David Drake - Reaches 02 by Through the Breach

Author:Through the Breach [Breach, Through the]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

NEW VENUS

Day 140

The planet was uncharted. Piet had located it at a good time. The last day of the run, we’d used personal oxygen bottles because a patch had cracked badly.

I didn’t have enough energy to run out with the others as soon as the ramp lowered. I sat in the hold on a pallet of chips, far enough back that the heat still radiating from the glazed soil didn’t bother me. The naming ceremony on the lakeside was over, and the crowd of relaxed sailors was breaking up.

At the base of the ramp, ten men under Salomon argued bitterly among themselves about the hoses we’d taken fromOur Lady of Montreal to replace the set damaged when we fled Templeton. The Federation equipment was the correct diameter, but both ends of the hoses had male connectors—as did the fittings of our water tanks. We’d have to make couplers to use the hoses. That job could have been done during the long run from Quincy if anybody’d noticed the problem before.

I got up very carefully and walked down the ramp. I’d be in the way if I stayed in the hold. Salomon would have enough problems doing shop work without offloading the treasure first.

The chips had come cheap enough, I suppose. Three dead, only two wounded. The Feds hadn’t been equipped to deal with our hard suits. Smetana had lost his leg—stupidly—by getting it caught in the mechanism of theMontreal‘s cargo lift. My wound was pretty stupid too.

The men fell silent as I walked past them. “Good to see you, Mister Moore,” Salomon said formally. I gave him a deliberate nod.

The story’d gotten around. More than the story, the way it usually happens. The men seemed to think I was a hero./ thought—

The soldier’s face dissolving in a red spray as I rammed my bar through her teeth and palate, then jerked the blade sideways.

I tried not to think at all, and it didn’t help.

Piet, Stephen, and Guillermo were chatting at the lakeside. I joined them. Nearby, men had started laying out the temporary houses they’d live in while we were on New Venus.

“Feeling better, Jeremy?” Stephen asked to welcome my presence.

“I’m all right,” I said. “Just tired. You know, the bruises I got from the back of my breastplate when the bullet hit me are worse than the little shot holes.”

I waggled my left hand in the direction of where Rakoscy had removed the buckshot. I could move my arms well enough, but it still hurt to twist my torso.

“And if Rakoscy hadn’t clamped off the vein those shots punctured,” Piet said with a cold smile, “you wouldn’t have felt any pain at all from your ribs. I hope the next time you’ll remember you have nothing to prove. Nor did you on Quincy.”

I shook my head. Shrugging was another thing I had to avoid. “It just happened,” I said. “I wasn’t trying .

I wasn’t human when it happened. I didn’t want to say that. “The ground cover doesn’t have a root

structure to bind turf,” I said.

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