The Reaches

25

Biruta

If it had been Mostert's ships against the Earth Convoy alone, the Venerians would have ruled Island Able at the end of the fight. Better crews, heavier guns, and the refractory ceramic hulls made the argosy far superior even to Carstensen's warships. The thin-skinned freighters were little better than targets. All of them were gapped and blazing by now.

But possession of the fort was decisive. Its meters-thick walls could withstand the Tolliver's heavy plasma cannon, and the separately-mounted guns could be destroyed only one at a time by direct hits. The only way to take the fort was as the Feds had done, by a sudden infantry assault that ignored casualties. The Venerians had neither the personnel nor a chance of surprise to reverse the situation.

The flagship fired a plasma cannon directly over the Peaches. Men transferring cargo screamed as the iridescent light shadowed the bones through their flesh. Tancred wasn't wearing a helmet. He fell into the featherboat, batting at the orange flames licking from his hair.

The concussion threw Gregg forward. His mouth opened, but his bludgeoned mind couldn't find a curse vile enough for the gunner who fired in a direction where there were no hostile targets.

"Look-" Ricimer said/mouthed, and turned from Gregg to point at the viewscreen's fuzzy panorama.

One of the remotely-controlled water buffalo had lifted from the station at the far end of the island. It slid slowly toward the three surviving Venerian ships, only a few meters above the ground.

The Tolliver fired another 20-cm plasma cannon at the water buffalo. Though the gunport was next to that of the first weapon, the discharge seemed a pale echo of the unexpected previous bolt. At impact, steam blasted a hundred meters in every direction. Moments later the unmanned vessel emerged from the cloud, spewing water from a second huge gap in its bow plating.

The Federation drone was full of seawater, nearly a hundred tonnes of it. Guns that fired at the water buffalo bow-on, even weapons as powerful as those of the Tolliver, could only convert part of that reaction mass to steam. The bolts couldn't reach the thrusters, the only part of the simple vessel that was vulnerable.

The amount of kinetic energy involved in a loaded water buffalo hitting the Tolliver would be comparable to that liberated by a nuclear weapon.

Ricimer bent to put his lips to Gregg's ear and shouted, "Stephen, if I bring us alongside, can you hit a nozzle with-"

"Do it!" Gregg said, turning away as soon as he understood. We'll do what we have to.

Crewmen cursing and shouting for medical attention hunched beneath the roof hatch. Cargo, more than a dozen cases of valuables transferred from the flagship in the minutes before the gun fired overhead, choked the narrow confines. Gregg bulled his way through, treating people and goods with the same ruthless abandon.

If he didn't do his job, it wouldn't matter how badly his fellows had been injured by the ravening ions. If he did do his job, it might not matter anyway. .

The featherboat lifted. Guillermo was alone at the attitude controls. Lightbody must have been one of those flayed by the side-scatter of ions. Nevertheless, the Peaches spun on her vertical axis with a slow grace that belied her short staffing.

The liftship came on like Juggernaut, moving slowly but with an inexorable majesty. It was already within five hundred meters of the Venerian ships. Plasma cannon clawed at one another to the south, but the gunfire was no longer significant to the outcome.

The Peaches pulled away from the flagship. The boarding bridge cracked loose, bits of clamp ricocheting like shrapnel off the featherboat's inner bulkheads. There'd been a few bales of cargo on the walkway, but the crewmen carrying them had either jumped or been flung off when the cannon fired above them.

Gregg aimed, over the barrel of his flashgun rather than through its sights for the moment. He didn't want to focus down too early and miss some crucial aspect of the tableau. He wouldn't get another chance. None of them would get another chance.

The Peaches swung into line with the water buffalo. Leon and Jeude fired their plasma cannon, a dart of light through Gregg's filtered visor. The featherboat's bow lit like a display piece. A line of ionized air bound the two vessels. At the point of impact, a section of steel belly plates became blazing gas.

The drone's thrusters were undamaged.

Gregg felt the Peaches buck beneath him. His bare hands stung from stripped atoms, but he didn't hear the crash of the discharge. His brain began shutting down extraneous senses. Cotton batting swaddled sound. Objects faded to vague flickers beyond the tunnel connecting him to his target.

"Reloads, Mr. Gregg," said a voice that was almost within Gregg's consciousness. Tancred stood beside him in the hatch. He held a battery vertically in his left hand, three more in his right.

The featherboat was on a nearly converging course with the water buffalo. Neither vessel moved at more than 8 kph.

Did the Feds think they were going to ram? That wouldn't work. The heavily laden drone would carry on, locked with the featherboat, and finish the job by driving the Hawkwood into the flagship in a blast that would light a hemisphere of the planet.

Three hundred meters.

Water spurted in great gulps from the drone's bow. The plasma bolts had hit low, so each surge drew a vacuum within the water tank and choked the outflow until air forced its way through the holes.

Two hundred meters. Ricimer's course was nearly a reciprocal of his target's.

The water buffalo sailed on a cloud of plasma from which flew pebbles the thrusters kicked up. The nozzles were white glows within the rainbow ambience of their exhaust.

The Fed controller kept his clumsy vessel within a few meters of the ground. He was very good, but as the Peaches closed he tried to lower the water buffalo still further.

One hundred meters. At this pace, the featherboat would slide ahead of the drone by the thickness of the rust on the steel plating. They would pass starboard-to-starboard.

The water buffalo grazed the shingle, then lifted upward on a surge of reflected thrust. Its eight nozzles were clear ovals with hearts of consuming radiance.

Gregg fired. He was aware both of the contacts closing within the flashgun's trigger mechanism and of the jolt to his shoulder as the weapon released.

The laser bolt touched the rim of the second nozzle back on the starboard side. The asymmetric heating of metal already stressed to its thermal limits blew the nozzle apart.

There was no sound.

Gregg's fingers unlatched the flashgun's butt, flicked out the discharged battery, and snapped in the fresh load. He didn't bother to look at what he was doing. He knew where everything in the necessary universe was.

Tancred shifted another battery into the ready position in his left hand.

The drone's bow dropped, both from loss of the thruster and because the vessel had risen high enough to lose ground effect. It was beginning to slew to starboard.

Fifty meters.

Only the leading nozzles were visible, white dashes alternately rippled and clear as water gushed over the bow just ahead of them. The drone was a curved steel wall, crushing forward relentlessly.

There was no sound or movement. The rim of the starboard nozzle was a line only a centimeter thick at this angle. The sight posts centered on it.

Trigger contacts closed.

The universe rang with light so intense it was palpable. Gunners in the fort had tried desperately to hit the featherboat but not the drone almost in line with it. They missed both, but the jet of plasma ripped less than the height of a man's head above the Peaches.

The water buffalo yawed and nosed in, much as the Rose had done minutes before. At this altitude, the Fed controller couldn't correct for the failure of both thrusters in the same quadrant.

The roar went on forever. Steam drenched the impact site, but bits of white-hot metal from the disintegrating engines sailed in dazzling arcs above the gray cloud.

Piet Ricimer slammed the featherboat's thrusters to full power. Guillermo at the attitude jets rolled the vessel almost onto her port side. The Peaches blasted past to safety as the ruin of the Federation drone crumpled toward her. For a moment, the featherboat was bathed in warm steam that smothered the stench of air burned to plasma.

Gregg didn't lose consciousness. He lay on his back. Someone removed his helmet, but when Lightbody tried to take the flashgun from his hands, Gregg's eyes rotated to track him. Lightbody jumped away.

There were voices. Gregg understood the words, but they didn't touch him.

We're low on reaction mass.

When the cannon's cool enough to reload, we'll choose one of the outlying platforms and top off. They must be down to skeleton crews, with all the force they threw into the attack.

Then?

Then we go back.

Gregg knew that if he moved, he would break into tiny shards; become a pile of sand that would sift down through the crates on which he lay. Hands gentle beneath their calluses rubbed ointment onto his skin. The back of Gregg's neck was raw fire. The pain didn't touch him either.

How is he?

He wasn't hit, but. . take a look, why don't you, sir? I'll con.

Stephen.

"Stephen?"

Everything he had felt for the past ten minutes flooded past the barriers Gregg's brain had set up. His chest arched. He would have screamed except that the convulsion didn't permit him to draw in a breath.

"Oh, God, Piet," he wheezed when the shock left him and the only pain he felt was that of the present moment. "Oh, God."

His fingers relaxed. Lightbody lifted away the flashgun.

"I think," Gregg said carefully, "that you'd better give me more pain blocker."

Piet Ricimer nodded. Without turning his head, Gregg couldn't see which of the crewmen bent and injected something into his right biceps. Turning his head would have hurt too much to be contemplated.

He closed his eyes. Because of where he lay, he couldn't avoid seeing Tancred. The young crewman's body remained in a crouch at the hatchway despite the featherboat's violent maneuvers. The plasma bolt had fused his torso to the coaming.

When the water baked out of Tancred's arms, his contracting muscles drew up as if he were trying to cover his face with his hands. His skeletal grip still held reloads for the laser, but the battery casings had ruptured with the heat.

Tancred's head and neck were gone. Simply gone.