The Reaches

37

Umber

The Commandatura basement was divided by concrete walls into a larger and a smaller volume. The former was a jumble of general storage, unsorted and in large measure junk. The smaller room was intended as a vault, but the open door couldn't have been closed until some of the boxes piled around it were removed.

A man in Federation whites cowered against the wall outside the vault. A Dalriadan held a flashlight on him, while another waved a cutting bar close to the prisoner's face. When the Venerian saw Ricimer appear at the foot of the stairs, he triggered the bar. Its whine brought a howl of terror from the captive.

"Stop that," Ricimer ordered sharply.

His brother came out of the vault, holding a handful of loose microchips. "See Piet?" he said, waving his booty through a flashlight's beam. "They're old production here, and it'll take forever to load them with the power out. You! Heathen! Tell my brother about the new stock."

The prisoner had opened his eyes a crack when the cutting bar went off. "Sirs," he whimpered, "the latest production, they're just now being brought across the Mirror. It's only two weeks till the Earth Convoy arrives, so they're being stored in the blockhouse at the head of the tramway."

"Why?" Ricimer demanded. He shook his head to try and clear it. His sight and hearing were both sharp, but all sensory impressions came to him as if from a distance.

"So as not to have to shift it twice, sirs," the prisoner said. His sleeve insignia marked him as a mid-level specialist of some sort, probably a clerk pulling night duty. He'd opened his eyes fully and had even straightened up a little against the wall. "The blockhouse is safe enough for a few days, surely."

"Not now it isn't!" Adrien cried exultantly. "Let's go clear it out now! Right, Piet?"

A Dalriadan crashed down the stairs so quickly that he almost bowled Ricimer out of the way. Guillermo's presence brought him at the last instant to the realization the man with his back to the stairs was his commander.

"Schmitt and Lucius got two of the trucks running, sir!" the man shouted. "The windshield's blown off, but they run. Do we go?"

Ricimer started to shake his head, still trying to clear it. He pressed his hands to his face instead when he realized the gesture would be misinterpreted. He wished he could think. He must have left his rifle on the roof, or was that one of the weapons Guillermo now carried?

"Yes, all right," he said through his hands. "I'll have the second team begin loading these as soon as they can open the Dalriada. I wish-"

He didn't know how he'd meant to finish the sentence.

Adrien and the Dalriadans bolted up the stairs. Ricimer wobbled as he started to follow. He got his stride under control and shook away the Molt's offered hand.

He wished Stephen were here.

Jeude met him at the ground-floor stairhead. "We're getting the navigational data out of the computers, sir," he said, waving a sheaf of flat transfer chips. "Lightbody's finishing up. We got the emergency backup running when the mains power blew. Hey, what was that bang?"

"Leon's dead," Piet Ricimer said inconsequently. "I-you two stay here, finish your work. It's important. We'll be back. Tell-"

He shook his head. "Guillermo, give him the radio. Adrien has one already. Tell Captain Dulcie to put the second team to loading the vault's contents as soon as they can. We're going after purpose-built chips at the, at the tramhead."

"Piet!" Adrien's voice echoed faintly through the wrecked doorway. "Come on if you're coming!"

"We're coming," Piet Ricimer mumbled as he staggered forward. Guillermo paced him. One jointed arm curved about the commander's waist, not touching him but ready to grasp should Ricimer fall.

Jeude watched them with a worried expression.

* * *

As the first truck roared out of the parking lot, a Dalriadan helped lift Piet Ricimer onto the bed of the second while Guillermo lifted him from behind. He was very tired. The truck driver accelerated after Adrien in the leading vehicle. The Molt had to run along behind for a few steps before he could jump aboard.

Though the wind had abated, the lead truck lifted freshly-deposited dust from the street and spun it back in the follower's headlights in a double whorl. The diffused illumination joined them as a bar of opaque yellow.

Occasionally the edges of murky light touched a Molt standing in front of a building, watching the vehicles. Once a human ran out into the street ahead, shouting and waving his arms. He jumped to safety when Adrien's truck didn't slow. The Dalriadan beside Ricimer fired at the sprawling figure but missed.

Instead of being laid out in a straight line, the street to the tramway kinked like a watercourse. The trucks, diesel stake beds, were clumsy, and even the leading driver's visibility was marginal. The modest pace, grinding gears, and frequent jolting direction changes hammered Ricimer into a kind of waking nightmare.

Something changed, but Ricimer wasn't sure what it was. Then he realized the vehicles had pulled up at a line of steel bollards. Beyond the waist-high barrier was a low building with several meters of frontage. One leaf of the front double door was open. The facade was pierced by four loopholes besides.

"Master, are you all right?" someone/Guillermo murmured in Ricimer's ear.

Men jumped out of the trucks. Adrien swung from the cab of the other vehicle and strode to the bollards. Beyond the blockhouse, the Mirror could be sensed but not seen.

"I'm-" Piet Ricimer said. He pitched sideways, off the truck bed. Guillermo tried to grab him but failed.

Ricimer knew that he'd hit the pavement, but he felt no pain. His right leg was cold. The trousers were glued to his skin by blood from the thigh wound that he only noticed now. He couldn't make his limbs move.

A Molt wearing a Federation sash stepped out of the blockhouse. "Halt!" he ordered in Trade English. "Who are you?"

Adrien shot the alien in the head. "C'mon, boys!" he cried. "They're just Molts!"

The wall gun mounted at one of the loopholes fired a 1-kg explosive shell into Adrien's chest. Ricimer saw his brother's body hurled back in a red blast. Adrien's helmet and bits of his shattered breastplate gleamed in the flash of the second gun, which fired from the other side of the door. The round hit a Dalriadan, blowing off both legs and lifting his armored torso several meters in the air.

Guillermo knelt and lifted Piet Ricimer in a fireman's carry. The Molt had discarded his weapons to free both arms.

Rifle bullets pecked craters in the surface of the blockhouse. A Venerian jumped into the cab of the other truck. A shell struck the engine compartment and blew blazing kerosene across the men falling back in confusion. The cannons' muzzle flashes were yellow-orange, brighter than those of the bursting charges.

Guillermo jogged down the dusty street. Only the wall guns were firing. A crewman passed them, screaming, "Jesusjesusjesus!" Ricimer saw the man was missing his right arm.

That was the last thing he noticed before night stooped down on him with yellow pinions.