The Reaches

35

Umber

The Halys lurched into freefall. Dole cursed and reached for the main fuel feed.

"Don't," Gregg snapped, "touch that, Mr. Dole."

The thrusters fired under direction from the artificial intelligence. The vessel yawed violently before she came to balance and resumed a measured descent. John, crewing both sets of attitude controls, didn't move during the commotion.

"Christ's blood, sir!" Dole protested. "That's rough as a cob. I could do better than that!"

"We're here to look like Feds landing," Gregg said coolly. "That's what we're going to do"-he gave Dole a tight smile-"if it kills us. That means we let the AI bring us in, as coarse as it is and as crude as the thrusters it controls."

Gregg looked at the Molt on the attitude controls. "Is this how you would have landed if it had been you and your regular captain, John?" he asked.

"Yes," the alien said.

The Halys' viewscreen was raster-scanned. Synchronous problems divided the display into horizontal thirds, and the image within those segments was bad to begin with. Nor did it help visuals that a windstorm was blowing dust across Umber City as the raiders came in.

The four men from the Dalriada braced themselves against stanchions and tried to keep their cutting bars from flopping. They seemed a solid crew. The three common sailors showed a natural tendency to look to the fourth, a gunner's mate named Stampfer, when orders were given, but they'd showed no signs of deliberately rejecting either Gregg's authority or Dole's.

That was as well for them. Stephen Gregg might not trust himself at piloting a starship, but he could damned well see to it that his orders were obeyed the second time.

The viewscreen's jagged images of sandy soil and the three ships already docked on Umber vanished suddenly in a wash of dust. "Hang on, boys," Gregg said. "Here it comes."

The thrusters slammed up to three-quarter power. Two of the attitude jets fired, controlling the yaw from the thrusters' asymmetry. The corrections were so harsh and violent that it was a moment before Gregg realized that the final shock had been the landing legs grounding.

He let go of the stanchion and flexed life back into his left hand. His right biceps had twinges also, from the way he'd clamped the flashgun against his chest.

He gave a broad grin. "Gentlemen," he said, "I can't begin to tell you how glad I am that's over."

For a moment, none of the crewmen spoke. Then Stampfer broke into a grin of his own and said, "Too fucking right, sir!"

Dole got up from the thruster controls. He nodded toward the hatch. "Shall I?"

Gregg switched off the Halys' internal lights. "Just crack it," he ordered. "Enough to check the local conditions. We aren't going anywhere for. . fifteen minutes, that'll let them go back to sleep in the fort."

Dole swung the hatch far enough to provide a twenty-centimeter opening. The six humans instinctively formed a tight arc, shoulder-to-shoulder, to look out. One of the Dalriadans eased the hatch a little farther outward; Gregg didn't object.

Dust blew in. It created yellow swirls in the glow above instrument telltales. The outside light of the fort was a similar blur, scarcely brighter though it was less than a hundred meters away. Gregg couldn't see the docked ships from this angle, but they'd shown no signs of life from above.

Dole covered the breech of his rifle with a rag. Even so, the chance of the second round jamming when he tried to reload was considerable. Gregg consciously avoided checking his laser's battery, because he'd get nonconducting grit on the contacts sure as Satan loved sinners.

Well, even one shot would be too much. If a threat wasn't sufficient, they were going to need a warship's guns; and they didn't have a warship.

"I'll lead," he said, repeating the plan aloud to fill time, his and his men's, rather than because he thought any of them had forgotten it. "They'll be expecting us to register for tariff. ."

The door beneath the light was steel and closed. It didn't open when Gregg pushed the latchplate. He pounded the panel with the heel of his left hand. Nothing happened.

He was terrified, not of death, but of failing so completely that he became a laughingstock for the expedition.

Dole muttered something to John. The Molt reached past Gregg, rapped the latch sharply to clear it of dust, and slammed the panel with the full weight of his body. Chitin rapped against the metal.

The door gave. Gregg pushed it violently inward with his left boot, bringing the flashgun up to his shoulder as he did so.

One of the six Molts in the room beyond had gotten up to deal with the door. He fell flat on the concrete floor when he saw he was looking down a laser's muzzle. The others froze where they sat at the desk they were using as a dining table.

Gregg jumped into the room so that his crew could follow him. "Who else?" he demanded in a harsh whisper. John chittered something in his own language.

A seated Molt pointed toward the inner door. He used only half his limb as though fearing that a broader gesture would leave his carapace blasted across the wall behind him. Things like that happened when the man at the trigger of a flashgun was keyed-up enough.

"One human," John said. "Perhaps asleep." He indicated the ladder through the ceiling. "There's no one in the gun room."

"Stampfer, check it out," Gregg whispered. "One of you, open the door for me."

He slid into position. The door panel was thermoplastic foam with a slick surface coating, no real obstacle. It opened outward.

A Dalriadan touched the handle, well aware that gobs of molten plastic would spray him if the flashgun fired into the panel. He jerked it open as Stampfer and two men clattered up the ladder.

Gregg pivoted in behind his flashgun. His visor was up, despite the risk to his retinas if he had to fire, but even so he couldn't find a target in a room lighted only by what spilled from the chamber behind him.

Something blurred. "What? What?" cried a woman's voice.

Dole found the light switch. A young woman, pig ugly by the standards of anyone who hadn't spent the past month in a male-crewed starship, sat up in a cot that was the only piece of furniture in the room. She looked terrified.

Gregg let out his breath in a sigh of relief that told him just how tense he had been. "Madam," he said, "you'll have to be tied up, but you will not be harmed in any way. You are a prisoner of the Free State of Venus."

"What?" she repeated. She tugged at her sheet. It was caught somewhere and tore. The hem covered her collarbones like a stripper's boa, leaving her breasts and navel bare.

"Tie her, Dole," Gregg said as he turned to leave. "And no problems! We're not animals."

"Of course not, sir," the bosun said. His voice was so meek that Gregg knew he'd been right to be concerned.

"While I go call down Piet and the others," Gregg added to himself. "May God be with them."