The Reaches

'you may stand down for the moment. Don't take off your hard suits. I regret this, but we have to be ready to open the gunports at a moment's notice.'

I nodded within the tight confines of the helmet sealed to my torso armor by a lobstertail gorget. My eyes were closed. I'd like to have been able to pray for mercy.

'Men,' Piet said. 'Comrades, friends. With the Lord's help, we'll prevail. But it's up to us to endure.'

The tannoys chirped as Piet switched off the PA system.

We would endure.

ABOVE QUINCY

Day 129

I unlatched the waste cassette-the shit pan-of Stephen's hard suit. You can change your own, but you're likely to slosh the contents when you reach beneath your fanny with arms encased in rigid armor.

This cassette leaked anyway. Stephen made a quick snatch with a rag. A few droplets of urine escaped despite that. Because we were in free fall, the drops would spread themselves across the first surface they touched, probably a bulkhead.

That wouldn't make much difference, because the Oriflamme already stank like a sewer from similar accidents. What bothered me worse was the way my body itched from constant contact with my suit's interior.

'If I ever have a chance to bathe again,' I said softly, 'all that's left of me is going to melt and run down the drain like the rest of the dirt.'

The Oriflamme's crew hung in various postures within the compartment. The only comfortable part of free fall was that any of the surfaces within the vessel could serve as a 'floor.' Piet lay on his couch, apparently drowsing. Dole was on lookout at the left console. Guillermo's usual position was empty. The Molt had gone into suspended animation and was bundled against the forward bulkhead in a cargo net.

The displays were set for blink comparison. Images of the stars surrounding the Oriflamme flashed against images taken at the same point in the previous orbit. The AI corrected for the vessel's frictional slippage and highlighted anomalies for human examination. In two days of waiting, we had the start of a catalog of comets circling Quincy's sun,

Kiley held open the clear bag so that I could add my cassette to the dozen already there. A detail of sailors would open the after hold and steam the day's accumulation, but there were limits to the cleaning you could do in free fall and vacuum.

Stephen slapped an empty cassette into the well of his suit. 'You've never been on a slaving voyage, with Molts packed into the holds and all the air cycled through them before it gets to you,' he said. 'Though we didn't have to stay suited up that time, that's true.'

I looked at him. 'I didn't know that you'd been a slaver,' I said.

Stephen turned his palms up in the equivalent of a shrug. 'Back when we were trying to trade with Fed colonies,' he said. 'The only merchandise they wanted were Molt slaves. Piet wasn't in charge.'

He smiled. 'Neither was I, for that matter, but it didn't bother me a lot.' There would have been as much humor in the snick of a rifle's breech opening. 'And that was back when some things did bother me, you know.'

'Hey?' said Dole. Piet, who I'd thought was dozing-and maybe he was-snapped upright and expanded by three orders of magnitude a portion of the starfield blinking on his display. Dole was still reaching for the keypad.

The magnified object was a globular starship. We had no way of judging size without scale, but I'd never heard of anything under 300 tonnes burden being built on a spherical design. Plasma wreathed the vessel. Her thrusters were firing to bring her into orbit around Quincy.

Piet wound the siren for two seconds. The impellers couldn't reach anything like full volume in that time, but the moan rising toward a howl was clearly different from all the normal sounds of the Oriflamme in free fall.

'General quarters,' Piet ordered crisply. 'Assault party, remain in the main hull for the moment.'

He paused, his armored fingers dancing across his console with tiny clicks. 'My friends,' Piet added, 'I believe this is the moment we've prepared and suffered for.'

Stephen checked the satchel which held charged batteries to reload his flashgun. I bent and held him steady with both hands to get a close look at his waste cassette. It was latched properly.

When the Oriflamme's gunports opened, we'd be in hard vacuum. That was the wrong time to have the pressure within somebody's suit blow his waste cassette across the compartment, leaving a two-by-ten-centimeter hole to void the rest of his air.

Lightbody unbound Guillermo and pumped his arms to break him out of his trance. The Molt was a doubly grotesque figure in the ceramic armor built for his inhuman limbs.

Salomon slid into his console as Dole propelled himself clear. The bosun could land the vessel manually and run the AI during normal operations, but he lacked the specialized training to match courses with a ship trying to run from us. With a competent navigator like Salomon backing Piet Ricimer at the controls, the Federation vessel didn't have a prayer of escaping either in the sidereal universe or through transit.

I'd hung a cutting bar from one of my hard suit's waist-level equipment studs. I unclipped it. There was no need to, but it gave me something to do with my hands. Catching our quarry was only the first part of the business.

'Prepare for power!' Salomon warned. Veteran sailors had already made sure their boots were anchored on the deck, 'down' as soon as the thrusters fired.

A 1-g thrust simulated gravity. I was at an angle, because my right foot bounced from the deck. Stephen kept me from falling.

The Fed vessel's image filled the main screen. That was another jump in magnification, though I supposed we were closing with them in real terms. Some of her plating had been replaced, speckling the spherical hull with bright squares. Her lower hemisphere was crinkly with punishment from atmospheric friction and the bath of plasma exhaust during braking.

Everyone in our forward compartment stared at the screen. The men amidships and in the stern cabin could only guess at what was happening, since the navigation staff was too busy to offer a commentary.

Our quarry's hatches would lower like sections of orange peel. There was an inlay of contrasting metal set beside one of them. I couldn't read the lettering, but I made out the figure of a woman with her hand outstretched.

'See the Virgin?' I said to Stephen. 'I think she's the Montreal.'

'Half the Feds' shipping is our lady of this or that,' Stephen said. His voice was that of a machine again. 'But if not this time, then another. And we'll be ready.'

As Stephen spoke, his hands moved as delicately as butterfly wings across the stock and receiver of his flashgun. He'd folded the trigger guard forward so that he could use the weapon with gauntlets on.

'Unidentified vessel,' crackled the tannoys. Piet had set them to repeat outside signals. This must have been from a communications laser since our thrusters and those of our quarry were snarling across the RF spectrum. 'Sheer off at once. This is the Presidential vessel Montreal. If you endanger us you'll all be sent to some mud hole for the rest of your life!'

'Gentlemen,' Piet ordered, 'seal your suits.'

He snapped his visor closed. I tried to obey. The cutting bar clacked against my helmet. I'd forgotten I was holding it. I couldn't feel it in my hand because of the gauntlets.

Our commo system switched to vacuum mode instead of depending on atmospheric transmission. Piet's voice, blurred almost beyond understanding, growled through the deckplates and the structure of my hard suit. 'Run out the guns.'

We dipped lower into orbit around Quincy, losing velocity from atmospheric friction as well as from our main motors. The Oriflamme began to vibrate fiercely. The Montreal's image trailed a shroud of excited atoms.

The gunport in the starboard bulkhead swung inward, glowing with plasma from our own exhaust. The