Patriots

"Then we have to surrender," Biber said bluntly. "Hang yourself in your cell if you insist on committing suicide. If you try to fight, Giscard'll destroy the port instead of just taking it over. Zenith can't afford that, and New Paris certainly can't!"

The James and John showed on the room's left-hand display, almost in position over the magnetic mass. The Earth troops aren't likely to blast a ship that's taking off. Things aren't quite that bad yet.

"Gentlemen," Mark said, "I know where the tanks and artillery you need are, and I know how to get them for you. It'll cost you-"

"Get them where?" Finch snapped.

"On Dittersdorf," Mark said. "You won't be able to get enough troops off planet to do it, but we Woodsru

"We can't free you from Earth," Mayor Biber said. "We can't free ourselves, you young fool!"

He gestured toward the entrance display. The tank's bow had pushed the wreckage of the barricade halfway up the slope. The dump truck suddenly tilted downward onto its side, spilling tons of loose sand over the top of the armored vehicle. Rivers of sand flowed through the intakes on the whirlwinds the drive fans sucked down.

The abrupt silicon hammer blows sheared half the blades from the forward impellers before burning out the motors in gouts of nacelle-devouring blue fire. The machinery screamed like a hundred-ton child being spanked.

The tank bucked to a halt as the driver cut the rear fans before the inflowing sand could destroy them as well. The armored bulk rested squarely across the port entrance, blocking access as completely as the twenty-foot earthen wall to either side.

"There's your chance to escape, gentlemen!" Mark said. "Now, if you accept the deal, I want one of you to come to Greenwood with me on the James and John. We'll need somebody who can speak for Zenith and your syndicate. Do you agree?"

Mark couldn't believe what he was hearing himself say. It was as though his father or Yerby Ba

And he'd won. Finch and Biber exchanged glances. They were both decisive men or they wouldn't have been able to create the positions they had despite Alliance attempts to stifle all colonials to docility.

"I'll go," said Biber. "You get your troops out, Finch. We'll need them again when we have tanks of our own."

Finch nodded and raised his radiophone to send his militia over the berm to safety. Mark ran for the door. Mayor Biber, panting but determined, was at his heels.

32. Some Are More Equal Than Others

"So if you'll help us by providing the arms we need to free ourselves from Alliance tyra

Before Yerby could resume speaking to the crowd, a burly man whose fur coat and fur hat nearly doubled his bulk took one of the mikes in the crowd below. "I'm Magnus Newsome," the fellow boomed. "I got a double section on Big Bay north of the Doodle… and what I want to know is, is why anybody with the sense God gave a goose would trust a Zenith? If that fat bastard said the sun was shining, I'd look up to be sure!"

He waved skyward. Hundreds of the Greenwoods present thundered agreement.

The sun was indeed shining, though it wasn't a day that Mark would have been outside for long if he'd been back on Quelhagen. There was no wind, but the brilliance of sunlight on snow didn't change the fact that the air temperature was well below freezing.

The starship that had landed ten minutes before steamed sullenly. A pool of meltwater had refrozen in the dimple that hundreds of ships had hammered into hard ground. Friction and magnetic eddies had heated the hull enough during descent to vaporize the ice again now.

A man had disembarked almost immediately. He walked toward the Spiker with the stolid determination of somebody virtually blinded by ghost images from sleep travel.

The crowd had trampled the slope west of the tavern into muddy slush. Mark certainly wasn't going to show weakness, and nobody else seemed to mind the conditions. There wasn't any choice but to meet outdoors. No building on Greenwood could hold the five hundred people present, and the assembly was far to important to exclude anybody who wanted to attend.

This might decide the future not only of Greenwood, but of every individual settler on the planet. The problem was, nobody could be certain what effect any particular decision would have.

"May I speak to that?" the PA system boomed in a familiar, unexpected voice. Mark was so startled that he might have fallen forward off the wall if Amy hadn't clutched him.

"Aye, you may," Yerby said. "And you can come up here on the platform to do it, because there's nobody on Greenwood who can advise us better. People, this is Lucius Maxwell!"

The man from the newly landed ship was Mark's father. Yerby squatted and lifted Lucius to the eight-foot-high platform as virtually a dead weight. Mark knew that his father was doing well just to walk a quarter mile this soon after coming out of his transit capsule.

Lucius swayed. Mark half rose, ready to hop up on the platform to help his father, but Yerby had already provided an arm.

"Mr. Newsome's right," Lucius said. Dizziness made him look as white as a vampire's victim, but his voice was strong and vibrant. "You can't trust Zenith-not the Zenith Assembly or any members of it."

He paused for effect, looking down at the settlers' worried faces. "But I'm advising you, I'm begging you, to do what Mayor Biber asks anyway. Because while you can't trust Zenith to help, you can trust the Atlantic Alliance to crush Greenwood and all of you individually unless it's stopped now!"

The last words were in a ringing shout that brought a collective gasp from the assembly. Lucius let the exclamation die away, then raised his spread hands to silence the buzz of conversation that followed.

"There's open rebellion against the Alliance on a score of worlds," Lucius continued. "I'm a delegate from Quelhagen to the parliament of free planets forming on Hestia. The Quelhagen Committee of Governance sent me here first, though, because you on Greenwood know me. Join us and other free peoples and help throw the Alliance out of our lives!"

"Maybe you lot want to get your heads shot off!" shouted a woman Mark didn't know. "I don't see how that makes it our fight here!"

"That's the question you all should be wondering," Lucius agreed, using the PA system to override the arguments that immediately broke out below. "And the answer is, if Earth crushes Quelhagen and the rest of the worlds that are protesting the closure of ports and factories to aid Earth manufactures, then the Alliance will try to prevent a recurrence by shipping millions of Earth citizens onto every settled world."

He pointed to the front of the crowd. "You all remember the city they would have built on Dagmar Wately's land! There'll be a dozen cities here and hundreds on planets like Quelhagen, swamping the present citizens. The Alliance government knows the forced exiles won't get along with real settlers-and they'll make sure they don't by sequestering the best land on each planet for these modular cities. The new arrivals will have to support the Alliance or lose everything a second time to the real owners of the land!"