The Reaches

Piet Ricimer clasped his hand over Gregg's on his shoulder and turned around slowly.

'Come on, come on!' Mostert shouted. 'Let's get the rest of these trucks set up.'

'I wonder how surprised these Molts are going to be,' Ricimer murmured to Gregg, 'when they've heard six starships land within a klick of their city?'

15

Punta Verde

The jungle drank sound, but the clearing itself was bedlam.

The loudest portion of the racket came from the Tolliver's pumps, refilling the old ship's air tanks. There was plenty of other noise as well. Piet Ricimer supervised a team probing for groundwater between the Peaches and the flagship. The rotary drill screamed through the friable stone of the forest floor. Nearby, crewmen argued as they loaded three more trucks to follow the lead element of Molt- hunters.

Gregg was only twenty meters from the featherboat. Even so, it wasn't till he turned idly and noticed Dole waving from the hatch that he heard the man shouting. 'Sir! Get the captain! Platt, he's stepped on his dick for sure!'

Gregg opened his mouth to ask a question-but realized that whatever the details were, Ricimer needed to hear them worse than he did. He lumbered toward the drilling crew, feeling like a bowling ball with the burden of his weapon and armor.

Gregg felt out of place, both in the lush greenery surrounding the landing site and, at a human level, while watching knowledgeable sailors refit the vessels for the next hop. If he'd been among the crews off to snatch Molts for the ships' holds, Gregg would have a person of importance: better equipped and more skillful than the men around him, as well as being a leader by virtue of birth. He had no place in the argosy's peacetime occupations.

Rather than join the raiders on the second set of trucks, Piet Ricimer had pointedly taken charge of the drilling. The equipment was carried in the flagship's capacious holds, but Ricimer operated it with his own crew. A cable snaking from one of the Tolliver's external outlets powered the auger's electric motors.

The ceramic bits had reached the subsurface water levels. The tailings, crumbly laterite somewhere between rock and soil, lay in a russet pile at the end of the drill's ejection pipe a few meters away. The crew-including Ricimer himself, Gregg was surprised to see-now manhandled sections of twenty centimeter hose to connect the well with the Tolliver's reaction-mass tanks.

It struck Gregg that he could have stood radio watch, freeing Dole to help with the drilling, or he could have laid down his weapon for the moment and carried sections of hose. Because he was a gentleman, no one had suggested that. . and the thought hadn't crossed his mind until now.

'Piet!' he called. 'Dole's got something on the radio. There's been trouble with the raid.'

Other operators than Dole had caught an emergency signal. As Gregg spoke, one of the ships distant in the forest honked its klaxon. The siren on top of the Tolliver's dome began to wind up, setting nerves on edge and making it even more difficult to hear speech in the clearing below.

The raiding party had blown a gap in the tangle of trunks which the flagship knocked down on landing. Ricimer looked up at the curtain of foliage overhanging that, the only route by which the vehicles could return to the ships. Not so much as a leaf twitched in the still, humid air.

'Stephen,' Ricimer said, 'can you get four more rifles from the Tolliver? If I send one of the men, they'll be refused.' He looked back from the jungle and made eye contact. 'And I need to get the Peaches ready.'

'Yes,' Gregg said. He set off for the flagship's ramp at something between a long stride and a jog. The sweat soaking his tunic and scalp was suddenly cold, and his muscles trembled with the adrenaline rush.

'Bailey and Jeude, go along to carry,' he heard Ricimer call behind him. 'But don't get in his way. The rest of you, come on!'

Gregg had never been aboard the Tolliver before, but the men milling at the central pillar of the lower hold drew him to the arms locker. Incandescent bulbs in the ceiling left the rest of the enormous room dim by comparison with the daylight flooding through the open hatch behind Gregg. The air smelled sour, reeking with decades of abuse.

The Tolliver carried a crew of a hundred and sixty on this voyage. About half the men had joined the initial raiding party, but scores waited uncertainly about the arms locker and the trucks being assembled in the clearing.

Captain Mostert was neither place. He must have climbed six decks to the bridge when the alarm sounded.

Two sailors were handing out cutting bars under the observation of an officer Gregg didn't know by name. 'You there!' Gregg said to one of the sailors. 'I'm Gregg of Eryx and I need four rifles now!'

'But-' the sailor said.

'There aren't any rifles left, sir,' said the other attendant, the man Gregg hadn't addressed.

'There may be some unassigned firearms still on the bridge, Mr. Gregg,' the overseeing officer put in.

'May there indeed!' Gregg exploded. 'Who in hell do you think I am, my man?'

He wasn't angry, but the soup of hormones in his blood gave his voice a trembling violence that counterfeited towering rage. Gregg was a big man in any case, the tallest in the hold. With the bulk of his helmet and body armor, he looked like a troll.

He looked at the men around him. The nearest started back from the gentleman's glare.

'You!' Gregg said, pointing to a man with a repeater. His eyes were beginning to adapt to the interior lights. 'You-' another rifleman. 'Y-' and the third man was holding out his breechloader to Gregg before the demand fully crossed his lips. Jeude and Bailey collected the weapons and bandoliers of sized ammunition without orders.

None of the other crewmen present held firearms.

Gregg focused on the officer. 'You, you've got a rifle too. Quick, man!'

The man clutched the repeating carbine slung over his shoulder. 'But I own this!' he protested.

'God strike you dead!' Gregg roared, raising the massive flashgun in his right hand as though he intended to preempt the deity. 'We've got a battle to fight, man! Go up to the bridge if you need a gun!'

Jeude stepped to the officer's side and silently lifted the weapon by its sling. The man opened his mouth, then closed it again.

'Oh, for God's sake!' he blurted. He ducked so that Gregg's two subordinates could remove both the carbine and the belt of cartridges looped in groups of five to match magazine capacity.

'Come along, you two!' Gregg said. He spoke to keep control of the situation. Bailey and Jeude were already ahead of him, silhouetted against sunlight. 'There isn't much time!'

It occurred to Gregg as he spoke that there might not be much time, but he personally didn't have a clue as to what was going on. That didn't bother him. He'd carried out his task.

16

Punta Verde

A jet of foul steam spouted from around the Peaches as Gregg and his helpers lumbered toward the vessel. The thrusters had fired, barely enough to rock the hull. Leon and Dole were locking the bow hatch open to the outside hull. The muzzle of the 50-mm plasma cannon had been run out of the port.

'What's going on?' Bailey shouted to the visible crewmen.

A projectile struck the featherboat's bow hard enough to make the hull ring over the siren's continuing wail. Dole and Leon jumped back. Neither was injured, but there was a greenish smear across the ceramic.