It did, but they'd make out one way or another. The Alliance military probably had its share of officers who always sounded like they had a broomstick up their ass.
Daniel doubted that sort very often found themselves commanding special operations troops—or survived very long when they did—but the technician in harbor control might not even know what MX539 was. Unless he had some reason to care, the APC was merely a number and a radar track to be routed away from other numbers and radar tracks.
It was dusk. On the horizon lights moved through the air above Kostroma City and across the water at its margins. Both the Floating Harbor and the surface harbor were much brighter than Daniel had seen them in the past. The Alliance forces had brought in additional lighting, as well as much else.
"Roger, Mike X-ray," the radio voice said. "You're cleared at altitude twenty meters, vector two-three-one, I repeat two-three-one, degrees. Tarnhelm Control out."
Daniel had made sure the commo helmets were shut off so they wouldn't accidentally be used. "Keep the speed down to thirty, Gambier," he shouted toward the driver's compartment.
Gambier flew with his seat high to raise his head through the open hatch, but Barnes was beside him watching the instrument panel. Barnes tugged the driver's leg and repeated the command.
Adele looked down at Daniel. There wasn't room for two people in the cupola ring, so he squatted beside her in the narrow passageway from the troop compartment to the driver's compartment. "Was I all right?" she asked.
She had been worried, she just didn't show it. "You were fine," Daniel said. That was true: they'd gotten clearance. This wasn't an acting class where performances were graded on a curve. "If everything else goes as well, we'll be back on Cinnabar before my birthday next month."
That was true too. If Daniel'd been asked if he thought that was a probable result, well, that would have been a different question.
"More ships have landed," Adele said. Unlike Gambier she preferred to view her surroundings through electronic imagery. The vehicle commander's position had a panoramic optical display as well as a combiner screen which echoed all the driver's gauges. "And Alliance forces seem to have taken over most of the government departments, not just traffic control."
Daniel nodded grimly. "Three destroyers and I count six big transports; that's a brigade at least, with full equipment. People who ask for help from Guarantor Porra don't realize what they're really going to get. Though by now they ought to."
"Are you thinking of the Three Circles Conspiracy?" Adele asked without emotion.
Daniel felt his stomach tighten. "No," he said. "I wasn't."
If he'd been thinking about what happened fifteen years ago on Cinnabar he'd have had better sense than to say anything out loud. The last thing he wanted to do was to offend the woman on whom the detachment's survival had depended, and still depended.
Adele sniffed. "I was thinking about it," she said. She appeared to be observing the ships in the Floating Harbor on her display.
Daniel cleared his throat. "Cinnabar and Kostroma are very different," he said, because he was afraid he had to say something.
"Yes," said Adele. "And Corder Leary isn't a complete fool like Walter III."
She shook her head and continued, "My parents were very passionate people. I'm sure passion is a useful characteristic or it wouldn't be so general in the human population, but I've always thought it must get in the way of accurate assessments."
She met Daniel's eyes and offered her pale excuse for a smile. "Of course, my parents had friends," she said. "As I do not."
Daniel tapped her shoulder with his clenched fist. "You've got friends," he said.
And Daniel Leary had one friend more than he'd had when he arrived on Kostroma.
The APC's landing skids grated minusculely as it settled to the Aglaia's concrete dock. Adele, wearing the commando lieutenant's uniform, reached for the hatch mechanism.
Behind her Daniel called into the closed-up troop compartment, "Remember, nobody says a word except Ms. Mundy. Not if there's a gun in your face!"
Adele opened the narrow hatch beside the cupola and stepped out, remembering the Alliance officer doing the same thing the day before. She wondered if she ought to display hectoring anger as the commando had done.
Adele smiled slightly. So long as the guards on the Aglaia's landing stage didn't make the correspondence perfect by throwing a grenade through the hatch.
The ports and panels that had been open when the Aglaia was in Cinnabar hands were now clamped shut, except for the main hatch where six soldiers armed with stocked impellers waited. The guards wore tan, not camouflaged, uniforms, so they were sailors rather than soldiers, Adele supposed.