He glanced down at the navigator in the couch to his left. "Mister Salomon, you'll command the Oriflamme in my absence. We'll rendezvous, the Oriflamme and my prize, at St. Lawrence. I don't believe there's any reason to proceed there in company."
Salomon nodded. Men were tugging their beards, rubbing palms together-a score of individual tricks for dealing with tension. I kept clearing my throat, trying not to make a noise that would disturb the others.
"All right," said Piet. "Stephen, you and I will get together and decide on personnel. When we've done that, then we'll go over tactics. I'd like the rest of you to vacate the compartment for a time, please, so that we can organize the raid."
His eyes met mine. "Not the people already told off for the mission, of course."
Crewmen drifted toward the passageway aft. Dole and Stampfer waited grimly. They obviously weren't about to leave unless they got a direct personal order to do so. I doubted Piet would push the point. You want your most aggressive men on a project like this.
I shoved off carefully and caught the stanchion to which Stephen was anchored. "Didn't want me along?" I said very softly.
Stephen shrugged. He didn't look at me. "I don't much want Piet risking his neck by leading this one," he said in a similar voice. "But there wasn't a prayer he'd listen if I said that."
He gave me a broad smile. "I'm responsible for you, Jeremy," he said in a bantering tone. "I brought you aboard."
"Then remember I'm a member of this crew," I said. "And a gentleman of Venus!"
The compartment had cleared except for the officers and two petty officers. "Stephen?" Piet called. "Jeremy?"
"Oh, I won't forget that, Jeremy," Stephen said. He directed himself with an index finger toward the consoles at the bow. "Nor, I think, will our enemies, hey?"
RIEL
Day 312
Our outer hull pinged as it slowly cooled. The pilot's screen was coarse-grained and only hinted at our surroundings. Besides, with fourteen men packed onto a cutter, there were too many heads and torsos in the way for me to see more than an occasional corner.
"Hell," said Winger. "With all the chips we're carrying, it'd be easier to buy the engine hardware."
"This'll be easy enough," Stephen replied in his chilling singsong. "It always has been in the past. Dead easy."
No one spoke for a moment. Our harsh breathing sounded like static on a radio tuned to open air.
"All right," Piet said decisively. "Commandatura team and Guillermo first, we others wait five minutes. I don't want anyone to notice just how full this cutter is."
Dole and Lightbody undogged the hatch, though the bosun would go with Piet to capture the ship that Guillermo picked. Fourteen men weren't many to operate a starship of a hundred tonnes or more, so Piet had picked the most efficient members of the Oriflamme's crew.
Stephen was the first out, jumping lightly to the ground. Under ordinary circumstances, Stephen seemed a little clumsy. Now, and at previous times like this, he moved with a dancer's grace.
"Hand me the crate," he ordered bleakly. Lightbody and I, seated on the hatch coaming, swung the chest of weapons into Stephen's waiting hands. He didn't appear to notice weight that had made the pair of us grunt.
I hadn't missed anything for being unable to see the vision screen. Piet had brought us down at the north end of the field, some distance from the river. The cutter was tucked in between a freighter that was either deadlined or abandoned-several of her hull plates were missing-and a water buffalo, a tanker that hauled air and reaction mass to orbiting vessels too large or ill-found to land normally.
Neither of our neighbors was lighted. There was no likelihood of anybody noticing that the cutter's sheen was that of hard-used ceramic, not metal.
We hopped down from the hatch. Guillermo was the last out. A Molt who disembarked from a Fed vessel ahead of humans would be whipped to death for his presumption.
Guillermo skulked away from us, heading toward a large freighter in the second row back from the river. A gang of Molt laborers was carrying cargo aboard from high-wheeled hand trucks.
"Take it easy, stay together, and ignore the other people out on the streets tonight," Stephen said. His eyes passed over us, but they didn't appear to light anywhere. "If we do our jobs, there won't be a bit of excitement. That's the way we want it."
A dead man wouldn't have spoken with less emotion.
We set off toward the Commandatura, three short blocks beyond the inland side of the field. Kiley and Lightbody carried the packing crate. We wore a mix of garments picked up on Federation planets, exactly like the crews of ships in Back Worlds' trade. None of the men or Molts on errands about nearby vessels gave us more than a passing glance.
The port was fenced off from the town of Corpus Christi. The pivoting gate was open, and the Molts in the guard shack were eating some stringy form of rations. Nearby was a gunpit. The multitube laser there was also crewed by Molts.
The street cutting the chord of the riverbend was paved. We sprinted to avoid a truck whose howling turbogenerator powered hub-center electric motors in all six wheels. A Molt drove the vehicle, but he was obviously under the direction of the man on the seat beside him. The human waved a bottle out his side window and jeered us.
"Wait a little, buddy," Kiley said. He was breathing hard because of the load of weapons. "Just you wait. ."
The street leading directly to the Commandatura was paved also and lighted. Stephen, walking with the stiff-legged gait of a big dog on unfamiliar territory, led us down one of the parallel alleys instead.
Buildings in this part of Corpus Christi were wooden and raised a meter above the ground on stilts. Individual structures had porches, but they weren't connected into a continuous boardwalk between adjacent buildings. We walked in the street itself, one more group among the sailors and garrison personnel.
If the town had a sewer system, it'd backed up during some recent high water. Enough light came from the signs and screened windows of the taverns for us to avoid large chunks of rubbish. Vehicular traffic disposed of most of the waste by grinding it into the mud in a fetid, gooey mass. The air was hot and still, and insects whined.
A flung chair tore through the screen of a building we'd passed. Inside, a shot thumped. My right hand reached for the cutting bar that I didn't have.
"Keep moving!" Stephen ordered without raising his voice.
"Yellowknife! Yellowknife!" men shouted in unison above a rumble of generalized rage. Crewmen from the warship were fighting with port personnel, nothing for us to worry about.
My right hand clenched and unclenched in sweaty desperation. Bells rang. A van tore past, towing a trailer with barred sides and top. We walked on.
The Commandatura was a two-story masonry building with an arching facade that added another half story. It stood on a low mound, but floodwater had risen a meter up the stonework at some point in the past. A double staircase led to the lighted front door on the second story. Constabulary was painted in large letters on the wall above the street-level entrance on the side.
There were twenty steps from the street to the Commandatura's front door. Originally there'd been a park in front of the building, but it was full of rubbish now. The governor and folk of quality wouldn't spend enough time here to make the effort of beautifying it worthwhile.
The door was unlocked. Stephen entered. I gestured Kiley and Lightbody in ahead of me, then helped them snatch open the lid of the crate of weapons. The feel of my cutting bar was like a drink of water in a desert.