The Reaches (107 page)

Stephen looked at the burly older man. He'd known Alexi Mostert for more than a decade. Stephen had shipped out to the Reaches for the first time aboard a vessel of the Mostert Trading Company. Though acquaintances rather than friends, they'd been through harsh times together just as Alexi said, in battle and in its aftermath.

"This is official business, isn't it?" Stephen said. "Somebody's afraid that I might kill anybody who was put in charge of the fleet over Piet's head? Yes?"

Behind him, Siddons Mostert choked. Alexi, standing with as much stiff dignity as his build and years allowed, said, "Well, since the question's come up, Gregg—how would you answer it?"

Stephen stared at Mostert. The older man, though obviously frightened, met his gaze. On all Venus, there were only a few men—and one woman—who could have ordered the Mostert brothers to ask the question that Alexi had just put.

"Since I'm being consulted as an expert," Stephen said in a cool, businesslike tone, "let's consider the general situation first. The governor
has
to appoint someone whose ancestors were factors back to before the Collapse. Otherwise every gentleman in the fleet will be squabbling over precedence. We'll kill more of ourselves in duels than we will Feds in battle."

Alexi let out a deep breath, nodding approvingly.

"I'm aware of that, and I'm sure Piet's aware of it," Stephen continued. "And I assure you, Piet wants Federation tyranny broken more than he wants honors for himself"—Stephen grinned coldly—"much though he wants honors for himself."

"And has earned them, nobody more," Siddons Mostert said effusively. "I think there may have been concern that political necessities might have been viewed as an insult to Factor Ricimer, when nothing could be farther from the truth."

A crane traveling in a trackway built into the dock's ceiling rumbled slowly past, carrying a tank of reaction mass. Drops of condensate fell from the outside of the tank like a linear rain shower. One of them plucked Stephen's right cuff.

"You asked me here to have this meeting," Stephen said, looking up at the huge water tank, "because of the armed guards, isn't that right? In case I flew hot and decided to kill you."

"It was my idea," Siddons admitted miserably. "Alexi said it wouldn't make any difference if, if you . . ."

Stephen laughed. "Oh, that's true enough to take to the bank, yes," he said.

Ten meters away, an officer in half armor looked bored. Two sailors chatted with their shotguns leaning against a pile of crates in a cargo net beside them. Stephen could have both guns before the guards realized he was taking them; though it would be much easier to grip a Mostert by the throat in either hand and batter their heads together until there was nothing left to break.

Stephen smiled.

"I've never been unwilling to do my duty to Venus and the governor, Gregg," Alexi Mostert said, standing stiff again. For all the words were as pompous as the old spacer looked in his present pose, they were basically the truth. There'd never been a lack of folk on Venus willing to sacrifice themselves for a cause they thought worthy.

"For what it's worth," Stephen said, nodding to Siddons, "I've never killed anybody just because I was angry. I've killed them for less reason, killed them because they were available and I was putting the fear of God into my general surroundings at the time. But never because I was angry."

"You've always been a loyal citizen of Venus, Mister Gregg," Siddons Mostert said. "Nobody doubts your patriotism."

"I'm not a patriot, Mostert," Stephen said. "Sometimes I've been a friend, though. It can amount to the same thing."

He bowed formally to the brothers. "I'm going to get a drink, since I believe we've covered our business, yes?"

"Yes, that's right," Alexi said. "Ah—we're heading for dinner, Siddons and I. If you'd like to come . . ."

Stephen shook his head, smiling. "Just a drink," he said. His expression shifted, though it would have been hard to say precisely which muscles tensed or slackened to make such a horrible change. "You know," he said, "sometimes I think the only time I'm alive is when I'm killing somebody. Funny, isn't it?"

Siddons Mostert stood with a frozen smile. Alexi, very slowly, shook his head.

The wind across the starport was gusty and strong, but it blew directly from Sal, leaning out of the cabin airlock, to the nearest of the forts. The flag of United Europe, sixteen stars on a green field, was only an occasional flap of bunting from behind the pole.

The fort and the three others like it on the margins of the field each had firing slits and a garrison of fifty or so human soldiers as well as heavy, ship-smashing plasma cannon. The troops looked bored as they watched starships from the walls of the position, but their personal weapons were always nearby.

Those were the sorts of details Sal had learned to consider since she started voyaging beyond Pluto.

"All right, lift her, but
easy
!" Tom Harrigan ordered.

Winches on the
Gallant Sallie
and the port operations lowboy took the first strain together. The ceramic turbine for a city-sized plasma power plant would have been a marginal load for either crane alone, especially at the full extension necessary to transfer it from hold to trailer. When the cables took the weight, the turbine skidded toward the hatchway. Brantling slowly let out slack while the Heldensburg operator reeled the load toward the lowboy at the same rate.

Wueppertal, the operations manager assigned to the
Gallant Sallie,
nodded approvingly from beside Harrigan. "Wueppertal?" Sal called. "What's the word on our return cargo?"

The Heldensburg official looked around and walked closer to the hatch. The turbine was balanced now. Brantling paid out more cable, allowing the other operator to draw the load over the bed of the lowboy.

Wueppertal patted the two-way radio hooked to his belt. "They've located the rest of the chips, Captain," he said. "It was an inventory error, somebody entering two crates when it should have been eleven. We'll have them out to you yet this evening, after we've off-loaded the rest of your cargo."

The microchips Sal was contracted to carry back to Paris Ouest on Earth were newly manufactured on a Near Space colony of the Independent Coastal Republic. Heldensburg produced very little itself, but in the past ten years it had become a major transit point for Near Space trade.

Heldensburg's powerful defenses were an important attraction, but it wasn't only captains concerned about Pleyal's claimed monopoly on trade beyond Pluto who called here. The ship nearest to the
Gallant Sallie
was a Federation vessel. Molt crew members had pulled several attitude jets and were polishing them on a workbench under the desultory supervision of a boyish-looking human officer.

"Do you have many Feds here?" Sal asked, trying to keep the disapproval out of her voice.

Wueppertal waved a hand. "About a third of our traffic," he said. "Look, their credit drafts spend just the same as yours. If we didn't have those guns"—a nod toward the nearby fort—"then I'd worry, sure But we do."

"Yes," Sal said She might have let the subject drop, but she hadn't been sleeping well for too long. "Heldensburg's too tough a nut for Pleyal to crack, now. But if it weren't for the trouble Venus has been causing him these past ten years, he'd have crushed you all like bugs before you got properly settled."

The turbine settled onto the lowboy. The trailer's suspension compressed a good 10 centimeters before the winch cables slackened.

A spherical 600-tonne merchantman was discharging grain into a series of hopper cars. From details of its design, Sal guessed the vessel was from the Federation. The Feds were drawn here by the variety of available cargoes, just as the other traders were. The fact that those cargoes depended on plasma cannon to keep President Pleyal's warships away was an irony of human existence.

"Oh, there's something to be said for a guy like Pleyal," Wueppertal said with the same tone of almost-challenge that Sal had heard in her own voice. "He knows what order is and he's not afraid to enforce it. Commandant La Fouche said just last week in staff meeting that there's other places that could use a little discipline of the sort."

"We'll give Pleyal discipline, all right," Tom Harrigan said, wandering over to the forward hatch now that the loading operation was complete. "He'll try to clamp down on Venus, and we'll go through his fleet like shit through a goose."

"You think that?" Wueppertal said. He was a smallish man, dark-haired but with brilliant blue eyes.

"I know that," the mate said. "Why, the man who owns this ship, Mister Gregg—that's
Stephen
Gregg, Wueppertal—"

"Co-owns the
Gallant Sallie,
Harrigan," Sal said in a crisp voice.

"Sure, co-owns," Harrigan agreed. "I've seen him clear a Fed warship single-handed—and that in a Fed port! And brought us back rich, too. Why, there's Dock Street ladies who bought country seats from what they made off sailors come back from Winnipeg and Callisto!"

Sal thought of the slaughter, of the columns of smoke rising from Winnipeg Spaceport as the
Gallant Sallie
lifted. She didn't say anything to the men standing below her.

Wueppertal's eyes narrowed. "You know Colonel Gregg?" he said.

Tom Harrigan nodded. "Let me tell you," he said. "When we hopped the
Moll Dane
into the military port at Winnipeg, Mister Gregg was as close to me as you are now. Captain Blythe was piloting"—Wueppertal's eyes followed Tom's nod under a frown of disbelief—"and Mister Gregg was right there with us, and Factor Ricimer too. Don't I have the scars?"

Harrigan bent his head and ran an index finger over the ridged pink-and-white keloid on his scalp. He straightened and continued forcefully, "Listen! When it comes to real war, we'll whip the Feds right back to Montreal, and we'll do it because God's on our side. Factor Ricimer preaches God like nobody you've heard in chapel of a Sunday, and Mister Gregg—he's the Wrath of God, he is!"

Sal thought of the Stephen Gregg she knew. Her eyes were on the distant horizon, and her expression was as hard as cast iron.

The stevedores had completed tying the turbine firmly onto the trailer bed. One of the men called, "Hey, Hymie!" and waved to Wueppertal. "You want us to go on back now?"

Wueppertal said, "Hang on, I'll ride with you!" To Harrigan and Sal he added, "I'll make sure they've got the chips ready to go. The sort of screwups they got running Warehouse Four, they're as likely to be piling more crates on top of yours as they are to be loading them onto trucks."

Harrigan sat on the topmost of the three steps from the hatch to the ground, watching the tractor and lowboy head toward the complex of low warehouses west of the field. "Paris and then home, Sal?" he asked.

Sal shrugged. The gesture was pointless since the mate wasn't looking at her. "Maybe home," she said. "There may be a load of desalinization equipment ready for carriage to Drottingholm. Europe and the Coasties have set up a joint colony there."

A starship was landing almost precisely in line with the morning sun. Harrigan took a filter from his breast pocket and used it to view the ship through the double glare. "A big one," he remarked idly. "Shouldn't wonder if it was another Fed."

He turned his head to look up at Sal. "We've been lucky with cargoes, you know," he said. "Short layovers and almost never lifting empty. Sure a change from the old days."

"It's a change, but it's not luck," Sal replied sharply. "Mister Gregg's making the arrangements. Balancing cargoes, setting up credit lines—judging who'll need something and who can pay for it."

She flicked an index finger in the direction of the lowboy, now halfway to the warehouses. "These power plants. Stephen—Mister Gregg—he set up the whole deal. All the principals had to do was sign the agreement he offered them! We're getting the haulage fees, but buyer and seller both are gaining a lot more from the deal than we are."

"Who'd have thought it?" Harrigan said. "A man like Mister Gregg, and he's a merchant besides!"

The thrusters of the ship in its landing approach braked at maximum output, bellowing across the starport at a level that forbade speech.

Who would have thought it?
Gregg of Weyston was one of the largest intrasystem shippers on Venus. It shouldn't surprise anyone that his nephew would have an equal flair for the complexities of trade.

It wouldn't have surprised those who knew Stephen Gregg before he first voyaged to the Reaches and defeated everything he found there except his own human soul.

And very nearly his soul as well.

Originally Dock Street had been the route by which starships were hauled between the transfer docks, whose domes slid open for takeoffs and landings, and the storage docks where vessels were refitted between voyages. New routes and docks had been built to suit the ever-larger ships operating from Betaport, but Dock Street remained a broad, high-roofed corridor and the center of nautical affairs in a city built on star travel.

Guild marshals were trying to keep the crowd back from the red carpet laid for the occasion. They had their work cut out for them, especially here near the train station where the dignitaries were gathered. The station itself was ringed by men who were something more than an "honor" guard: the
Wrath
's B Watch close-combat team. Today the Wraths carried batons rather than shotguns and cutting bars, but Dole had told them what they could expect if anybody jostled Commander Bruckshaw.

Dole saw Stephen blocked by a press of citizens who'd overwhelmed the guild marshals. "Make a path for Mister Gregg, you whoresons!" the bosun shouted.

Stephen forced a smile. He was as tense as a trigger with only the last gram of take-up remaining. He'd been raised in Eryx, his family's small keep on the Atalanta Plains. Space was at a premium, but there weren't enough people in the entire community to constitute a crowd by Betaport standards.