The Reaches

Sal heard the commotion outside the Blue Rose, but because she wasn't a Betaport native she couldn't judge how unusual it was. Nobody else in the tavern seemed to care.

Stephen threw his last dart into the rim. The ships' officers crowding the taproom groaned or hooted, depending on how their side bets lay.

Sal put her hand on Stephen's shoulder and said, 'Some marksman you are!'

'Find me a board that throws back and see how I do,' Stephen called, loud enough to be heard generally.

Guillermo stepped from Piet's office behind the taproom. At the same instant the door to Dock Street flew open and a sailor shouted, 'Sir! Captain Ricimer! The Oriflamme's in from Asuncion and the Feds are coming out!'

Sal felt her rib muscles tighten. Her mind wasn't ready to consider what the news meant, but her body was already reacting.

All the light went out of Stephen Gregg's expression. He folded his retrieved darts into a strip of soft leather with the economical motions of a man whose fingers had reloaded any number of weapons, and who would shortly be reloading more.

Sound erupted, then ceased like a bubble that rose to the surface of a swamp and plopped into nonexistence. Faces turned toward the messenger in the doorway rotated as suddenly toward Piet Ricimer.

'Guillermo?' Piet said. He sounded nonchalant.

'Ishtar City and the other defense ports have been alerted, Captain,' the Molt said. One of Piet's trusted subordinates had been on communications watch in the office every day for the past six. Because ships couldn't communicate with the ground through the charged, turbulent Venerian atmosphere, information would have been carried by land line from the transfer dock to the office at the same time as the dock's external speakers shouted the news to those passing by in the street. 'Ships in Betaport intended for the squadron have been informed also.'

Sal had seen Guillermo's three-fingered hands working a keyboard intended for humans. The Molt was at least as quick as a human operator because he never, absolutely never, made a false movement. He'd transmitted the alert to all necessary recipients of the information, and he'd still entered the taproom in no more time than it had taken a sailor to run across the street.

Men shoved toward the door in a group just short of a mob. Virtually everyone in the Blue Rose had duties on one of Venus' fighting ships.

'One moment, gentlemen!' Piet Ricimer said, slicing the chaos like a shovel through gravel. Everyone stopped and turned again.

'Guillermo, what is the status of the transfer docks?' Piet asked.

'There are six vessels in orbit queued to land, Captain,' Guillermo said. 'The docks won't be clear for another three hours at best.'

'Much as I thought,' Piet said. He beamed to the men around him. 'I believe the Wrath's duty officer and anchor watch can receive the reporting crewmen for the next ten minutes without me. That should give us time to finish our game. Captain Salomon, I recall it being your throw.'

Stephen Gregg began to laugh the way he had on Lilymead, great, booming gusts of laughter. He bent over, supporting himself in part by resting his empty right hand on his thigh. Men looked at the big man as if he were a ticking bomb.

'Your throw, Mister Salomon,' Piet prodded gently.

Salomon swallowed and stepped to the scratch. His darts flew wild, in sharp contrast to earlier in the evening when his mechanical precision had put him and Todarov, his partner, well ahead.

More men entered from Dock Street. Each newcomer started to shout the news, then was hushed by those in the taproom already.

'May God bless our enterprise,' said Piet Ricimer in a calm voice. He threw. Each of his darts landed within a millimeter of his point of aim, putting the game to bed.

Stephen enfolded Sal in his arms, squeezed and released her, and strode to the door ahead of Piet; Colonel Gregg preceded Deputy Commander Ricimer through a crowd of their subordinates.

But Stephen was still laughing.

BETAPORT, VENUS

September 25, Year 27

1013 hours, Venus time

'There were ninety and nine-' sang six crewmen near Stephen as they gripped the stanchions around the Wrath's Number One gun. They were supernumeraries for takeoff and landing, as were most members of the vessel's complement. '-who safely lay-'

'The dome is opening, Captain,' Guillermo reported from the leftmost of the three primary navigation consoles. The Molt always sounded prim. His enunciation was perfect, but the hard edges of his triangular jaws clipped words as a matter of physical necessity.

'— in the shel-ter of the fold,' the singers continued. Perhaps it was their way of dealing with the nervousness on takeoff that was normal even among spacers. Perhaps they just liked to sing hymns.

The great screen before Piet at the center console boiled a smoky yellow-red. The Venerian atmosphere poured down on the Wrath as soon as the clamshell lids of the transfer dock began to draw back.

At ground level the air was almost still, but in the topmost of the three bands of convection cells, sulphurous winds of over 400 kph buffeted vessels. The atmosphere had been the Venus colony's greatest protection from out-planet raiders during the Rebellion, but it had devoured a thousand ships and their unskillful or unlucky crews in the millennium since.

'But one was out on the-'

'Will you shut the bloody noise off, you bloody widdiful!' Philips said in a shout that was nearly a scream.

The leader of the singers, a gunner's mate, looked around with a sneer on his lips and a snarl on the tip of his tongue. His face cleared and he swallowed the words when he saw that Philips squatted beside Mister Gregg in back of the navigation consoles. Philips might have been speaking on the gentleman's behalf; and anyway, the men who loaded for Mister Gregg had a certain status on the Wrath.

'Sorry, sir,' the gunner's mate muttered to Stephen, hushing his fellows with a hand.

'You may light the thrusters, Mister Simms,' Piet said to the navigator at the console to his immediate right. Simms touched a key.

The vessel came alive. Even on minimum flow the plasma motors gave the Wrath a vibrant feel far different from the solemn throb of the auxiliary power unit and the varied shrillness of pumps and fans throughout the hull.

'Sorry, sir,' Philips muttered to Stephen. 'Seems to me they're singing for fun, not like it was a Christian thing to do now. And it's not right, with our people back home and only us to stop the Feds.'

The Wrath had thirty-two separate plasma motors, giving the warship a greater delicacy of maneuver than a freighter of similar size could achieve with thrust channeled through eight or perhaps a dozen nozzles. Piet ran their power up and down, four thrusters at a time, as the dock's lid continued to edge sideways above them. On the screen, exhaust added brilliance to an atmosphere lit by a bloody, sullen sun.

'Sir?' Philips asked. He was a solid sailor, a motorman's mate of 25. He retained his ordinary shipboard duties after he volunteered to load for Stephen, though Mister Gregg's convenience became paramount. 'What will happen if we don't. . What if the Feds do reach Venus, sir?'

'The dock is fully open, Captain,' Guillermo said. Desire to get the entire squadron into Venus orbit wouldn't affect Piet's normal-nonemergency-start-up routine.

'They'll orbit,' Stephen said with deliberate calm. Philips' first child, a girl, had been born three days before. She and the mother were in Betaport, sure to be the second target of Pleyal's forces if not their first. 'They'll demand landing clearance under threat of bombing, and they'll get it. Nobody on Venus is going to have cities ripped open.'