Patriots

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, Ba

"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, Ba

"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."

"As you please," Finch said with pinched nostrils. He turned to the nearest ladder and climbed, the repeller on his back swinging with the violence of his motions. Mark braced the rope with one hand till Finch reached the top, then followed him.

Yerby backed a few steps and took a run at the wall. His boot got enough purchase on the vines that the frontiersman was able to catch the lip and swing himself onto the broad battlement. Amy shook her head at her brother's showing off, but she was recording him nonetheless.

Dittersdorf had no moon. The raiders' only light came from the warning flasher on the ante

One of the raiders started to wander off toward the stairwell that led directly down to quarters for the soldiers living in family groups. The underground corridor between those rooms and the barracks-style arrangements for the remaining troops was open, but none of the ceiling lights worked.

Married quarters were Finch's responsibility. "Hey you!" he called to the man. "Where do you think you're going?"

The frontiersman turned. "I'm going down the stairs, like I'm supposed to," he said. "But if you want, pretty boy, I'll clean your clock before I do that."

"Now, you just hold where you are, Casey Tafell," Yerby said in a mild but carrying tone. "Nobody goes anywhere till we're all ready."

Tafell grimaced. "Who died and made you God?" he asked, but he spoke in a lowered voice which Yerby was willing to ignore.

"The little prick sure gets up a fellow's nose," Yerby said to Mark in a generally audible aside. "But we can't have folks haring off on their own."

Finch was welcome to think Yerby was talking about Casey Tafell if he liked. Anyway, all the raiders stayed at the base of the wall until the last person-Dagmar, making sure that nobody was still screwing around in the truck-was over the wall.

"That's it," she said. "My lot, come on, we'll collect them engineers before somebody gets up to take a leak and sees us."

She headed across the vast paved courtyard, cradling a repeller captured in one or the other of the Zenith invasions. Ten frontiersmen followed her. They weren't moving fast, but neither does the surf as it sweeps up the shore; and like the surf, they'd keep going until they were darned good and ready to stop.

"Finch, good luck to you," Yerby said. "And remember, watch out for kids."

Yerby sauntered to the entrance by which he'd entered the fort the first time. He didn't give orders to the raiders who were supposed to go with him. Mark wasn't sure if Yerby knew everybody would follow or if he just didn't care.

Mark didn't look over his shoulder either. He couldn't imagine that the people who'd come this far wouldn't go the rest of the way. Besides, Amy was a half step behind her brother; Mark was going in even if it was nobody but the three of them.

Boots shuffling on the slotted metal stair treads set up echoes in the shaft. By the time Mark was three-quarters of the way down to the first level, it sounded as though an army or an extremely large centipede was coming down the stairs behind him.

"Yerby?" he said. "We'd better stop before you open the door to the corridor. The racket'll wake the guards up even if they've all been dead for three days."

Yerby got to the first landing and reached for the door latch. He hadn't heard Mark's warning over the clatter of feet.

"Yer-" Mark shouted.

The door opened inward to the hallway before Yerby touched it. An Alliance soldier, half turned to say something to his companion in the corridor, jerked his head around. He faced Yerby Ba

Amy peered around her brother's shoulder with the three lenses of her camera spread like the eyes of a monstrous insect. Mark was on the first step behind the Ba

"Mother!" the Alliance soldier screamed. He flung his repeller down the corridor in one direction and fled in the other.

His companion raised and pointed her own weapon. Her face was pallid in the light in the ceiling above her.

"The door!" Mark cried. He couldn't level the gas gun because the sling swivel in the butt was tangled in the belt of the man behind him.

The door was made of quarter-inch armor plates that sandwiched an insulating honeycomb. The hypervelocity pellets would disintegrate on the panel's first layer without penetrating. If Yerby could pull the door closed-

Yerby jumped straight toward the gun and clouted the soldier with a sweep of his left arm. He held his flashgun to the side in the other hand, out of the way.

The Alliance soldier bounced like a rubber ball off the far wall of the corridor. Her repeller sparked and skidded along the concrete flooring. Mark grabbed it, trying to glance in both directions to see if there were more soldiers coming.

Mark couldn't tell anything except that there was nobody in the two pools of light in the distance to the right. The other way there was no light at all, though an occasional clatter suggested the fleeing soldier was caroming from one side to the other at a dead run.

The rest of the raiders crowded into the corridor, jostling Mark aside. "Hey, now," Yerby said. "Don't step on the poor child I whacked on, here. She's had enough trouble tonight."