The Reaches

the report.'

His grin became bleak. 'The next time,' he said, 'I'll lie.'

T'Leen returned to the humans with others of the clan in tow. 'Fire came from the sky,' he said. 'Eight days ago, in the morning. It killed two of our people.'

He pointed in the general direction where the Dalriada had been berthed in the forest.

'Were the ships hit?' Ricimer asked.

'No, not then,' the Molt said. T'Leen's voice lacked human inflections, but the vocabulary of Trade English was close to the surface of his mind, in contrast to the impression Gregg had of K'Jax.

'The fire came again, nine times,' T'Leen went on. 'It didn't hit any of us, or the ships. We ran into the Mirror, all but K'Jax and I and S'Tan. The large ship fired guns into the sky.'

T'Leen cocked his head to one side, then the other, in a gesture Gregg couldn't read. 'We have never seen guns like those used before. If we had guns like those, we would drive the humans off this world.'

Gregg mentally translated 'human' as 'Fed' when members of K'Jax' clan used the word. At moments like this, he was less than certain that the Molts didn't mean exactly what they said.

'The fire from the sky stopped when the large vessel began to shoot,' T'Leen said. 'The ships took off, the little one and then the large one.'

He pointed to the Halys. 'This they left. S'Tan would have gone back to bring the clan from mirrorside, but the fire came again. Here.'

His chitinous fingertips clicked against the ruined hull. 'Then soldiers came on vehicles and aircraft, and we went across the Mirror too,' T'Leen said. 'There was nothing more here.'

'Well,' Gregg said. 'They got away, at least. Dulcie and the crews did.'

He wondered how much of the chill in his guts was physical and how much came from the realization that he might spend the rest of his life on Benison.

'It was my fault,' Ricimer said as he examined the vessel's cockpit.

Though the dispersed bolt had opened the Halys as completely as a pathologist does a skull before brain removal, the interior of what remained wasn't in too bad a condition. That was partly because the Venerians themselves had gutted her thoroughly to create the Umber, abandoned on the mirrorside of her namesake.

'The fire that did this,' T'Leen said. 'And burned the forest. That was from guns like those on your ship?'

Gregg nodded. 'Yeah,' he said. 'Plasma cannon. Probably bigger ones than the Dalriada mounts. Not so well served, though.'

'We thought so,' said T'Leen. 'One day we will have such guns.'

Gregg sighed and wiped the stock of his rifle with the palm of his hand. How many times would he have to run into the Mirror to save himself from Fed hunters?

'A ship in orbit's at a disadvantage in a fight with ground batteries,' he said to divert his mind from an icy future. 'The Feds didn't get lucky when they sprang their surprise, so they eased off and let our people get away.'

He snorted. 'I've got a suspicion the Halys will be promoted to a Venerian dreadnought in that Fed captain's report.'

'Stephen!' Ricimer said. 'Switch your radio on to Channel Three!'

'Huh?' said Gregg. The helmet radio was designed for use by men in vacuum wearing gauntlets. He clicked the dial on the right temple from Channel One, intercom, to Channel Three which the squadron used for general talk-between-ships, then pressed the dial to turn the unit on.

'. . to Ricimer, we've been attacked by the enemy. We'll remain in orbit for another day. Call us when you return. Dulcie to Ricimer. We've been attacked-'

Gregg switched his radio off. The static-broken voice, a recording that presumably played in segments interspersed with dead air for a reply, was the most welcome sound he'd ever heard.

'Piet!' he said. 'We're saved!'

A cold as terrible as that of the Mirror flooded back into his soul. 'Except we can't call them,' he said. 'These helmet intercoms won't punch a signal through the atmosphere. Stripping the commo system out of Dee or Dum and setting it up in working order will take a lot more than a day with the tools and personnel we've got.'

'Yes,' Ricimer said crisply. He looked down at their Molt guide. 'T'Leen,' he said, 'please recross the Mirror and tell the personnel there to immediately begin bringing the cargo over to this side. First of all, send across all of my crewmen. I'll need their skills for the work.'

T'Leen flexed his elbow joints out in his equivalent of a nod. He stepped toward the transition layer.

'What work, Piet?' Gregg asked.

It was possible to travel from mirrorside to realside through normal transits, though it was a brutal voyage that might take years. Dum and Dee would never survive it, but they could capture a larger ship-

Six humans and perhaps a few Molt volunteers. Most of their weapons abandoned on the realside of Umber. Capturing a ship that could journey home from the mirrorside.

Right. And perhaps the angels would come down in all their glory and carry Stephen Gregg to Eryx without need for a ship at all.

'To put the Halys in shape to lift off,' Ricimer said.

'What? Piet, we gutted her before we left. She's got three thrusters, no AI, and she's been torn to Hell besides!'

'Yes,' Ricimer said. 'But if she lifts me to orbit, then I think I can raise our friends with my helmet radio.'

Gregg stared at the ruined vessel. They'd cut frame members to remove the thruster. 'Piet,' he said. 'She'll twist, flip over, and come in like a bomb.'

Like the Federation cutter he'd brought down on Umber.

Ricimer smiled gently. 'If that's God's will, Stephen,' he said, 'so it shall. But if we give up hope in the Lord's help, then we're already lost.'

Gregg opened his mouth. He couldn't think of anything to say, so he turned away quickly before Piet could see his tears of frustration.

50

Benison

The thrusters crashed to life. The Halys yawed nose-down to starboard as her stern came unstuck. The Venerians had removed the starboard stern unit to power the Umber. Ricimer, a suited doll in the open cockpit, seemed to have overcompensated for the imbalance.

'Forward throttle, sir!' Dole screamed. Piet couldn't hear him over the exhaust's crackling roar, and it wasn't as though the deathtrap's pilot didn't know what the problem was.

Besides, Gregg knew instinctively that Dole's advice was wrong. Gregg couldn't pilot a boat in a bathtub himself, but he knew from marksmanship that you were better off carrying through with a plan than to try to reprogram your actions in mid-execution.

You'd probably gotten it right when you had leisure to consider. Your muscles couldn't react quickly enough to follow each flash of ephemeral data. If you kept your swing and squeeze constant, the chances were that the shot and the target would intersect downrange.

If you were as good a shot as Stephen Gregg.

Ricimer was at least as good a pilot as his friend was a gunman.

The Halys continued to lift with her nose low. Her bow drifted to starboard so that as the blasted vessel climbed, she also wheeled slowly.

'You've got her, Piet,' Gregg whispered. 'You've got her, you do!'

They'd rigged manual controls to the Halys' remaining thrusters, using what