The Reaches

The marksmen, eight or ten of them rising to fire and then vanishing again behind the barricade to reload, didn't really figure in Stephen's calculations. They were motions in black and white, while in his mind the cannon and its crew had color and detail richer than human eyes could possibly make out at this distance.

Bullets whanged across the boarding hold. They didn't impinge on Stephen's consciousness, any more than did the back muscle he'd pulled when Beverly cannoned into him.

A Fed crewman, a Molt, stepped back from the gun, waving a ruptured case triumphantly in the jaws of his pliers. Stephen's index finger took up the last pressure on the flashgun's electronic trigger. The bolt hit one of the gun's six barrels at the crank assembly. Ionized steel flashed in a white shock wave that knocked down the gun captain and the two crewmen standing on the near side of the weapon.

Stephen reached for the satchel holding fresh batteries. It was gone, his whole equipment belt shot away by the same burst of fire that wounded Beverly. He started to turn Beverly over to search for the spares the loader carried.

Philips, kneeling, waved the battery in his right hand. There were four more batteries fanned upward from Philips' left gauntlet, ready for Stephen to snatch as he fired.

Violent fighting was taking place on the gun deck of the Holy Office, directly above the boarding hold. Maybe Piet could use help there, but the crew of the spherical warship was too alert to be ignored.

The Fed riflemen had ducked to cover when the rotary cannon exploded beside them, but now one took a chance of rising to shoot. Smoke drifted from where the blazing steel had sprayed the barricade. Without being fully conscious of his decision until he'd made it, Stephen fired into a wooden packing crate instead of the face of the Molt rifleman.

The crate erupted as it absorbed the energy of the monopulse laser. The metal food cans inside were nonflammable, but they were packed in extruded cellulose that ignited in a red fireball.

Feds jumped up, batting at themselves instinctively even though most of them wore protective garb. Rifleshots from Venerians still arriving from the Moll Dane knocked several of them over. When the box of cannon cartridges went off in smoky, rippling flashes a moment later, the surviving Feds abandoned the position to the flames.

Stephen got to his feet. 'Do what you can for Beverly,' he said to Philips in a voice that seemed half human even to his own ears. He'd have slung the flashgun if the sling were whole, but he probably wouldn't need the laser in the tight constraints of a starship's compartments. He dropped the flashgun on the deck and took the pump gun lying beside Philips. He liked the feel of the slide working, and the rifle's powerful cartridges were a better choice than the lighter carbine when so many of the Feds wore armor.

Stephen walked up the companionway, taking the last six steps in three. He burst onto the chaotic gun deck like a float bobbing from the deep sea. As he appeared, a Venerian sailor fired at a Molt near the stern and hit instead the 17-cm plasma cannon behind which the target was sheltering. The bullet ricocheted, clipped the left- side latch of Stephen's faceshield, and fell to the deck without actually harming anyone.

The Molt rose with a flechette gun whose four heavy barrels were welded together into a unit that looked massive enough to be part of a ship's landing gear. Stephen and the alien fired simultaneously.

Stephen's bullet slammed the Molt backward with a hole near the top of the plastron. The flechette gun emitted an orange-red, bottle-shaped muzzleflash and a crack so loud that it forged compression bands in the smoky cabin air. The hypervelocity projectile struck the lower lip of the Venerian sailor's breastplate, shattered it, and was deflected straight up the inside of the backplate. Battered but still moving, the flechette exited through the neck opening of the armor and tipped off the sailor's helmet as he fell forward.

A Fed grabbed the flechette gun as it fell from the Molt's hands. Stephen shot the man, then shot the fellow again in the head since he refused to fall to a bullet placed perfectly to wreck the knot of blood vessels above the heart.

A red needle sprang up beside Stephen's rear sight, indicating that the round just fired was the last one in his rifle. Beverly hadn't managed to fully load the weapon before Stephen snatched it back from him the last time.

The shot that carried away his battery satchel hadn't touched his bandolier of rifle and carbine ammunition. He took out a fan of five bottle-necked cartridges and began to load.

The Holy Office's crew still held the sternmost third of the gun deck. Gunsmoke and smudge fires ignited by the battle screened the parties from one another, though there were probably eighty or a hundred men and Molts locked in combat in the confined space.

Most shots were fired by men who poked a weapon up from cover one-handed and loosed blindly in the general direction of the enemy. Venerians advanced crabwise, hopping back and forth across the central aisle because the lines of plasma cannon were offset to give them a greater distance to recoil.

Occasionally somebody would bellow forward with a cutting bar. As shots flashed in both directions along the cabin, sparks and the shriek of teeth shearing armor spewed from a gun bay.

Stampfer, who shouldn't have been in the assault party at all, was ignoring the battle. Piet's gunner struggled alone with a 17-cm cannon of the starboard battery. The gun's power assist was either damaged or disabled from the bridge, so Stampfer was running the massive weapon to firing position by cranking the manual capstan with a come-along. The gunner's backplate was cracked and a charge of buckshot had smeared the side of his helmet, but he kept to his self-appointed task.

'Stephen, help me!' Piet Ricimer called from forward. Even in the present noise and carnage, that voice reached Stephen's directing mind. As he turned, his gauntleted fingers continued to feed cartridges up the loading gate in the rifle's receiver.

The battle for the forward portion of the gun deck was over. At least a score of bodies and partial bodies littered the deck or were draped over the guns. Most of the casualties were from the Fed crew, but the Venerian sprawled on his back with a hole through his thigh armor was certainly dead by now if the femoral artery had been nicked.

There were two more bodies in Venerian hard suits at the head of the cabin. The helmet of one had been topped like a soft-boiled egg; brains were leaking out. Piet, holding a cutting bar, stood between the corpses of his companions.

The situation was easy to read. The control room in the nose of the Holy Office was separated from the gun deck by an airlock passage similar to but much wider than that between the Gallant Sallie's hold and cabin. Piet had headed for the control room with the two nearest men, leaving the rest of the assault force to deal with the crew of the Holy Office. The Venerians had cut through the hinges of the outward-opening hatch and pried it away from the opening.

A Fed in full armor waited in the passage with a pair of cutting bars. The man was a giant. The surface of his hard suit was silvered to reflect laser beams. Judging by the fresh scars-from bullets and cutting bars both-the plates beneath were exceptionally thick as well.

The Venerians were expecting an empty passage when they cleared the hatch. The Fed guardian fell on them, hacking with both hands and rightly confident that his armor was proof against their panicked response.

Piet had dodged back in time-Stephen had never seen his friend completely surprised by any event-but the sailors with him died beneath the paired cutting bars. The giant then backed up and waited for the next assault, knowing that the passage protected his flanks from the numbers that could otherwise be brought against him.

'Don't bother shooting, Stephen,' Piet called without taking his eyes off the giant. 'If you block the right-hand bar with your own, I'll block the left and-'

Stephen closed to two meters and tossed his rifle in the giant's face. As the weapon clanged harmlessly off the helmet, Stephen lunged forward like a missile himself. Their breastplates crashed together. Stephen caught the Fed's armored wrists before the bars could scissor together on his helmet.

The howling edges pressed toward Stephen's face despite anything he could do. 'Christ Jesus bugger you, you Federation whoreson!' he screamed as he butted the Fed's faceplate. He'd always known there were men stronger than he was, but he didn't meet them often.

This man was strong enough to hand Stephen Gregg his head, literally.

For a moment, Stephen thought the vibration and screaming refractories came from the giant's bars cutting into his helmet. The Fed threw himself backward, pulling Stephen with him. They smashed into the hatch between the passage and the control room. The cutting bar fell from the giant's right hand.