by David Drake
Some of the ships we passed had exterior lights on. Occasional human sailors watched our car out of boredom. Most of the crews were Molts who continued shambling along at whatever task had been set them. If I hadn't heard the driver laugh, I might have thought the aliens were unemotional automata.
"How many guns does the Montreal carry?" Ricimer asked calmly. His eyes flicked in short arcs that covered everything to our front; the men behind him would be watching the rear. Despite the rough road, Piet's hands made only minuscule corrections on the steering yoke.
"How would I know?" Heimond snapped. "It's none of my business, and it's a damned waste of capacity if you ask me!"
He drew in a breath that ended with a sob. I looked back at Heimond as we passed a ship whose thruster nozzles were being replaced under a bank of floodlights. The port official's cheeks glistened with tears. He was looking straight ahead, but I didn't think he was really seeing anything.
"Our Lady of Montreal is rated at five hundred tonnes," Heimond said softly. "I think she has about a dozen guns. I don't think they're very big, but I don't know for sure. I don't know even if you kill me!"
A wave of dry heat washed us. The ship that landed after ours had baked the ground we were crossing. She was a largish vessel, several hundred tonnes. Her exterior lights were on, but she hadn't opened her hatches yet.
"We're not going to kill anybody, Mister Heimond," Piet Ricimer said. "You're going to get us the information we need, and then we'll leave peacefully. Don't worry at all."
* * *
Port control was a one-story, five-by-twenty-meter building of rough-cast concrete at the head of the peninsula. A man sat on a corner of the roof with his legs crossed and his back to an antenna tower, playing an ocarina. He ignored us as we pulled up in front.
"Here," Stephen said in a husky voice, handing my electronics kit forward. Stephen's face was still, his soul withdrawn behind walls of preparation that armored him from humanity. He took Heimond's collar in his free hand.
The control building, a line of repair shops, and a three-story barracks that stank of Molt excrement separated the peninsula from the rest of Templeton City, though there was no fenced reservation. The dives fronting the port were brilliantly illuminated.
I could see at least a dozen lighted compounds on the hills overlooking the main part of the city. That's where the wealthy would live.
Woven-wire screens instead of glass covered the front windows of the port control building. Lights were on above the doorway and within. A Molt stood behind the counter that ran the length of the anteroom.
Stephen pushed Heimond ahead of him into the building; the rest of us followed as we could. I was clumsy. My kit and the cutting bar in my other hand split my mind with competing reflexes.
"Don't do anything, Pierrot!" Heimond called desperately to the Molt. "Don't!"
Only the Molt's eyes had moved since the car pulled up anyway. The creature looked as placid as a tree.
"The data bank is in back?" Ricimer said, striding toward the gate in the counter.
A truck returning from the city with a leave party drove past port control. The diesel engine was unmuffled. The sudden Blat!Blat!Blat! as the vehicle came around the corner of the building spun us all.
Heimond cried out in fear. A drunken Fed flung a bottle. It bounced off the screen and shattered in front of the building. Lightbody raised his carbine to his shoulder.
"No!" Ricimer shouted. Stephen lifted the carbine's muzzle toward the ceiling.
"Let's get into the back," Stephen ordered. He gestured the Molt to join us.
Heimond found the switch for the lights in the rear of the building. The data bank stood in the center of a bullpen. There were six screen-and-keyboard positions on either side, with long benches for Molt clerks. The human staff had three separate desks and a private office in the back, but I didn't care about those.
I sat on a bench and opened my kit beside me. The bank had both plug and induction ports. I preferred the hard connection. The plug was one of the three varieties standard before the Collapse.
Jeude bent to look into my kit. "What—" he said.
"No!" ordered Piet, placing his left hand under the young sailor's chin and lifting him away from me. I appreciated the thought, but Jeude wouldn't have bothered me. I lose all track of my surroundings when I'm working on something complex.
I attached the partner to the data port and matched parameters. The five-by-five-by-ten-centimeter box hummed as it started to copy all the information within the Fed data bank.
The job would have taken a man months or years. I'd designed the partner to emulate the internal data transfer operations of whatever unit I attached it to. It was an extremely simple piece of hardware—but as with the larva of an insect, that simplicity made it wonderfully efficient at its single task of swallowing.
The partner couldn't do anything with data except absorb it. Sorting the glut of information would be an enormous job, but one the Oriflamme's AI could handle with the same ease that it processed transit calculations.
Plasma motors coughed, shaking the ground and casting rainbow flickers through the bullpen's grimy side windows. Heimond sat at a desk with his head in his hands. Stephen and Piet interrogated him, pulling out responses with the relentless efficiency of a mill grinding corn. I couldn't hear either side of the conversation.
The partner clucked. A pathway query replaced the activity graph on the little screen. So far as I could tell, neither supplemental cache was terribly important. One held the operating system, while the other was probably either backup files or mere ash and trash. I cued the second option, though maybe we ought to—
I rose, drawing the others' eyes. The thruster snarled again, raggedly. Some ship was testing its propulsion system.
"I think I've got everything important," I said. I'd been hunched over the partner for long enough to become stiff, though it hadn't seemed more than a minute or two. "This is—"
A Fed in a blue uniform with a gold fourragère from the left shoulder strode through the door from the anteroom. "Hey!" he shouted. Jeude shot him in the chest, knocking him back against the jamb.
There were half a dozen other Feds in the anteroom. They wore flat caps with PARLIAMENT in gold letters above the brim. One of them grabbed at his holstered pistol. Stephen shot him with the flashgun from less than five meters away.
The laser sent dazzling reflections from the room's brightwork as it heated the air into a thunderclap. The Fed's chest exploded in a gout of steam and blood, knocking down the men to either side of him.
I keyed shutdown instructions into the partner's miniature pad. If I disconnected the unit mechanically first, the surge might cost us the data we'd risked our lives for.
I glanced over my shoulder. Jeude fired the other barrel of his shotgun at a woman running for the outside door. He missed low and chewed a palm-sized hole in the counter instead. Ricimer hit the running woman. She slammed full tilt against the window screen and bounced back onto the floor. A pair of Fed sailors made it out the door despite Lightbody's shot and two more rounds from the commander's carbine.
The partner chirped to me. I jerked it free and slammed the lid of the kit down over it. "I'm coming!" I shouted, because by now I was the last Venerian left in the building.
Heimond was hiding under his desk and the Molt clerk stood like a grotesque statue in one corner. The first Fed victim sat upright in the doorway. His legs were splayed and his face wore a dazed expression. Jeude's buckshot had hit him squarely at the top of the breastbone, but he was still—for the moment—alive.
Which is all any of us can say, I thought as I jumped his legs. My boots skidded on the remains of the man Stephen's bolt had eviscerated. I caught the counter with my free hand and swung myself through the gate. I'd left my cutting bar behind. There was more shooting outside the building.
The room stank worse than a slaughterhouse. Ozone, powder smoke, and cooked meat added their distinctive smell
s to the pong of fresh-ripped human guts. The woman Ricimer shot was huddled beside the outer door. She'd smeared a trail of blood across the floor to where she lay.
Heimond's car pulled a hard turn as I ran out the front door. Ricimer was driving again. Stephen stood on the passenger seat. He'd slung the flashgun and instead held Piet's repeating carbine.
The man on the roof now lay full length on his back. I don't know if he'd been killed or had passed out from drink.
I jumped into the back with Lightbody and Jeude. The car hadn't slowed, and I'm not sure anybody realized I wasn't already on board. Jeude fired again. The flash from the shotgun's muzzle was red and bottle-shaped.
"Shut that popgun down until there's a target in range, you whore's turd!" Stephen snarled in a voice with more hatred than you'd find in a regiment of Inquisitors.
Stephen swayed as the car jounced. I grabbed his belt so that if he fell he wouldn't be thrown out. He poised the butt of the carbine to crush my skull, but his conscious mind overrode reflex at the last moment.
I sucked breaths through my mouth. I was dizzy, and nothing around me seemed real.
The car had a quartet of headlights above the hood, but only the pair in the center worked. They threw a long shadow past a bareheaded man in blue running down the track a hundred meters ahead of us.
Stephen fired once. The man pitched forward with one arm flung out and the other covering his eyes. We jolted past the body at the car's best speed, 50 kph or so. There was no sign of the other Feds who'd escaped from port control with that one.
"Stephen, sit down!" Piet Ricimer ordered. Gregg ignored him.
The boarding ramps of the ship that landed after ours were down, and the vessel was lighted like a Christmas star. Molts and humans in blue uniforms stood on the ramps and at a distance from the vessel: the ground directly underneath would still be at close to 100°C from the ship's exhaust.
A man on the vessel's forward ramp pointed toward our swaying vehicle and shouted orders through a bullhorn. "The fucking Parliament!" Jeude snarled. "The real fucking escort, and why she couldn't have showed up tomor—"
A uniformed woman ran into our path, waving her arms over her head. Piet swerved violently. Stephen fired, a quick stab of yellow flame. The Fed toppled under our right front wheel.
We lurched but the wheels were mounted on half-axles and had a wide track. Stephen flailed, completely off balance. The car didn't go over. By bracing my leg against the side of the compartment I kept Stephen from falling out as well.
Lightbody cried, "Lord God of hosts!" as he fired toward the Parliament, and Jeude's shotgun boomed again despite the fact that I was sprawled half across him as I clung desperately to Stephen. The car's frame swayed upward as the heavy front wheel slammed down. The rear wheel hit the woman's body, and Stephen shot the blue-sashed Molt who tried to leap over the hood at Ricimer.
A ship down the line lit her thrusters. A bubble of rainbow fire lifted and cooled to a ghostly skeleton of itself before vanishing entirely. The Parliament was a dedicated warship. I'd seen three rectangular gunports gape open in succession in my last glimpse of her, but now we were past.
Stephen got his legs straight and sat down. His carbine's bolt was open. He opened a pocket of Piet's bandolier and took out a handful of cartridges. The Parliament's siren howled and a bell on the Molt barracks clanged a twice-a-second tocsin.
A ship tested her thrusters again. This time the vessel lifted slightly from her berth and settled again ten meters out in the roadway. She was the Oriflamme. The 20-cm hoses with which she'd been drawing reaction mass dangled from her open holds.
Glowing exhaust backlit us. I stared stupidly at the spray of dust ahead of our right front wheel. "There's a truck following—" Jeude shouted.
Maybe he meant to say more, but three violent hammer blows shook our vehicle. Stephen pitched forward, the severed tags of his flashgun's sling flapping. A palm-sized asterisk of lead smeared his backplate; the ceramic was cracked in a pattern of radial lines. My face stung, my hands bled where bits of bullet jacket had splashed them, and I still didn't realize the Feds were shooting at us.
I twisted to look back the way we'd come. A slope-fronted truck bounced down the road in a huge plume of dust. It was moving twice as fast as we could. Red flame winked from the framework on top of the vehicle. The Feds had welded dozens of rifle barrels together like an array of organ pipes.
Bits of rubber flew off our left rear tire, though it didn't go flat. Because of Rabbit attacks, the garrison of Templeton had a mobile reaction force. It was too mobile for us.
Stephen leaned across the back of his seat and rested his left elbow on my shoulder. It was like having a building fall on me. I had just enough awareness of what was happening to close my eyes. The flashgun drove its dazzling light through the tight-clenched eyelids, shocking the retinas into multiple afterimages when I looked up again.
The laser mechanism keened as it cooled beside my ear. Stephen tilted the weapon and slapped a fresh battery into the butt compartment. The flashgun wasn't going to do any good; even I could see that.
The truck was armored. The metal shutter over the windshield glowed white, but the driver behind it was unharmed. Flashgun bolts delivered enormous amounts of energy, but a monopulse laser has virtually no penetration. Even a hit on the driver's periscope might be useless, since properly designed optics would shatter instead of transmitting a dangerous amount of energy.
"Bail out!" I shouted. I squirmed to the side of the compartment. Jeude wasn't moving; Lightbody thumbed a cartridge into the breech of his rifle.
"Jump!" I shouted, but as I poised Lightbody fired again and Stephen leaned forward against the butt of his squat laser.
A bullet hit our right rear wheel and this time the tire did blow. The car fishtailed, flinging me against the seats. The sky ripped in a star-hot flare. Concussion pushed the car's suspension down to the stops, then lifted us off the ground when the pressure wave passed.
The Oriflamme had fired one of her 15-cm broadside guns. The truck was a geyser of flame. Fuel, ammunition, and the metal armor burned when the slug of ions hit the vehicle.
Ricimer crossed his wrists on the yoke, countersteering to bring us straight. The wheel rim dragged a trail of sparks across the gravel.
"Salomon shouldn't have risked running out—" Ricimer cried.
Another of the Oriflamme's cannon recoiled into its gunport behind a raging hell of stripped atomic nuclei.
The facade of the Molt barracks caved in. The interior of the three-story building erupted into flame as everything that could burn ignited simultaneously.
Wreckage spewed outward like the evanescent fabric of a bubble popping. Shattered concrete and viscous flame wrapped port control and the maintenance shop on the barracks' other side.
Ricimer stood on the car's brakes. Because of the blown tire we spun 180° and nearly hopped broadside into the lip of the Oriflamme's stern ramp. Stephen rose in his seat and poised like a statue aiming the flashgun. I tried to raise Jeude one-handed—I'd clung to my electronics kit since the moment I slammed it over the data we'd come to get. Lightbody bent to help me.
Stephen fired. A secondary explosion erupted with red flame.
Piet grabbed Jeude's legs. He and I and Lightbody lifted Jeude out. The smooth surface of Jeude's body armor slipped out of my hand, but Lightbody's arms were spread beneath the wounded man's torso.
Beneath the torso of the dead man. A bullet had struck Jeude under the right eye socket and exited through the back of his neck. Strands of his blond hair were plastered to the wounds, but his heart no longer pumped blood.
A thumping shock wave followed several seconds after Stephen fired. He'd managed to do effective damage with the flashgun instead of leaving the fight to the thunderous clamor of plasma cannon.
We ran up the ramp, carrying Jeude among us. The air shimmered from the hop that had lifted the Oriflamme into firing position. Salomon poured full power through th
e thrusters. Heat battered me from all sides. I would have screamed but my lips and eyelids were squeezed tight against the ions that flayed them like an acid bath.
I fell down, feeling the shock as the third of our big guns fired. Acceleration squeezed me to the deck as the jets hammered at maximum output. I was blind and suffocating and at last I did scream but the fire didn't scour my lungs.
I thrashed upright. The crewman spraying me with a hose shut it off when he saw I was choking for breath. I was wrapped in a soaking blanket. So were the others who'd staggered aboard with me.
Dole knelt and held Piet's hands with a look of fear for his commander on his face. Stephen checked the bore of his flashgun and Lightbody was trying to unlatch his body armor. The fifth blanket must cover Jeude, because it didn't move.
Our ramp was still rising. Through the crack I could see waves on the lake fifty meters below, quivering in the icteric light of a laser aimed at us from the Templeton defenses. Something hit the hull with a sound more like a scream than a crash. Our last broadside gun slammed as the ramp closed against its jamb.
Piet got to his feet. Dole tried to hold him. Piet pushed past and staggered toward the companionway to the Oriflamme's working deck. His face was fiery red under the lights of the hold. Stephen walked behind Piet like a giant shadow.
I stood up. Pain stabbed from my knuckles when I tried to push off with my free hand. My face was swelling, so that I seemed to be looking through tubes of flesh. Soon I wouldn't be able to see at all.
I stumbled to the companionway, swinging my arm to clear startled crewmen from my path.
I had to get to the bridge. My partner held the course we would follow until we won free or died.
INTERSTELLAR SPACE
Day 102
"Sir, please leave the dressing in place," begged Rakoscy, the ship's surgeon. "I can't answer for what will happen to your eyes if you don't keep them covered for the next twenty-four hours at least."