The Reaches

Gregg's mouth quirked. 'For your sake I hope so,' he said. 'But I haven't, and I've been doing this for some years now.'

Besides the ship's officers, the forward compartment was crowded by Hawtry and the nine gentlemen- adventurers who, like him, stood fully equipped with firearms and body armor.

The ceramic chestplates added considerably to the men's bulk and awkwardness. Many of them had personal blazons painted on their armor. Hawtry's own chestplate bore a gryphon, the marking of his house, and on the upper right clamp the oriflamme of the Duneens.

'Now that's navigation!' said Captain-former captain-Macquerie with enthusiasm. 'We can orbit without needing to transit again.'

It had taken Macquerie a few days to come to terms with his situation, but since then he'd been an asset to the project. Macquerie was too good a sailor not to be pleased with a ship as fine as the Porcelain and a commander as famous as Piet Ricimer.

'The Kinsolving's nowhere to be seen,' said Salomon as he leaned toward the three-dimensional navigation tank. 'As usual. The Mizpah can keep station, the cargo hulk can keep station, more or less. Winter couldn't find his ass with both hands.'

'There they are,' Ricimer said mildly. He pointed to something in the tank that I couldn't see from where I stood. It probably wouldn't have meant anything to me anyway. 'One, maybe two transits out. It's my fault for not making sure the Kinsolving's equipment was calibrated to the same standards as the rest of ours.'

'If the Absalom can keep station,' Salomon muttered, 'so could the Kinsolving-if she had a navigator aboard.'

'Enough of this nonsense,' said Thomas Hawtry. Several of the gentlemen about him looked as green as I felt, but Hawtry was clearly unaffected by the multiple eversions of transit. 'We don't need a third vessel anyway. Lay us alongside the Mizpah, Ricimer, so that I can go aboard and take charge.'

Guillermo looked up from his console. 'The cutter should be launched in the next three minutes,' he said to Ricimer in his mechanically perfect speech. 'Otherwise we'll need to brake now rather than proceeding directly into planetary orbit.'

'You'd best get aft to Hold Two, Mister Hawtry,' Ricimer said. If he'd reacted to the gentleman's peremptory tone, there was no sign of it in his voice. 'The cutter is standing by with two men to ferry you.'

Hawtry grunted. 'Come along, men,' he ordered as he led his fellows shuffling sternward. Watching the sicker-looking of the gentlemen helped to settle my stomach.

'Sure you don't want to go with them?' Gregg said archly. 'When they transfer to the Mizpah, there won't be any proper gentlemen aboard. Just spacers.'

'I'm a proper gentleman,' I snapped. 'I just have little interest in weapons and no training whatever with them. If you please, I'll stay close to you and Mister Ricimer and do what you direct me.'

'Mister Hawtry?' Ricimer called as the last of Hawtry's contingent were ducking through the hatchway to the central compartment. 'Please remember: there'll be no fighting if things go as they should. We'll simply march on the base from opposite directions and summon them to surrender.'

Hawtry's response was a muted grunt.

Salomon and Macquerie lowered their heads over the navigation tank and murmured to one another. The Molt Guillermo touched a control. His viewscreen split again: the right half retaining the orb of Decades, three-quarters in sunlight, while the left jumped by logarithmic magnifications down onto the planetary surface.

A fenced rectangle enclosed a mixture of green foliage and soil baked to brick by the exhaust of starships landing. In close-up, the natural vegetation beyond the perimeter had the iridescence of oil on water.

There were two ships with bright metal hulls in the landing area, and a scatter of buildings against the opposite fence. The morning sun slanted across the Federation base. Obvious gun towers threw stark, black shadows from the corners and from the center of both long sides.

I licked my lips. I didn't know what I was supposed to do. The Porcelain shuddered like a dog drying itself. Lights on the attitude-control panels pulsed in near unison, balancing the shock. The three sailors looked alert but not concerned.

'That's the cutter with Hawtry aboard casting off,' Gregg said. He glanced at the bosun. 'How long before we begin atmospheric braking, Dole?' he asked.

Dole, a stocky, dark man with a beard trimmed to three centimeters, pursed his lips as he considered the images on the viewscreen. 'About two hours, sir,' he said.

Jeude, beside him, nodded agreement. 'We could go into orbit quicker,' he said, 'but it'll take them that long to transfer the fine gentlemen to the Mizpah-good riddance to them.'

'Watch your tongue, Aaron Jeude,' the bosun said.

Jeude's smile flashed toward Gregg, taking in me beside the bigger man as well.

'What do we do, Gregg?' I asked. My voice was colorless because of my effort to conceal my fear of the unfamiliar.

'We wait,' Gregg said. 'Ten minutes before landing, we'll put our equipment on. And then we'll march a klick through what Macquerie says is swamp, even on the relative highlands where the Feds built their base.'

'I don't have any equipment,' I said. 'If you mean weapons.'

'We'll find you something,' Gregg said. 'Never fear.' He spoke quietly, but there was a disconcerting lilt to his tone.

Six sailors under Stampfer, the Porcelain's master gunner, bustled around the Long Tom, opening hydraulic valves and locking down the seats attached to the carriage. They were readying the big weapon for action.

'Will there be fighting, then, Gregg?' I asked, sounding even to myself as cool as the sweat trickling down the middle of my back.

'At Decades, I don't know,' Gregg said. 'Not if they have any sense. But before this voyage is over-yes, Mister Moore. There will be war.'

* * *

The Porcelain's two cargo holds were on the underside of the vessel, bracketed between the pairs of plasma motors fore and aft, and the quartet of similar thrusters amidships. Number Two, the after hold, had been half-emptied when the cutter launched. Now it was filled by a party of twenty men waiting for action, and it stank.

'You bloody toad, Easton!' a sailor said to the man beside him. 'That warn't no fart. You've shit yourself!'

My nose agreed. Several of the men had vomited from tension and atmospheric buffeting as the ship descended, and we were all of us pretty ripe after a week on shipboard. I clutched the cutting bar Gregg had handed me from the arms locker and hoped that I wouldn't be the next to spew my guts up.

The Porcelain's descent slowed to a near-hover. The rapid pulsing of her motors doubled into a roar. 'Surface effect!' Gregg said. 'Thrust reflected from the ground. We'll be touching down-'

The big gentleman wore back-and-breast armor-the torso of a hard suit that doubled as protection from vacuum and lethal atmospheres-with the helmet locked in place, though his visor was raised for the moment. In his arms was a flashgun, a cassegrain laser which would pulse the entire wattage of the battery in its stock out through a stubby ceramic barrel. Gregg was shouting, but I needed cues from his mouth to make out the words.

The last word was probably 'soon,' but it was lost in still greater cacophony. The starship touched its port outrigger, hesitated, and settled fully to the ground with a crash of parts reaching equilibrium with gravity instead of thrust.

I relaxed. 'Now what?' I asked.

'We wait a few minutes for the ground to cool,' Gregg explained. 'There was standing water, so the heat ought to dissipate pretty quickly. Sufficient heat.'

It seemed like ten minutes but was probably two before a sailor spun the undogging controls at a nod from Gregg. The hatch, a section of hull the full length of Hold Two, cammed downward to form a ramp. Through the opening rushed wan sunshine and a gush of steam evaporated from the soil by the plasma motors.