The Reaches

by David Drake

  She hadn't known that Stephen was still alive until Dole raised the faceshield of the figure floating beside him like an empty suit of armor.

  Attitude jets puffed, rotating the Gallant Sallie so that Harrigan could brake the freighter's slight velocity relative to the deputy command vessel. The Wrath's image was the background to the mask of alphanumeric calculations filling the display. Patches of odd-colored ceramic covered battle damage. A crew was at work on the outer hull.

  Stephen closed his eyes and took off the linked back-and-breast pieces of his hard suit. There was a huge bruise visible through the sweat-soaked tunic he wore beneath the armor. "Has anything happened with the fleets?" he asked without emotion.

  "A lot of shooting," Sal said. "Less damage, and none of it serious. One of the Fed ships blew up all by itself, but you've won our only victory so far, Stephen."

  He looked at her, really at her. Sal was lifting away the hinged groin and thigh pieces. Stephen put the tips of his fingers on the backs of her hands to hold her attention.

  "Sal," he said, "the Feds surrendered because they thought I'd tear the whole ship open and leave even the crew to suffocate when their oxygen bottles ran out."

  Sal nodded. "I'm glad they surrendered," she said carefully. "That saved many lives."

  Perhaps yours among them, my friend. My love.

  "They were right, Sal," Stephen said. "I told them that I'd as soon kill them as not, and that was as true as if I'd sworn by a God I believed in. I was ready to kill the whole thousand or more of them."

  "You didn't, though," she said.

  "No, they surrendered," Stephen said—not agreeing.

  "Stephen, if it bothers you so much when you think of what might have happened . . ." she said. She paused, wondering if she was willing to go on. "Then the next time, don't do it. But it didn't happen."

  "I'd have killed them all," he whispered.

  Sal turned her hands to grip Stephen's as hard as she could. Part of her prayed that she wouldn't start to cry; but the tears would have been for both of them, herself and the man she held who couldn't weep for the soul he thought he'd lost.

  ABOARD THE WRATH

  October 1, Year 27

  1847 hours, Venus time

  Piet saw Stephen's approaching figure reflected in the brightwork of his console. He spun the couch with a smile of greeting that hardened minutely as he rose to his feet. "I didn't know you'd been wounded, Stephen," he said.

  "It's a bruise, Piet," Stephen said. Maybe he ought to wear something high-necked—though he really didn't want even cloth in contact with the swollen, purple-black flesh over his breastbone. "You should see the other guy."

  Piet had seen the other guy, many times over a decade. The mangled bodies floating through the compartments of a captured starship were all the same, except perhaps to God.

  "Glad you're safe, Colonel Gregg," Simms said quietly. The navigator turned back to his console immediately, as though he were afraid of the reaction.

  It always puzzled Stephen that people really did seem to like him. Even people who knew what he was.

  "Come view what's happened while you were gone," Piet said. He drew his friend down beside him on the couch turned crossways in respect to the three-dimensional display. "I'd like to get your opinion, and it'll be another hour yet before the Feds complete their calculations."

  He touched a control. The blotchy appearance of the enemy after a transit series replaced a real-time image of the Federation globe reformed. The Venerian ships converged on their enemy in a speeded-up review of the battle. Vector lines careted six Venerian vessels moving in line ahead toward a gap in the Fed formation. A sidebar along the top of the display strung database close-ups of Captain Casson's Freedom and five similar vessels: spherical armed merchantmen, among the largest ships in the Venerian fleet.

  The globe began to collapse on Casson's squadron like an amoeba ingesting prey. Four vessels from the Federation rear guard closed, maneuvering with surprising agility. Stephen frowned. Piet nodded, pleased that his friend had noticed. He touched another control. At the bottom of the display appeared an oddly angular vessel, a dodecahedron rather than a sphere.

  "The Feds have brought four orbital monitors with them," Piet said. "The living conditions aboard on a voyage of this length must be indescribable, but—"

  The monitors were designed for weightless conditions rather than to operate at most times with the apparent gravity of 1-g acceleration. Their decks were onionskins around a central core instead of perpendicular to the main thrust axis like those of spherical-plan long-voyage vessels.

  For all their light frames and the discomfort of their crews, the monitors were dangerous opponents for Casson's self-surrounded squadron. The Fed vessels had many times the usual number of attitude jets to provide the agility Stephen watched on the display, and eleven of twelve facets mounted a powerful gun.

  The remainder of the Venerian fleet swept down with unexpected coordination on the "east" quadrant of the Federation globe. Feds closing on Casson turned to meet the new threat. Cracks opened in what had almost become a crushing vise. Casson's squadron eased out of the trap.

  Stephen looked at Piet with a faint smile. "Your idea?" he said. "Organizing the rescue instead of letting it turn into a mare's nest as usual?"

  Piet shrugged, almost hiding his own smile. "I signaled—Guillermo signaled, of course—all vessels to conform to the Wrath's movements. There wasn't time to do more . . . and somewhat to my surprise, most of the others did as I asked."

  He looked at Stephen and shrugged. "We aren't as tightly disciplined as the Feds, Stephen."

  Stephen shrugged back. "Tyranny has certain advantages in the strictly military sphere," he said.

  Piet's smile became broad and as hard as a gun muzzle. "Tell that to the captain of the Savior Enthroned," he said. "You might get an argument."

  He returned the display to real-time images and pointed. Barges carried supplies and munitions from the Fed transports to the war vessels on the outer face of the globe.

  "We can listen to their intership communications and know they're frightened," Piet said quietly. Guillermo and Simms were absorbed in their work; no one else was close enough to overhear. "Short transit series are a terrible strain. Metal doesn't craze the way our ceramic hulls do, but their seams are working badly and many of their ships have gunfire damage."

  He looked at the friend beside him and went on, "Only sometimes I think—if we run out of ammunition before we break the Fed formation, what happens then?"

  "Then you put us alongside them, one ship at a time," Stephen said. "And we board them. If that's what it takes."

  "The commander acknowledges your communication, Deputy Commander," Guillermo said. The Molt raised his voice but didn't turn his triangular head lest he seem to be intruding his personality into a private conversation. "He is relaying it to the remainder of the fleet for action."

  Stephen raised an eyebrow. Piet smiled with slight warmth. "We're three transits from a junction that will carry us to within half an AU of Venus, sixty-five million kilometers," he explained. "The Feds will certainly attempt that route. If we calculate our speed and position correctly, though, we can prevent them from taking the third jump unless they're willing to turn their thrusters directly toward our guns at a few hundred meters range. I suggested such a plan to Commander Bruckshaw."

  "If they don't make that junction, then what?" Stephen asked.

  Piet laughed. "More of the same, my friend," he said. "At least until we run out of ammunition. Then we'll see."

  He preserved a light tone up to the final sentence. On the display beside him, the Fed formation looked as perfect as a poised axe.

  ABOARD THE GALLANT SALLIE

  October 2, Year 27

  0813 hours, Venus time

  Sal finished her calculations, finished checking the AI's calculations, really. The display reverted from alphanumeric to its previous setting: a view of the Federation glob
e and, fifty kilometers to one side, the straggling Venerian formation.

  Sal lay back on the couch with a sigh. A circle of white light marked the Wrath, otherwise an indistinguishable dot at this scale.

  "So, Captain . . ." Brantling said from a seat at the attitude-control board. "We're headed back for home, then?"

  Sal scowled and for a moment continued to face the display. She realized that she had to tell her crew sometime, and they deserved better than the back of her head when she did so. She got up and faced her men. The whole crew was in the cabin.

  "I've decided that we'll hold position with the fleet for a time," she said as professionally as she could manage. "Although we—"

  The cheers of her crew interrupted her. Brantling clapped Harrigan on the shoulder and cried, "Hey, I told you she had too much guts to run off when there was a fight coming!"

  Kokalas clapped his hands with enthusiasm and said, "We're going to pay them bastards back for Josselyn, we are."

  Nedderington, who'd learned everything he could from Godden when the gunner's mate was aboard, rose from the locker holding the Gallant Sallie's meager store of 10-cm rounds and opened the lid.

  "No!" said Sal. "No, we're not going in as a fighting ship. Christ's blood! we don't have but two hard suits aboard and one only fits me. All we're going to do is—"

  Watch and pray.

  "—render assistance to damaged vessels if necessary, and to carry out any other tasks the commander, the commanders may set us."

  "We'll be following the fleet's transits, Sal?" Tom Harrigan asked. "Or . . ."

  "We've got the course plots, transmitted from the Venus and the Wrath both," Sal said. "We aren't . . ." She paused, wondering how to phrase the description. "We haven't been ordered to accompany the fleet, but we aren't acting against the commanders' wishes, either."

  "Captain?" Brantling said, pointing over Sal's shoulder.

  She spun. The Federation globe was dissolving in sequential transit. The Wrath vanished, then a dozen more of the largest and best-crewed Venerian ships.

  "Stand by to transit," Sal said as she dropped back into the navigation console, engaging the AI. An orange border surrounded the display. Five seconds later, the Gallant Sallie—

  Transit. Sal saw the cabin as a black-and-white negative, but that was only the construct her mind built of familiar surroundings to steady itself.

  Starscape. The Gallant Sallie's display was set for real visuals, not icons representing the confronting fleets, but at the previous range there was little visible difference. Ships had been glimmers in starlight, varying by albedo rather than absolute size.

  Now the fleets and the Gallant Sallie with them had closed considerably. In the fraction of a second after Sal's eyes adjusted to the sidereal universe again, she could see the Wrath as an object, blotched from previous damage. Two of the starboard gunports were open because the lids had jammed or were shattered by fire.

  Transit. Sarah Blythe had made her first transit when she was two years old. The feeling had never really disturbed her the way she knew it did others.

  Starscape. The two fleets on the display were nearly a single mass. The Federation globe very nearly rested on a lumpy plain of Venerian ships. At this moment Federation AIs would be screaming collision warnings.

  The Fed captains knew the real threat was not impact with the tightly controlled first line of the Venerian fleet. They had the choice of overriding the next programmed transit or having their thrusters ripped out by point-blank plasma bolts. Some of the Federation officers were experienced enough to have expected this result as soon as they saw how much more maneuverable their opponents were. Their commander was sure to have a planned response.

  The squished and gaping Fed formation vanished raggedly. The Venerian fleet didn't move. Sal disconnected the sequencer.

  The Gallant Sallie's AI was very nearly as powerful as those of the Wrath and her sister ships, let alone the armed merchantmen that made up the bulk of the Venerian force. Sal would have a solution within a few minutes, whether or not one was relayed from the dedicated warships.

  "What's happening?" Rickalds said, panic growing with each syllable. "Ma'am, they're getting away!"

  "They're not getting nowhere!" Tom Harrigan snarled contemptuously. "They're running with their tails between their legs 'cause we cut them off. As soon as the computer tells us where they ran to, why, we'll jump right after them. And I shouldn't wonder if we had 'em right by the balls, as strung out as they're going to be!"

  The artificial intelligence bordered the screen with blue and threw up a blue sidebar. The complex calculations of the latter were too minute to read.

  Sal didn't need to know where the course would take them. All that was important was that it would take them in pursuit of the Feds, in company with the men who would crush the tyrant's force or die.

  "Prepare for transit!" she ordered, engaging the sequencer.

  "Course received from the Wrath, ma'am!" Cooney called from the adjunct communications module at the back of the cabin.

  "We've got our own course!" Sal said. The screen's border went orange.

  Transit.

  Starscape. She couldn't see the Federation fleet. The Feds had a lead of the minutes it took the Gallant Sallie to compute their course. A Venerian ship was present, though: the Wrath. A dozen more, a score more, Venerian vessels winked into sight.

  Transit.

  Starscape.

  Transit. Brantling's reversed image stared tensely from Sal's mind, though she hadn't been looking at him or even toward the back of the cabin.

  Starscape, but partly masked by a planet looming across the sky. The Federation ships were in orbit or already beginning landing approaches.

  "Bloody hell!" Tom Harrigan said as he made the identification a fraction of a second before Sal herself did. "That's Heldensburg! The port governor's letting the Feds land on Heldensburg!"

  Venerian warships appeared and immediately accelerated through sidereal space toward the scattered Feds. The intended attacks were unplanned and thus far uncoordinated.

  "The governor, La Fouche, he's a fan of Pleyal's," Sal remarked. "I remember what the cargo supervisor told us."

  Her fingers set the AI to determine a course that would hold the Gallant Sallie stationary in respect to the planet below. "I wonder—"

  One of Heldensburg's 30-cm cannon sent a bolt across the Wrath's bow. The round probably wasn't aimed to hit. It was simply a warning that a Venerian attempt to interfere with the Feds here would have Heldensburg's ship-smashing port defenses to contend with. The Wrath drew away from its target, a big Fed vessel braking from orbit.

  The Venerians no longer had to wonder how Port Governor La Fouche would interpret his nation's neutrality in a war between Venus and the North American Federation.

  ABOVE HELDENSBURG

  October 2, Year 27

  1333 hours, Venus time

  "Oh, this is too bad!" Commander Bruckshaw said, glaring at the hundreds of ships indicated on the display in the conference room of the Venus. "Why, this should never have been permitted to happen!"

  Stephen was more amused than not by the sight of so many private vessels, probably everything on Venus capable of the short journey to Heldensburg. The ships had come from every port on the planet as soon as a courier brought word home that the Feds had gone to ground on Heldensburg.

  Some of the ships carried supplies and munitions, the way the Gallant Sallie had done a few days before, but many captains were motivated simply by a desire to get in a blow of their own against the Federation. The light guns the merchantmen mounted made them as useless in a real battle as their hulls were vulnerable.

  The multitude of small vessels could get in the way, true; but so far as Stephen could tell, Bruckshaw's irritation was mostly because the newcomers weren't under his control and hadn't come at his request. The mass of ships was sure to have a psychological effect on the Feds, despite their knowing the influx had little milit
ary value.

  "I believe most of the captains are here, Commander," Piet said, gently prodding Bruckshaw back to the real matter at hand. This was a live rather than video conference, because if Guillermo could eavesdrop on Federation intership communications, then the Feds—or their Molt slaves—could listen to the Venerian fleet.

  Stephen grinned sardonically at Sarah Blythe beside him. She was too tautly professional to meet his eyes. Sal was present because Mister Gregg had brought her to the command group meeting. Stephen knew he was throwing his weight around to bring a friend into a conference called only for the captains of fighting ships; but he had the weight. A score of the gentlemen accompanying Bruckshaw on his flagship crowded the room with even less reason.

  "Yes, I see that," the commander said sharply.

  Bruckshaw had had a frustrating time. Though he'd closed with the enemy whenever possible, he knew the Venus hadn't done any marked damage. On a strategic level, the Federation fleet was unbroken and now in the process of refitting beyond his reach.

  Besides those military considerations, the commander had to be galled to know that the only Federation ship captured had been taken by his famous deputy, Captain Ricimer. Bruckshaw had deferred to Piet's experience just as he'd promised he would, but—Bruckshaw was the governor's cousin, and Piet was a potter's son. Though the commander was a decent and intelligent man, he was human.

  He grimaced and said in apology, "Factor Ricimer, would you please outline the situation for the assembly?"

  Piet bowed to his superior and turned to the company. "We've tried everything we know to get the port commandant, La Fouche, to stop sheltering the Feds," he said in a pleasant voice. "Commander Bruckshaw has sent couriers both to Venus and to Avignon to get the decision reversed through La Fouche's superiors. At best that will take a week—as much time as the Feds need to refit."