The Reaches

iridescence. Tile shattered and stone walls crumbled to gravel as moisture within the pores of the rock flashed to steam.

Flesh would explode and burn also, if there were flesh in the sun-hot plasma below. Perhaps there was no one in the Gallant Sallie's path.

Piet swung the vessel five kilometers from the western edge of the city, crossed the highway, and brought the Gallant Sallie back on the south side of the road. With the nozzles flared, the motors consumed reaction mass at more than ten times the normal rate to achieve this modest level of thrust. The waste ions spread in a glowing fog, hiding the Gallant Sallie from anyone outside the curtain of death.

And hiding from the humans aboard the sight of just what they were doing.

None of them spoke. Lightbody took a small New Testament from a pocket in his tunic and held it, the metal covers closed, as he watched the feed gauges.

As the Gallant Sallie approached Savoy, Piet sphinctered down the nozzles and lifted the vessel a safe hundred meters in the air to curve back to the port. As the Gallant Sallie rotated at altitude, Sal glanced at the screen's view of what they'd accomplished. The countryside west of Savoy was a steaming, smoking wasteland. Everything in that broad swath was gray.

It had been a brilliant piece of piloting. Sal knew that with the thrusters operating at low efficiency, the controls felt as if they were rubber. Nothing you did at the console seemed to affect the ship. Piet had followed the terrain, rising and falling to achieve the maximum effect without ever endangering the vessel.

They landed very close to the entrance, searing the finish of a Federation freighter and Captain Casson's Freedom as they did so. Sal cleared her throat. 'There's a hard suit aboard, sir,' she said. 'If you'd like to leave before the ground cools.'

Piet looked back at her from the console. 'Thank you, Captain,' he said quietly. 'I can wait five minutes.'

When Stephen finally opened the cockpit hatch, the sunlight was a relief to Sal. She'd spent what seemed a lifetime in silence with only her thoughts for company.

All five of them were experienced spacers, but they ran to clear the surface immediately surrounding the vessel. Five minutes wasn't really enough for the plasma-heated ground to cool. .

The ends of the berm overlapped at the entrance to the reservation. Smaller mounds on both port and city sides increased the protection. Nearly a hundred Venerian officers and men waited for Piet within the baffles.

Between Captains Casson and Salomon stood an angry, frightened woman in her sixties. She was tall and muscular as well as fat; but fat certainly. She eyed Piet as a rat eyes a ferret.

'This is Madame Dumesnil, sir,' Salomon said. Casson prodded the woman a step forward.

'Madame,' Piet said with a cold anger very different from the blasts he'd directed at Stephen and Sal in the immediate past. 'You will be given a vehicle and sent out the highway to the west. You will find Director Eliahu. You will inform him that at local noon every day I will conduct a similar operation until the man who murdered my previous envoy is surrendered to me.'

'What sort of-' Dumesnil said.

'You will see as you drive out of the city,' Piet said, 'and the director will know very well. Make it clear to him, Madame, that unless he complies every village, every farm, every field on Arles will be burned to the bare rock! If there are any men surviving, they'll hide in the ditches like Rabbits after the Collapse and the Molts will hunt them for food. Tell him!'

Piet's body trembled. He gestured to Salomon and muttered, 'Put her on a truck and get her out of here.'

Dumesnil didn't understand what she'd been told, but Piet's tone shocked her to silence. Salomon bundled her quickly through the crowd to the vehicle that had brought her.

Casson scowled uncomfortably. 'You know, Ricimer,' he said, 'if a Fed managed to shoot out one of your thruster nozzles while you were mooching along at low altitude, you'd likely dive right into the ground.'

'I always appreciate my subordinates' concern for my safety, Captain Casson,' Piet said so loudly that most of those watching from the sides and top of the berm could hear him. 'No matter how inappropriate that concern might be!'

Piet turned sharply to Sal. His eyes were a brown as hard as agate. 'Captain Blythe, please have your vessel refueled immediately. I like the way she handles, and I may need her again tomorrow noon.'

SAVOY, ARLES

January 4, Year 27

0613 hours, Venus time

Dawn of the short Arlesian day hinted from the east, but the truck coming up the western highway was in complete darkness. The vehicle proceeded at a walking pace. Its headlights were on, and the Klaxon on the driver's side of the cab sounded constantly. The cab's passenger waved a flag.

'Somebody who appreciates the risk he's taking,' Stephen Gregg said. He smiled faintly to Sal, who stood beside him.

Stephen hitched his breastplate a little higher. When it hung in its normal position, the ceramic lip pressed the bruise above his pelvis.

'They also appreciate the risk if they wait and Captain Ricimer decides to make another demonstration earlier than he'd said,' Sal said.

Stephen shrugged. 'Piet'll keep his word to them,' he said. 'Either way, he'll keep his word.'

This side of the city was given over to human residences. Molts who weren't owned by individual Feds-slaves in the municipal and port administration-had housing adjacent to the noise and drifting ions of the port reservation.

Thousands of Molts, seemingly all those who'd remained in Savoy after the human residents fled, now sat or stood where they could watch the oncoming vehicle. The Molts were careful not to crowd the fifty-man Venerian guard post, and they opened lanes quickly for humans coming from elsewhere in the city. Nonetheless, the heavily armed troops eyed the massed aliens with disquiet.

Sal looked at the Molt faces, as surely expectant as if they were muscle under skin instead of hard chitin. 'How do you suppose they knew?' she asked. 'They're not telepathic, are they?'

'Not that I've heard,' Stephen said. Piet was two meters away, talking quietly to Guillermo and the pair of surviving Molt envoys at the gate in the barricade blocking the road. Piet wore half armor for show, but he wasn't carrying a weapon. This wasn't going to be a battle. . and besides, he had Stephen.

Lewis stood in back of Sal and Stephen, holding a repeater. He wore bandoliers of ammunition and flashgun batteries. Stephen needed to find a replacement for Giddings. He'd never understood why men would volunteer for the job, but they did.

'Maybe Beverly,' he murmured.

'Sorry?' Sal said.

'Didn't realize I'd spoken aloud,' he said. 'I was wondering who I'd get for a second loader.' He nodded to Lewis to show that he wasn't treating the man as a piece of furniture.

'There's going to be fighting now?' Sal asked. Her tone was tense, not anxious.

'I don't think so,' Stephen said.

The slowly moving truck entered the pool of light cast by the banks of floods mounted on roofs to either side of the barricade. There were five people on the vehicle: all human, all male, and all wearing Federation uniforms of either military or civil style.

None of them was armed. Stephen felt himself relax, though he hadn't been consciously aware of his tension.

The truck stopped. The man beside the driver stepped down. He still carried the white flag he'd been waving from the open cab. Two of the men in back wrestled out the third, whose arms were pinioned behind his back. All four of them approached the barricade. After a moment, the driver got out and stood beside the cab.

'I'm John McKensie, the Fiscal of Arles,' said the man with the flag of truce. He was within the penumbra of the floodlights, blinking and angry with fear. 'I've brought Navigator Jenks to the Venerian commander.'

Piet opened the gate. Stephen was through it behind him. Sal, Lewis, and-unexpectedly-the surviving Molt envoys followed.