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.
HELDENSBURG
July 4, Year 27
2306 hours, Venus time
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.