The Reaches

Punta Verde

Gregg didn't recognize the ceiling. He turned his head. A wave of nausea tried to turn his stomach inside out. Nothing came up except thin bile, but the spasms made his rib cage feel as though it was jacketed in molten glass.

Piet Ricimer leaned over him and gently mopped the vomit away with a sponge. 'Welcome back,' he said.

'I feel awful,' Gregg whispered.

Ricimer shrugged. 'Cracked ribs, a concussion, and unconscious for three days,' he said. 'You ought to feel awful, my friend.'

'Three days?'

'I was beginning to worry a little,' Ricimer said without emphasis. 'The medic thought most of it was simple exhaustion, though. You were operating'-he smiled wryly-'well beyond redline, Stephen.'

Gregg closed his eyes for a moment. 'Christ's blood, I feel awful,' he said. He looked up again. 'Sorry.'

'You've had quite a time,' Ricimer said. 'The Lord makes allowances, I'm sure.'

'Where are-' Gregg began. He broke off, winced, and continued, 'Just a bit. I'm going to sit up.'

'The medics-' Ricimer said. Gregg lurched up on his right elbow and gasped. Ricimer slid an arm behind his friend's back but followed rather than lifted Gregg the rest of the way up.

The gentleman sat with his eyes closed, breathing in quick, shallow breaths. At last he resumed, 'Where are we?'

'The argosy hasn't moved, if that's what you mean,' Ricimer said. 'You and I are in a cabin on the Tolliver.'

His smile had claws of memory. 'They were going to put you in the sick bay,' he added. 'But I didn't think you ought to be disturbed by the other wounded men.'

'I don't think I'm going to stand up just yet,' Gregg said deliberately. He opened his eyes and saw the worry on Ricimer's face melt into a look of studied unconcern. 'We're going to lift off, aren't we?' he pressed. 'Mostert can't possibly think we can capture enough Molts here to be worth the, the cost.'

'As a matter of fact. .' Ricimer said. Gregg couldn't be sure of his tone. 'The village we attacked-city, really, there are thousands of Molts living in it. The Molts were impressed. They've dealt with the Southerns before, but they'd never met anything like us.'

Looking at a corner of the ceiling, Ricimer went on, 'Leon's in the sick bay, you know. Splinters through the shoulder from an arrow that hit the hull beside him.'

Gregg pursed his lips, remembering flashes of the way he'd shouted at the bosun. 'I didn't know that,' he said.

Ricimer shrugged. 'He'll be all right. But I heard him telling a rating from the Tolliver in the next bed, 'Our Mr. Gregg, he's a right bastard. He went through them bugs like shit through a goose. As soon kill you as look at you, Mr. Gregg would.''

'Lord, I'm sorry,' Gregg whispered with his eyes closed. 'I was. .'

'He's proud of you, Stephen,' Ricimer explained softly. 'We all are. Our Mr. Gregg. And the Molts were so impressed that they want us to help them against their neighbors forty klicks away. In return, we get the prisoners.'

'Well, I'll be damned,' Gregg said.

'Not for what you did three days ago,' Ricimer said. 'Eight of the men with the trucks were killed, but none of them would have made it back except for us. Especially for you.'

'Especially for you,' Gregg corrected. He met his friend's eyes again. 'Bailey?' he asked.

Ricimer shook his head minusculy. 'No. But that's not-anyone's fault.'

'When do we. .' Gregg said. 'The raid, the attack. When is it?'

'Three days from now,' Ricimer said. 'The Molts are getting their army, I suppose you'd call it, together. But Stephen, I don't think-'

'I'm going,' Gregg said. He set his lips firmly together, then held out his hand toward his friend. 'Now,' he said. 'Help me stand. .'

18

Punta Verde

Because the four men stationed at the Peaches' hatch all wore body armor and helmets, Gregg knocked elbows when he twisted to either side. Even so, the hatchway was less crowded than the featherboat's bay in which twenty more heavily-armed men waited.

The Hawkwood at three hundred meters altitude led the expedition. She wobbled across the sky, losing or gaining twenty meters of elevation in an instant and slewing sideways by twice that much. The Hawkwood had a good enough thrust-to-weight ratio to make atmospheric flight a possible proposition, but not an especially practical one. They were using her because Mostert needed the firepower and the hundred men he could cram into the vessel's hull.

Four lifeboats, each with a dozen or more men aboard, veed out to the Hawkwood's flanks. They skimmed the treetops, buttoned up but still washed dangerously by hot, electrically-excited exhaust from the leading vessel's thrusters. Occasionally one of them, buffeted or simply blinded when the Hawkwood slid to the side, dipped into the forest. As yet, none of them had been noticeably damaged by such mishaps.

The featherboats closed both arms of the vee. Gregg noted with grim amusement that the Desire to starboard porpoised almost as badly as the Hawkwood did, while Piet Ricimer kept the Peaches as steady as if she ran on tracks.

A kilometer ahead of the expedition's leading vessel, Gregg saw an incandescent rainbow: sun catching the plume of another spaceship's thrusters. The reason the Molts had allied themselves with the Venerians was that their rivals were in league with the Southerns, trading captives for firearms.

No one would hear Gregg if he shouted. The flashgunners in the hatch had their visors locked down against the retina-crisping dazzle of the Hawkwood's exhaust. That and the engine roar isolated them as individuals. The other three came from the Rose. Gregg wouldn't recognize any of them with their helmets off.

Anyway, it wasn't the hatch crew which had to be warned but rather the vessels' captains. Their view was even blurrier than Gregg's through his filtered visor. It was possible that the distant vessel wasn't hostile. . but it was equally possible that pigs flew on some undiscovered planet.

Gregg aimed his flashgun at the top of the distant plume where the other vessel had to be. He tried to steady his weapon. The shot was beyond human skill, but the vivid lance across the optics of the expedition vessels would at least call attention to the interloper.

The world fluoresced with a shockwave that felt for an instant like freefall. Forest vaporized in the bolt from the Peaches' plasma cannon. Despite the featherboat's distant position, Ricimer had seen the target as soon as Gregg had.

The interloper appeared startled, though it was untouched by the blast. It lifted from where it lurked in the upper canopy and ripped a series of brilliant sparks toward the Hawkwood. It appeared to mount a multishot laser rather than a plasma weapon.

The 14-cm Long Tom in the Hawkwood's bow belched a sky-devouring gout of directed energy toward the interloper. Foliage exploded. Eighty meters of a giant tree leaped upward like a javelin, shedding leaves and branches as it rose. It had been struck near the base. The target dived to vanish within the forest again.

Mostert brought the Hawkwood's bow around to starboard. He ignored the danger to the cutters on that side and the Desire in his eagerness to bring his port six-gun battery into play. These lighter weapons, 8- and 10-cm plasma cannon, had no target by the time they bore, but the