Gregg chuckled. "There wasn't any," he said.
"You're telling me!" Ricimer agreed.
He turned to the sailors. Two were still in the boat, while the others huddled unhappily in the vessel's shadow. Venerians weren't used to open skies. Gregg was uncomfortable himself, but his honor as a gentleman—and Piet Ricimer's apparent imperturbability—prevented him from showing his fear.
"The rest of you stay here with the boat," Ricimer ordered. "Chances are, the captain'll want us to ferry him closer to the Southern compound. There's no point in doing anything until we know what the plan is."
"Aye-aye," Leon muttered for the crew. The bosun was as obviously glad as the remainder of the crew that he didn't have to cross the empty expanse.
"And keep a watch," Ricimer added. "Just because we don't see much here—"
He gestured. Except for the Venerian ships—the crews of the
Sultan
and
Dove
were unloading ground vehicles—there was nothing between the boat and the horizon except rocky hummocks of brush separated by sparse growths of a plant similar to grass.
"—doesn't mean that there isn't something around that thinks we're dinner. Besides, Molts can be dangerous, and you know the Southern Cross government in Buenos Aires doesn't want us to trade on the worlds it claims."
"Let them Southerns just try something!" Tancred said. The boy got up and stalked purposefully around to the other side of the boat, from where he could see the rest of the surroundings.
Gregg and Ricimer set out for the flagship. The dust of landing had settled, but reaction mass exhausted as plasma had ignited patches of scrub. The fires gave off bitter smoke.
"Do you think there's really anything dangerous around here?" Gregg asked curiously.
Ricimer shrugged. "I doubt it," he said. "But I don't know anything about Salute." He stared at the white sky. "If this really
is
Salute."
From above, the landscape appeared flat and featureless. The hummocks were three or four meters high, lifted from the ground on the plateaus of dirt which clung to the roots of woody scrub. Sometimes they hid even the
Sultan
's 300-tonne bulk from the pair on foot.
The bushes were brown, leafless, and seemingly as dead as the gravel beneath. Gregg saw no sign of animal life whatever.
"How do you think the Southerns are going to react?" Ricimer asked suddenly.
Gregg snorted. "They can claim the Administration of Humanity gave them sole rights to this region if they like. The Administration didn't do a damned thing for the Gregg family after the Collapse, when we could've used some help—didn't do a damned thing—"
"Don't swear," Ricimer said sharply. "God hears us here also."
Gregg grimaced. In a softer tone, he continued, "Nobody but God and Venus helped Venus during the Collapse. The Administration isn't going to tell us where in God's universe we can trade now."
Ricimer nodded. He flashed his companion a brief grin to take away the sting of his previous rebuke. Factorial families were notoriously loose about their language; though the same was true of most sailors as well.
"But what will the Southerns
do,
do you think?" Ricimer asked in a mild voice.
"They'll trade with us," Gregg said flatly. He shifted his grip on the flashgun. It was an awkward weapon to carry for any distance. The fat barrel made it muzzle-heavy and difficult to sling. "Just as the colonies of the North American Federation will trade with us when we carry the Molts to them. The people out in the Reaches, they need the trade, whatever politics are back in the solar system."
"Anyway," Ricimer said in partial agreement, "the Southerns can't possibly have enough strength here to give us a hard time. We've got almost two hundred men."
Choransky's crew had uncrated the three stake-bed trucks carried in the
Sultan
's forward hold. Two of them were running. As Ricimer and Gregg approached, the smoky rotary engine of the third vibrated into life. Armed crewmen, many of them wearing full or partial body armor, clambered aboard.
Captain Choransky stood up in the open cab of the leading vehicle. "There you are, Ricimer!" he called over the head of his driver. "We're off to load our ships. You and Mr. Gregg can come along if you can find room."
The truck bed was full of men, and the other two would be packed before the young officers could reach them. Without hesitation, Ricimer gripped a cleat and hauled himself onto the outside of Choransky's vehicle. His boot toes thrust between the stakes which he held with one hand. He reached down with the other hand to help Gregg into a similarly precarious position, just as the truck accelerated away.
Gregg wondered what he would have done if Ricimer hadn't extended a hand, certain that his companion wanted to come despite the risk. Gregg didn't worry about his own courage—but he preferred to act deliberately rather than at the spur of the moment.
He looked over his shoulder. The
Sultan
's other two trucks were right behind them, but the
Dove
's crew were still setting up the vehicle they'd unloaded. The
Preakness
was just opening her single hatch.
"Shouldn't we have gotten organized first?" Gregg shouted into Ricimer's ear over the wind noise.
Ricimer shrugged, but he was frowning.
The general rise in the lumpy terrain was imperceptible, but when the trucks jounced onto a crest, Gregg found he could look sharply
down
at the ships three kilometers behind him—
And, in the other direction, at the compound. Neither of the Southern vessels was as big as the
Preakness,
the lightest of Choransky's argosy. The installation itself consisted of a pair of orange, prefabricated buildings and a sprawling area set off by metal fencing several meters high. The fence twinkled as it incinerated scraps of vegetation which blew against it.
There was no sign of humans. Squat, mauve-colored figures watched the Venerians from inside the fence: Molts, over a hundred of them.
Captain Choransky stood up in his seat again, aiming his rifle skyward in one hand. The truck rumbled over the crest, gaining speed as it went.
"Here we go, boys!" Choransky bellowed. His shot cracked flatly across the barren distances.
A dozen other crewmen fired. Dust puffed just short of the orange buildings, indicating that at least one of the men wasn't aiming at the empty heavens.
"What are we doing?" Gregg shouted to Ricimer. "Is this an attack? What's happening?"
Ricimer cross-stepped along the stakes and leaned toward the cab. "Captain Choransky!" he said. "We're not at war with the Southern Cross, are we?"
The captain turned with a startled expression replacing his glee. "War, boy?" he said. "There's no peace beyond Pluto! Don't you know anything?"
Choransky's truck pulled up between the two buildings. Gregg squeezed hard to keep from losing his grip either on the vehicle or the heavy flashgun which inertia tried to drag out of the hand he could spare for it. The second truck almost skidded into theirs in a cloud of stinging grit. The third stopped near the Southern starships.
Gregg jumped down, glad to be on firm ground again. The smaller building was a barracks. Sliding doors and no windows marked the larger as a warehouse.
Gregg ran toward the warehouse, his flashgun ready. Ricimer was just ahead of him. They were spurred by events, even though neither of them was sure what was going on.
Ricimer twisted the latch of the small personnel door in the slider. It wasn't locked.
The warehouse lights were on. The interior was almost empty. A man in bright clothing lay facedown on the concrete floor with his hands clasped behind his neck. "I surrender!" he bleated. "I'm not armed! Don't hurt—"
Gregg gripped the Southern by the shoulder. "Come on, get up," he said. "Nobody's going to hurt you."
"I got one!" cried the spacer who pushed into the warehouse behind Gregg. He waved his cutting bar toward the prisoner.
Ricimer used his rifle muzzle to prod the blade aside as he stepped in front of the Venerian. "
Our
prisoner, I think, sailor," he said. "And take off your cap when you address officers!"
The man stumbled backward into the group following him. One of the newcomers was Platt, another member of Choransky's command group. Platt wore a helmet with the faceshield raised. In addition, he carried a revolving pistol belted on over body armor.
"Who else is here?" Gregg asked the Southern he held. He spoke in English, the language of trade—and the tongue in which the fellow had begged for mercy.
"What's going on?" Platt demanded.
Ricimer shushed him curtly. He stood protectively between Gregg and the newcomers, but his face was turned to catch the Southern's answers.
"Nobody, nobody!" the prisoner said. "I was in here—all right, I was asleep. I heard a ship landing, I thought it was, so I went out and all the bastards had run away and left me! All of them! Taken the trucks and what was I supposed to do? Defend the compound?"
"Why didn't you defend the compound?" Gregg asked. "I mean, all of you. There's the crews of those two ships as well as the staff here."
Around them, Platt and a score of other Venerians were poking among bales of trade goods, mostly synthetic fabrics and metal containers. The warehouse was spacious enough to hold twenty times the amount of merchandise present.
"Defend?" the Southern sputtered. He was a small man, as dark as Ricimer, with a face that hadn't been prepossessing before a disease had pocked it. "With what, half a dozen rifles? And there wasn't but ten of us all told. The local Molts bring us prisoners and we buy them. We aren't soldiers."
"We should've landed right here in the valley," said Platt, who'd drifted close enough to hear the comment. "Cap'n Choransky was too afraid of taking a plasma charge up the bum while we hovered to do that, though."
"And so would you be if you had the sense God gave a goose!" boomed Choransky himself as he strode into the warehouse. "You got a prisoner, Mr. Gregg? Good work. There wasn't anybody in the house."
The captain rubbed his cheek with the knuckles of his right hand, in which he held his rifle. "Like a pigsty, that place."
"He says his fellows drove off in a panic and left him when they heard the ships landing, sir," Ricimer said.
Choransky stepped closer to the prisoner. "Where's the rest of your stock?" he asked.
"You can't just come and take—" the Southern began.
Choransky punched him, again using his right hand with the rifle. The prisoner sprawled backward on the concrete. His lip bled, and there was a livid mark at the hairline where the fore-end struck him.
"We've got pretty much a full load," the Southern said in a flat voice from the floor. He was staring at the toes of his boots.
He touched the cut in his lip with his tongue, then continued, "There's a freighter due in a week or so. The ships out there, they don't have transit capability. The freighter, it stays in orbit. We ferry up air, reaction mass, and cargo and bring down the food and trade goods."
Choransky nodded. "Maybe we'll use them to ferry the water over and top off our reaction mass. Those ships, they've got pumps to load water themselves?"
"Yes," the Southern muttered to his toes.
Platt kicked the side of the prisoner's head, not hard. "Say 'sir' when you talk to the captain, dog!"
"Yes sir, Captain," the Southern said.
"All right," Choransky said as he turned to leave the warehouse. "Platt, get the Molts organized and march them to the ships. Ricimer, you think you're a whiz with thrusters, you see if you can get one of those Southern boats working. I'll tell Baltasar to put an officer and crew from the
Dove
in the other."
He strode out the door. Platt followed him, and the rest of the spacers began to drift along in their wake.
"Right," said Ricimer. He counted off the six nearest men with pecks of his index finger. "You lot, come along with me and Mr. Gregg. I'm going to show people how to make a ship hover on thrust."
He shooed them toward the doorway ahead of him with both arms. The chosen crewmen scowled or didn't, depending on temperament, but no one questioned the order.
"You don't mind, do you?" Ricimer murmured to Gregg as they stepped out under an open sky again. "They haven't worked with me before. You won't have to do anything, but I'd like a little extra authority present."
"Glad to help," Gregg said. He looked at his left hand. He'd managed to bark the knuckles badly during the wild ride to the compound. "Besides, I wasn't looking forward to those trucks again."
Ricimer chuckled. His dark, animated face settled. Without looking at his companion, he said, "What do you think about all this, anyway? The way we're dealing with the Southerns."
Gregg glanced around while he framed a reply. Venerians had unlocked the gate in the electrified fence and were herding out the Molts. Some crewmen waved their weapons, but that seemed unnecessary. The Molts were perfectly docile.
The wedge-faced humanoids were a little shorter than the human average. Most of them were slightly built, but a few had double the bulk of the norm. Gregg wondered whether that was a sexual distinction or some more esoteric specialization.
Viewed up close, many of the Molts bore dark scars on their waxy, purplish exoskeletons. A few were missing arms, and more lacked one or more of the trio of multijointed fingers that formed a normal "hand."
"I'm my uncle's agent," Gregg said at last. "And I can tell you, nothing bothers my Uncle Ben if there's profit in it. Which there certainly is here."
Ricimer nodded. "I'm second cousin to the Mosterts," he said.
One of the crewmen he'd dragooned showed enough initiative to run ahead and find the hatch mechanism of the nearer ship. It sighed open.
"Really, now," Ricimer added with a grin to his companion. "Though what I said about a factorial family, there's evidence."
Gregg laughed.
"All three ships are Alexi Mostert's," Ricimer continued. "In the past, my cousin's made the voyage himself, though he sent Choransky out in charge this time. I'm sure this is how Alexi conducted the business too."