David Drake: Patriots

That was true. The court echoed with people calling to one another. Most of the raiders were donning rain gear to splash outside in search of food and drink more interesting than the rations they'd brought from Greenwood.

"Of course," said Finch. "I've noticed that you're very scrupulously recording events as they occur?"

Amy nodded. "Yes I am," she said. "And I have no intention of wiping any image at the request of someone who doesn't care for the way it makes him look."

"Not that," Finch said. "Not at all. But what I would like, and what I'd be willing to pay very well for, would be copies of recordings of my actions during the raid to come. Particularly images that might show me involved in-"

He looked around to see where his rival, Mayor Biber, was. Biber was talking to Yerby and the husky local who owned the truck that three of the expedition's better mechanics were trying to put in running order.

"-the sort of heroic actions that would interest voters in a political campaign on Zenith," Finch went on in a still lower voice. "In return, besides paying you, I would be very supportive of your planet's independence from Zenith. One hand washes the other, as the saying goes."

He winked.

"I'll see what can be arranged, Vice-Protector," Amy said. "No promises, but-we'll see."

It wasn't an offer a Greenwood patriot could afford to reject, Mark knew; but he hadn't trusted Finch before and now he really didn't trust the man. Listening to the Vice-Protector planning to turn a dangerous, maybe bloody, raid into political capital made Mark want to wash all over, not just his hands…

The land ahead loomed out of the sea's soft phosphorescence. "See?" Yerby crowed. "Didn't I tell you we'd be OK? I don't need a compass, I got a natural compass in my head!"

"It was monstrously irresponsible to leave before navigational aids were installed in this vehicle!" Berkeley Finch said. "I didn't dream that you were considering such a thing!"

"You were welcome to stay at the spaceport, Colonel," Amy said.

"Naw, Finchie," Yerby said. "I knew I could find Minor. It'd have been a lot riskier to wait around the port, looking for a radiocompass that maybe we wouldn't find anyhow."

"And have the Alliance reinforcements arrive early while we were cooling our heels," Mark put in. "On the frontier, we learn to make do."

He was talking as if he'd been raised in a log cabin instead of conditions of luxury as civilized as those of the Vice-Protector himself. The past months had changed Mark, though. He hadn't blinked when Yerby announced that he'd need to eyeball their overwater course because the compass didn't work.

A few of the recruits from more ordered planets had indeed backed out when they heard about the compass. The frontiersmen from Greenwood and other planets had taken the matter in stride. Yerby said he could get them to the fort on Minor; and if he didn't, well, they'd make do.

Finch had come anyway. His hopes for a political future were greater than his fear of drowning.

"Now hang on, everybody!" Yerby roared over his shoulder. "This may get a mite rough."

The surface-effect truck looked like a conventional aircraft with wings and a pair of turbine engines at the roots of the vertical tail. The wings were too stubby to support the fat fuselage in normal flight. Their steep camber trapped a cushion of air between them and the surface of the ground or sea so long as the vehicle flew forward.

The truck could sail ten feet in the air at 220 miles an hour with a modest expenditure of energy, perfect for carrying heavy loads over water or flat ground. It couldn't hover, though, and crags or a wall would rip the vehicle apart.

If the engines failed you'd better like the immediate terrain, because you were either going to land there or crash.

Mark tensed as the shoreline approached beyond a frill of seafoam. He hadn't paid any attention to the coast on his previous trips to Minor, and he doubted Yerby had either. If the margin rose too abruptly, rocks were going to take the truck's bottom off as sure as a grater scrapes cheese.

"Amy," he said. "Lift your feet."

"Why-" said Berkeley Finch.

The truck dipped, then lifted as if the shelving beach were a trampoline. Vegetation whickered beneath their keel like the brushes of an automatic car wash. Occasionally something more solid would thump the vehicle, but for the most part even the tree trunks were soft and sappy. Nothing came ripping through the bottom plates, at any rate.

"This is a much bigger vehicle than the ones you used to scout the fort earlier," Finch muttered. "It may well be above a detection threshold that the cars escaped."

"Naw, nothing much works down there," Yerby said unconcernedly. "You ain't seen the place, Finchie."

"Don't call me that," Finch said, but he spoke in an undertone that carried no conviction. Yerby chuckled and tousled Finch's hair.

"There's a signal!" Mark said. "There's a light flashing ahead of us!"

"That's the warning light on the fort's antenna tower, lad," Yerby said. "It flashes in the daytime too, when we was there before, but I guess you didn't pick it out."

He throttled back the turbines and rotated the big horizontal steering wheel hand over hand. You couldn't bank the truck without spilling the supporting cushion of air, so the rudder had to supply all the turning force. The vehicle wallowed and sideslipped as it curved around the nighted bulk of the fort.

They coasted down on a three-hundred-foot strip on the north side of the fort, where the walls' shade stunted the vegetation. The ground sloped but not badly. The double-bogie wheels on the truck's hull jounced brutally, but the vehicle tracked straight enough that the small wing outriggers could handle the sideways jolts.

The turbines roaringly reversed thrust, and the wings pivoted further down into airbrakes instead of lifting devices. The truck stopped with a final whiplash.

"Next time we do this, Bannock," said Axel Kockler as he picked himself from the tangle of other raiders who'd lost their hold on the bulkhead straps, "we bring blimps, you hear me? This is no way for human beings to travel!"

"Who decided you was human, Kockler?" a neighbor called. Sliding hatches in the cargo compartment rumbled open.

Yerby opened the door on his side of the cab. "Well, anyhow," he said across the general laughter, "it's fast."

"If I wanted fast," Kockler muttered, checking the flashgun he'd dropped when he fell, "I wouldn't drink whiskey. I'd just club myself on the head and get straight to the hangover."

Vines curtained the outer wall of the fortress. The stems were leafless until they reached the top and exploded in a profusion of foliage. Some of the more active raiders were already climbing, carrying rope ladders for the others to follow by.

"All right, Colonel," Yerby said to Finch. "I want you and your people to be special careful when you pick up the families. Chances are, most folks won't want trouble because they got their kids around; but there'll be a few who get panicky for the same reason. I'll tell you right now, anybody who hurts a kid because of an itchy trigger finger had better shoot me too before I hear about it. Right?"

"Nobody's going to get hurt, Yerby," Zeb Randifer said. "It's going to be like Blind Cove, no trouble at all."

"I'd like to accompany the body that captures the Command Center, Bannock," Finch said formally-for at least the fourth time since Yerby decided in the caravansary who'd go where on the raid.

"I'd like you to get on with the job I give you, Finch," Yerby said. There was enough granite for a landslide in his tone. "Or if you like, you can guard the truck here in place of Rinaldi."