The Reaches

'They'll put down soldiers, then?' Philips said.

'Garrisons, yes,' Stephen agreed. 'Enough to show that they're in charge, but not a fighting army it wouldn't be. Maybe five or ten thousand troops, spread out all over the planet. It won't be pleasant. They'll desecrate churches, putting up their idols. And I'm sure folk in the government will be arrested. But not so very terrible for ordinary people, I shouldn't think.'

'I guess with their own soldiers in cities, it'll be safer,' Philips suggested hopefully. 'They won't blow the roof in with their own people there.'

'Prepare for liftoff!' Piet announced, his voice ringing through the Wrath's tannoys. The thrusters ran up to full output, their irises still dilated.

Stephen thumped his loader in friendly fashion with his left hand; his right gripped the stanchion against which both men braced themselves. 'I don't expect to lose, though, Philips,' he shouted over the roar as thruster nozzles shrank down.

Nor did Stephen Gregg expect to survive a defeat himself. But Philips was very naive if he thought President Pleyal would bomb a riotous city any less quickly for the fact a few hundred Federation troops would burn in the corrosive atmosphere with the tens of thousands of Venerian civilians-like Philips' wife and child.

ABOARD THE WRATH

September 29, Year 27

0847 hours, Venus time

'Holy Jesus Christ our lord and savior,' somebody said in a hushed voice. Stephen realized his eyes were closed. He opened them carefully and saw the fleet of the North American Federation.

The Wrath was four days out from Venus. The transit series just concluded had been of twenty-seven separate exits from and reentries to the sidereal universe. Each one had hooked a needle through Stephen's soul and drawn another stitch stranglingly tight.

For ten years, transit had been a regular part of Stephen Gregg's existence. Each new experience was exactly like the last. Sometimes his eyes welled tears; always the pain in his skull made his stomach try to turn itself inside out.

Stephen would rather have had his teeth pulled without anesthetic than undergo transit. Dentistry wouldn't take him across interstellar space to where he had a job to do, so transit it was.

He understood why first sight of the enemy had brought the amazed prayer-it really had been a prayer-from Simms, who'd recovered fractionally quicker than Stephen had. The navigator's pride at meeting the enemy across trackless light-years was muted by realization of what they'd caught.

The Federation fleet was awesome. The number of ships, well over a hundred, wasn't unexpected, though seeing them had an emotional impact on even a prepared mind. What Stephen found shocking was the regularity of the Feds' formation.

He rose to his feet. The Wrath was under power, a standard 1-g acceleration for comfort's sake. Piet felt or saw the movement at the back of his console and turned. 'That was the last transit series for some hours, I think, Stephen,' he said. 'How do you feel?'

'I'll live,' Stephen said. He quirked a smile, knowing that between them 'whether I like it or not' was understood to close the sentence. 'I don't want to bother you if you. .' He shrugged and flicked a finger toward the display.

'Nothing until the commander and the rest of the fleet arrives,' Piet said. Ninety percent of Simms' screen was given over to alphanumeric data, but a visual sidebar in the lower right corner showed Venerian dispositions. Three more beads winked into sight simultaneously, bringing the total to ten.

'They're doing a good job of holding together,' Stephen said, his eyes on the Federation fleet. The Feds were in a tight globe. Most of the ships were large, and some were very large. The vessels in the interior of the formation, like the stone in a peach, didn't have guns to run out when the Venerians appeared. Those would be the stores ships and probably troopers; not fighting vessels, though their size and added numbers couldn't fail to have a morale effect on their opponents.

The outer sphere was of warships, arrayed with fields of fire interlocked like the spines of a bramble bush. There were at least eighty of them, twice as many as the heavy vessels of the Venerian fleet.

'They've got more experience in fleet operations than we do,' Piet said simply. 'I'm surprised to see how well they're keeping formation, though. Their captains and commander are both smarter and more skillful than I'd thought they would be.'

Guillermo turned from his adjacent console. 'I have been listening to the talk within the Federation fleet, Captain,' he said.

'How are you doing that?' Stephen asked in surprise. Modulated laser was the only practical means of communication between starships, since plasma thrusters acted as omniband radio-frequency transmitters. Unlike radio, laser communicators were tight-beam devices that had to be carefully aimed to be heard even by the intended recipient.

Guillermo made a grating motion with his belly plates, the Molt equivalent of laughter. 'Their communication beams reflect from their hulls, Colonel,' he said. 'I directed the Wrath's fine sensors to pick up the reflected light, and her fine computers to analyze and enhance the glimmers. As no doubt an ancestor of mine was taught to do before the Collapse.'

There were folk who denied that Molts had real intelligence. They claimed the aliens were merely bundles of genetic memory, operating like machines according to programmed pathways. Those folk-bigots, fools, and very often grasping pinchfarts to whom the profit in trading Molt slaves was all the justification necessary-hadn't worked with Molts the way Piet and Stephen had done in the past decade.

The navigator's sidebar now showed nearly forty ships, though there was no way of telling from the schematic how many of them were the fleet's accompanying light vessels-couriers and rescue craft-without combat value.

'What are they saying, Guillermo?' Simms demanded. 'Are they going to attack us?'

'The Federation officers are terrified, Navigator Simms,' Guillermo said. 'They thought it was impossible that we would locate them before they had reached the Solar System.'

Stephen chuckled. The prospect of action was doing more for his transit-induced queasiness than the solid deck alone could have managed. 'The other guy's always three meters tall,' he said. 'We need to remember that to the Feds, we're the other guy.'

An attention signal chimed through the Wrath. An image of Commander Bruckshaw formed on the upper left corner of the main display. Piet touched a control, reversing the images so that the enemy fleet was a miniature and the commander's huge visage looked sternly across the cockpit and from all the flagship's displays slaved to the main screen.

Stephen straightened to parade rest, feet spread and his hands crossed behind his back. Bruckshaw's screen displayed a montage of images from all the vessels linked to his flagship, the Venus- probably all the vessels in the fleet at this moment. The view transmitted from the optronics of some of the older ships would be at best a fuzzy blur, but Bruckshaw would be well able to see Stephen if he cared to look. It didn't matter, but the principle of disciplined readiness mattered.

'Gentlemen and sailors of Venus,' Bruckshaw said. 'This is the day we have prayed for: the day that God may, with His blessing, give the Federation into our hands and free Venus from the threat of tyranny forever.'

He gestured. Transmission parameters shrank and stripped the commander's voice, but the Wrath's AI swelled it again to more than fullness. Bruckshaw had a good oral style, and to his words' enhanced majesty he added the bedrock of utter sincerity.

'Our foes are numerous, as we knew they would be,' Bruckshaw continued. 'The formation they keep looks impressive, but a formation doesn't fight battles-men fight battles, and the men with courage and God on their side win those battles! We will take thirty minutes to prepare ourselves. Then we will all attack. Captains, ready your ships for action!'

The shrilling Action Stations alert stepped on the chime closing the transmission over the command channel. A view of the Federation fleet against an alien starscape replaced Commander Bruckshaw's face again.

'Let's get our suits on, Philips,' Stephen said. 'I'll want you and Hadley each carrying an extra flashgun as well as rifles this time, I think.'