Patriots » (Reprint)

David Drake was attending Duke University Law School when he was drafted. He served the next two years in the Army, spending 1970 as an enlisted interrogator with the 11th armored Cavalry in Viet Nam and Cambodia. Upon return he completed his law degree at Duke and was for eight years Assistant Town Attorney for Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He has been a full-time freelance writer since 1981. Besides the bestselling Hammer's Slammers and RCN/Leary series(next of which, In the Stormy Red Sky, is coming in May 2009), his books for Baen include Ranks of Bronze, All the Way to the Gallows, Redliners, and many more. His "Lord of the Isles" fantasy novels for Tor are genre best sellers.

The corrupt Earth government is sending an army to Greenwood to remove the pioneers who discovered and settled the planet: the potential profits are too great to leave the world to scraggly ne’er-do-wells!

            Though the rugged individualists of Greenwood may be fractious and disinclined to agree on most things, the greedy politicians of Earth will learn a harsh lesson if they think the settlers won’t join together to save their livelihoods and homes! Under Yerby Bannock, who never walked away from a drink or a fight, the Greenwood patriots will face thugs in the night, lawyers in a distant court, traitors in their own ranks—

            And, if they have to, a fortress built to shrug off the assault of a battlefleet!