The Reaches

by David Drake

  "No, I meant . . ." Ricimer said. "See this? It's not a native plant, and I doubt the Feds brought it with them in the rediscovery."

  The other spacers were coming up slowly, but nobody else was within a hundred meters of Ricimer and Gregg. The whole sixty or so in the party probably stretched a klick back into the forest.

  "A thornbush?" Gregg said in puzzlement.

  Two more Feds had joined the observer on the berm. One of them carried a megaphone. Despite its greater access to pre-Collapse sites on the outworlds, the North American Federation wasn't overall more technically advanced than Venus.

  "Not a thornbush," Ricimer said. His finger carefully freed a full yellow bloom from the native foliage concealing it. "A rose."

  "Stay where you are!" called the Fed with the megaphone. "Don't come any closer or we'll fire!"

  "Right," said Leon, wheezing with the exertion of keeping up—almost—with the leaders. "And if that was the worst I had to worry about, I'd still die in bed."

  "What you got, sir?" Tancred asked, squatting down beside Ricimer. "Hey! Artifacts!"

  The young spacer carried a rifle. He used the barrel of the weapon to sweep back the vegetation. Underneath was half of a shallow porcelain bowl. Varicolored birds sang on a white field. The material had survived its millennium of exposure well enough, but Gregg didn't think it was up to the quality of current Venerian manufacture.

  "Nothing valuable, though," Tancred said in disappointment. "You know, when I signed on, I kinda thought I'd, you know, pick up handfuls of chips when we got out-system."

  "I think they're moving guns up behind the berm," Gregg said. "I can't see over, but there's some sort of commotion back there."

  Two autogyros pop-popped in slow circles overhead. A line of diesel-powered ground vehicles rounded the edge of the ravelin shielding a gap in the berm. The spacers hadn't bothered to unload the trucks their vessels carried, because the forest was trackless and the tree boles averaged less than a meter and a half apart.

  Choransky, Schremp, and a dozen men from each party joined the score of spacers who'd clustered around Ricimer and Gregg. As many more straggled along behind.

  "I heard them shout," Choransky said. "What was it?"

  "They told us not to come closer, sir," Ricimer said.

  Schremp snorted. "Why should we want to do that?" he said. "When they're coming to us, and they don't have to walk like dogs."

  The German leader wore only the torso and helmet from his hard suit. The face beneath his lifted visor was sweaty and bright red with exertion.

  Gregg eyed the German's armor speculatively. The metal's bright finish—it appeared to be silver-plated, not just highly polished—would reflect energy better than Gregg's suit, and if the core was titanium alloy, it might be lighter as well. The metal couldn't be as effective a heat sink as Venerian ceramic, though, and Gregg was willing to bet his armor's higher hardness against metal's ability to deform under extreme stress instead of shattering.

  Schremp glanced at Tancred. "Find anything valuable, kid?" he asked.

  Tancred's face tightened. Before he could speak, Ricimer said, "Just the remains of somebody's garden, from a long time ago."

  Schremp nodded and turned his attention to the oncoming vehicles that the other spacers were watching.

  Rather than trucks, the Feds approached in three tracked, open-topped tractors, each towing a flatbed trailer in which forty or so figures rode. Figures, not "men," because half of the personnel were Molts and many of the humans wore coarse, bark-fabric clothing.

  Though humans survived after a fashion on many outworlds, civilization did not. The men in indigenous dress were Rabbits, feral remnants of the pre-Collapse colonies.

  The Rabbits and Molts were armed with cutting bars and even manual axes. None of them wore armor. There were half a dozen troops in Fed uniform on each vehicle. Not all of them had firearms, and only two wore head and torso armor.

  "Huh!" said Jeude, scratching his neck with the edge of his cutting bar. "Those trucks're slower than glass flowing. I could walk as fast as that."

  "They haul mats of timber processed at field stations," Ricimer explained. "They don't need to be fast."

  "They're riding," Gregg guessed aloud, "because they want to show they've got vehicles and we're on foot."

  "They got plasma guns in the fort," Leon said, eyeing the berm opposite the party of spacers. Metal glinted there without being raised quite high enough to make identification certain. "Them I'm willing to worry about."

  Gregg spread and raised his flashgun's parasol. The meter-square solar cell swayed awkwardly in the breeze, making the weapon harder to control.

  He didn't need to deploy the charger for any practical reason. He was carrying six extra batteries, and it was much faster to replace than recharge them in a firefight. The Feds weren't the only ones who could make silent threats, however.

  Ten meters from the spacers, the tractor-trailers swung broadside and halted. A man wearing a white uniform and a number of medals got out of the cab of the leading tractor. He waited for two more officers, one of them female, and a pair of guards armed with rifles to get off the trailer behind him. With them in tow, he strode toward the spacers.

  The whole party of Venerians and Germans surged forward across the wheat.

  "Not so many!" the Fed leader cried, waggling his hand. He wore a pair of pistols completely swallowed by their cross-draw holsters. At careful inspection his uniform, though fancy enough, was frayed at the cuffs and noticeably dingy.

  Choransky and Schremp muttered to one another for a moment. Choransky looked around. "You lot stay where you are!" he ordered. The two captains, accompanied by Platt and two Germans—as choice a pair of cutthroats as Gregg remembered seeing in his life—met the Feds between the waiting lines.

  Choransky seized the initiative by blustering, "I want to know who you think you are, shooting at peaceful traders?"

  "I am Port Commander Zaloga," the Fed leader blustered back, "and there'll be no trade with illegal interlopers like yourself on this planet or any planet of the North American Federation."

  "North America is a thousand light-years away," said Captain Schremp in a surprisingly calm voice. "We are here with cargo your people need, slaves from my Venerian fellows there and the highest quality sauces and dairy solids aboard my Adler. Surely you must be tired of eating the bland mush you grow here, not so?"

  "Your predecessor gave Captain Mostert a want list when he landed on Virginia last year," Choransky put in. "We brought our Molts here at your orders."

  "My predecessor," Zaloga said, "was arrested for his treasonous dealings with interlopers like your Captain Mostert. You're not here at my orders. My orders are that you leave the planet at once. And as you see—"

  He pointed toward the settlement. Half a dozen soldiers had lifted a small plasma cannon onto the top of the berm. The crew wore helmets, gauntlets, and padded coveralls against the effects of their own weapon.

  "—I can enforce those orders!"

  "Can you?" Schremp said with a sneer in his voice. "Take them," he added flatly.

  Each of the Germans with him grabbed a Fed officer. Schremp himself caught Zaloga by the throat with his scarred left hand and squeezed hard enough to choke the port commander's protests into a startled bleat.

  Choransky grasped the rifle of a Fed guard and prevented the man from lowering his weapon. Platt tried to do the same with the remaining guard, but he wasn't strong enough to overpower the fellow. They struggled for a moment.

  Schremp, holding his repeater in one hand like a huge pistol, socketed the muzzle in the guard's ear and blew his brains out. The Fed's skull sagged sideways like a fruit dropped against concrete. Bits of colloid sprayed the female officer and the German who held her. She began to scream and kick hysterically.

  "Stephen!" Ricimer shouted. His grip on Gregg's shoulder was as firm as a C-clamp. He pointed toward the plasma cannon with his rifle. He didn't bother to shoot
because it was hopelessly out of his range. "Stop them!"

  The half-armed militia on the trailers were too shocked by the violence to react, but the crew of the plasma gun were traversing their weapon squarely onto what had been the negotiating party. A bolt from that weapon—three or four centimeters in bore—would incinerate both command groups and probably a score of other spacers besides. The gunners might or might not fire—

  But Piet Ricimer was right. The choice couldn't be left to them.

  Gregg clashed his visor down and swore as the world blurred amber. The flashgun had a simple, four-post optical sight. He could only wish now that he'd checked the collimation, made sure that the point of aim was aligned with the point of impact, because at five-hundred meters you didn't have to be out by much to miss by a country klick.

  The parasol swayed, twisting against the stock to which it was connected. One of the Feds on the berm raised his arm.

  Gregg fired. The air snapped like the string of a powerful crossbow letting go. The line of the bolt was too sudden to see, but it left dazzling purple afterimages despite the filtering visor.

  Light haloed the plasma cannon. Metal sublimed from the trunnion Gregg hit, flashing outward in a shockwave that ignited as it expanded. The ball of fire threw down the four crewmen on that side and behind the weapon. They lay where they fell. The remaining pair, untouched, vanished behind the berm.

  Gregg lifted his visor. The air smelled burned. Half the members of the Fed militia had jumped behind the trailers. Those still visible had thrown down their weapons.

  Gregg's flashgun whined as it started to recharge. The sound cut off when he opened the compartment in the stock and removed the discharged battery.

  He thought he was fine, but his fingers fumbled and dropped the battery. He took a fresh charge from his side pocket and snapped it into the gun.

  "That was necessary," Piet Ricimer murmured beside him. "Not this, what these folk are doing. But what you did, if we were to survive."

  "Right!" said Captain Choransky. "Now, we're all going to trade like reasonable people. Isn't that right, Zaloga?"

  Schremp transferred his grip to the port commander's shoulder. Zaloga was white-faced. He didn't attempt to speak, but he nodded agreement.

  "That was easy, not so?" Schremp said cheerfully.

  With the visor raised, Gregg could see a haze lift from the crew of the plasma cannon. Blazing metal vapor had ignited their clothing.

  11

  Venus

  The probe dangling a hundred meters below the Sultan recorded the change in wind direction as it dipped into the third and final set of Hadley Cells layering the Venerian atmosphere. Warning bells clanged on the forward attitude-control workstations and, slightly distorted, from the stations in the next compartment.

  "Oh, put a sock in it," Jeude muttered to his alarm.

  "Think of it as welcoming us home, Jeude," Piet Ricimer said cheerfully. "This old girl could pretty well con herself into dock from here."

  The Sultan twisted like a leaping fish when her hull passed through the discontinuity. Gregg felt a vague mushiness through his boots as the vessel continued her descent. Atmospheric density at this level was itself enough to slow a falling object appreciably.

  The upper reaches of Venus' atmosphere roared from west to east at 450 kph, transferring heat from the sun-facing side of the planet to the cooler dark. Ships had to take wind direction and velocity into account during reentry.

  But the top layer of sun-heated convection cells bottomed out and reversed course well above the planetary surface. Friction from the high-altitude cells formed an intermediate pattern of contra-rotating winds in the mid-atmosphere, but at much lower velocities.

  When the convection pattern reversed again near the surface, completing the sequence of Hadley Cells, average wind velocity had dropped to 30 kph. That was scarcely a noticeable breeze to a craft which had managed to penetrate the crushing high-altitude violence.

  "You know, Stephen, we should thank the Lord more often for our atmosphere," Ricimer said.

  He was smiling, but Gregg knew Ricimer too well to think that anything the spacer said referencing God was a joke.

  "As a warning of the Hell that awaits those who deny him?" Gregg suggested.

  "For saving us during the Collapse," Ricimer explained. "All of the settlements on Venus were underground, so raiders didn't have any easy targets. And very few outplanet captains chose to hit us anyway. They knew that defensive vessels couldn't prevent hit-and-run attacks—but that if their ship attacked Venus, the planet herself would fight them. And the planet would win, as often as not, against inexperienced pilots."

  "People died anyway," Gregg said. "Nine in ten died. Venus colony almost died!"

  The harsh edge in his voice was a surprise even to him—especially to him. Many factorial families had their own records of the Collapse, and the journals of the Eryx County Greggs were particularly detailed. Stephen Gregg had found that reading about the deaths of your kin and ancestors by starvation, wall fractures, and manufacturing processes which desperation pushed beyond safe limits was not the same as "learning history."

  Ricimer nodded. There was a tic of wariness though not fear in his expression. "Yes," he said, "the Lord scourged us. It had been easier to import some of our needs. When trade stopped, life almost stopped before we were able to expand food production sufficiently for the population."

  "The surviving population," Gregg said. His voice was very soft, but it trembled.

  Piet Ricimer rested his fingertips on the back of Gregg's right hand. "Never again, Stephen," he said quietly. "Trade must never fail. The tyrants who would stop it, President Pleyal and his toadies in Brisbane—the Lord won't let them stop free trade."

  Gregg laughed and put his arm around the smaller man's shoulders. "And we're the instruments of the Lord?" he said, only half gibing. "Well, I don't usually think of myself that way, Piet."

  As he spoke, Gregg realized that Piet Ricimer did usually think of himself as a tool of God. The odd thing from Gregg's viewpoint was that the holy types he'd met before always struck him as sanctimonious prigs, thoroughly unlikable . . .

  "Prepare for landing," called Captain Choransky, hunched over a CRT loaded with scores of data readouts, each one crucially important in the moments of touchdown.

  The vessel was coming down nearly empty since her main cargo, nearly 1,000 tonnes of cellulose base, had been unloaded in orbit. The mats had to be armored with a ceramic coating before purpose-built tugs brought them down through an atmosphere which would have consumed them utterly in their unprotected state.

  The Sultan vibrated as the shockwaves from her thrusters echoed from the sides of the landing pit. Choransky chopped the feedlines, starving the thrusters an instant before the artificial intelligence would have done so.

  The Sultan hit with a ringing impact. Gregg staggered but didn't fall against the workstations around him.

  "Not really dangerous," Ricimer murmured, to Gregg and to himself. "The lower hull may want some reglazing . . . but after a long voyage, the torquing of so many transits, that'd be a good idea anyway."

  Vibration continued even with the Sultan's powerplant shut off. A huge dome rolled to cover the landing pit. When the pit's centrifugal pumps had dumped the Venerian atmosphere back into the hell where it belonged and the hull had cooled sufficiently, conveyor belts would haul the vessel into a storage dock. Betaport was a major facility with six landing pits, but the volume of trade she handled required that the pits be cleared as soon as possible.

  The men at the attitude controls stood up and stretched. "C'mon, c'mon, c'mon," Jeude said toward a bulkhead. "Get that personnel bridge out here."

  "I got my pay," Dole singsonged, "and I want somebody to spend it with. I do want that."

  Lightbody looked at Dole. Ostentatiously, he took his Bible out of the pocket where he'd placed it on landing. He began to read, his lips forming the words as his right index finger trace
d the line.

  The bridge console beeped. The CRT, blanked when Choransky shut down, filled with characters.

  "What?" the captain demanded. "Are we getting hard copy of this?"

  Bivens squinted at the screen. "This is message traffic from Captain Mostert," he said as he watched the data scroll upward.

  "I know what it is," Choransky said angrily. He opened a cabinet beneath the CRT and threw a switch with no effect. "Are we getting hard copy of it, that's what I want to know?"

  The duty of a ship's crewman was to do whatever a superior ordered him to do. It wasn't clear that a gentleman like Gregg had any superior aboard the Sultan; but he knew a great deal more about office equipment than anybody else on the ship did, and he didn't care to sit on his hands.

  Gregg stepped past Choransky, knelt to study the installation for a moment, and reconnected the printer. It began spewing out copy as soon as he switched it on.

  "There you go," he said to the captain. "Somebody probably got tired of the way it clucked every time the board switched mode." To the best of Gregg's knowledge, the printer hadn't been used at any previous point in the voyage.

  The Sultan rocked.

  "About d—" Jeude began. He caught Ricimer's eye. "About time the personnel bridge got here," he finished.

  The vessel shuddered softly as ground staff evacuated the seal which clamped the enclosed walkway to the starship's hull.

  "That message," Gregg said to Ricimer quietly. "Captain Mostert is summoning Choransky and his top officers to a meeting and party at his house in Ishtar City tomorrow morning. He's going to have potential investors for a larger voyage present. Some of them may be from the Governor's Council."

  "Are you going?" Ricimer asked.

  Gregg looked at him. "I suppose Uncle Benjamin will already have a representative chosen," he said. "If he's interested, that is."

  "I doubt my cousin Alexi would leave you on his doorstep, though," Ricimer said.

  A hatch sighed open. The air pressure increased minutely. Crewmen—none of them on the bridge—shouted "Yippee!" and "Yee-ha!"