The Reaches

Hawtry stepped backward, chewing on his lower lip. He wasn't a coward, but the muzzle of Gregg's weapon was only two meters from his chest. A bolt at that range would spray his torso over hectares of swamp.

Ricimer's posture eased slightly. He reached into his belt pouch, handed Blakey the compass from it, and resumed. 'You will find the Porcelain on a reciprocal of this course. Tell Mister Salomon that your party will guard the vessel until we're ready to depart. The crew will be more comfortable here at the base, I'm sure.'

Hawtry let out a long, shuddering breath. 'We'll need men to deal with the menial work,' he said.

Ricimer nodded. 'If you care to pay sailors extra to act as servants,' he said, 'that's between you and them.'

Hawtry glanced over his shoulder at the accompanying gentlemen. Without speaking further, the group sidled away in the direction of the Mizpah and the gear they'd left aboard her.

Gregg opened his visor. His face had no expression.

Dole plucked at my sleeve. 'Let's get along and find the radio room, sir,' the bosun said. 'You know, I thought things were going to get interesting for a moment there.'

I tried to smile but couldn't. I supposed I should be thankful that I could walk normally.

DECADES

Day 8

I turned at the console to look out the window of the commo room. Halfway across the compound, male prisoners from the Decades garrison and the damaged freighter were unloading spoiled stores from the Absalom 231. With my left hand I picked a section from the half orange while my right fingers typed code into the numeric keypad.

'That's it!' said Lavonne. She'd been Officer III (Communications) Cartier when Decades Station was under Federation control. 'You've got the signal, Jeremy!'

'Thanks to you and this wonderful equipment,' I added warmly, patting my hand toward Lavonne without quite touching her. I pursed my lips as I looked over the console display. 'Now if only the Mizpah's hardware weren't a generation past the time it should've been scrapped. .'

The console showed the crew emptying the hulk, from the viewpoint of the port-side optical sensors in the Mizpah's hull. Occasionally some of the Venerians and Molts replacing the Mizpah's damaged thrusters came in sight at the lower edge of the display, oblivious of the fact they were being electronically observed. Because the Mizpah's sensors only updated the image six times a second, the picture was grainy and figures moved in jerks.

Lavonne stripped the fascia from one of the orange sections I'd handed her, using her fingers and the tip of a small screwdriver. 'Why, we could connect all the tower optics with this!' she said in pleased wonder. 'Superintendent Burr keeps worrying that one day the Molts on guard will decide to let in the wild tribes from the swamp. But someone could watch what's going on in the towers from here.'

Several people came up the stairs from the lower level of the admin building, talking among themselves. I'd left the commo room's door ajar, though I'd made sure the panel could be locked if matters with Lavonne proceeded faster than I expected.

'Ah-it's Molts that you're afraid of,' I said, 'and you use Molts for guards?'

'Well, the ones who've been trained to work for humans are trustworthy, I suppose,' the woman said defensively. 'Freshly caught ones used to escape from the holding pens while the ships carrying them laid over here.'

She bent past me to tap the screen where a corner of the inner compound was visible past the cargo hulk. Electrified wire surrounded thatch-roofed wooden racks. If it hadn't been for the voices in the hallway, I'd have taken up the offer implicit in Lavonne's posture.

'That was years ago,' she added, straightening. 'They can't get out of the station now that the perimeter's fenced too.'

The door opened. Piet Ricimer stepped in, his head turned to catch Gregg's voice: '. . who on Duneen's staff was paid to load us with garbage in place of the first-quality stores we were charged for.'

I jumped to my feet, knocking my knees on the console. Macquerie and Guillermo entered behind Ricimer and his aide. I'd learned to recognize Guillermo from the yellowish highlights of his chitin and his comparatively narrow face. It was odd to think of the aliens as having personalities, though.

'I've, ah, been connecting the squadron's optics through the console, here, Ricimer,' I said. 'Ah-save for the Porcelain; I'd have to be aboard her to set the handshake.'

I was nervous. What I'd done here had been at my own whim; and there was the matter of Lavonne, not that things there had come to fruition. Birth in a factorial family made me the social superior of the general commander, but I hadn't needed Hawtry's humiliation to teach me that the reality here was something else again.

Ricimer glanced at the display. 'From the Mizpah?' he said. 'I'm delighted, Moore.'

Gregg offered me a bleak grin over the general commander's shoulder. Lavonne, who'd moved toward a corner when the command group entered, eyed the big man speculatively. There were things about women that I would never understand.

'I was surprised to find you aboard after we lifted off,' Ricimer commented. 'Stephen explained, though; and I can see that you'd be an asset in any case.'

'I, ah, regret the inconvenience I've caused,' I said. I nodded to the pilot. I'd tried to avoid Macquerie thus far during the voyage, but a starship was close confinement for all those aboard her. If there was going to be trouble between us, best it happen under the eyes of Ricimer-and more particularly Gregg.

Macquerie smiled wryly. 'My own fault not to wonder why somebody was buying me drinks, Mister Moore,' he said. Unlike the others, Macquerie respected me for my birth. 'Anyway, Captain Ricimer says he'll put me down on Os Sertoes with my in-laws.'

A white asterisk pulsed at the upper corner of the screen as Macquerie spoke. I noticed it from the corner of my eye. The icon might have been there for some while, and I didn't have any notion of what it meant.

I opened my mouth to call a question to Lavonne. Before I spoke, Guillermo reached an oddly-jointed arm past me and touched a sequence of keys. Captain Blakey, his image streaked by static, snarled, 'Come in, somebody, isn't there anybody on watch on this God damned planet?'

Piet Ricimer put his left hand on my shoulder, guiding me out of the way so that he could take over the console. The general commander's grip was like iron. If I'd hesitated, he would have flung me across the radio room.

'I'm here, Captain Blakey,' Ricimer said.

The static thinned visibly with each passing moment. I recognized the pattern. Thrusters expelled plasma, atoms stripped of part or all of their electron charge. The exhaust radiated across the entire radio frequency spectrum, with harmonics as it reabsorbed electrons from the surrounding atmosphere. A thruster was firing in the vicinity of the Porcelain. .

'Mister Hawtry's taken the cutter!' Blakey said. 'He and the others, they're sure they know where Molt treasure is and they've gone off to get it. They have a map!'

'Do you know where-' Ricimer began.

Blakey cut him off. 'I don't know where they're going,' he blurted. 'I wouldn't go, sir, I refused! But they got two of the sailors to fly the cutter for them, and now there's nobody aboard the ship but me and the other four sailors they brought. I tried to stop them, but they wouldn't even let me to the radio to warn you, sir.'

'We can't call the cutter while its thruster's operating,' Gregg said. 'Not that the damned fools would listen to us.'

'Outside of the plateau the station's on. .' Captain Macquerie said grimly. 'I know, you think it's a swamp, but it's the only solid ground on the continent. Five klicks in any direction from the station, it's soup. It maybe won't swallow them, but they'll play hell unclogging their nozzles to lift off again.'

My face grew still as glass; my mind considered the capabilities of the console built to the standards of the chip-rich North American Federation. The cutter's motor created RF hash that would smother normal attempts at