Patriots

"The Assembly has voted you a colonelcy and a lifetime pension," Lucius continued. He smiled slightly. "How much the pension is worth depends on whether the Assembled Planets gain their freedom from the Alliance, of course."

Yerby's laughter was briefer than Mark expected. "I never turned down money, Lucius," he said. "If it don't do nothing else, at least it looks pretty, most of it. But being colonel, that you can keep."

"The decision's yours, of course," Lucius said. He looked down as if he were examining his fingernails.

"It's not like I don't see the honor," Yerby said uncomfortably. "It's just-Lucius, I don't like the idea of killing other folks. I know, there's a lot of things a guy's got to do in life and I've done most of them, good and bad, one time or the other. But that's one I druther leave for other folks if I can."

"It's good to meet a man with principles," Lucius said. He bowed to Yerby, then turned to his own son. "Mark," he continued, "you've been elected in your absence to the Greenwood Committee of Governance. One of three members, your delegates to the assembly on Hestia tell me. Congratulations."

"Me?" said Mark. "But I can't serve. I'm with the Woodsru

Yerby snorted. "If you mean you think the boys is going off to Zenith to fight just because we put our oar in here, you couldn't be more wrong, lad. I don't guess there'll be ten fellows leave with Lucius, and half them's going to come back to Greenwood in a week."

"If they leave with General Carswell," Lucius said grimly, "they'll stay till the general releases them. His men called him Iron Sam when he was a captain, and I don't believe the past twenty years have changed his ideas of discipline."

He returned his attention to his son. "Mark," he said, "you've proved you can be a soldier. I hope by now you realize how easy that is anyway. Go back to Greenwood."

Yerby squeezed Mark's shoulder as gently as if he was pinching a raw egg. "We need you, lad," he said. "More than we know, I shouldn't doubt, but even the folks we left on Greenwood do know it or they wouldn't have picked you like they done."

Mark scowled. The two older men were the stones of a mill, trying to grind away his determination.

"It's time to prove you can be a statesman, son," Lucius said. "That's a great deal harder, I assure you."

"Deputy Maxwell?" a uniformed officer shouted from the hatch down to the Command Center. "There's a question about the initial division of the captured equipment. General Carswell would like your input."

"In a moment!" Lucius replied in a voice that showered echoes from the multiple interior angles of the fort. Mildly he added to Mark and Yerby, "Everyone in the delegation is from a different planet. We'll have to bring our ships in at minor ports on the worlds where the Alliance is trying to enforce their embargo. That's going to be difficult enough, and one might wish that general success would be the first priority of each member. I'm afraid that lies beyond the realm of real-world politics. I'd best go."

"I'll come down in a little bit, Dad," Mark said. "I'd like to think."

"Do," Lucius said. He nodded and strode away.

"Did I ever tell you I met your old man twenty-odd years ago?" Yerby said, his eyes on the elder Maxwell. "Saw him, I mean. I was just a little nipper."

Mark stared at the frontiersman. "No," he said, "you didn't."

"He was a major, then," Yerby said. "Had a battalion of Quelhagen commandos in the Proxy War. I heard they'd been the ones who took Dittersdorf Base from the Easterns the first time, but I didn't see that with my own eyes."

"That can't be true!" Mark said. He realized he'd shouted. More quietly he went on, "Dad's always said soldiering was no fit life except for fools and butchers, Yerby."

Yerby nodded, then turned to look Mark in the eyes. "Did you ever ask him why he was so sure of that, lad?" he said.

"My God," Mark said softly.

"Guess I'll check things inside myself," Yerby said. The corona discharge of the incoming starship was begi

The big frontiersman sauntered across the courtyard, his thumbs hooked in his belt. He was whistling "Lillibullero." Amy had come up from the command center and was walking toward Mark.

"Well, I'll be," Mark said.

He started thinking about the challenge of governing a society of individuals as cantankerous as the settlers of Greenwood.

David Drake