The Reaches

by David Drake

  Stephen and Piet Ricimer were in the vessel's hold. They would be among the first men out of the Moll Dane.

  The military port was more than a klick from the Moll Dane's berth near the warehouses. Sal found, somewhat to her surprise, that Lasky's vessel handled well in ground-effect mode; a meter or so above the ground, buoyed on a cushion of exhaust reflected onto the belly plates. Sal kept the Moll Dane there instead of rising to twenty meters and sailing toward the berm as she'd intended. She had to hold their forward speed to 10 kph to avoid outrunning the effect, but the loss of a minute or two in transit time was a cheap price to pay for the relative safety and control.

  Sal corrected twice to avoid ships studding the big field, first a Fed craft and then the Cyprian, an armed merchantman from Betaport. Sailors on the Cyprian's loading ramps waved enthusiastically to the Moll Dane scudding past in a cloud of dust and plasma.

  Sal guided their course toward a point on the berm a hundred meters to the left of the wrecked Fed freighter. She couldn't see any Feds watching from the top of the concrete-surfaced slope—gunners on grounded Venerian ships were looking for any excuse to fire their cannon—but defenders within the military port would be able to track the approaching vessel by its exhaust plume.

  The Moll Dane's hatch was to starboard. Sal came to a halt ten meters from the scarred berm, then swung the Moll Dane cautiously on its vertical axis to put the berm on the port side. The skids touched twice, port side and then starboard, as the Moll Dane rocked queasily. Thanks to luck and skilled hands at the attitude-control console, the vessel didn't overset.

  The guns of the Venerian squadron had fallen silent, God be praised! The bolt of a friendly gunner who misjudged Sal's intended course could do worse damage in the open hold than the Feds' fire concentrated on the solid hull.

  Sal tightened the nozzle irises with the throttles on sixty percent power. The Moll Dane lifted, slightly nose-down, and slid forty meters forward, parallel to the berm. If the Feds had aimed their cannon at the center of the previous exhaust plume, they were going to get a surprise.

  When she'd brought her vessel its own length beyond its previous location, Sal touched her skids to the ground again to kill her forward motion. She cocked the nozzles a hair to starboard, then slid the thruster controls up to full output. Roaring like an avalanche, the Moll Dane rose over the berm at an angle that became a catenary arc when Sal eased back on the throttles again.

  At least twenty plasma cannon fired within the two seconds of the Moll Dane's rise and fall. Most of the Fed guns blasted into the berm or ripped the air just above it at the point where the Venerian ship had first paused.

  Three bolts struck the vessel. Two of the impacts were sternward. They made the hull ring and may have penetrated the hold full of assault troops, but they didn't affect Sal's control of the Moll Dane.

  The third round slammed the hull at midline forward. The plasma itself didn't penetrate the cabin, but it blew a high-voltage power line in the ceiling. The bang of the explosion was sharper than lightning. Molten metal gouted through the light headliner, spraying the armored assault party and the crewmen in cabin clothes at the attitude controls.

  Sal heard Brantling scream. The vessel twisted as Sal lost half the power to her nozzle-alignment motors. She fought her controls. The cabin was bitterly gray with ozone and burned insulation.

  The Moll Dane's roll to port slowed, then reversed. Brantling was batting bare-handed at his smoldering tunic, but Harrigan and Piet's Molt navigator were still at the attitude board despite their burns.

  Using both hands on the control yoke, Sal kicked the Moll Dane's stern out to cross the bow of the purpose-built Fed warship they'd otherwise crash into. The Fed vessel—the Holy Office, according to the osmium letters inlaid onto the bow—had moved parallel to the berm and within twenty meters of it since the Gallant Sallie had viewed the military port during landing.

  A collision between the Moll Dane and the Holy Office would have killed everyone aboard both vessels. No amount of damage to a ship of the North American Federation could have repaid the death of Piet Ricimer.

  Because of the violent maneuver, the Moll Dane hit so hard that the left landing skid shattered. The cabin lights, normally on whenever the vessel was under way, blew out. The navigation console and apparently the attitude controls still had power.

  Sal made as swift and skillful an instinctive decision as she'd ever managed in her life: she chopped one starboard and both port thrusters in each quartet simultaneously, but she didn't shut off the remaining motor to bow and stern for another fraction of a second. The momentary additional output eased the Moll Dane down on the starboard skid instead of dropping the ship like 200 tonnes of old junk.

  The men in the hold were sailors. They fell down at the shock, but a moment later they were on their feet and clumping out of the hold to attack.

  In the middle of the enclosure three hundred meters away, a freighter much like the one the Freedom's guns destroyed was being readied for another ramming attack on the Venerian squadron. Ionized exhaust bathed the vessel; she was already light on her skids.

  When the Moll Dane hopped over the berm, the ramship's captain shut down his thrusters. The hatches were already open. The crew spilled out of the vessel, abandoning ship in a panic greater than their fear of the throbbing hot ground onto which they were jumping.

  There were three Fed warships in the military port with their gunports open, as well as a number of freighters that either were unarmed or didn't have crews aboard to work the guns. The warships' guns weren't visible; they'd recoiled back within the vessel when they salvoed at the Moll Dane.

  Members of the assault force were still jostling their way out of the cabin through the narrow passage. Sal set her console display for a 360° panorama. Men of the first wave from the hold trotted around the Moll Dane's bow and stern, their weapons ready. A score of Fed soldiers stood in the loading ramp of the spherical warship two hundred meters away, shooting as the Venerians appeared.

  Stephen, identifiable from the piebald condition of his hard suit, halted at the Moll Dane's bow. He fired five times. Each time his rifle lifted in recoil, his left hand pumped the slide to chamber a fresh round; and each time, a white-uniformed soldier toppled backward. The Feds were wearing body armor, so Stephen must have been aiming for heads—and hitting them.

  Stephen tossed the emptied rifle behind him and took a carbine from one of his loaders. Other members of the assault force jogged by like boulders with limbs. Once Sal saw a Venerian stagger when a Fed bullet ricocheted from his armor, but the man caught his step and continued on.

  Sal got up from her console when the cabin emptied enough to give the flight crew some room. She opened the first-aid kit on her belt and took out the jar of salve. Tom Harrigan was daubing Brantling's burns. A huge blister was rising on the mate's bald spot. The fringe of hair still smoldered.

  There were just the four of them in the flight crew: motormen to watch the plasma thrusters weren't necessary for a quick up and down, and their presence would have meant one fewer man in the assault force. The odds were in the order of ten to one as it was, though the Venerians were in full armor and further strengthened by absolute certainty that they would win. Captain Ricimer and Mister Gregg always won. . . .

  "Guillermo, are you all right?" she asked the Molt. The alien's carapace was normally a smooth brownish mauve. His exoskeleton didn't blister like human skin, but spattering copper had burned off the waxy coat and pitted the chitin beneath.

  Guillermo took a wad of tarry substance out of his mouth where he'd been masticating it. "Yes, Captain," he said. He smeared the softened goo onto his burns with a three-fingered hand.

  Harrigan turned his head at the touch of Sal's fingers on his scalp. His eyes caught the display behind her. "God help us, Sal!" he shouted. "We've got to get out of the ship!"

  Sal looked around. Unusual for a Federation warship, the Holy Office was of cylindrical rather than spherical
layout. During the past two years, Pleyal's naval architects had started to copy the latest Venerian design philosophy. A port in the vessel's extreme bow had opened.

  Despite the Moll Dane's fuzzy optics, Sal could see members of the Fed crew swinging a heavy gun on a traveling mount to bear on the Venerian ship. At point-blank range, the bolt would turn the interior of the Moll Dane's weakened hull into an inferno.

  "Right, we'll—" Sal started to say.

  Stephen Gregg took the flashgun one of his loaders carried for him. He leaned against the Moll Dane's bow, aiming up at the Holy Office. The laser pulse momentarily lit the muzzle of the big plasma cannon.

  Because of the angle, Stephen couldn't fire directly along the barrel's axis. The gun bore was highly polished to direct the stream of plasma with minimum erosion, however. The smooth surface worked equally well to reflect the bolt down to the shell loaded in the cannon's breech.

  Dirty red smoke engulfed the gunport as the shell detonated in a low-order explosion. Stephen traded the cassegrain laser for his slide-action rifle. With his loaders behind him, he stalked up the forward boarding ramp of the Holy Office.

  WINNIPEG SPACEPORT, EARTH

  April 16, Year 27

  0441 hours, Venus time

  The Holy Office was boarded via through-holds, chambers the width of the vessel with no internal partitions, fore and aft on the lowest level. When both the port and starboard hatches were lowered, as they were now, you could see through the ship to the northern berm of the military port.

  A human and a pair of Molts lay beside the hatch control panel set into an alcove in the front of the hold. They'd been shot dead by Venerians who'd rounded the Moll Dane's stern with Piet while Stephen led the other contingent by way of the bow.

  The bulkhead separating the bow and stern holds was armored and thick. It contained a separate companionway for either hold. As a safety feature, there was no direct connection between the two holds; though that didn't help now, since the aft hatches were open also. The Feds hadn't expected a shipload of Venerian infantry to be lofted over the berm.

  The first troops aboard the Holy Office had already fought their way up the companionway. A Fed officer in half armor dangled from the railing, his foot caught between a tread and a stanchion. A shotgun blast had nearly decapitated him. A Venerian lay at the foot of the companionway, his breastplate starred by a bullet that had punched through the center of it. A Fed sailor and the ichor-leaking arm of a Molt littered the steps, crushed by the armored weight of men who'd charged up to the main deck.

  Stephen's nasal passages were dry from breathing pure bottled oxygen. As he started for the companionway, he touched his left hand to his helmet to raise his faceshield.

  The through-hold exploded in a cataclysm of sparks and clangor. Beverly's body caromed into Stephen and knocked him down. The dangling Fed corpse flew out the starboard hatchway in a mist of blood and pureed flesh, all but the leg that still hung from the railing.

  Without rising, Stephen turned his head and torso to see where the shots had come from. His rifle fire had killed or dispersed the troops surprised in the lower hold of the spherical Federation warship two hundred meters away. The crew of that vessel had set up a defensive position on the midline deck with hatches intended for loading in vacuum. Men in armor and Molts in protective suits of quilted rock-wool knelt behind a barricade of crated cargo.

  At this range, riflefire wasn't particularly dangerous to troops in ceramic hard suits, but the Feds also had an anti-boarding weapon—a hand-cranked rotary cannon. The five 2-cm rounds the gun spit out before it jammed—solid steel shot with no bursting charge—ricocheted lethally from the bulkhead of the Holy Office and penetrated everything else they hit.

  Beverly was carrying the flashgun. Stephen grabbed the weapon. The sling was caught on the loader's suit. A shot from the rotary cannon had struck Beverly's left shoulder, crushing the backplate and gorget. The ceramic shards were slippery with blood, but there was no time to worry about that now.

  "Philips!" Stephen called. He tugged the flashgun. Beverly thrashed, but the weapon didn't come loose. Stephen tugged again. The fiberglass sling parted, and the universe settled into the glassy calm that Stephen Gregg knew so well.

  It was the only time he was at peace.

  The rotary cannon stood out in sharp relief in Stephen's mind. Three crewmen bent over the weapon, prying at a burst cartridge case. An officer in polished armor shouted orders as she leaned on the hand crank, backing the barrel cluster to give her crewmen's tools more room.

  The marksmen, eight or ten of them rising to fire and then vanishing again behind the barricade to reload, didn't really figure in Stephen's calculations. They were motions in black and white, while in his mind the cannon and its crew had color and detail richer than human eyes could possibly make out at this distance.

  Bullets whanged across the boarding hold. They didn't impinge on Stephen's consciousness, any more than did the back muscle he'd pulled when Beverly cannoned into him.

  A Fed crewman, a Molt, stepped back from the gun, waving a ruptured case triumphantly in the jaws of his pliers. Stephen's index finger took up the last pressure on the flashgun's electronic trigger. The bolt hit one of the gun's six barrels at the crank assembly. Ionized steel flashed in a white shock wave that knocked down the gun captain and the two crewmen standing on the near side of the weapon.

  Stephen reached for the satchel holding fresh batteries. It was gone, his whole equipment belt shot away by the same burst of fire that wounded Beverly. He started to turn Beverly over to search for the spares the loader carried.

  Philips, kneeling, waved the battery in his right hand. There were four more batteries fanned upward from Philips' left gauntlet, ready for Stephen to snatch as he fired.

  Violent fighting was taking place on the gun deck of the Holy Office, directly above the boarding hold. Maybe Piet could use help there, but the crew of the spherical warship was too alert to be ignored.

  The Fed riflemen had ducked to cover when the rotary cannon exploded beside them, but now one took a chance of rising to shoot. Smoke drifted from where the blazing steel had sprayed the barricade. Without being fully conscious of his decision until he'd made it, Stephen fired into a wooden packing crate instead of the face of the Molt rifleman.

  The crate erupted as it absorbed the energy of the monopulse laser. The metal food cans inside were nonflammable, but they were packed in extruded cellulose that ignited in a red fireball.

  Feds jumped up, batting at themselves instinctively even though most of them wore protective garb. Rifleshots from Venerians still arriving from the Moll Dane knocked several of them over. When the box of cannon cartridges went off in smoky, rippling flashes a moment later, the surviving Feds abandoned the position to the flames.

  Stephen got to his feet. "Do what you can for Beverly," he said to Philips in a voice that seemed half human even to his own ears. He'd have slung the flashgun if the sling were whole, but he probably wouldn't need the laser in the tight constraints of a starship's compartments. He dropped the flashgun on the deck and took the pump gun lying beside Philips. He liked the feel of the slide working, and the rifle's powerful cartridges were a better choice than the lighter carbine when so many of the Feds wore armor.

  Stephen walked up the companionway, taking the last six steps in three. He burst onto the chaotic gun deck like a float bobbing from the deep sea. As he appeared, a Venerian sailor fired at a Molt near the stern and hit instead the 17-cm plasma cannon behind which the target was sheltering. The bullet ricocheted, clipped the left-side latch of Stephen's faceshield, and fell to the deck without actually harming anyone.

  The Molt rose with a flechette gun whose four heavy barrels were welded together into a unit that looked massive enough to be part of a ship's landing gear. Stephen and the alien fired simultaneously.

  Stephen's bullet slammed the Molt backward with a hole near the top of the plastron. The flechette gun emitted an orang
e-red, bottle-shaped muzzleflash and a crack so loud that it forged compression bands in the smoky cabin air. The hypervelocity projectile struck the lower lip of the Venerian sailor's breastplate, shattered it, and was deflected straight up the inside of the backplate. Battered but still moving, the flechette exited through the neck opening of the armor and tipped off the sailor's helmet as he fell forward.

  A Fed grabbed the flechette gun as it fell from the Molt's hands. Stephen shot the man, then shot the fellow again in the head since he refused to fall to a bullet placed perfectly to wreck the knot of blood vessels above the heart.

  A red needle sprang up beside Stephen's rear sight, indicating that the round just fired was the last one in his rifle. Beverly hadn't managed to fully load the weapon before Stephen snatched it back from him the last time.

  The shot that carried away his battery satchel hadn't touched his bandolier of rifle and carbine ammunition. He took out a fan of five bottle-necked cartridges and began to load.

  The Holy Office's crew still held the sternmost third of the gun deck. Gunsmoke and smudge fires ignited by the battle screened the parties from one another, though there were probably eighty or a hundred men and Molts locked in combat in the confined space.

  Most shots were fired by men who poked a weapon up from cover one-handed and loosed blindly in the general direction of the enemy. Venerians advanced crabwise, hopping back and forth across the central aisle because the lines of plasma cannon were offset to give them a greater distance to recoil.

  Occasionally somebody would bellow forward with a cutting bar. As shots flashed in both directions along the cabin, sparks and the shriek of teeth shearing armor spewed from a gun bay.

  Stampfer, who shouldn't have been in the assault party at all, was ignoring the battle. Piet's gunner struggled alone with a 17-cm cannon of the starboard battery. The gun's power assist was either damaged or disabled from the bridge, so Stampfer was running the massive weapon to firing position by cranking the manual capstan with a come-along. The gunner's backplate was cracked and a charge of buckshot had smeared the side of his helmet, but he kept to his self-appointed task.