Shadow of Freedom

“Oh, that.” Allenby shrugged and looked back down at the snowshoe he was mending. “Couldn’t tell you that, Jason. Looks to me like there’s only one way to find out.”

“Figured that was what you were gonna say,” MacGruder said gloomily, and Allenby smiled down at his work.

MacGruder was his second cousin, with the same brown hair and brown eyes—not to mention the beak-like Allenby nose—although MacGruder favored the tall and lanky side of the family while Allenby came from its compact, broad shouldered, fireplug side. There wasn’t much to choose between them in a lot of ways, but MacGruder did have a positive gift for looking on the gloomy side.

Not that there was all that much of a side that wasn’t gloomy at the moment.

Allenby finished replacing the broken rawhide lacing, knotted it, and carefully trimmed off the excess length. He set the repaired shoe aside and leaned closer to the fire to pour a cup of coffee from the battered black pot. Then he sat back again, leaning against the flat stone face which helped to both conceal their fire and to reflect its heat back into their tiny encampment.

“You know,” MacGruder said in a thoughtful tone, leaning back against his own bedroll and folding his arms behind his head, “our mighty liberation movement’s bitten off quite a mouthful here, Floyd.”

“Yep,” Allenby agreed.

“’Pears to me we’re just a tad outnumbered,” MacGruder continued. “Something like, what, around three or four-thousand-to-one?”

“’Bout that.”

“With air cars, recon drones, sting ships, armored personnel carriers, tri-barrels. Heck, Floyd, they’ve even got tanks, I hear!”

“Heard that, too,” Allenby agreed, sipping the scalding hot coffee.

“Don’t think those odds might be a little steep even for an Allenby, do you?”

“Maybe just a little.”

MacGruder made a disgusted sound, but his lips twitched, and Allenby smiled down into his cup. Then he stopped smiling and looked back up.

“The truth is, Jason,” he said much more seriously, “this is probably a losing hand. You sure you want to sit in?”

“You don’t want to go around insulting people by asking a man a question like that,” MacGruder pointed out, looking up at the huge, brilliant starscape above the Cripple Mountains’ thin atmosphere.

“I’m serious, Jason. I think we’ve got a chance, or I wouldn’t be doing this, but having a chance isn’t the same as having a good chance.”

“And what does Vinnie have to say about that?” MacGruder inquired politely.

“You know what Vinnie has to say about it.” Allenby’s voice was suddenly harsher and much colder than it had been, and a look of apology filled MacGruder’s eyes as they flicked to his cousin’s face.

Vincent Frugoni was the brother of Sandra Frugoni Allenby, Floyd Allenby’s dead wife. Like Sandra, he’d been born off-world. He’d been ten T-years younger than Sandra when Doctor Frugoni had come out to Swallow after their parents’ deaths. Sandra had been in the Tallulah Corporation’s employ at the time, but it hadn’t taken her long to realize what was going on in Swallow, at which point she’d resigned and set up her own practice in the Cripples. Vincent had been delighted with her decision, and they’d both always felt comfortable around the stubborn, hard-working, bloody-minded folk of the Cripple Mountains. In fact Vincent was even more stubborn and bloody-minded than most of Swallow’s clansmen. In a lot of ways, killing his sister had been just as big a mistake as killing Floyd Allenby’s wife.

Leave it to that bitch Karaxis to piss both of them off with one frigging SAM, MacGruder thought now. And me, too, come to that.

Blood and family meant a lot up in the Cripples. Sandra Allenby had been as treasured for who she was as for her medical skills or the fact that she’d married one of their own, and MacGruder was an old-fashioned clansman, just like Allenby himself. He’d have rallied around his cousin even if he’d never met Sandra, but like everyone else who’d known her, he’d loved her. It would have been personal for him, anyway, but he was honest enough to admit to himself that it was even more personal than it might have been.

“What I meant, Floyd,” he said in a softer, less bantering tone, “was whether or not Vinnie thinks we can pull it off, not whether or not it’s a good idea.”

“To be honest, I’m not sure whether or not he thinks we can actually bring Schuman and Karaxis down,” Allenby admitted after a moment. “I think he’s convinced we can at least make both of them wish they’d never been born, but actually knock off the government?” He shrugged. “That’s a lot steeper order. All I can say is he thinks there’s at least a chance, and if this contact of his comes through for us, we may have a lot better chance than I thought we did when we started.”

“Makes a man a little nervous counting on ‘contacts’ he’s never met,” MacGruder observed.