The Reaches

by David Drake

  Heldensburg's powerful defenses were an important attraction, but it wasn't only captains concerned about Pleyal's claimed monopoly on trade beyond Pluto who called here. The ship nearest to the Gallant Sallie was a Federation vessel. Molt crew members had pulled several attitude jets and were polishing them on a workbench under the desultory supervision of a boyish-looking human officer.

  "Do you have many Feds here?" Sal asked, trying to keep the disapproval out of her voice.

  Wueppertal waved a hand. "About a third of our traffic," he said. "Look, their credit drafts spend just the same as yours. If we didn't have those guns"—a nod toward the nearby fort—"then I'd worry, sure But we do."

  "Yes," Sal said She might have let the subject drop, but she hadn't been sleeping well for too long. "Heldensburg's too tough a nut for Pleyal to crack, now. But if it weren't for the trouble Venus has been causing him these past ten years, he'd have crushed you all like bugs before you got properly settled."

  The turbine settled onto the lowboy. The trailer's suspension compressed a good 10 centimeters before the winch cables slackened.

  A spherical 600-tonne merchantman was discharging grain into a series of hopper cars. From details of its design, Sal guessed the vessel was from the Federation. The Feds were drawn here by the variety of available cargoes, just as the other traders were. The fact that those cargoes depended on plasma cannon to keep President Pleyal's warships away was an irony of human existence.

  "Oh, there's something to be said for a guy like Pleyal," Wueppertal said with the same tone of almost-challenge that Sal had heard in her own voice. "He knows what order is and he's not afraid to enforce it. Commandant La Fouche said just last week in staff meeting that there's other places that could use a little discipline of the sort."

  "We'll give Pleyal discipline, all right," Tom Harrigan said, wandering over to the forward hatch now that the loading operation was complete. "He'll try to clamp down on Venus, and we'll go through his fleet like shit through a goose."

  "You think that?" Wueppertal said. He was a smallish man, dark-haired but with brilliant blue eyes.

  "I know that," the mate said. "Why, the man who owns this ship, Mister Gregg—that's Stephen Gregg, Wueppertal—"

  "Co-owns the Gallant Sallie, Harrigan," Sal said in a crisp voice.

  "Sure, co-owns," Harrigan agreed. "I've seen him clear a Fed warship single-handed—and that in a Fed port! And brought us back rich, too. Why, there's Dock Street ladies who bought country seats from what they made off sailors come back from Winnipeg and Callisto!"

  Sal thought of the slaughter, of the columns of smoke rising from Winnipeg Spaceport as the Gallant Sallie lifted. She didn't say anything to the men standing below her.

  Wueppertal's eyes narrowed. "You know Colonel Gregg?" he said.

  Tom Harrigan nodded. "Let me tell you," he said. "When we hopped the Moll Dane into the military port at Winnipeg, Mister Gregg was as close to me as you are now. Captain Blythe was piloting"—Wueppertal's eyes followed Tom's nod under a frown of disbelief—"and Mister Gregg was right there with us, and Factor Ricimer too. Don't I have the scars?"

  Harrigan bent his head and ran an index finger over the ridged pink-and-white keloid on his scalp. He straightened and continued forcefully, "Listen! When it comes to real war, we'll whip the Feds right back to Montreal, and we'll do it because God's on our side. Factor Ricimer preaches God like nobody you've heard in chapel of a Sunday, and Mister Gregg—he's the Wrath of God, he is!"

  Sal thought of the Stephen Gregg she knew. Her eyes were on the distant horizon, and her expression was as hard as cast iron.

  The stevedores had completed tying the turbine firmly onto the trailer bed. One of the men called, "Hey, Hymie!" and waved to Wueppertal. "You want us to go on back now?"

  Wueppertal said, "Hang on, I'll ride with you!" To Harrigan and Sal he added, "I'll make sure they've got the chips ready to go. The sort of screwups they got running Warehouse Four, they're as likely to be piling more crates on top of yours as they are to be loading them onto trucks."

  Harrigan sat on the topmost of the three steps from the hatch to the ground, watching the tractor and lowboy head toward the complex of low warehouses west of the field. "Paris and then home, Sal?" he asked.

  Sal shrugged. The gesture was pointless since the mate wasn't looking at her. "Maybe home," she said. "There may be a load of desalinization equipment ready for carriage to Drottingholm. Europe and the Coasties have set up a joint colony there."

  A starship was landing almost precisely in line with the morning sun. Harrigan took a filter from his breast pocket and used it to view the ship through the double glare. "A big one," he remarked idly. "Shouldn't wonder if it was another Fed."

  He turned his head to look up at Sal. "We've been lucky with cargoes, you know," he said. "Short layovers and almost never lifting empty. Sure a change from the old days."

  "It's a change, but it's not luck," Sal replied sharply. "Mister Gregg's making the arrangements. Balancing cargoes, setting up credit lines—judging who'll need something and who can pay for it."

  She flicked an index finger in the direction of the lowboy, now halfway to the warehouses. "These power plants. Stephen—Mister Gregg—he set up the whole deal. All the principals had to do was sign the agreement he offered them! We're getting the haulage fees, but buyer and seller both are gaining a lot more from the deal than we are."

  "Who'd have thought it?" Harrigan said. "A man like Mister Gregg, and he's a merchant besides!"

  The thrusters of the ship in its landing approach braked at maximum output, bellowing across the starport at a level that forbade speech.

  Who would have thought it? Gregg of Weyston was one of the largest intrasystem shippers on Venus. It shouldn't surprise anyone that his nephew would have an equal flair for the complexities of trade.

  It wouldn't have surprised those who knew Stephen Gregg before he first voyaged to the Reaches and defeated everything he found there except his own human soul.

  And very nearly his soul as well.

  BETAPORT, VENUS

  July 12, Year 27

  1658 hours, Venus time

  Originally Dock Street had been the route by which starships were hauled between the transfer docks, whose domes slid open for takeoffs and landings, and the storage docks where vessels were refitted between voyages. New routes and docks had been built to suit the ever-larger ships operating from Betaport, but Dock Street remained a broad, high-roofed corridor and the center of nautical affairs in a city built on star travel.

  Guild marshals were trying to keep the crowd back from the red carpet laid for the occasion. They had their work cut out for them, especially here near the train station where the dignitaries were gathered. The station itself was ringed by men who were something more than an "honor" guard: the Wrath's B Watch close-combat team. Today the Wraths carried batons rather than shotguns and cutting bars, but Dole had told them what they could expect if anybody jostled Commander Bruckshaw.

  Dole saw Stephen blocked by a press of citizens who'd overwhelmed the guild marshals. "Make a path for Mister Gregg, you whoresons!" the bosun shouted.

  Stephen forced a smile. He was as tense as a trigger with only the last gram of take-up remaining. He'd been raised in Eryx, his family's small keep on the Atalanta Plains. Space was at a premium, but there weren't enough people in the entire community to constitute a crowd by Betaport standards.

  Stephen's instincts were all wrong for a mob of people like this. Unless of course the folk around him had been hostile, in which case he could have cleared a path very quickly indeed.

  The sailors in the crowd were already dodging away when the Wrath's men strode forward. Some countrymen from the surrounding region, come to town for the event, would be lucky if nothing was dislocated; and the wife of one got a baton where she probably hadn't expected it. Dole waggled a horny fist in salute to Stephen as he passed the gentleman through.

  Piet Ricimer had tur
ned from the group of town and guild officials inside the station when he heard the shout. "Stephen?" he said. He blinked in pleased wonder. "Stephen!"

  "I went to the tailor my uncle recommended in Ishtar City," Stephen said in embarrassment. "He decided brighter colors would 'soften the image,' as he put it. I feel like an idiot."

  Piet laughed melodiously. "Nothing in this world or the next is going to make you look soft, my friend," he said. "But you look very striking indeed."

  When Stephen Gregg consulted an expert, he abided by the expert's advice; a courtesy he expected from others when they asked his advice. Today he wore crimson tights with canary yellow sleeves, matching yellow boots, and a helmet and breastplate of copper/uranium alloy that shimmered purple.

  The only part of the outfit he'd refused was the holstered pistol. "Just for show," the court tailor had explained.

  Stephen didn't wear weapons just for show.

  Piet squeezed his elbow. "Glad you made it," he said. "I'd hate to greet Councilor Bruckshaw without my right arm present."

  Air rammed hissing through the station ahead of the train warned of the Councilor's arrival. Intercommunity travel on Venus had been by subsurface electric trains as far back as the first pre-Collapse colonies.

  Within communities—even Ishtar City, the largest by far, with a population climbing above 200,000 souls in the past decade—people walked. Corridors cut with difficulty through the planetary crust were too narrow for vehicular traffic. Wealthy folk who thought to ignore the laws as a form of ostentation found themselves overturned within minutes. The mob accepted class distinctions, but it had a firm grasp also of the distinction between citizen and slave.

  The train sighed to a halt, then settled with a clackclackclack onto the rail as power to the suspension magnets was cut. The double doors sprang open for Councilor Duneen and Councilor Bruckshaw, Commander of the Fleet, to step onto the platform together.

  Staff members, ordered by precedence, walked behind their chiefs in more-than-military order. Each councilor had a good dozen folk in his entourage. The first man out of the train behind Duneen was Jeremy Moore, Factor Moore of Rhadicund, and an old shipmate of Piet and Stephen.

  Piet strode forward and made a full bow. "Councilors," he said, "you honor Betaport with your presence. Please permit me and the chief men of our community to guide you to your destination."

  With Stephen to his right and the Betaport magnates falling in behind, Piet Ricimer walked out of the train station. Four of the Wrath's men led the procession. Dole and the remainder of the team walked along beside the dignitaries, enfolding them the way a magazine follower does the spring that drives it.

  A cheer greeted Piet and Stephen. When the councilors came out of the station a moment later, a claque of carefully briefed sailors bellowed, "Long life to Commander Bruckshaw! Long life to Commander Bruckshaw!"

  Piet leaned close to Stephen's ear and whispered, "After this, I don't think the commander will doubt the loyal willingness of Betaport to accept the decisions of Governor Halys."

  "I don't think he'll doubt the loyalty of Betaport's first citizen, either," Stephen whispered in reply. "How do you like the red carpet?"

  "Long life to Commander Bruckshaw!" The whole crowd had taken up the chant. The guards from the Wrath made sure that each new blockful of spectators knew what to shout as the honored visitors approached.

  "Excellent quality," Piet said. "I wasn't expecting anything more than a roll of cloth. How much do I owe you?"

  Stephen chuckled. "I pointed out to Haskins of Haskins Furnishings that he could double the new price to every social climber in Beta Regio—and I wasn't going to make sure he didn't sell somebody a piece that the governor's closest advisors hadn't really stepped on. The use is free, Piet."

  "Where would I be without you, Stephen?" Piet murmured. His smile drooped slightly, unintentionally.

  "Long life to Commander Bruckshaw!"

  It was seven blocks from the train station to the Blue Rose Tavern across from the transfer docks. The tavern had been Piet Ricimer's unofficial headquarters since the days he was an ambitious teenager, mate on an intrasystem trader.

  The first wealth from Piet's successful voyages had bought him a ship of his own, but the next stage of his climb was Betaport real estate. He'd bought the ground lease of the Blue Rose before even buying a house for himself. The front room was still a working tavern, but the back and upper floor of the building had become the center of Betaport's operations against President Pleyal and those who would support his tyranny.

  Piet had raised a meter-high temporary dais in front of the Blue Rose. He paused at the steps, bowed again, and gestured the governor's councilors to precede him onto it. The Wraths made sure that none of the Betaport magnates tried to increase their dignity by hopping up with the three principals. As for the councilors' staff members—many of them courtiers of high rank themselves—Stephen Gregg stood at the base of the steps, grinning, and no one at all tried to push past him.

  "People of Betaport!" Commander Bruckshaw said. He had a high, reedy voice, which nonetheless carried well across the packed street. "Free citizens of Venus!"

  The immediate crowd quieted. The sough of folk more distant, chopped to verbal silage by the twists and corners of the corridors, continued as it always did in the cities of Venus.

  "I appreciate the honor her excellency the governor did in appointing me commander of her fleet," Bruckshaw continued, "as I appreciate the honor you have done me on my arrival. I know as well as you do that there's a great deal I have yet to learn about crushing the tyrant Pleyal's minions in space, however."

  Bruckshaw had an ascetically handsome face. The commander didn't look to be a terribly dynamic personality, but there was no lack of firmness and authority in his countenance. Not only was he a cousin to Governor Halys, members of Bruckshaw's direct lineage had in their own right been powerful figures on Venus for all the thousand years since the Collapse.

  "I know also that there are no folk better able to teach me how to pay out the Federation than the sailors of Betaport can," Bruckshaw said, "and the—"

  The roar of bloodthirsty triumph from the crowd drowned even the thought of intelligible speech. Bruckshaw and Duneen smiled; Piet Ricimer beamed like a floodlight on the people of the community that raised him.

  Bruckshaw raised both hands for silence, still smiling. When the cheers muted to a dull rumble he resumed. "The sailors of Betaport, and the greatest space captain of all time, Factor Ricimer of Porcelain!"

  The roar this time made even the previous cheers seem puny. Only the hoarseness of minutes of unrestrained shouting brought the silence for which the commander gestured again.

  "In appreciation of Factor Ricimer's unequaled skills and his former services to the Free State of Venus . . ." Bruckshaw said.

  He paused. Councilor Duneen stepped forward, holding a box inlaid with wood and nacre imported to Venus at obvious expense. Duneen opened the case. Bruckshaw removed a necklace from which depended a porcelain medallion in the form of Venus seen in partial eclipse: Governor Halys' crest.

  " . . . I have appointed Factor Ricimer as my deputy commander," Bruckshaw said, draping the necklace over Piet's head. "He will be my closest advisor, as he has been for so many years the greatest enemy of Federation tyranny!"

  The three men on the dais raised their hands together, Piet between the two councilors. They ducked quickly and slipped into the Blue Rose to plan the defeat of the Federation armada that would surely destroy Venus as a free society if they failed.

  As Stephen Gregg followed the chiefs through the familiar door of the Blue Rose, he wondered if President Pleyal's officers had ever heard a sound to compare with the cheering. The walls of living rock trembled to the roar.

  BETAPORT, VENUS

  July 12, Year 27

  1741 hours, Venus time

  The upper floor of the Blue Rose had originally been four two-room apartments whose tenants sublet space to sai
lors in port who could afford better accommodation than a flophouse. Folk on Venus lived tightly together, and starship crews were used to living tighter still.

  Piet had knocked out the internal divisions, save for two pillars of living rock where the load-bearing crosswall had been. The area had become working quarters for the part of the Ricimer household whose duties involved the still-undeclared war against President Pleyal, with the desks, files, and communications equipment necessary for that task.

  Normally Piet conducted business, including conferences, in the back room of the tavern's lower floor. That comfortable, familiar chamber was full when a dozen men were present and packed by twenty. For this meeting, bringing together Governor Halys' representatives with the most experienced of the captains who would command her fleet, Piet needed the volume of the tavern's upper floor.

  Stephen looked around the room with a critical eye and decided that Piet's staff had done a creditable job with the makeover. There hadn't been time to tile the bare rock walls. Instead, tapestries covered the scars and scribbles of centuries of occupation by spacers and leaseholders who were themselves only a handsbreadth above poverty.

  The hangings were eclectic in style and materials. Batiks and thickly woven wools imported from Earth hung beside Venerian synthetics, and there were even a few Molt designs identifiable by odd color contrasts and recurrent pentagonal motifs. Piet had scoured the wealthy households of Betaport to meet the sudden requirement for wall coverings.

  The melange shouldn't have worked together, but it somehow did. The chamber had a barbaric power that well symbolized the strength of Venus against the imposed uniformity of President Pleyal and his North American Federation.

  There were many assembly rooms in Ishtar City that could have contained the gathering without difficulty. Commander Bruckshaw had chosen the Blue Rose Tavern to underline implicitly what he had said from the dais: it was due to Betaport sailors that Venus could claim to be a rival to the North American Federation, rather than merely a backwater to be overwhelmed (as the Southern Cross had been) when it suited Pleyal's whim to extend his tyranny.