The Reaches

by David Drake

  A branch of opinion in United Europe held that alliance with President Pleyal was a better choice than the present climate of low-level hostility toward the North American Federation. La Fouche might well be carrying out the policy of his government under cover of personal whim.

  "I'm convinced that to attempt to land in Heldensburg with the defenses alerted would be suicidal, not a matter of military consideration," Bruckshaw interjected. "I will not countenance such a waste of the state's limited resources."

  Several of the veterans relaxed noticeably. There was murmuring among the gentlemen—stilled instantly when the commander glared at them. Were it not for Bruckshaw's birth status, someone was sure to have suggested a head-on assault and damned as cowardly anybody who caviled. The commander had quashed that wrangle with a combination of good judgment and the courage to voice an unpalatable truth.

  "Yes," said Piet. "Venus has no lack of men ready to charge thirty-centimeter guns. My friend Mister Gregg, for example"—he nodded, smiling faintly—"and many others in this room, I'm sure. But the Lord gave us courage to be steadfast in His service, not to throw ourselves away."

  "If we wait till the Feds refill their tanks and repair their damage—and Heldensburg has a first-rate maintenance facility as I well know . . ." said Willem Casson. The old man wore a mauve velvet suit and the jeweled awards three trading associations had given him for his explorations on their behalf. "And refill their ammunition lockers too, I shouldn't wonder, if there's any shells down there of the right sizes—well, then, what do we do? Use up our air and reaction mass stooging around out of range, then hope we can break their fleet refitted when we couldn't do it before?"

  Casson glared at Piet and added, "Because some folk don't have the guts to carry the fight to the Feds!"

  Sal stiffened. If Piet had taken more than a fraction of a second to reply, there would have been a brawl between his supporters and Casson's.

  With his smile still broader, Piet said in a soothing voice, "I didn't mean to impugn the courage or judgment of anyone in this room, Captain. Your point is well taken: we can't afford to permit the Feds to regroup at leisure. Though we can't force them up from Heldensburg with ordinary warships, I believe launching unmanned vessels into the port will send them flying in panic."

  "The heavy guns can destroy a ship as a ship," Salomon put in, "but it's still a couple hundred tonnes of hardware following a ballistic course. A thirty-centimeter bolt doesn't make a ship vanish."

  "You talked about suicide," said Captain Montero. His fists were unconsciously pressed together in front of his chest. "If a ship isn't controlled down to twenty klicks altitude, it's not going to come close enough to scare anybody but farmers in the next province, we all know that."

  He looked around challengingly. Montero wasn't a member of one clique or another, just an experienced captain stating a well-grounded opinion. "Coming that close, especially in the sort of junker you'd throw into the ground that way, well, the port guns are going to smash it to bits before the crew can get out."

  "Not a ship with a modern navigational system," Sal said loudly, perhaps louder than she'd intended. Men craned their necks to see who'd spoken. The room was full, and Sal was shorter than most of the others present.

  Stephen turned his head in unspoken challenge. Men who met his eyes nodded, smiled stiffly, or simply looked away.

  "I can program the Gallant Sallie to land itself from orbit," Sal continued. She smiled tightly. There was sweat at her hairline, though her voice didn't sound nervous. "It won't be a soft landing, but that's not what we need here. I volunteer my ship for the mission."

  "One ship won't do it," said Salomon. "It'll take half a dozen, and I'm not talking featherboats, either. At least a hundred tonnes."

  Everyone spoke at once, to the assembly or to a neighbor. Bruckshaw and Piet leaned their heads together for a whispered conversation.

  Bruckshaw straightened and said, "A moment!" interrupting the brief pandemonium. "A moment, gentlemen and captains. I've discussed this possibility with Factor Ricimer. We agree that we'll need six ships of at least a hundred tonnes burden to be sure of success."

  Piet winced. Bruckshaw caught the expression and added, "With the blessing of God, that is. The Free State of Venus will purchase the vessels involved at a price set after survey by a board of senior captains, chosen and presided over by Factor Ricimer. Let me say that no shipowner will be the loser financially from his patriotism."

  He smiled faintly and added, "We appear to have most of the merchant fleet of Venus to pick from, after all."

  "Say, I've got a ship you can have!" Captain Groener said from Casson's side. "Assuming the survey covers stores at listed value?"

  "Captain Casson?" Piet called. "Captain Salomon? I'd be honored if the two of you would serve with me on the survey board. Will those present who own ships they'd like to volunteer please join us now? We won't go outside this group unless we have to."

  There was a surge toward Piet. Most of the fleet's captains themselves owned one or more ships, part of the cloud of light vessels clogging the starscape about Heldensburg. With the survey done the way Bruckshaw implied it would be, this could be a very profitable way to sell a vessel that needed a total rebuild.

  Sal shivered. She started to put her arm around Stephen for support but caught herself before the motion was complete. "I should have asked you," she said. "I'm sorry."

  "You're the managing director," Stephen said. "And a very good business decision you've made. Go talk to Piet."

  He nodded Sal forward. "I wouldn't argue with a choice you had a right to make," Stephen added softly, "any more than I'd expect one of my men to tell me who to kill next."

  ABOARD THE GALLANT SALLIE

  October 3, Year 27

  1027 hours, Venus time

  "They're clear!" Brantling announced. He was in the cutter in the Gallant Sallie's hold, speaking over the hardwired intercom rigged for the mission.

  On the display, Sal could see the barge pulling away with most of the Gallant Sallie's crew and personal effects. Tom Harrigan watched tensely from the attitude-control boards. He, Sal, and Brantling were all the personnel the old vessel had on her last voyage.

  Ships didn't have souls; and even if they did, there were humans dying in this war also.

  "All right, we're going in," Sal said. She pushed the execute key to start the program. Even that simple movement felt awkward in a hard suit.

  Harrigan wore the Gallant Sallie's general-purpose suit. He looked even more clumsy and uncomfortable than Sal felt. Stephen had offered to find armor for Brantling, but the sailor had refused. He waited at the cutter's controls in a helmet, a breathing mask, and a flexible bodysuit.

  The attitude jets fired, then counterfired. The thrusters lit with a shudder, returning the vessel to an apparent 1 g of acceleration toward Heldensburg.

  Words in white letters crawled across the bottom of the display. The message had been sent on the command channel, overriding the lock Sal had placed on the commo gear.

  "Wrath sends, 'Our prayers go with you,'" Sal relayed to her fellows. The transmission was slugged "Piet," not "Wrath," but she would have felt awkward saying that.

  Heldensburg was an ugly planet, yellow beneath the misty blue scattering of its atmosphere. Sal hadn't realized quite how ugly the place was on previous landings here. A turgid pimple, swelling on the display.

  Two specks swung toward the Gallant Sallie. Sal highlighted and expanded the images.

  "I see them! I see the Feds!" Brantling cried.

  "Brantling, keep off the intercom!" Sal snapped.

  Because the hatch remained open, Brantling had been able to glimpse either the featherboat or the armed barge trying desperately to match courses. The Feds had a number of light vessels in orbit to prevent what the Gallant Sallie was about to do.

  The thrusters cut out momentarily. The AI used the attitude jets to rotate the Gallant Sallie, then fired the thrusters again at an
initial 3 g's. They were coming in very hard and fast. A technical expert from the Wrath had reprogrammed the artificial intelligence to permit it to execute maneuvers well beyond safety parameters.

  Sal checked their heading. The point of impact was drifting west, though for the moment it was still predicted to be within the port reservation. She adjusted the program. Execution was in the AI's electronic hands, but Sal felt the ship quiver minusculely as altitude jets burped moments after she'd entered the correction.

  Heldensburg filled the display, as vapid as an ingenue's smile. The port was on the opposite side of the planet. Sal angrily hit keys preset to a series, then another set. A corner of the display—an eighth of the total—became a close-up of the port, a real-time view as relayed from another Venerian ship. On the opposite corner, a Fed featherboat with a light plasma cannon protruding from the bow port accelerated to come up with the Gallant Sallie.

  The number of Federation vessels crowded even the vast Heldensburg spaceport. From a score of locations, plasma exhaust bloomed like flowers opening. To react so quickly, the Feds must have been expecting, dreading, exactly what was about to happen. The Gallant Sallie and her consorts couldn't expect to destroy a significant proportion of Pleyal's fleet, but they could very easily induce a wild panic that threw the Feds into the arms of sharks like Piet Ricimer and his Wrath. . . .

  Sal rechecked their heading. Below them, clouds swept swiftly eastward as the Gallant Sallie cut against the grain of Heldensburg's rotation. The predicted landing—impact—site still drifted west, but less swiftly. With Sal's correction, the ship would hit close to the center of the target.

  The atmosphere was beginning to buffet the ship. Even though thrust had dropped to little more than 1 g, movement was difficult.

  "Let's—" Sal said as she rose from the console.

  The featherboat fired its plasma cannon. A bright ionized track showed on the display because the Feds as well had dipped into the atmosphere in pursuit. The bolt missed closely enough that hair on the back of Sal's arms rose.

  "—go!"

  Tom Harrigan grabbed Sal and flung her bodily down the passage ahead of him. The ship staggered like a drunken sailor, but Sal had a lifetime's experience on jumping decks.

  She caught the lip of the cutter's dorsal hatch and hoisted herself into the cabin. She turned to help Harrigan, but the mate had paused to throw the hatch-closing switch.

  Brantling lit the thruster. Plasma smothered the hold in a brilliant fog. The cutter lurched even though the nozzle was irised wide. Sal saw Harrigan's gauntlet flail through the iridescence. She grabbed him and pulled. Harrigan came aboard just as Brantling took the cutter out of the Gallant Sallie, ticking on the way against the slowly closing hatch.

  Sal pressed her helmet against the mate's and shouted, "You idiot!"

  "Sal," Harrigan said, his voice a buzz through the ceramic of his helmet and hers, "I was afraid the open hatch'd throw the AI off in the lower atmosphere."

  The Gallant Sallie glowed across a broad segment of sky, plunging toward Heldensburg. Brantling was trying to climb out of the atmosphere, but the featherboat now kept company with them less than a kilometer out. Another gleaming reflection, probably the armed barge, was closing as well.

  One moment the Gallant Sallie was a white-hot comet trailing a cone of superheated atmosphere. In the next the ship disintegrated as a rainbow flash, hit squarely by one of Heldensburg's 30-cm guns. The bolt was powerful enough to destroy the hull's structural integrity; friction and inertia did the rest.

  Sal watched transfixed. They'd removed the cutter's hatch before the mission so that nothing would slow her and Tom when they boarded at the last instant. The cutter's attitude as Brantling braked the momentum transferred during the Gallant Sallie's dive gave Sal and Harrigan a perfect view of the port.

  The Gallant Sallie had broken into three large pieces, plus a score of smaller ones that were refractory enough to survive their bath in the atmosphere. Most of the smaller chunks were separated nozzles and plasma motors, each describing a slightly different trajectory toward the ground. The general effect was that of a shotgun charge, but the smallest of these missiles weighed a hundred kilos and travelled at orbital velocity.

  A dozen Federation vessels were already climbing skyward, corkscrewing wildly because their officers hadn't taken the time to balance thrust. Two ships touched in a grazing collision. One continued to climb but the other, an orbital monitor with a lighter hull than the long-haul vessel, caromed out of the port reservation and dropped. The monitor came down in a swamp, only marginally under control.

  The barge moved alongside Sal's cutter. The Feds mounted a twin-tube laser on a pintle in the open cabin. A man in metal armor and two Molts with asbestos padding over flexible vacuum suits swiveled the weapon to bear on the cutter.

  Sal waved her hand. Harrigan clamped her thigh so that she could raise the other as well. The Fed pilot was probably using a laser communicator to order Brantling to hold station, but Sal didn't want the gunners to doubt her willingness to surrender.

  Fifty tonnes or more of the Gallant Sallie's stern hit near the center of the spaceport, narrowly missing a 1000-tonne giant just lifting from the ground. The shock wave sent ripples of dust across the surface.

  A plasma motor ripped through the heart of a moderate-sized freighter half a klick away. The victim's thrusters were already lit. Kinetic and thermonuclear energy combined in a stunning fireball, dazzling even against the sunwashed expanse of the port.

  Every ship in Heldensburg was attempting to lift. Two more unmanned Venerian vessels dived toward the port, though Sal was sure that at least one of them would miss by several klicks.

  The barge edged within twenty meters, seesawing as the pilot tried to match velocity. One of the Molts flung a line belayed to a staple on the barge's hatch coaming. The throw missed ahead, but Sal managed to catch the line as the Fed overcorrected and the barge slipped behind the cutter.

  She'd thought the Feds might kill them out of hand, but apparently the crews of the screening force wanted proof that they had done something to prevent the disaster taking place beneath them.

  Sal gestured Harrigan, then Brantling, ahead of her. From reflex she held the line instead of tying it, since there'd be no one remaining aboard the cutter to cast it off.

  Brantling paused at the hatch coaming with a reckless smile on his face. He pointed to the legend on the bow of the barge: A311, and below it in smaller letters ST. LAWRENCE. He touched his helmet to Sal's and said, "Look, Captain! That's their flagship. Only the best for Mister Gregg's friends, hey?"

  A 30-cm bolt lit the sky beneath the barge with the iridescent, vain destruction of another incoming Venerian missile.

  ABOARD THE WRATH

  October 3, Year 27

  1104 hours, Venus time

  The purpose-built Fed warship closing to point-blank range was slightly larger than the Wrath, The name blazoned on her bows was St. Lawrence. She was the flagship of the tyrant's fleet, and her captain was putting her in the path of the Venerian vessel that had already ripped the thrusters out of three armed Federation merchantmen.

  Stephen Gregg watched with professional approval as the St. Lawrence grew on the gunnery screen. Courage was easy enough to come by. The Feds aboard the vessels wallowing powerless—one of them dropping back toward Heldensburg with fatal inevitability—were probably brave enough. They'd just lacked the skill to deal with an expert like Piet Ricimer maneuvering beneath the stern of their ship and loosing a salvo into the most vulnerable point. This fellow knew his duty to the ships under his command, and he was able enough to at least make a stab at carrying out that duty.

  He was a brave man also, for he surely knew he was about to engage Piet Ricimer, the terrible pirate conqueror.

  Both ships were coasting on inertia, their thrusters shut down and shielded against hostile fire. Attitude jets puffed, changing the Wrath's alignment slightly.

  "Mister Stampfer," Pi
et announced over the intercom, "you may fire as you—"

  The starboard gunport across the bridge cantilevered open. Stephen had known that the Wrath and St. Lawrence were on parallel courses; and known also that the two ships were close together.

  Until the port lid lifted and he saw nothing but the Fed's scarred, curving hull plates, Stephen hadn't appreciated how very close the ships were.

  "—bear!"

  The 20-cm gun fired, started to recoil, and shattered in brilliance. A plasma bolt had struck at the edge of the port and on the muzzle of the Venerian cannon, blowing glassy shards of both in all directions. The splinter cage vanished. The gun to the trunnions and three crewmen above the waist were missing. The remainder of each was vaporized or scoured away by ceramic shocked into high-velocity sand.

  The blast wall partitioning the bridge held, though flying debris scored it foggy. The tube Stephen gripped broke, and he flew across the bridge.

  There were dozens of nearly simultaneous shocks, cannon recoiling and plasma bolts hitting the Wrath in turn. Vaporized metal from the hull of the St. Lawrence spurted, still white-hot and glowing, through the blasted gunport.

  The cabin lights were out, but holographic displays cast a pastel glow across the interior surfaces. Stephen scuttled around the blast wall, dabbing with all four limbs. He expected the Wrath to swap ends and pour her remaining broadside into the St. Lawrence. Instead, the ships continued their matched courses, hurtling through nothingness a hundred thousand kilometers above Heldensburg. Piet had lifted the access plate of his console and was aiming a handlight into the interior.

  Stephen braced one boot on the remnants of the 20-cm gun and locked the other armored knee on the hull where the gunport had been. The present hole was easily large enough to pass his body. He leaned out, aiming his flashgun.

  Great gaps glowed in the flank of the St. Lawrence. The blue-white light winking through a jammed gunport was clearly an electrical fire. Only the fact that the battle was being fought in vacuum kept the entire gun deck from turning into an inferno.