The Reaches

Feds thought Stephen's men had vaporized the other gunhouse.

'Vanderdrekkan?' Stephen croaked. His aide was one of the armored men picking themselves up nearby, but he'd lost his laser communicator just as Stephen had lost the flashgun in the shock wave.

Stephen had been close to death before, many times before; but generally he'd known the danger was present. This time-

The fighting wasn't over, not by hours or maybe days, but the initial assault was complete. Stephen's troops had carried their objective without casualties and almost without fighting.

And then the blast that Major Lucas Cardiff hadn't felt, and Colonel Stephen Gregg wouldn't have felt either if he'd been standing one pace to his right. God's will, Stephen supposed; and therefore unfathomable by human beings, Piet would add. But. .

Why Cardiff and not me? Why so many others over so many years, and not me?

Stephen started up the ramp to carry the message of success since he couldn't send it to the Wrath. Piet Ricimer in gilded half armor, carrying a shotgun and a laser communicator, stepped though the opening from which the gate and gateposts had both been blown by the explosion.

'Bring the squadron in, Guillermo,' Piet ordered into the communicator's mouthpiece. 'The guns have been eliminated.'

Stephen flipped up his faceshield. Piet's eyes flicked from the Fed gun position to the man climbing toward him in a hard suit blurred by the frosty gray of recondensed metal vapor. 'Stephen? Stephen, are you all right?'

'For God's sake, Piet,' Stephen Gregg whispered as he embraced his friend. 'For God's sake.'

All Stephen could think of in that moment was that if Piet had leaped from the Wrath's cockpit hatch a few seconds sooner, the general commander in his half armor would have been ripped to atoms as surely as the gate itself.

And Stephen Gregg would still have been alive with the memory.

WINNIPEG SPACEPORT, EARTH

April 16, Year 27

0257 hours, Venus time

Steam, smoke, or sometimes flame flared from every opening of the 400-tonne Federation freighter across the field from the Gallant Sallie. While Sal was still in orbit, she'd watched the destruction on a signal from the Wrath.

The Fed crew had run out eight of their moderate-sized plasma cannon as Captain Casson brought the Freedom down. The Feds fired three bolts at the Freedom. They hit twice but didn't penetrate the big armed merchantman's hull. Before the other Fed guns could fire, the Wrath and the Freedom together put a dozen rounds of 17-, 20-, and 25-cm cannonfire into the metal-built vessel, turning it into a blazing white inferno.

'I'm going to open the hatches now,' Sal said.

'We ought to give the ground another minute-' Tom Harrigan said.

Brantling stepped past the mate and threw the controls for the cockpit hatch. Harrigan grimaced but didn't object. Air, throbbing with the heat of the ground and scores of fires across the spaceport, entered the cabin.

Sal stood up and adjusted her pistol holster to the side now that the navigation console's bucket seat no longer squeezed her hips. She thought of taking a respirator from the locker near the hatch, but she didn't bother. She'd breathed hotter, fiercer air every time she crossed to or from a starship in a transfer dock on Venus. She could take this.

A Venerian 6x6 with fiberglass wheels drove toward the Gallant Sallie. The vehicle was moving as fast as the load, two heavy plasma cannon, allowed.

Only one Fed ship had attempted to resist the Venerian assault on Winnipeg. The crews-mostly just anchor watches-of the others abandoned their vessels on foot, trudging toward the edge of the reservation. The risk of another ship landing close by in a crown of lethal exhaust seemed less serious than that of being used for target practice by the invaders.

Sal stood a meter back from the hatch so that the angle through the airlock chamber would trap heat radiating from the ground. There was a good deal of activity around the warehouses and administrative buildings on the port's southern edge. The fighting seemed to be over, though Sal couldn't be sure from a klick away.

She wondered where Stephen was.

'Ma'am?' Godden called. 'Captain Blythe, sir?'

Sal turned. 'Ma'am?' the gunner repeated. 'Can I fire into that freighter that's burning? I'd like to see-'

'Christ's blood, man!' Harrigan shouted. 'What d'ye want to be wasting ammunition for? Aren't there fireworks enough for you?'

Godden stiffened. 'I'd like to see how a gun handles before I use it for serious, sir,' he said. Godden was a rated specialist, not a common sailor, and he'd been posted to the Gallant Sallie from the general commander's own ship. 'And as for blasphemy-your soul's in your own keeping, Mister Harrigan, but I don't care to be party to terms such as you just used.'

The remainder of the crew watched the gunner and their officers. Their faces were in general studiously blank, but Brantling wore a broad grin.

'Tom, see what the truck's doing here,' Sal ordered crisply. 'Godden, one round, and make damned sure that you don't hit somebody driving past!'

She stepped to the hatch to join Harrigan. She'd extricated the mate from a situation he shouldn't have gotten involved with in the first place. Tom wasn't the Gallant Sallie's captain; but everyone aboard was tense and uncertain right now, in a chaotic, dangerous place and out of communication with the other Venerian ships.

When the truck stopped, the driver in the open cab was only two meters from the airlock hatch. The man wore a full hard suit. He'd thrown open his faceshield, but Sal didn't recognize him.

'Gallant Sallie?' the driver called. He jerked an armored thumb toward the two 15- cm plasma cannon in the truck bed. 'Captain Ricimer said to bring you these to load soonest, then for me to get back. There's more where these come from, if they can just get them out before the whole warehouse burns.'

Sal jumped to the truck bed. 'Tom, unlimber the winch and get these aboard!' To the driver she added, 'You! Pull around to the main hatch.'

The truck's torque converter built to a peevish whine as inertia fought the diesel's rattling surge. The vehicle eased forward to halt again by the hatch as it lowered.

Sal rubbed her hands together. Her throat was dry. She should have grabbed a water bottle.

'Is Mister Gregg with the general commander, then?' she asked the driver. She wished she knew the man's name. She'd seen him aboard the Wrath, she was sure.

'Oh, yeah,' the driver said cheerfully. He gave Sal a slight smile as he eyed her. 'The Feds tried to start something at the arms warehouse, so he was there to sort them out.'

'He's all right, though?' Sal asked, her heart as parched as her mouth.

'You needn't worry about him, ma'am,' the driver said. 'Our Mister Gregg-he's the Angel of Death, he is.'

The Gallant Sallie's crane squealed as Brantling ran the hook out the beam positioned over a gun tube. Four crewmen were lifting the fiberglass sashes tied around the heavy weapon.

'Harrigan!' Sal called. 'When we've got these guns loaded, take charge of the ship. I'm going back on the truck to-to see what's going on.'

WINNIPEG SPACEPORT, EARTH

April 16, Year 27

0345 hours, Venus time

The casters clacked like gunshots at every irregularity in the warehouse floor. The manual dolly tracked straight enough, but as the entrance neared Stephen saw that they weren't going to clear the door, which had jammed only three-quarters open.

Piet, across the dolly from Stephen, leaned hard against the muzzle of the 15-cm gun tube. The dolly