WITH THE LIGHTNINGS(109)

"Aye aye sir!" over a hundred ratings boomed as they scrambled to obey.



"Em Ex five three niner," said the controller's voice; a different person but as bored as the first one. "You're cleared to leave harbor. Maintain fifty meters altitude until you're three klicks out. Tarnhelm control out."

"Go ahead, Gambier," Daniel called from beside Adele. The APC slid off the pontoon and accelerated across the water's surface for several seconds in a trough of spray before rising to the prescribed altitude.

Daniel nodded approvingly. "Gambier's using surface effect till we build momentum," he said.

Adele started to climb out of the cupola; Daniel waved her back with a grin. "Stay there," he said. "We're more likely to need you on the radio than we are me on the cannon. I hope to God that's true, anyhow."

His grin broadened into his full-dress smile, an expression that made even Adele feel absurdly positive. "Besides," he added, "you could probably use the cannon too."

Adele sniffed. "About as well as you could handle the communications chores," she said. She permitted herself a tiny grin. "Which might be adequate. I've noticed that you have a very good ear."

Kostroma City had shrunk to a smudge on the horizon on Adele's panoramic screen. Gambier was following the programmed course, taking them well out to sea before curving southward toward the Navy Pool. The harbor and warehouse complex had Alliance detachments overseeing the Kostroman naval personnel on duty, but they weren't linked to Tarnhelm control.

Adele had listened to enough of their radio traffic to know that the standards at the Navy Pool were lax. Very nearly as lax as they'd been under Walter III, in fact.

"I'd like to use something less threatening than an APC," Daniel said as he scowled at the receiver of the submachine gun that was effectively part of his uniform. Adele had never seen Daniel fire a shot, now that she thought about it. "Our Alliance friends stripped airboats and anything else movable off the Aglaia as soon as they took over, it seems. The cutters too, though I wouldn't want to use a cutter."

"An Alliance APC will be an advantage," Adele said. "The Kostromans won't dare question us."

She didn't know whether she was being logical or merely soothing. She rather thought she was trying to be soothing, but that wasn't a familiar experience for her.

A dam crossed the jaws of a bayou to form the Navy Pool. It swelled in Adele's display, looking like a causeway supported by buttresses. The flap valves on the inner side formed a solid wall when the incoming tide no longer held them open.

The APC slowed mushily. Barnes stuck his head back between the drivers' seats to call, "Sir, there's a big aircar right slap in the center of the tender moored to the Princess Cecile. What do you want us to do?"

Adele glanced at the display before she remembered Daniel was the person who had to be able to see what was going on. She started to squeeze out of the way, then realized Daniel didn't need the display. He'd already echoed the image through his helmet's hologram projector.

She kept forgetting that though Daniel wasn't an information specialist, he was a professional trained to use state-of-the-art military hardware. Given a little time and experimentation she might be able to get more out of the equipment than Daniel could, but he handled it smoothly for its intended purposes.

The Princess Cecile was the cigar-shaped corvette Adele had seen in flight only a few days earlier during the Founder's Day celebrations. It was moored in the center of the bayou, at a distance from the rows of generally larger ships along the shore.

A flat barge was tied to the main hatch. Many of the corvette's other hatches and ports gaped also. The scene reminded Adele of the way the Aglaia had looked before she was captured.

The aircar parked in the middle of the barge's deck could carry at least a dozen passengers. The car's gray-enameled sides were marked with Alliance crests and stenciled government motorpool legends.

"Set us down on the tender's stern and pray we don't swamp her," Daniel ordered. "Keep the fan speed up in case it does."

He looked at Adele and shook his head. "If they'd landed on one end or the other, we could center our weight and there'd be no problem."

"If wishes hooked fish," Hogg put in tartly, "then you and I wouldn't have ate so much dried food when we'd go off camping."

Daniel's servant wore a commando uniform that couldn't be said to fit him even after he'd done some rough-and-ready tailoring to the sleeves, trouser legs, and waistband. Nobody'd suggested that the uniform should go to somebody who was more nearly the right size and age, however.

Adele was just as glad of that. At least some of the sailors were good shots, and their courage was beyond question. In the present business, however, she trusted Hogg's reflexes as she did those of no other member of the party.