the flapped cross-draw holster along her left thigh. She swung herself to the deck just as Brantling jumped onto the ground well beyond the thruster's reach. Sal followed her crewman without letting herself think much about what she was doing.
Walking was harder than she'd expected. The soil was soft, and dark green leaves hid the furrows. Pringle called an order in a high-pitched voice. His soldiers pushed through the juniper hedge but halted at the waist-high wall beyond.
Most of the squadron's landsmen were combat veterans who'd fought against President Pleyal on Earth while serving in the Independent Coastal Republic. Only about half the troops were Venerians. Pringle was from Ishtar City, but from their accent and what she overheard of their conversation, most of the men under him were citizens of United Europe. A few of them shared the hatred of the Federation general among sailors from Venus, but for the most part the troops were fighting for pay and loot.
That was all right, so long as they fought.
Sal reached the wall and knelt between a pair of soldiers. One man rested his rifle on the cement coping; the other carried a cutting bar and had a short-barreled shotgun dangling on a lanyard looped through his right epaulet. He gave Sal a gap-toothed grin.
She peered over the wall, breathing hard. Juniper branches had scratched her face, and her low-sided shipboard slippers were full of sticky black dirt.
The stone house was forty meters away. A bullet ricocheted from its roof, passing high overhead with a nervous
The Feds were looking over their shoulders toward where Harrigan's cutter had landed. They were nearly to the stone wall before one of the women looked up, saw the waiting Venerians, and screamed. Pringle's order was drowned in the blast of shots.
All the Fed males went down, along with several women. Pellets from the edge of a shotgun's pattern clawed the face of a 6-year-old. He ran in circles, shrieking and spraying blood.
Pringle and his soldiers jumped over the wall and charged the buildings. A Molt came out of the nearer barn. Brantling, running with the troops, shot and spun the alien. A shotgun blast from one of the other cutter's men knocked the Molt sprawling.
Sal was alone in a haze of sweetish smoke. Ceramic cartridge cases gleamed in the sunlight. The troops hadn't bothered to pick the hulls up for reloading as they would during target practice.
Someone inside the farther barn screamed, but there were no more shots. Soldiers from both cutters ran into the buildings. Sal could glimpse them through the windows of the house.
The survivors of the Feds who'd run toward Pringle's men lay flat among their dead and wounded. Two soldiers with cutting bars guarded them. One of the troops had caught the wounded boy and was applying a pressure bandage; the victim kicked and flailed his arms in blind terror. Sal stepped over the wall to help. As she did so, the boy went as flaccid as a half-filled bladder. He'd fainted, or. .
Sal jogged past the prisoners and into the house, so that she wouldn't have to consider the other possibility for the moment. The holstered revolver slapped her thigh as she moved.
There was a dead man in the kitchen, decapitated by a cutting bar. Wisps of his white beard, sawn by the same stroke, drifted in the air. There was blood over everything.
The living room beyond was a tangle of bedding and overturned furniture that several soldiers were searching with their cutting bars. The farm had obviously taken in refugees from New Windsor; maybe relatives, maybe not.
A whining bar slashed a cushion to fuzz. The stroke continued toward Sal's head. She ducked. It looked like simple vandalism to her, but perhaps the soldiers knew what they were doing.
She started up the stairs to get away from the troops' enthusiasm. A plasma thruster blatted unexpectedly. A cutter hopped the wall at low level and landed in the courtyard. Reinforcements sent because of her report, she supposed. There was room for a good pilot to land without hurting anybody on the ground, but he'd better have been good.
A woman screamed in the room at the top of the stairs. The door was ajar. Sal flung it open with her left hand. The panel bounced back from Lieutenant Pringle's shoulder. He stepped aside so that Sal could enter.
She'd tried to draw her revolver. She only managed to get the holster flap unbuttoned before she saw that there was no danger.
Two soldiers held the fully clothed woman they'd dragged from piled bedding in which she'd tried to conceal herself. The captive was about Sal's age, swarthy and terrified. 'Not a treasure in chips,' Pringle said cheerfully, 'but she should provide some entertainment.'
The woman's dress was a shiny orange synthetic fabric. One of the soldiers tried to rip it at the neckline and only managed to jerk the captive's head forward. She continued to scream.
'Let her go!' Sal said. She looked at Pringle. 'Make them let her go at once!'
The second soldier put his free hand beside his comrade's. They pulled in opposite directions. The dress tore all the way down the front. The bandeau beneath was so loose that one of the woman's full breasts flopped out.
'You needn't watch,' Pringle said coolly. 'They shot at us, so they ought to know what to expect.'
One soldier caught both the woman's wrists in one hand. He flung her backward onto the bed when his partner kicked her legs from beneath her.
'Stop that!' Sal said. Pringle stepped in front of her. She backed and drew the revolver.
'Listen, you whore!' Pringle shouted. 'If you don't want to find yourself spread-eagled beside her, you'd better-'
He moved forward. Sal couldn't shoot him in cold blood.
'Tom!' she screamed. She raised the revolver's muzzle and fired three shots into the ceiling as fast as she could pull the trigger. The blasts were deafening in the enclosure. Bits of shattered lath from the ceiling exploded across the room. One of the bullets bounced back from the roof slates and buried itself in the window ledge.
The two soldiers jumped up from their captive. Pringle grabbed Sal's wrist. He punched her in the jaw with his free hand. 'Stupid whore!' he shouted.
Sal's world went white and buzzing. She sagged until Pringle let go of her wrist; then she fell to the floor. She could hear voices, but they were ten decibels weaker than they'd been a moment before.
Stephen Gregg stepped into the bedroom. He held his flashgun to his shoulder. Pringle dropped the revolver he'd twisted from Sal's grip.
More men followed Stephen, too many for the available space. 'I gave orders against rape,' said Piet Ricimer as he knelt beside Sal. 'Mister Dole, all three of these men are to be confined in close arrest. I'll try them later this evening.'
'Sir, I. .' Pringle said. 'We. .'
Ricimer put an arm under Sal's shoulders. 'Can you move?' he asked.
