WITH THE LIGHTNINGS(108)

Hogg gestured the Alliance ratings toward the end of the corridor with the coil of cargo tape he'd brought to secure them. "Sit down and hold your hands out, you dumb bastards, and you'll live through the day, all right?"

As the guards obeyed, Daniel examined the hatch mechanism. The hold could be padlocked, but only a simple rod now blocked the system. Daniel tossed that to the deck and activated the power latch, then backed out of the way.

"All right, Cinnabars," he called to the fetid darkness within Hold 2. "You're free now. Come out without noise or jostling. I want the senior officer to report to me immediately."

"It's Mr. Leary!" a rating called in delighted wonder. Daniel permitted himself the shadow of a smile, despite the tension and his anger at the stench in which his shipmates had been confined.

Discipline held. The first person through the open hatch was Domenico, the bosun. He braced to attention and saluted—an admiral's inspection salute, not the forehead tap of a fighting ship on service. "Sir!" he said.

Ratings poured out of the hold. Some hugged friends among Daniel's detachment or even kissed the deck in delight to be freed, but the process was as orderly as a barracks emptying at a call of General Quarters.

"I don't mind saying I'm real glad to see you, Mr. Leary," Domenico added with a smile that involved every millimeter of his craggy face. "The best we were hoping for was passage to Pleasaunce and maybe exchange in a year or two."

"I think we can do better than that, Domenico," Daniel said. "What's our present strength?"

He glanced around to be sure everything was under control, but there was really nothing to control: these were veterans, every one of them. The most junior rating could rig, work ship, or handle the armament without a petty officer's attention.

"A hundred and thirty, including me and Chief Baylor," Domenico said. "The rest is ratings. The commissioned officers they took someplace else, and there's forty of the crew killed or sent to hospital when the bastards took us over. Chief of Ship Nantes, she choked on her tongue."

The bosun scowled like a thundercloud. "Talk about catching us with our pants down, sir, they did that for fair!"

"Yes, well, we'll see if we can't surprise our Alliance friends in turn," Daniel said mildly. "We'll ready the Aglaia for liftoff while a party frees Captain Le Golif and his officers, then reach orbit and head for home before anyone realizes what's going on."

His stomach twisted to think of the casualties to the Aglaia's crew, though he supposed he should have known. The Alliance had used nonlethal gas in their takeover, but even so there were bound to be people who got an overdose or were allergic to the compound.

"Sir, it won't work," Domenico said miserably. "They didn't want us getting ideas about crawling out through a cable trunk or some damned thing, so they dismantled the High Drive. Had a detail of our own people do it so we'd know for sure that even if we got loose there wasn't any place to go."

"And they cleaned out the arms locker," said Chief Missileer Baylor, who'd joined them from the hold. He was a slight, sharp-featured man who looked as though he'd aged a decade since Daniel saw him a week and a half ago. "Primary and secondary armament's still in place, such as it is, because they didn't have time to offload it."

"Very well," said Daniel. "We'll have to do something else, then."

Learning that they couldn't escape in the Aglaia was a shock, but it passed in a few heartbeats. Shocks were always brief for Daniel Leary. His wasn't the sort of personality that thought it could plan for every eventuality. He did think, feel, that he could handle any crisis that arose, though. Thus far he'd been pretty successful at that.

The Aglaia's crew was sorting itself by watches and specialties in the corridor, each portion under the command of a petty officer or the senior rating if no petty officer was present. Daniel's detachment threw the four guards, bound with cargo tape, into the hold in place of the Cinnabars. The process was more violent than would have seemed necessary if the conditions for the former prisoners had been a little better.

"I think we'll take the Princess Cecile," Daniel said as calmly as though the idea had been at the top of his conscious mind for a week. "I don't imagine any of the Alliance vessels will be so poorly guarded as to give us the opportunity we need, but I've found you can generally count on the Kostromans to let things slide."

Daniel looked at what was his command, by God, until the Aglaia's proper officers came aboard. He gave the crew a pleased, professional smile and said, "Right. Warrant officers to the bridge with me, the rest of you to general quarters and await orders."