The Reaches

The shot had come from above. Gregg paused, scanning the trees a hundred meters away at the clearing's edge. He couldn't see anything-

Bailey and Jeude had stopped when he did, looking nervous but waiting for orders. Another missile whicked into the matted vegetation between them at a 45° angle. The body of the shaft was smooth wood, thumb-thick and perhaps a meter long. An integral filament grew from the end of the shaft, stabilizing the missile in place of fletching.

'Get aboard!' Gregg shouted to the crewmen. 'Now!'

He still couldn't see anyone in the high branches from which the projectiles must have come, but the foliage quivered. Gregg lowered his visor, aimed the flashgun, and fired.

Vegetation ripped apart in a blast of steam. Gregg threw up his visor to be able to scan for targets better as his hands performed the instinctive job of reloading. His mind was cold as ice, and his fingers exchanged batteries with mechanical crispness.

After ten or fifteen seconds, something dropped from the place where the laser bolt had scalloped the vegetation. Gregg couldn't make out a figure, but a flicker of mauve suggested the color of the Molts they'd loaded on Salute. The falling body made the second canopy, then the undergrowth, quiver.

Two more missiles snapped from the curtain on the other side of the trucks' passage. Gregg saw them, foreshortened into black dots as they sailed toward him. One missed his shoulder by a hand's breadth as he aimed the flashgun again.

He didn't have time to close the visor. He froze the sight picture, squeezed his eyes shut, and fired. The dazzle burned through the veils of mere skin and blood vessels and left purple afterimages when he tried to see what he'd accomplished.

'Mr. Gregg!' a voice called. 'Mr. Gregg, please, get aboard, the captain says!'

Gregg ran back toward the Peaches. A projectile struck the hull in front of him and glanced away in two major pieces and a spray of splinters from the center of the shaft where it broke. He wondered if the arrows were poisoned.

He grabbed one of the handholds dished into the featherboat during casting and hauled himself up. Leon and Tancred aimed rifles out of the hatch. As Gregg rose above the curve of the hull, Tancred fired at the jungle behind him.

Bits of jacket metal and unburned powder bit Gregg's face like a swarm of gnats. He shouted, 'God flay you, whore-'

A Molt projectile slammed into the middle of Gregg's back and shattered on his body armor. His breastplate banged forward into the hull, driving all the breath out of his lungs. Leon let his rifle fall into the featherboat's interior so that he could lean forward and catch the gasping gentleman's wrists.

'Take the flashgun,' Gregg wheezed.

Tancred worked the bolt of his repeater and fired again. 'Stubborn bastard,' the bosun snarled, probably meaning Gregg, but he lifted the flashgun with one hand and dropped it behind him down the hatch while he supported Gregg with the other.

The Peaches lifted a meter or two with a wobbly, unbalanced motion. She rotated slowly about her vertical axis. Gregg saw another projectile as a flicker of motion in the corner of his eye, but it must have missed even the vessel.

Leon gave a loud grunt and hauled the gentleman up with a two-handed grip. Gregg managed to find a foothold and thrust himself safely over the hatch coaming with no more grace or control than a sack of grain. Bailey and Dole were waiting inside to catch him.

Ricimer was at the controls. Lightbody and Jeude were hunched forward, wearing helmets. Leon hopped down from the hatch to pick up his rifle again.

The plasma cannon fired and recoiled. Vivid light across and beyond the visual spectrum reflected through the gunport and the open hatch. The thunderclap made the featherboat lurch as though Ricimer had run them into a granite ledge.

'That'll make the bastards think!' Jeude crowed from the bow. He opened the ammunition locker and took out another round for the plasma cannon, though it would be minutes before the weapon cooled to the point it could be safely reloaded.

The egg-shaped shell was a miniature laser array with a deuterium pellet at the heart of it. When the lasers fired, their beams heated and compressed the deuterium into a fusion explosion. The only way out in the microsecond before the laser array vaporized was through the gap in the front of the egg, aligned with the ceramic bore. The deuterium, converted to sun-hot plasma by the energy of its own fusion, ripped down the channel of the barrel and devoured everything in its path.

Gregg got to his feet. He found the flashgun and loaded a fresh battery from the pack slapping against his chest.

'The Molts ambushed the trucks before they ever got to the city,' Leon shouted in explanation. 'The buggers are up the trees, Platt says.'

'I noticed,' Gregg said grimly as he stepped onto the storage locker again. A sharp pain in his ribs made him gasp. His mouth tasted of blood, but he thought he must have bitten his tongue when the arrow knocked him forward. Tancred stood head and shoulders out of the hatch, trying awkwardly to reload his rifle.

The Peaches was fifty meters above the ground, wobbling greasily and moving at the speed of a fast walk. The plasma bolt had blown a huge crater in the foliage. A dozen tree trunks, stripped bare of bark and branches, blazed at the edge of the stricken area.

Piet Ricimer kept the featherboat rising a meter for every meter it slid forward. By the time the Venerians reached the edge of the original clearing, they were high enough that their thrusters seared the topmost canopy into blackened curls and steam.

Gregg stepped to the front of the long hatch and nudged Tancred aside. The young spacer grimaced but didn't protest aloud. Leon and Bailey, each holding a rifle, climbed onto the locker as well.

There were no targets. Indeed, from the topside hatch, nothing was visible over the bow save an occasional giant tree emerging from the general 'landscape.' Massed blooms added splotches of yellow, brown, and eye- catching scarlet to the normal green.

Accelerating very slightly, the Peaches proceeded in the direction the raiders' trucks had followed through the jungle. If there were Molt warriors beneath, they fled or died in the vessel's superheated exhaust.

Somebody tugged at the thigh of Gregg's trousers. He looked down.

'Sir,' called Dole over the waterfall roar of the thrusters. 'The captain, he needs you.' He jerked his head toward Ricimer, facing forward over the control console.

Gregg knelt and stepped down into the featherboat's bay. He didn't duck low enough; his helmet cracked loudly against the hatch coaming, no harm done but an irritation. Between armor and the big flashgun in his arms, he was clumsy as a blind bear.

Despite the open hatch and gunport, the vessel's interior was much quieter than the outside. 'Stephen,' Ricimer said, 'we're getting close to the vehicles. If I overfly them, they'll be broiled by our thrusters.'

Ricimer's eyes were on the viewscreen. His hands moved as two separate living creatures across the controls, modifying thrust and vector. Dole seated himself at one of the attitude-jet panels, but from the rigidity of the crewman's face, he was afraid to do anything that might interfere with Ricimer's delicate adjustments.

'The only way I can think to break our people loose is to go down into the canopy and circle,' Ricimer continued in a voice that was controlled to perfect flatness, not calm. 'The men on the ground don't have any targets, but the Molts aren't camouflaged from their own level or a little above.'

'Right,' Gregg said. 'Take us down.' He turned.

'Stephen!' Ricimer said.

Gregg looked back. Ricimer risked a glance away from the viewscreens so their eyes could meet. 'It will be very dangerous,' Ricimer said. 'And I have to stay here.'

'Do your bloody job, man!' Gregg snapped in irritation. 'Leave me to mine.'

He climbed onto the locker again and moved Tancred aside. 'Get ready,' he ordered his fellow gunmen as he lowered his visor. 'We're going down. Everybody take one side.'

The Peaches shuddered and lost forward way for a moment. The stern dipped. The