The Reaches Read Online Free Page B

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