by David Drake
He fired his repeller. The stream of pellets didn't come within a country mile of the target, partly because Finch kept a worried eye on the angry woman beside him. Maybe he thought she was going to sling him out of the car. Maybe she thought the same thing.
Zeniths crammed beside Finch in the back started shooting with a repeller and a gas gun. A woman in the middle seat stood to launch a rocket flare. She stumbled sideways when the vehicle swayed, jostling the man seated beside her. His gas shell missed Finch's cheek by less than the colonel's razor had that morning.
Finch squealed and hunched down. His second burst chewed the back fender of his own car.
"Oh, you people!" Yerby said in obvious amusement. "You don't know Desiree the way I do. Why don't you just pack it in now? I promise I'll keep her off you."
"Shut up, you fool!" Finch snarled. As he raised his repeller to fire, he glanced nervously over his shoulder at the Zeniths behind him. He ducked down without actually pulling the trigger.
Mark looked at Yerby. He wondered how much of the frontiersman's nonchalance was an act. It also struck Mark that the relationship between Yerby and Desiree was a good deal more complex than the loud hostility he'd initially thought it was limited to.
The other car had pulled within fifty feet and was slightly to the right of the Zenith machine. One of the kidnappers with a repeller started hitting despite the vehicles' doubled motion. Pellets danced across the bow of the target, exploding in friction-heated violence. They had no effect on the car.
The Bannock aircar had at least the virtue of being sturdy. Its body shell was heavy plastic that cratered but didn't disintegrate at the high-velocity impacts. Occasionally a second or third pellet might hit the same point. The passenger compartment was of double-box construction for stiffness, so even those lucky coincidences didn't endanger the driver.
The two cars separated to round a tree that dangled aerial roots from its branch tips. The vehicles closed the wide circuit at increasing velocity. A gas shell burst on the target's bow and spread its cold fog across the plastic. The driver was the only target on which the Zeniths' weapons could have an effect, and she was protected by the skewed angle of flight of a vehicle with only two and a half of its four motors working.
The Zenith driver was focused on his compass course and the terrain ahead. As they rounded the tree, he steered toward rather than away from the oncoming vehicle. The Bannock car raced toward the Zeniths with its leading edge three feet above the ground.
"Turn!" Finch screamed. "Turn, you idiot!"
The Zenith with the flare gun fired it into the backseat of her own car. It zipped between the legs of a man desperately trying to reload his repeller in the crowded, jouncing vehicle. He screamed and threw himself forward as if the gout of red fire were rocket exhaust.
Desiree peered over the bow of her aircar, visible for the first time. She eased her leading edge over the Zenith vehicle's right rear inlet duct. The fan choked off for lack of air. The other three fans, operating at maximum output, flipped the car like a tiddlywink.
Mark had a view of the ground, then a sky full of flailing figures and weapons all on separate courses; then the ground again.
The aircar managed the last half turn the instant before it hit.
That was the difference between Mark's survival and him being driven into the ground like a tent peg.
The prisoners hadn't been flung out with the others because they were on the floor at the axis of the car's revolution. The ground was marshy. When the car hit, its undercarriage cut deep to form an air cushion with a perfect seal. Thin mud exploded in a brown curtain. An instant later the drive fans sucked in the mixture and ripped off impellers that were set too coarse for any medium but air.
"By all that's holy!" said Yerby Bannock. "Lad, if we could sell tickets to a ride like that, we'd make our fortunes!"
Mark managed to sit upright. The world had stopped spinning, but his head hadn't figured that out yet. The Bannock aircar was nearby, sticking out of the ground at a forty-five-degree angle. The two forward fan nacelles were clearly visible. The impellers were winding down; the damaged unit still glowed and gave off a faint moan.
Desiree Bannock climbed slowly out of the backseat of her vehicle. Her face had no particular expression. Since anger was the only emotion Mark had seen her express, he supposed that was just as well.
"Honey love, you're surely a sight for sore eyes!" Yerby called. "Come cut my hands loose before they fall off, the beggars tied me so tight!"
The Zeniths were picking themselves up from the bog. Mark couldn't be sure, but it looked like they'd all survived the crash also. Berkeley Finch stood knee deep in a particularly wet patch. He pointed a dripping repeller at Desiree and shouted, "Halt! You're under arrest for interfering with officers of the law!"
Desiree continued to stump toward the Zenith aircar. "You put that thing down," she snarled, "or I'll feed it to you! You hear me?"
Yerby cackled. "You better listen to her, Colonel!" he said. "You peeve my Desiree and you'll be lucky if it's your teeth that get first look at what you're stuffed with."
Desiree reached the car. "There's forty of our neighbors on the way here," she said. "By daybreak there'll be two hundred. The blimp's empty, so I took that bitch of a car up to three thousand feet and put a call out before I come chasing you."
She snipped the cords from her husband's ankles with a pair of wire cutters, then freed his wrists. "Yerby," she added, "I told you you were the biggest fool in all space to buy that piece of junk. Do you know the sucker flipped twice on me before I got her back down?"
"I'm sorry, honey love," Yerby said contritely. He stood and flexed his arms to work life back into them. "I'll get you a proper car next time I'm on Zenith, see if I don't."
The Zeniths had gathered in a tight bunch like sheep in a blizzard. Dr. Jesilind was trying to worm his way into the center of the group. Boots and elbows drove him back with universal determination.
"If you're thinking you got help coming from the Doodle," Desiree called to them as she cut Mark free, "you can forget it right now. There's folks there by now ready to blow the nose off anybody who peeks out of the ship you lot come in."
Some of the kidnappers had kept or found their weapons. The chances that anything would shoot without a thorough cleaning was nothing to bet your life on, though. The battered Zeniths didn't look as though they were up to a fight in any case.
Mark stood. His feet felt as if somebody were hammering needles into them. Still, they held him.
A dirigible approached from the northeast. It crawled along low to the ground so that the crew could jump to safety if Zeniths shot the gasbag to bits. More dirigibles bobbed closer from all points of the horizon.
Yerby rose in the passenger compartment of the Zenith aircar as if he were on a dais addressing a rally. "Now, I tell you what I'm going to do, Finch my boy," he said. "I'm going to let you and your band of heroes stick all your guns here with me where they can be collected. Then I'm going to tell my friends to take it easy. We'll haul you lot to the Doodle and you can go back where you came from."
"After they've paid for the damage they caused on Greenwood," Mark interjected. "That includes a working—a demonstrably working—aircar destroyed."
Yerby chuckled. "Yep, he's a feisty one, my attorney here," he said. In a tone with more hard edges than a file he went on, "Now, I hope you take the deal offered, Finchie. If you don't, the best thing that's going to happen is that you walk around a while, and that won't be longer than sunrise. I don't much mind what happens to you, but there's me and mine here too . . . and a bullet don't have eyes."
Colonel Finch wiped his forehead. "Stack arms in the car," he ordered hoarsely.
The community of Wanker's Doodle was at the south end of Centipede Lake, a multibranched thickening of the glacial White River. The lake was three hundred miles long, and its shoreline was ten or twenty times as great. Heavy loads of the sort that had to be ferried to the Spiker by dirigible
could be rafted to the Doodle from any point on the lake's circumference.
Despite that, Wanker's Doodle wasn't as busy a port as the Spiker. The Doodle itself was a finger of basalt, the core of an ancient volcano, that thrust up through soil deposited by the floods every spring. The hard rock spreading from the base of the Doodle could hold only three starships at a time—four if they were smaller than average—and other ground nearby was too soft for the concentrated weight.
There were two typical freighters on the basalt at the moment. The third, larger vessel waiting on the magnetic mass was much shinier than what usually landed at Greenwood. Frontiersmen with guns and bottles sat in the big ship's open hatches while crewmen in spiffy white uniforms watched them glumly.
Yerby was leaning over the rail of Bat Lunaan's dirigible to view the approaching community. "Pretty as a picture, that ship, ain't it? Bet the captain's having conniptions because the boys are tracking mud on his clean floors."
Because the prisoners in the netting below weighed so much, Lunaan had only Yerby and Mark with him in the gondola. Even so, his airship was slower than the others. The flat ground near the Doodle was brilliant with the coverings of thirty or more dirigibles and the wings of flyers that had started arriving soon after the sun came up.
"There's Amy," Mark said, pointing. She stood near the starship's hatch holding a gas gun.
Somebody must have picked her up on the way to the Doodle. It would be another day at least before enough water had been electrolyzed into hydrogen—the oxygen was vented—to refill the tanks of the Bannock dirigible.
Yerby stepped back from the railing. "What do you figure our friends from Zenith are going to try next, lad?" he asked quietly. "Oh, not this lot," he added, gesturing toward the deck and the captives who dangled beneath it. "The syndicate of folks that wants to steal our land, I mean."
"I think . . ." Mark said. "I think there'll be a peace conference. Protector Giscard'll call it, or maybe even a delegation from Earth. You've made the Zenith authorities look very foolish. They'll make a compromise offer to avoid worse."
The dirigible settled in the cleared space near the starship's hatch. Pumps whined to suck hydrogen from the ballonets now that the prisoners' weight rested on the ground.
"I thought maybe something like that," Yerby said as if he were making idle conversation. "Myself, I've never been much for compromise, though."
Yerby jumped from the gondola while the deck was still six feet above the ground. Mark sighed and followed. He didn't fall over when he hit, so he figured the paralysis must have worn off completely by now.
Mark's mouth still tasted worse than he could imagine. The swig of what Lunaan claimed was whiskey had added its own ghastly flavors without in the least cutting the miasma of the gas.
The cargo net collapsed about the Zeniths when Lunaan dropped it and moved the dirigible off the starport. Desiree took charge of freeing them. Yerby nodded approval, then sauntered to the starship's captain standing beside the boarding ramp. Mark smiled to Amy as they both followed her brother without speaking.
"Well, Captain . . ." Yerby said, peering at the nametag. "Captain Drumm. I'll bet you're not very pleased about how things went this voyage, are you?"
"My ship's been looted!" Drumm said. He was a dapper man with, at the moment, the red face of someone on the verge of a stroke. "Are you responsible for this, sir? My liquor cabinet's been emptied and my passengers' private lockers have been broken into as well!"
Yerby nodded sympathetically. "Looting's a terrible thing, yes sir. But—did you lose anything besides booze, Captain?"
"My pistol," Drumm said. Apprehension was replacing anger as he realized how very powerful Yerby was. "I don't know that there was anything else. Except the liquor."
"Peaceful visitors don't need guns on Greenwood," Yerby said with the smile of a cat for the mouse between its paws. "Reckon we can forget that."
"It isn't important, no," Drumm agreed. "And the liquor—"
"And the liquor's the sort of hospitality a smart fellow'd offer people when he came waltzing into their house without a by-your-leave," Yerby continued, overriding the captain's nervous mumble. "Which is the thing I wanted to take up with you, Captain. The next time you want to land on Greenwood, why don't you hold in orbit until I've radioed you a personal invitation? Because if you land without my permission again, you'll never take off."
Drumm licked his lips. His face was as sallow as it had been red a moment before. "I understand," he said.
Yerby smiled and patted Drumm on the shoulder. "I thought you would," Yerby said. Whistling "Men of Harlech" between his teeth, he turned to watch the prisoners being marched in line toward the ramp.
Dr. Jesilind felt the weight of Yerby's stare. He eased to the side to put Colonel Finch between him and the frontiersman. A Woodsrunner thrust Jesilind back into place. Yerby walked toward him, still whistling.
Berkeley Finch swallowed and deliberately faced Yerby. "One moment, please, sir," he said in a voice that got higher with every syllable. "My troops and I surrendered our weapons upon your promise of safe conduct until we were off-planet."
"And that's just what you'll have if you step out of my way," Yerby said in a tone Mark had never heard him use before. It was like listening to millstones speak. "There's a personal matter between me and the doc, though I guess you can have part of it if you're fool enough to want it."
He brushed the Zenith aside with an arm as hard as the threat he'd just implied.
If it hadn't been for Finch's terrified courage, Mark wouldn't have been able to step in front of Yerby himself. "Yerby," he said. He was so tense that he wasn't sure whether his voice squeaked as he feared it did. "If it's a personal matter, it's the one I've already taken care of. Please. It's on my honor if I let you kill him."
"You don't let me do any blame thing I choose, boy!" Yerby shouted. He tried to step around Mark.
Mark grabbed Yerby's right wrist with both hands. It was like trying to hold a spinning driveshaft. Yerby bent Mark's arms back and took a handful of his shirt. He lifted Mark completely off the ground with one hand.
"Yerby!" Amy cried. She pressed the fat muzzle of her gas gun against her brother's chest. "Stop this right now! Put him down!"
"I don't need a woman to fight for me!" Mark wheezed. He wasn't exactly being strangled, but he sure wasn't getting the amount of air his lungs thought they needed.
"And I don't need a man to fight for me!" Amy replied. "Yerby, put him down this instant."
Yerby looked at her. He lowered Mark gently to the ground. "Sorry, lad," he muttered. His big hands tried to straighten Mark's shirt. "Got a bit above myself there."
Amy let out her breath in a vast sigh. She flung her gun down.
Nobody else had moved during the confrontation. Now Finch got cautiously to his feet and the other spectators relaxed sightly.
"Doctor," Yerby said to the trembling Jesilind, "I think you and I better not meet again. I don't figure I'll ever go to Marques . . . but if I see you anywhere else, anywhere at all but your home planet—"
He didn't finish the sentence. He just smiled.
Jesilind said in a tiny voice, "I'm leaving immediately, Mr. Bannock."
"How right you are," Yerby said. Before anyone could react, he'd grabbed Jesilind by collar and waistband. Yerby took a step forward, swinging the doctor back; then took a second step and launched Jesilind toward the open hatch.
It was a beautiful throw. Jesilind didn't touch anything but air for the twenty feet before he crashed into the starship's hold.
28. Democracy in Action
Major Ustinov was one of the military aides Mark had seen in Protector Giscard's office. The Alliance emissary wore a gray field uniform in place of the sky-blue jacket and silver trousers of the previous occasion, but he still looked remarkably neat and clean to eyes that had gotten used to Greenwood settlers over the past four months.
Yerby hammered the table that had been brought in
to the Spiker's bunkroom for the meeting. All six legs jounced off the floor. "And just how do you figure to keep me from going, Dagmar Wately?" he shouted. Ustinov winced even though the anger wasn't directed at him.
"By knocking you cold as a trout with a gas gun," Zeb Randifer replied, leaning over the table from the other side. "If you're that big a durned fool, that is. And I mean it!"
This had started as a Woodsrunner muster called because a Zenith ship wanted to land. When the passengers turned out to be from Protector Giscard instead of more thugs sent by the investment syndicate, what might have been a battle turned into a meeting almost equally heated. The three dim lamps shone on angry, puzzled faces.
"You put me in charge!" Yerby said. "That means I go!"
The rain that hammered the tavern's uninsulated roof would probably be sleet by nightfall. By clearing out all the bedframes, most of the hundred or so Woodsrunners at the Spiker could squeeze into the barracks-style sleeping room. The rest were in the hallway—or the taproom below, drinking instead of worrying about Protector Giscard's offer of truce negotiations.
The meeting was very likely going to decide the fate of Greenwood. It bothered Mark that the people present were a small fraction of the settlers and had been called for a purpose completely different from the one they were involved with now. On the other hand—
You could make a case that folks who came out in dangerous weather to defend their planet had as much right to decide for that planet as any group could possibly have.
"Yeah, you're in charge, Bannock," Dagmar said. "And that's exactly why you're not going back to Zenith. They'd snatch you sure, and much as I'd like to be shut of you for a neighbor, we can't afford that now."
The concrete wall was directly behind Yerby with Major Ustinov to his right. Mark was to the left, and Amy stood on a low stool in the corner behind Mark, recording the proceedings for posterity. Mark wondered if Blaney had deliberately arranged things so that the table was a barrier in case Yerby really lost his temper.