by David Drake
"Pleyal will never give anyone but those he owns the full access to the stars that all mankind needs to survive, sir," Piet said in growing animation. "Pleyal will die or be overthrown, certainly, but whoever replaces him will be the same sort of autocrat. If the Federation thinks Venus is weaker, they'll stifle us. If they think we're weak enough—and we would be weak without the opportunities men like your nephew and yes, myself, have wrenched from Pleyal's grip—then they'll crush us utterly. The only way the Pleyals know to live is with their boot on our neck or our boot on theirs."
Piet stood, facing Uncle Ben stiffly. "And with the help of God, sir, I intend that it be Pleyal's face in the dust!"
Uncle Ben stood also. Ten years dropped away from him as he leaned across the desk. "Where will we be with the whole force of the Federation and the Southern Cross against us, Ricimer? Where will we be with hundreds of warships ringing Venus, bombing down through our clouds until every city has been ripped open to an atmosphere that corrodes and burns? During the Rebellion, Venus was a sideshow for the rebels attacking Earth. We'll be the focus the next time!"
"All the more reason to build and train a fleet so that we can not only stop Pleyal, we can forestall him!" Piet replied. The two men weren't violent; there was no risk of a slap or one spitting on the other. They were passionate men, and passionate about the subject at issue.
"A stalemate that wrecks trade, that's your answer?" Uncle Ben demanded. "Listen, boy, it was truly said that there was never a good war or a bad peace!"
Stephen got to his feet. "Gentlemen!" he said. He rapped hard on the glass table with his knuckles. It rang like a jade gong. "Gentlemen."
Piet and Uncle Ben eased back from their confrontation, breathing hard. Both of them looked embarrassed.
"Piet," Stephen said, gesturing his friend to his seat while keeping his eyes on Gregg of Weyston. Piet sat down.
"Uncle Ben," Stephen said, "the war's coming. Plan for it. There's always a way for a man who keeps his head in a crisis to make money."
Uncle Ben opened his mouth to speak. Stephen chopped his right hand in a fierce cutting motion. "No. Let me finish. Piet will never let go till he's brought down the Federation. If he did, there'd be a hundred to take his place now that he's shown the way. Pushing until the war comes, no matter what you want or I want or Governor Halys herself wants. Depend on it."
Uncle Ben sighed and relaxed. "You could always see as far into a stone block as the next man, Stephen," he said. "And perhaps I can too. But I thought I ought to try."
He turned to Piet and said, "Factor Ricimer, could I prevail upon you for a moment alone with my nephew? My servants will outdo themselves getting you anything you want in the way of refreshment."
The old man smiled. "I directed them not to make pests of themselves, but I suppose as the most famous man on Venus you must be used to it by now."
"Sir," said Piet, "you're one of the men who've made Venus great. I'm honored to know you." He bowed low, then stepped out the door the footman peering through the crack pushed open for him.
The door closed. Uncle Ben looked at his nephew sadly. "When you first set out on a course of what I viewed as piracy, Stephen," he said, "I was worried that you might lose your life. I should have worried about your soul instead."
Stephen drew up sharply. "We Greggs have never been Bible pounders, Uncle Ben," he said.
The old man shook his head. "I don't care about your faith, Stephen," he said. "Fifty years of trade have scrubbed away any belief in God I ever had. But I do care about your soul."
Stephen stepped around the desk and put his arms around his uncle. Standing straight, Gregg of Weyston was the height of his nephew. They might have been father and son; as in a fashion they were.
"Somebody had to do it, Uncle Ben," Stephen said softly. "I'm better at it than most."
"No one ever had to tell a Gregg his duty, boy," Uncle Ben said. "But I wish . . ."
"What's done is done," Stephen said. Again, barely audible, "What's done is done."
BETAPORT, VENUS
March 12, Year 27
0445 hours, Venus time
A rotary sander screamed as it polished a patch on the Wrath's outer hull. The yard was working three shifts to put the big vessel right after the strains of her voyage to the Reaches. Though not so much as a rifle bullet had hit the Wrath, the repeated shocks of her own 20-cm plasma cannon firing had chipped gunports and even cracked some frame members.
"She was a little too taut for her own comfort when we left Venus," Piet said in near apology. "You mustn't think these repairs are anything against the design or construction. The Wrath handles beautifully. If Venus had fifty like her, we'd never have to fear from the Federation."
Captain Ricimer regularly visited the Wrath during the early hours of the morning with his friend Mister Gregg. This time they were accompanied by a middle-sized man in brown whose high collar obscured his face. None of the workmen was likely to recognize the third man as Councilor Duneen, who was having a private meeting in plain view on the bridge of the Wrath.
"We won't have fifty when Pleyal sends his fleet against us, as you well know," Duneen said. "Ten, I hope, but the rest of our strength in armed merchantmen as in the past."
For all the time Stephen had spent in the Wrath on the voyage just completed, he had no feeling for the vessel. That wouldn't come until he'd fought aboard her the first time.
At present the warship's twenty big guns were landed. Half the main-deck plates had been taken up so that the yard crew could work on the scantlings. Sternward, men with a hand kiln were recoating a beam that had been ground down to remove the surface crazing. The kiln nozzle hissed like an angry cat as it sprayed ceramic at just below the temperature of vaporization.
"We could gain more time if we raided Asuncion and destroyed the Federation fleet before it's fitted out," Piet said, with the force of a man repeating an old argument.
"Ricimer, Governor Halys won't permit the fleet to leave the Solar System," the councilor said flatly. "That decision is between her and the three of us"—he nodded to Stephen—"but it's absolutely final. Not to put too fine a point on it, the governor doesn't want her fleet and her most able captains weeks and perhaps months away when the danger to Venus is so great."
"It's not 'months' to a Near Space world like Asuncion, not even for Federation navigators," Piet said. "The way to scotch, to end this threat is—"
"Final, I said," Duneen repeated. "And I'm not going to claim that I think she's wrong. Asuncion's orbital forts pose a risk that any sensible man would find daunting."
"I'll be given a squadron for operations within the Solar System?" Piet said with a grin of acquiescence. His expression sobered slightly. "That's how the orders will be phrased, 'within the Solar System'?"
Duneen nodded. "Yes. Much of the materiel with which the Feds are fitting out their fleet comes from Earth. You can interdict that trade."
"Winnipeg is the major port on Earth for supplies being sent to Asuncion," Stephen said. They'd known the governor wouldn't permit a distant operation. The choice of an alternative target was Piet's, but the two of them together had roughed out the plan. All that remained was to sell Councilor Duneen on the idea.
"Good God, man!" the councilor said. "You can't just waltz into Winnipeg. The Feds know the risk, and they've surely increased their defenses over the past year!"
"We'll need current intelligence, that's true," Piet agreed.
Duneen shook his head. "The Feds are limiting the traffic that lands even on the commercial side of Winnipeg Port," he said. "Besides, since your last raid there's almost no direct Venus—Federation trade."
"Stephen here is the owner of a vessel in the regular Earth trade," Piet said. "With the right cargo, she'll be able to land in Winnipeg. Even now."
"What kind of cargo . . ." Duneen asked cautiously.
Piet nodded. "Venerian cannon, cast in Bahama. The arms trade from Venus to the Federation is at least as gre
at as it ever was, because the prices Pleyal is willing to pay for first-quality guns is so high in the crisis. My father can get us a cargo from a firm who's supplied guns in the past."
"Look, Ricimer, you can't expect to spy out the port yourself," the councilor said, concern replacing shock on his face. "You'd be recognized!"
"Not as a common crewman," Piet said with a shrug. "The rest of the crew will be folk who've been with me for a decade, folk I know can keep their mouths shut. If I'm going to plan the operation, I can't trust any other eyes than my own."
"Good God," Duneen said softly. "Well, let's hope the governor doesn't hear about it. She'd flay me alive if she thought I'd let her favorite captain take a risk like that!"
Stephen Gregg thought about the risk to the Gallant Sallie's captain, but he didn't speak. That didn't matter to anyone but himself; therefore it didn't matter at all.
EARTH ORBIT
April 6, Year 27
0520 hours, Venus time
The Federation guardship was a blur with three distinct jags across it where the screen's raster skipped a line. Technicians had degraded the Gallant Sallie's optronics by seventy percent for this part of the operation, so the image was even worse than what Sal would have had to make do with before the recent refit.
The four plasma cannon aimed at the Gallant Sallie were sufficiently clear. "Ten-centimeter?" Sal said to break the silence that had fallen over the cabin since suction clamps slapped the Fed boarding bridge over the cockpit hatch.
"About that," Stephen agreed in a tone of dreamy disinterest. He sat on a bunk, his hands in his lap and his eyes unfocused.
The outer airlock door squealed as the Federation inspector started to undog it manually from outside.
"Listen to me," Piet Ricimer said crisply from where he manned the attitude-control panel with Dole and Lightbody. "None of us need love the Feds, but anyone who causes an incident will answer to me afterwards. If we're both alive, that is. Understood?"
"Won't be a problem, sir," Dole said mildly. "Won't nobody make a problem."
"Tom, the hatch," Sal said to Harrigan. Harrigan threw the lever that retracted the dogs of the inner hatch hydraulically.
The hatch opened. The slightly higher pressure in the guardship and boarding tube popped the first of the three Fed inspectors into the cabin like a cork from a champagne bottle. Harrigan tried to grab the man. The Fed batted Harrigan's hand away, spinning himself completely around before he fetched up against supply netting on the opposite bulkhead.
"Don't you stinkballers have a pressure system?" the Fed demanded. "And I'll tell you, if you'd taken one spin more before getting your rotation stopped, we'd have blown you to bits and inspected the pieces!"
All three inspectors were puffy-faced and run-down from too long in weightlessness. That probably accounted for some of their ill temper too, though Sal doubted the cream of the Federation military was assigned duty to the ships guarding the orbital entry windows for Winnipeg.
"Look, it's an old ship," she said in what she hoped was a reasonable tone. "First you make us do a slow three-sixty rotation to check for spy cameras, then you tell us to stand still for a boarding bridge. It's not that easy, you know!"
"Didn't say it was easy," said a second inspector. "Said the next trip back, you better learn to control this pig better or we get some target practice."
"Where's your fucking manifest?" the third inspector, the female, demanded. Tom Harrigan gave her a sheaf of hard copy on a clipboard.
The second inspector drifted over to the navigation console. Sal thought he intended to check the resolution of their screen. Instead the man reached down to pat her breast. She doubled her right leg, then kicked him across the cabin.
The Venerian crew grew very still. The Fed caught himself on a bunk, Stephen's bunk. He laughed. "You know, I thought it was funny you stinkballers would have a woman captain. Guess you're just a man with tits, huh, honey?"
"I own the ship, and I'm carrying you the cargo," Sal said tight-lipped. She had to assume that the inspectors lacked the authority to reject a vessel with a cargo like the Gallant Sallie's, however they might bluster. If Sal didn't behave normally, she'd set off more alarm bells than if she did.
"So I see," said the woman with the manifest. "Six fifteen-centimeter plasma cannon. You know, some of you people would sell their mothers, wouldn't you?"
"Look, we're sailors, we're not politicians," Sal said. "If President Pleyal doesn't want to do business, fine. There's a market for these, believe me,"
The second inspector stared at Stephen beside him. "Hey," the Fed said. "You look like shit. Do you have something contagious, is that it?"
Stephen stared at his fingers interlaced on his lap. "I'm here to watch things for the seller," he said in a dead voice. "I'd never gone through transit, and I swear to God that once I'm back on Venus I never will again. Just do your job so I can stand on firm ground again. All right?"
The female inspector scrawled her initials on the bottom of the manifest. Instead of handing the clipboard back to Harrigan, she flipped it into a corner of the cabin. "Let's get out of this pigsty," she said. "The sulphur stink makes me want to puke."
The Feds bounced out the boarding tube. They moved in weightless conditions with the skill of experience, but there was a porcine sluggishness to them. Sal wondered how long Pleyal kept his guardship crews in orbit. Too long, certainly.
Harrigan shut the airlock hatches together. Probert, a motor specialist, said in an injured tone, "Where'd she get that stuff about sulphur? Our air's as clean as clean!"
Because Piet Ricimer was normally a flashy dresser, he stuck out like a sore thumb to his familiars now that he wore a common spacer's canvas jumpsuit. The Feds hadn't given him a second look, though.
He shrugged cheerfully. "If she hadn't made up a problem," he said, "she might have tried to find a real one. Give thanks for a small blessing, Probert."
The boarding bridge uncoupled from one edge to the other with a peevish squeal. Its asymmetrical pressure started a minute axial rotation in the Gallant Sallie.
Sal opened an access port in her console and reengaged the full electronics suite. Every stain on the guardship's plating sprang alive on the screen. An associated recorder was storing the images for later use. Though the Feds had made a production of searching the Gallant Sallie for external sensor packs, they hadn't bothered to consider that the vessel's normal electronics might be an order of magnitude better than what they expected of her type. Stephen's improvements to the Gallant Sallie had required a dockyard rebuild, not just a blister welded to the hull.
"Gallant Sallie requests permission to brake for Winnipeg landing," Sal said into the modulated laser directed at the guardship's communications antenna. "Over."
"Get your filthy scow out of our sky, stinkballers!" the Fed on commo duty replied.
Sal engaged the timing sequence on her AI. In the interval before the Gallant Sallie reached the reentry window, Sal looked over the back of her couch toward the men on the attitude controls. "Remember, we're going in manually so that we look the way the Feds expect us to. That means you guys need to make a few mistakes too. I know perfectly well we could between us set down as neatly as the new hardware could do it, but that's not what's called for today."
Piet laughed heartily. The AI gave a pleasant bong. Sal lit the eight thrusters, then ran the throttles forward to sixty percent power. The guardship vanished from the viewscreen. Earth, blue and cold-looking to eyes accustomed to the roiling earth tones of Venus, rotated slowly beneath them.
Atmosphere began to jar against the Gallant Sallie's underside. Their exhaust streamed around them in the turbulence. Sal set the screen to discount the veiling and distortion of the plasma englobing the vessel. The planet sharpened in chilly majesty again.
"These guns we're delivering, Captain Ricimer?" Sal said, speaking carefully against the apparent weight of deceleration. "They're flawed, aren't they? They'd burst if the Feds fi
red them."
"Oh, I assure you, Captain," Piet said, "these are first-quality fifteen-centimeter guns. Nicholas Quintel may be a better merchant than patriot, but not even my father ever faulted the workmanship of the Quintel foundry. They have to be perfect. The Feds will certainly ultrasound the tubes, and they may well test-fire them before acceptance."
"Then we really are aiding the Feds?" Tom Harrigan asked, squatting with his back to the hatch and holding a stanchion. "This wasn't a trick?"
Stephen looked at him. "Don't worry, Mister Harrigan," he said. "We'll be paying another visit to Winnipeg before the Feds have a chance to mount or transship these guns. All they're doing is renting warehouse decorations for the next few days."
Beneath the neutral tone of Stephen's words was an edge as stark as honed glass.
WINNIPEG, EARTH
April 6, Year 27
0623 hours, Venus time
The Gallant Sallie's plates pinged and clicked as they cooled nearby. The sky at local noon was a pale blue across which clouds moved at high altitude. In ten years, Stephen Gregg had learned to stand under open skies without cringing, but it wasn't a natural condition to him or to anyone raised in low corridors bored through the bedrock of Venus.
Piet, as though he were reading his friend's mind, said, "We're struggling so that men can live on worlds where they don't have to wear armor to go outside . . . but for myself, home is a room cut in the stone."
He gave Stephen his electric smile. "Or a ship's cabin, of course."
The civil port of Winnipeg didn't have a berm. The city whose houses grew like fungus on the ruins of the pre-Collapse foundations was several klicks to the west at the confluence of two rivers. Presumably the locals felt the distance was adequate protection.
There were seventy-odd ships in the civil port. Two of them were quite large, thousand-tonners in the regular trade to the Reaches. Piet eyed the monsters, far on the other side of the spacious field. "They're being refitted," he said. "The motors have been pulled from both of them."