The Reaches

ionized exhaust. The 5-cm cannon in the featherboat's nose was covered by the cushion.

A starship was a potential missile with enormous kinetic energy, even at the relatively low speeds possible immediately after takeoff. Concentrated cannonfire could destroy a ship-the freighter blazing in the middle of the field was proof of that-but jolts of ions wouldn't in themselves counteract the momentum of hundreds of tonnes of steel. The Fed vessel's bow might be a white glowing mass when it hit a Venerian ship, but that wouldn't keep the impact from being wholly devastating to the target.

A Venerian cutter, then the other two cutters and the featherboat, edged forward at a walking pace. The small vessels kept as low as possible: Fed vessels within the military port would have their cannon trained over the berm to smash anything that rose high enough to be visible. A ship the size of the Fed freighter could absorb punishment for a minute or two, but a boat of less than 50 tonnes would disintegrate at the first plasma bolt.

The freighter porpoised as it started toward the civil port, dipping and then rising again enough to clear the berm. The featherboat and cutters swung wide, still keeping close to the surface of the field.

The Venerian small craft had expert pilots, briefed for this task. Piet had calculated that by butting gently against the freighter's starboard bow and then boosting their thrusters to maximum output, they could swing the bigger vessel harmlessly off its line and send it off over the hectares of wasteland and farms. If the Feds stayed aboard they could perhaps maneuver into the Wrath or another important ship despite the picket boats, but that would be literal suicide for the crew. President Pleyal didn't inspire that degree of loyalty.

'I'll take a company into the military port,' Stephen decided aloud. 'Fifty or a hundred men ought to be enough to sort things out. I don't imagine the Feds will hold after the first volley.'

Vanderdrekkan was at Stephen's side again. 'I believe all the troops have been committed, sir,' he said. 'Do you want me to gather men at random, or did you have a particular contingent in mind?'

'Belay that, Cherwell,' Piet ordered, gesturing to the half-raised gun tube. 'The guns can stay here for the time being. I'm going to need the truck myself.'

The Fed merchantman dipped again as it gathered forward speed. If the Venerian pickets hit the Fed too hard, the freighter's thicker hull would shatter the boats and brush the fragments away. The small craft pogoed nervously as they maneuvered toward contact. The featherboat was slightly larger than the cutters, but it too depended on a single thruster. Not even the most skillful pilot and crew could keep a one-nozzle vessel perfectly stable in a hover.

'The A Watch close-combat team is still aboard the Wrath for emergencies,' Stephen said to his aide. 'The Feds getting their act together across the berm is as close to an emergency as we're likely to have. I want men in full armor because the ships inside'll fire when we cross. The splash from plasma cannon is going to be too hot for anything but hard suits.'

He was planning against near misses by the Federation cannoneers. Armor didn't make any difference for the inevitable direct hits, since the heaviest suit a man could carry would burn like a cotton wisp in the direct path of a slug of ions.

The Fed freighter nosed over the berm. Two guns fired from the Freedom, against Piet Ricimer's direct orders.

The shock wave from the bolts hitting the freighter rocked the picket vessels violently. The nearest cutter spun a full 360°, touched the ground, and bounded a hundred meters in the air. The pilot got control just in time to dive to safety as a bolt from the military port slashed the air where the cutter had been.

A rainbow fireball engulfed the freighter's bow. The Freedom mounted several 25- cm smashers as part of its heterogeneous battery. Stampfer, the expert on plasma cannon so far as Stephen was concerned, said that 20-cm guns were superior to the big guns because they cooled much faster between shots and because 25-cm shells were so heavy that they led to dangerous accidents as the crews handled them under the stress of combat.

For all that, 25-cm plasma bolts made an impressive show when they hit a metal hull in an oxidizing atmosphere. The first round punched the lower curve of the vessel's bow and vaporized a square meter of hull plating. The bubble of gaseous steel used the top of the berm as a fulcrum to lift the freighter.

The second bolt, fired a half-second later-and it was probably pure chance, but Stephen had known for a decade that in war it was better to be lucky than skillful-hit the nest of four thrusters under the bow. The tungsten nozzles exploded in green radiance, destroyed as much by the ions they were channeling as by the cannon bolt that overloaded their outer surfaces.

Inertia kept the vessel moving forward even after the bow thrusters were destroyed, but the nose dipped as gravity pulled it down. The freighter hit the berm, quenching the white-hot metal as it plowed through a hundred cubic meters of earth. Sparks flew from rocks in the dirt. The noise was overwhelming, even in comparison to the clang of cannonfire a moment before.

The Fed captain reacted instantly and as well as was possible under the circumstances. He (or not unlikely she, in Federation service) chopped the throttles to the quartet of thrusters in the stern. Their continued thrust would have lifted the freighter onto its ruined nose, then flipped the vessel over the berm on its back.

With the power off and the bow supported three meters above the ground by the berm, the stern dropped and hit with a crash. The freighter bounced, hopped several meters forward, and came down again to break its back on the berm.

The wreckage lay steaming in a haze of dirt. The vessel's crumpled bow lay in the civil field, but the stern remained in the military port.

Almost as an afterthought, the final impact flung the prepared escape boat out of the hold. It hit something within the military port. An orange flash brightened the morning momentarily, followed by the thud of an explosion.

'I'm very glad none of our people were injured by those bolts,' Piet said in a voice as neutral as possible, given the need to shout to be heard over the continuing clangor. His face was hard.

Stephen regarded casualties as a fact of war, and it didn't particularly matter to him whether they were caused by the enemy or by a friendly mistake. Dead was dead. But for Piet, a victory had to be without friendly loss to be complete. If Casson had killed Venerian sailors when he disobeyed the general commander's orders, he might have found that Piet Ricimer in a rage was as fearful a thing as his friend Stephen Gregg.

Piet looked at Stephen, smiled slightly, and went on, 'We won't cross the berm on foot, Stephen. We'll take the Moll Dane in. She's sturdy enough to survive a few shots. The loss among unprotected troops would be higher than I'd care to accept.'

The guns of the Freedom and several other Venerian ships battered the wreckage of the Fed vessel. Plasma bolts were quick darts of iridescence across the field, followed by balls of opaque white fire as collops of steel burned under the ions' impact. The shots hit like hammers on a huge anvil. Shock waves caused each hull plate to slam against its neighbors, flinging heavy fragments into the air.

'All right,' Stephen said. His mind worked in several directions at once. Part of him was planning the operation, pulling up information on how the Fed ships had been arranged within the military port when the Wrath descended; part of him noted that he'd be able to get another flashgun from the flagship's armory when he returned to gather the close-combat team.

But Stephen Gregg's main concern at this moment-

'That's a good idea, Piet,' he said aloud. Cherwell's crew had loosed the gun tube from the winch; the truck was ready to take Stephen to the Wrath. 'But you're not coming yourself. You won't wear a hard suit while you're piloting in an atmosphere, and you won't take the time to put one on after we've landed.'

'I-' Piet said.

'No!' Stephen said. 'You scared me too much at the gunpit, Piet. Half the Fed ships across the berm have probably got their thrusters lit. I'm not going to carry your ashes home, and I'm not going to trust you to put your suit on when I know you'd be lying if you told me you would. I won't!'

'Guillermo will pilot the ship,' Piet said. He slapped his trouser leg with a bare hand. 'I'll put on the rest of my armor on the Wrath.'

'I'll pilot the Moll Dane,' Sal said in a voice as clear and strong as those of the men. 'Guillermo can work the attitude-control board with Harrigan and Brantling from my ship. They're current on manual systems, and people from a new warship probably wouldn't be.'