The Reaches

The hatch flared, becoming a rectangle of momentary white against the dark hull. Gregg's bolt had punched a bulkhead inside the cutter, converting an egg-sized dollop of metal to blazing gas. The shock hurled one of the weapon's crew forward, out of the hatch.

The laser slewed left and down but continued to fire. Gouts of flame leaped each time a pulse stabbed into Umber City. The Fed infantry paused, looking back at what had been their hope.

The laser's wild firing stopped after a few seconds. Reflected light glimmered as the gunner swiveled his tube back on target.

Gregg swung his reloaded flashgun up to his shoulder. Beads on a wire. He squeezed the trigger.

The second bolt's impact was a brief flash, followed by ropes of coruscating blue fire that grew brighter as they ate the metal away from all four sides of the hatch. Gregg had severed one of the armored conduits which powered the laser's pumping system. The generator's full output dumped into the cutter's hull through a dead short.

'Run for it!' Ricimer cried. He stood and swept his rifle's barrel toward the tramline like a cavalryman gesturing with his saber. 'Stay between the rails!'

Stephen Gregg locked the lid of the butt compartment down over his last charged battery.

Jeude ran hunched over, carrying the heavy rifle in his right hand and dragging his carbine by its sling in his left. The three Venerians surviving within the blockhouse ran for the tramline also. Coye's legs to the pelvis, baked to the consistency of wood, remained standing behind them. Piet waited till his men were clear, then followed.

The Federation cutter rolled over on its back and plunged out of sight. The flash and the shockwave three seconds later were much greater than a vessel so small could have caused by hitting the ground. The cutter must have dived into one of the starships, perhaps the one which had launched it.

'Stephen!'

Gregg aimed his flashgun.

He was hard to see against the concrete, but some of the Fed soldiers had now reached the bollards. Several of them fired simultaneously. Something hot stabbed Gregg's lower abdomen and his right foot kicked out behind.

He squeezed. The bolt from the flashgun illuminated the figure who stood at the central window of the blacked-out Commandatura. The target existed only for the instant of the shot, high-intensity light converted to heat in the flesh of a man's chest.

Gregg turned to run. A bullet had carried away the heel of his right boot. He fell over. When he tried to get up, he found his arms had no strength.

Half a dozen Fed soldiers continued their assault even after the cutter's crash broke the glass out of all the remaining windows in Umber City. They'd ducked as Gregg leveled his lethal flashgun, but they came on again when he fell.

Gregg levered his torso off the ground. It was over. He couldn't move beyond that.

'On my soul you won't have him!' Piet Ricimer screamed. He held the short- barreled shotgun a Fed guard had carried. It belched twice, bottle-shaped flares of powder gases burning ahead of the muzzle. A soldier staggered backward at either shot. The unexpected flashes and roars did as much to stop the attack as the actual damage did.

Gregg felt arms around him. He knew they must be Piet's, but he couldn't see his friend for the pulsing orange light that swelled silently around him.

The orange suddenly flipped to cyan. Then there was nothing.

Nothing but the cold.

47

Above Benison

'Lift the suit around me and latch it,' Gregg said. 'I'll be fine with it carried on my shoulders. I just don't want to bend to pick it up.'

Weightlessness in orbit above Benison made his guts shift into attitudes slightly different from those of the gravity well in which he'd been wounded. The result wasn't so much painful as terrifying. Part of Gregg's mind kept expecting ropes of intestine to suddenly spill out, twisting around his shocked companions.

His left eye was undamaged. Blood from his cut brow had gummed it shut during the blockhouse fight.

'Stephen,' Ricimer said, 'you can't do any good in your present condition. You'll only get in the way. Besides, the mirrorside authorities don't have the strength to interfere with us and K'Jax' people together, if they so much as notice us land.'

'Lightbody,' Gregg said. 'Pick up my body armor and latch it around me.' He glared at Ricimer.

The Venerians hadn't bothered to formally name the ships they captured on Umber's mirrorside. Because you had to call them something, the other vessel was Dum and this one, Dee. Lightbody looked from Gregg to Ricimer and fingered his pocket Bible. The three of them were the only humans aboard.

Ricimer sighed. 'No, I'll take care of it,' he said to the crewman. He reflexively crooked his leg around a stanchion to hold him as he lifted the torso of the hard suit. 'Is it just that you want to die?'

'I'm sorry,' Gregg said. He stretched his arms out to his side so that Ricimer could slide the right armhole over him. The movement was controlled by his fear of the consequences. 'I-if I give in to it, I will die, I think. I don't want to push too hard, really. But I can't just. Lie back.'

'Okay, now lower them,' Ricimer said. The backplate was solid, with hinges on the sides and the breastplate split along an overlapping seam in the middle. Ricimer closed the left half of the plate carefully over the bandaged wound.

One of the Molts from Umber was a surgeon. It was typical of Federation behavior that she and other specialists had been sent to the labor crews when there was need to carry crates to the spaceport.

Because the surgeon had survived the firefight, and because there was a reasonably-equipped clinic on Umber's mirrorside, Gregg had survived also.

When Gregg awakened halfway through the voyage back to Benison, Lightbody offered him the bullet. He'd taken the battered slug because he was still too woozy from analgesics to refuse, but now he was looking forward to tossing it away discreetly as soon as they were on a planet again.

'Dum has arrived,' Guillermo called from the control console, where he watched the rudimentary navigational equipment. 'Shall I radio her?'

He was one of the half dozen Molts awake on the two vessels together. The rest were in suspended animation. Air wasn't a problem this time, but there were limited provisions available. Besides, with all the cargo, there was no space to move around as it was.

'Yes, of course,' Ricimer said. 'Tell Dole that we'll set down first, but I'll wait till he's ready to follow immediately.'

'If there's no trouble with the locals, Piet,' Gregg said quietly, 'then it won't matter whether I'm holding a rifle or not. If there is trouble, then I'm still the best you've got.'

His lips smiled. 'Even now.'

Ricimer latched the strap over Gregg's left shoulder. 'You never explained why you waited to fire that last shot,' he said, his eyes resolutely on his work. 'After you brought the cutter down.'

'It was an idea I had,' Gregg said. A Molt who had been watching the proceedings without speaking handed him the helmet that replaced the one Gregg had lost beside the blockhouse. Coye hadn't worn his through the Mirror, and he had no need of one now.

'I thought that Carstensen would be watching the. . proceedings,' Gregg continued.

'You thought?' Ricimer said sharply.

'I felt he was,' Gregg said. He was embarrassed to explain something he didn't understand himself. 'Sometimes when, when there's. .'

His voice trailed off. Piet met his gaze from centimeters away.