The Reaches

'Sometimes when I've got a gun in my hands,' Gregg continued coldly, 'I know things that I can't see. I saved one charge in the flashgun. And I was willing for whatever happened later if I'd sent that bastard to Hell to greet me.'

He licked his dry lips. 'I'm not really thinking when I'm like that, Piet,' he said. 'And I don't care to remember it later.'

But I do remember.

'Yes,' said Ricimer. 'Do you want to wear the rest of the suit?'

Gregg shook his head. 'This'll be fine,' he said. 'It's really a security blanket, you know.'

'Mr. Dole reports they're ready to land,' Guillermo called.

'All right,' Ricimer said. 'I'll take the console for landing.'

He handed Gregg the breechloader and cross-belts Jeude had brought back through the Mirror because he was too single-minded to think of throwing them down.

'The Lord has mercy for all who love Him, Stephen,' he added softly as he turned away.

48

Benison

Piet shut off the thrusters. The Dum dropped the last meter and pogoed back on the shock absorbers, simply springs rather than oleo struts, of her landing outrigger.

Gregg jounced in the hammock that was all the mirrorside builders had provided in the way of acceleration couches. Everything felt all right; though he didn't suppose there'd be nerves to tell him that the stitches holding his guts together had all let go. He got up, carefully but trying to hide his concern.

'Sorry,' Ricimer said as he undid his harness. 'I was getting so irregular a backwash from the ground that I shut down sooner than I cared to do.'

'Any one you walk away from, sir,' Lightbody said cheerfully. He stood and stretched at the rudimentary attitude-control panel. He'd let the AI do the work, wisely and at Ricimer's direction. 'Not as though we're going to need these again, anyhow.'

'That's not a way I like to think, Mr. Lightbody,' Piet said tartly. He latched on his own body armor. The suits were too confining to wear safely while piloting.

The two Molts from Umber went into the Dum's single hold to wake their fellows. Guillermo stepped to the personnel hatch in the cockpit bulkhead and undogged it.

Ricimer glanced at the viewscreen. It was almost useless. If you knew what the terrain of Benison's mirrorside looked like, you could just make out the skeletons of multitrunked trees, burned bare by the exhaust.

Gregg checked the chamber to make sure his rifle was loaded. It was a falling-block weapon. He would have preferred a turn-bolt with more power to cam a bulged or corroded case home. Beggars can't be choosers.

'I'm ready,' he said aloud.

Guillermo dragged the hatch inward hard. Hot air surged in; heat waves rippled from the baked soil beyond. K'Jax rose into sight twenty meters away, just beyond the burned area. Both of his bodyguards now carried firearms.

'Any trouble here, K'Jax?' Ricimer called. The relief in his voice was as evident as that which Gregg felt at seeing the situation they had planned on.

A glint in the upper atmosphere indicated Dole was bringing the Dee down right on their heels. The nearest Federation settlement was hundreds of klicks away, so the chance of being disturbed really hadn't been very high. It was only paranoia, Gregg supposed, that had made him so fearful ever since they reached orbit.

'None here,' said the Molt leader. 'But across the Mirror, the humans came and attacked your ships. One was destroyed, and the other two fled.'

49

Benison

'You're all right now, Mr. Gregg,' said the black-bearded Federation guard whose chest was a tangle of charred bone. The corpse gripped Gregg with icy hands. 'You've passed through the Mirror, sir.'

Gregg shouted or screamed, he wasn't sure which. He swung. The butt of the rifle he was carrying struck a tree and spun the weapon out of his hands. The Molt who'd tried to stop Gregg, already five paces from the edge of the Mirror, ducked away from the rifle and Gregg's flailing hands.

'Oh!' Gregg said. 'Oh.' He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and said, 'I'm all right now,' before he opened them again.

It was overcast on Benison's realside. Gregg had traveled enough by now that open skies bothered him less than they once had, but the tight gray clouds were a relief after another episode with the Mirror.

The Molt he'd swung at was T'Leen, whom K'Jax had sent with Ricimer and Gregg as a guide. He picked up the rifle, examined it-a smear of russet bark on the stock, but no cracks or serious damage. He gave the weapon back to Gregg.

'I'm sorry,' Gregg said. 'I don't handle the Mirror well.' And I'm getting worse, like a man sensitized to an allergen.

Piet sat on the stump of a tree burned off close to the ground by a plasma bolt. Guillermo stood beside him, ready to grab if his master toppled from what couldn't have been a comfortable seat.

The Mirror took it out of a fellow. Even on Umber where the boundary was shallower, what must it have been like to carry a man the size of Stephen Gregg through in your arms?

Gregg forced himself to walk toward Ricimer. He felt increasingly human with every consciously-directed step. The wound in his lower abdomen was a frozen lump, but that was better than the twist of fiery needles he'd been living with since he awakened during transit.

Piet smiled and started to get up. His face went blank. Guillermo reached down, but Ricimer managed to lurch to his feet unaided. He smiled again, this time with a mixture of relief and triumph.

'There's no sign that the Feds harmed either the Peaches or Dalriada,' he said. 'After all, we'd dismantled the Halys ourselves before we crossed to mirrorside.'

A party of armed Molts appeared from the forest surrounding the blasted area. T'Leen clicked reassuringly to them. K'Jax remained on mirrorside for the moment, greeting and working out power arrangements with the newcomers from Umber.

A plasma bolt had struck the bow of the Halys. It came from a powerful weapon, but the depth of atmosphere between target and the bombarding vessel in orbit dispersed the effect over several square meters. An oxidized crust of thin metal plated the soil around the point of impact. Metal icicles jagged where they'd cooled on lower portions of the hull.

A dozen other bolts had vaporized chunks of forest in the immediate neighborhood. That didn't say a great deal for the Feds' fire direction, though Gregg realized there were severe problems in hitting anything with a packet of charged particles that had to pass through kilometers of atmosphere.

'How did they find us, do you think?' he asked Ricimer.

Piet clambered aboard the Halys. The hatch, open when the bolt hit, had crumpled in on itself like foil held too close to a flame.

He looked back. 'Schremp, I suppose,' he said. 'Or one of his men. I said we were going to Benison to mislead them.'

Ricimer grinned. 'Without lying, you see. Carstensen must have sent a warship from Rondelet to check out