The Reaches

Savoy,' Kletch-han said. 'The officer said to his men, 'Do they think we're going to treat with bug slaves?' He took the flag from me and struck me as you see. He and his troops took the vehicle and drove westward with it. That is all.'

'We ran into the brush when Kletch-han was attacked,' the third envoy said. 'When the soldiers left, we carried Kletch-han back to the city. Master Gregg summoned Dirksahla to treat Kletch-han though we told him that was unnecessary. Then Mister Gregg brought us here.'

Stephen's face and whole body were quiescent, waiting for emotion to fill them. He had no more expression than the trigger of his flashgun did.

Captain Ricimer nodded. 'Captain Blythe,' he said crisply. 'Are the reaction mass tanks of your vessel topped off?'

'Yes,' Sal said, 'and the air tanks have been dumped and refilled.'

'We won't be high enough to pressurize,' Ricimer said. 'Gentlemen, help our Molt friends here lift Kletch-han down gently.'

Boler and Salomon slid their arms under the chitinous body. Molts massed somewhat less than humans on average, and both captains were powerful men. As they handed the dying envoy to Jankowich and Casson on the ground, Ricimer said, 'Stephen, who's our highest-ranking human captive from Savoy?'

'We've got the head of the Merchants' Guild, Madame Dumesnil,' Stephen said in a voice that could have been a machine's. 'She was trying to load her whole warehouse onto a truck when some sailors from the Wrath arrived.'

'Fine; have her at the port entrance on my return,' Ricimer said. 'She'll take the next message to Director Eliahu. Stephen, swing by the Wrath on our way to the Gallant Sallie. With full AI controls, Guillermo can handle the attitude board alone, but I'll want a second man with Lightbody watching the water flow to the thrusters.'

'I'll take care of that,' Sal said. She lifted herself into the back of the vehicle, though she supposed she could have ridden on the running board as easily.

'Mistress Blythe, you will do as I command you!' the general commander said with the same shocking rage that had flared at Stephen a moment before.

'Captain Ricimer,' Sal replied, 'you will not order me off my own vessel! Besides which, you don't have a man better able to monitor the Gallant Sallie's fuel feeds!'

Stephen put the truck in gear, accelerating smoothly. He made small steering corrections to miss the worst of the craters starships had blasted in the field's surface. It was still a bone-jarring ride.

'She's a stubborn lady, Piet,' Stephen called over the rattle of the truck.

'She's also correct,' Ricimer said. He reached his right hand across the truck bed, swaying with the vehicle's motion. Guillermo put an arm around Ricimer's waist to brace him. 'I've noted your shiphandling with pleasure, Captain Blythe. I'm fortunate to have you in this squadron.'

The general commander's handshake was firm and dry. Sal swallowed, stunned at the memory of what she'd just done. 'Factor Ricimer,' she said. 'I-'

'And if you'll call me 'Piet' in private, Mistress, I'll feel a little less like one of the Federation's saints' idols,' Ricimer continued. He smiled wanly. 'Too many of the people I respect seem to be afraid of me.'

'They're confusing you with me,' Stephen said. The truck was nearing the Gallant Sallie against the eastern berm. The surface on this side of the reservation was less pitted, and he was getting as much speed from the vehicle as the diesel's governor allowed.

'Do you think that's it?' Ricimer-Piet-said. He looked at Sal and, in a voice that neither man in the cab could have heard, said, 'I sometimes think Stephen and I are halves of the same soul, Sal. But the division was very unjust to him.'

They stopped beside the Gallant Sallie, casting a spray of sand in front of the cab. Rickalds and Kubelick, the anchor watch, stared from the cockpit hatch in surprise.

Piet jumped from the vehicle. 'Stephen,' he said, 'drive these men back to the port entrance. Make sure Madame Dumesnil is waiting for me.'

Stephen got out, slinging his flashgun. 'They can drive themselves,' he said. 'And Salomon will make sure the lady arrives where you want her. I'm going along.'

Sal climbed the three steps extended from the cabin airlock when the Gallant Sallie was on the ground. 'Kubelick,' she said, 'drive Rickalds back to the gate. Find Captain Salomon and tell him he's responsible for the general commander's orders regarding the head of the Merchants' Guild.'

'Stephen, I'm taking a minimum crew on this,' Piet said sharply. 'You know absolutely nothing about operating a starship!'

'I know about defending them if they come down some place they shouldn't,' Stephen said in the same detached tone he'd used since he arrived with the dying envoy. 'Besides, you'll have to shoot me to keep me off.'

'Captain?' Rickalds murmured with a worried expression,

'Get this damned truck out of here!' Sal shouted as she bent to switch on the vessel's electronics. 'We're lifting as soon as you're clear.'

Her men obeyed instantly, though Rickalds frowned and muttered a question to Kubelick. Lightbody, carrying a shotgun, was already aboard. Guillermo followed the sailor and sat at one of the three places around the attitude-control boards. The Molt seemed comfortable on a seat designed for humans.

Sal took the starboard motor panel, across the cabin from Lightbody. Piet settled himself at the navigation console and made adjustments to the couch. Stephen cycled the outer hatch closed and squatted in the lock, his boots and shoulders braced against opposite sides of the chamber.

'Then again,' Piet said as he waited for the hydraulics to build up pressure, 'perhaps my trouble is that not enough people are afraid of me.'

In a different voice he added, 'Crew, prepare for liftoff.'

Piet lit the thrusters, then brought the Gallant Sallie to a roaring hover about a meter above the ground. His left hand made minuscule adjustments in the flow rate of individual motors. The visual display throbbed with plasma, and the hull shook with the hammering of exhaust reflected from the ground.

Sal gripped the stanchion beside her flop-down seat. She expected the general commander to boost thrust to lift out of the port as soon as he'd dialed in the motors to his own satisfaction. Instead, Piet ran up the flow of reaction mass while simultaneously flaring the nozzles with consequent loss of efficiency. The Gallant Sallie continued to bobble in place, rising and falling only a few centimeters despite the variation in control settings.

'Lifting,' Piet called. He reduced the nozzle irises to three-quarters power. The Gallant Sallie sprang a hundred meters in the air. Piet shifted into forward flight, vectoring the nozzles as smoothly as Sal could have done herself after being raised on the vessel.

Stephen smiled from the airlock in her direction. It was a cool expression, the sort of look a statue might have worn. She wasn't sure it had anything to do with her.

The Gallant Sallie left the port reservation to the north and curved around Savoy in a shallow bank instead of overflying the city. The newly installed optics gave Sal a better view from the middle of the cabin than she'd have had in past years from the navigation console itself. Arles in the vicinity of Savoy was covered in tawny shrubbery against which the green of introduced vegetation made a vivid contrast.

The line of the main western highway out of Savoy came into view ahead of them. Piet swung the Gallant Sallie parallel to the road and about half a kilometer out from it. He flared the thruster nozzles. The ship dropped mushily and slowed to 50 kph of forward motion. Plasma roiled out to either side and behind the vessel, billowing as far as the highway to port and an equal distance to starboard. The Gallant Sallie advanced in a hissing roar, burning the countryside around her as bare as a sheet of fresh lava.

Arles had been a major administrative center early in the Federation's recolonization efforts. Now it was a backwater, a source of grain and oil seed for the Reaches and a center of local trade because of the excellent port facilities remaining from the planet's former glory. Many of the villas along the road had been abandoned a generation before, though refugees from Savoy might have been sheltering in the ruins.

Everything died beneath the plasma scourge. Foliage wilted, then blazed in a faint challenge to the seething