"Who do you think you are, giving me orders?" Rasile said.
"The guy who's going to be testing Hoodoo's drive fans in a moment," Lamartiere said as he hopped onto the bow slope. "If you're within a hundred meters when I crank up, there won't be anything left of you but a smear by the time I shut down again. Just a friendly warning."
If trouble started, Lamartiere needed to be in the driver's seat. He wished Clargue weren't there now, but the doctor wouldn't have been able to work on his patients from the cupola.
The refugees drifted toward the orchard instead of pushing matters. Louise and Pietro walked together, while Rasile stayed twenty meters distant in space and a lot farther away in spirit.
Lamartiere supposed they'd been hoping to steal equipment. Tanks in the field were generally festooned with gear, but Heth and Stegner had stripped Hoodoo to be loaded on a starship before Lamartiere drove her out of the base. He and Clargue had only the clothes they stood in, but Lamartiere still didn't want the likes of those three rummaging around inside the tank.
Clargue got out of the compartment very stiffly. "I'm sorry, Denis," he said. "I should have been working on the software, but I found I was a doctor before I was a tank crewman."
"Go get a bath and some sleep, Doctor," Lamartiere said. "There's plenty of water here, for our purposes anyway."
He gripped Clargue's hand to permit him to negotiate the iridium slope under control. "You did just what you should've done. I wish I could say the same."
Clargue trudged toward the basket, carrying his medical kit. Marie still stood close to the tank. "I'll leave in a moment," she said. "I wanted to apologize for what I said when you arrived. Dr. Clargue is a good man, and he tells me that you are, too."
Lamartiere snorted. "Then he knows something I don't," he said. He squatted on the edge of the hatch instead of lowering his body inside. The driver's seat had almost infinite possible adjustments, but at the end of the long run there was no part of Lamartiere's body that hadn't been rubbed or pounded.
"Look," he said, "I'm sorry we're here. I'm sorry about a lot of things, though I know that doesn't make them any better. If Maury can get us ammo, then we'll go back across the mountains to where we can maybe do something about the war. Or whatever the Council decides it wants."
"Maury won't give you anything unless there's advantage in it for him," the woman said. "The last thing he wants is for the war to end. He and de Laburat are making too good a thing about being the only authorities in the Boukasset."
Despite Marie's initial comment, she didn't show any sign of wanting to leave. Lamartiere was glad of her company.
"They manufacture drugs, you know," Marie said. She glared at Lamartiere as though he was responsible for the situation. "Most of the output goes off planet, but I suppose there's enough left over for Ambiorix as well."
"I wasn't aware of that, no," Lamartiere said evenly. It made sense, though.
He should have wondered what Maury traded to the smugglers in exchange for his gang's weaponry. Goat-hair textiles or even the subtly flavored lemons of the Boukasset didn't buy many powerguns and antiaircraft missiles.
"I was at one of the factories for three months," Marie said. Her tone was harsh, but Lamartiere now saw the misery in her eyes. "Not as staff—they have off-planet technicians for that. As entertainment. Until they raided some other family of refugees and replaced me with someone who was in better shape. I came to the shrine instead of dying in the desert."
"I'm responsible for the things I've done," Lamartiere said. He deliberately met the woman's fierce glare. "I won't apologize for things other people have done. However much I may regret them."
Marie nodded. Her expression relaxed slightly. "I just wanted you to know the sort of people you'll be dealing with," she said. "And don't misunderstand me: de Laburat's gang ran the factory where I was held. But they're both the same. They and all their men are demons."
The sun was almost on the rim of the western hills. The shrine's residents were coming back from the lemon orchard, carrying their tools. Some of them were even singing.
Over the southern horizon roared a score of vehicles, both wheeled and air-cushion. They bristled with weapons. Dust mounted in a pall that turned blood red in the light of the lowering sun.
The rulers of the Boukasset were paying a call on Hoodoo.
Lamartiere slid into the driver's hatch. His body no longer ached. He switched on the fans and checked the readouts. All were within parameters except Number 7, and that bearing wasn't of immediate concern. He blipped the throttle once, then let the blades drop to a humming idle.
A blast of fine grit sprayed beneath the skirt at the pressure spike in the plenum chamber. It staggered Marie as she backed away from the vehicle. Lamartiere was sorry, but he didn't have a lot of time. Worse things were likely to happen soon anyway.
The vehicles approaching in line abreast were already within a klick of the shrine. Even without magnification Lamartiere could tell that they were overloaded, wallowing over irregularities in the desert's surface.
He brought up the gunnery controls on the lower of the compartment's two displays. It was impossible for one person to drive and handle Hoodoo's armament simultaneously, but though he was prepared to move the tank Lamartiere didn't expect to need to.
He hoped he wouldn't be shooting either, not when he had only seven 2cm rounds in the tribarrel's ready magazine and no ammunition at all for the main gun.
In the middle of the oncoming vehicles was a three-axle truck which flew a pennant of some sort. The windshield was covered with metal plates; the driver could only see through a slit in his armor. That was just barely better than driving blindfolded. If Lamartiere had been in either of the adjacent vehicles, he'd have given the truck at least fifty meters clearance to avoid a collision.
The truck's bed was armored with flat slabs of concrete, a makeshift that would stop small arms but not much more. Three launching tubes were bracketed to either side; Lamartiere couldn't tell whether they held antitank missiles or unguided bombardment rockets. On top was a turret that must have come from a light military vehicle: it mounted an automatic cannon and a coaxial machine gun, both of them electromotive weapons.
The remainder of the vehicles were similar though smaller: four- and six-wheeled trucks, massively overloaded with men, weapons, and armor, as well as half a dozen air-cushion vehicles of moderate capacity. The latter weren't armored or they wouldn't have been able to move. The wheeled vehicles' panoply of mild steel and concrete was next to valueless anyway.
Lamartiere had fought among the guerrillas of the Western District before the Council picked him to steal a tank for the rebellion. The rebels had tried to convert civilian trucks into armored fighting vehicles, but they'd immediately given up the practice as a suicidal waste. In combat against purpose-built military equipment, makeshifts were merely tombs for their crews. They were good for nothing but to threaten civilians and rival groups of undisciplined thugs.
Which was obviously what these were being used for.
Well, Denis Lamartiere was neither of those things. He rested his hands on the control yoke. His index finger was a centimeter away from the firing control on the screen in front of him. To his surprise, he was smiling.
The vehicles halted near the base of the shrine, disgorging men and a few women. Their clothing was a mixture of military uniforms, the loose robes of the Boukasset, and tawdry accents of Carcassone finery. A band of pirates, Lamartiere thought; about two hundred of them all told.
The residents still at a distance either stopped where they were or returned to the orchard which provided concealment if not shelter. Civilians who'd already reached the shrine squeezed against the walls, their eyes on the armed gang.