Lightbody was driving a spaceport truck, obviously rented by means of a bribe to the right official. The guns and cutting bars that the rescue party hadn't wanted to display unless necessary were in the cab with him. Nobody came out of the tavern as the vehicle pulled away.
"Thanks, Sal," Stephen said softly.
"My pleasure," she replied in a neutral voice. "Much more pleasure than dealing with Dan Lasky this afternoon."
The truck jounced over potholes in the dirt street. At every corner hung one or more giant portraits of President Pleyal. Some of the pictures had been defaced with paint.
"Lasky's ship, the Moll Dane," Piet said, speaking over the rattle of the truck's suspension. "Is it a well-found vessel, Captain Blythe?"
Sal looked at him. Her face was shadowed, but puzzlement was evident in her voice as she said, "Not particularly. Why?"
"That's good," Piet said. "We don't have the authority to take a Venerian vessel prize when we return here. I certainly don't intend to leave the Moll Dane in the present hands, but I'd hate to destroy a really trim ship."
He smiled. For a moment, Stephen felt that he might have been looking into a mirror.
EARTH APPROACHES
April 16, Year 27
0120 hours, Venus time
"God's love, that's a sharp image!" Tom Harrigan said as he hung in the air behind Sal at the navigation console, watching the remote display transmitted from the New Year's Gift. "If I was looking out the hatch, it wouldn't be that clear!"
The guardship at the orbital window for Winnipeg grew slowly on the screen as the New Year's Gift maneuvered carefully closer to the expectant Feds. The guardship's four cannon were run out, but her crew didn't go through the charade of aiming the guns at yet another intrasystem merchantman with a cargo for Winnipeg.
The squadron had captured the New Year's Gift at Berryhill on January 1. The vessel was metal and responded to the guardship's hail as the Mary of Vancouver with a cargo of forgings from the Asteroid Belt for Winnipeg. There was nothing about the ship or the situation to rouse the inspectors from their boredom.
"The imagery from when we scouted Winnipeg is still in the database," Sal explained. "The AI uses that data to sharpen the details we get from the New Year's Gift. Our optronics now are. . We have as good a system as any ship in the squadron, the Wrath included."
She touched a control. The display switched from enhanced visuals of the guardship to a scene including both the guardship and the New Year's Gift as the latter approached for inspection. The image of the Venerian vessel was entirely computer-modeled from the Gallant Sallie's database.
Sal's whole crew hung in the cabin, using the freedom of weightlessness to position themselves so that everybody had a view of the display. They could get to their duty stations within five seconds. Unless and until the New Year's Gift carried out her mission, the rest of the squadron had no duty to perform.
Piet had divided his vessels between the thirteen that would stay in Earth orbit to prevent the Feds from reinforcing Winnipeg from space, and the twelve ships that would actually land in the port. The Gallant Sallie was in the latter group, but because of her excellent controls, she would land last.
Piet knew Sal would set down within meters of the planned landing spot-not on top of a ship that had landed a few minutes earlier. Some of the larger freighters might in the confusion come down almost anywhere.
"Amazing," Harrigan whispered.
"Cost more than the hull, I shouldn't doubt," said Godden. He'd been assigned to serve as the Gallant Sallie's gunner during the operation. All the ships landing at Winnipeg carried their regular batteries, despite the fact the guns diminished space that could be given over to loot. Even more than the recent voyage to the Reaches, this raid was a military rather than commercial operation.
"Too right it did," Brantling said. "My cousin's the assistant manager at Torrington's Chandlery. He says because it was Mister Gregg buying, Old Man Torrington did the work at cost. Even then it was more than he'd ever heard being spent on a ship this old."
Sal looked back at Brantling. She hadn't known the details. Stephen had listed the equipment at invoice price rather than at its much higher fair market value.
"Keep your fingers crossed," Tom Harrigan said softly.
The images of the guardship and the New Year's Gift were almost touching as they prepared for external inspection. The two oversized gunports in the Gift's cargo bay swung open on the side opposite the guardship.
"The scantlings of a tin can like that'll never take the shock of twenty-centimeter guns," Godden muttered disapprovingly. "They'll shake her apart."
Steam puffed from the attitude jets of the New Year's Gift. The vessel began to rotate slowly on her axis.
"She doesn't have to survive any longer than it takes to fire two shots," Sal said. She gripped the edge of her keyboard as if it were all that prevented her from dropping over a chasm. "Or even one, if things work out as they ought."
She touched a control. She'd been tempted to display the view that the guardship's crew would have in their last moments of life: the merchantman turning with a slight wobble on her axis; the meter-square hatches open, nonstandard and puzzling, but not a sign of danger. At the final instant, the devouring flash of a 20-cm plasma charge ripping into the guardship before anyone could send a warning to Earth.
Instead, Sal returned the image to the Gift-transmitted realtime view of the guardship. Every seam, every rust stain was evident in the enhanced image.
"Firing without running the guns out. ." Godden said. The gunner was speaking aloud but to himself. "I know, so the Feds don't see what's coming, but the side-scatter'll blow plates off the hull."
The central half of the guardship exploded in rainbow coruscance. An instant later another heavy plasma bolt vanished into the swelling chaos created by the first. The extreme bow and stern of the guardship spun away from the glowing gas cloud. There could be no one alive in either section.
"Prepare for transit," Sal said in a cool, gray voice. Her crew was already taking its stations.
The Wrath transited into the orbital window under Piet Ricimer's usual flawless navigation. The big warship began braking for reentry at once. If all went well, in a matter of minutes Stephen Gregg would be leading his band against the Fed guns.
Sal watched the Wrath shrink as the warship dropped away from the New Year's Gift. Her heart shrank with the image.
WINNIPEG SPACEPORT, EARTH
April 16, Year 27
0142 hours, Venus time
Because the Wrath was designed by men who'd done all the jobs on starships in war and peace, the vessel had visual displays in its boarding holds. On merchant ships used for war service, men waiting in the holds in hard suits to attack were as blind as sausages in a can. They had to guess the ship's status from the shocks and bumps: braking thrust, atmospheric turbulence because the guns had been run out; and always at the backs of their minds was the fear that any particular jolt might have been the plasma bolt that would cause the overstressed hull to crumble about them.
Nobody who'd experienced that blind helplessness thought it was beneficial to men preparing for combat, so the Wrath had a medium-resolution visual display in both of her boarding holds. Stephen Gregg, twenty-five soldiers under Major Cardiff as second in command, and half the men of the B Watch close-combat team could watch flat prairie galloping closer through a veil of exhaust plasma and the friction-heated glare of the warship's rapid descent.