WITH THE LIGHTNINGS(110)

Hogg carried a stocked impeller for choice. At Daniel's orders, so did Lamsoe, Sun, and Dasi. Adele hadn't understood why until Hogg explained to the sailors.

Submachine guns were lighter, handier and fine at short range. The light pellets were next to useless against vehicles or targets a hundred yards away, however. The group didn't know what they'd be facing in the next few minutes, and Daniel's desire for a range of alternatives was worth the extra weight.

Gambier dropped the APC to the surface of the water, then bounced up onto the tender. The inevitable gush of spray soaked the car already there. The driver jumped into her cab, shaking her fist at the APC.

Daniel smiled faintly. "Whoever's here ahead of us complicates things," he said, "but we'll handle it."

Adele nodded crisply. "I didn't do a cull and sort for messages referring to the Princess Cecile," she said. "It's my fault."

The APC settled. The tender rocked uncomfortably but finally stabilized with a slight list. When Gambier was sure it wouldn't turn turtle, he shut down the engines.

"It was your fault that time is finite and that I was in a hurry?" Daniel said. "No, I really don't think it was."

He turned to face the enclosed troop compartment. "Same drill as before: Ms. Mundy does all the talking until I give orders to the contrary."

Adele saw Daniel's jaw muscles twitch in a familiar smile. "Or the shooting starts, all right? But we don't start it."

Adele stepped onto the tender's quivering deck. The car's driver had gotten out again; she wore an Alliance naval uniform. "You there!" Adele snapped in upper-class scorn. "Who told you to land in the middle of this site? What are you doing here, anyway?"

She heard Hogg murmur in pleased appreciation.

The driver swallowed a lungful of protests in sudden fear. Greenish kift juice dribbled down her cheek.

"Look, I'm just driving Commander Strachan and the inspectors," she said as she backed toward the cab again. "Look, I'll move it, all right?"

She closed the hatch behind her before Adele could have replied if she wanted to. "They'll be examining the ship to take her into Alliance service," Daniel murmured into Adele's right ear. "Probably three officers and aides, but nobody looking for trouble."

The aircar's fans howled; it slid sideways clumsily. Adele strode toward the corvette's hatch, trying to ignore the way the deck hopped beneath her soles. She hoped the idiot driver wouldn't manage to fall off the tender and bring a rush of people out into the open.

The Princess Cecile was much more cramped than the Aglaia. Two Kostroman sailors were in the entrance lobby, standing beside mops and buckets of soapy water. They stopped talking when they saw the "commandoes."

"Where are the inspectors?" Adele demanded. She heard footsteps and a mixture of voices approaching.

The sailors looked at one another. A group of people wearing Kostroman and Alliance officers' uniforms walked into the entranceway from the hall to the left.

"What's this?" said an Alliance officer.

"Leary!" a Kostroman officer cried. Adele recognized him as one of the plump young peacocks she'd met at the Admiral's Ball. His name was Candace. "What are you—"

Adele had her pistol out butt-down at her side. It wasn't a magic wand; you didn't point it for threat the way sailors behind her were doing with their weapons. "Don't move or I'll kill you!" she said, her eyes holding those of the officer from Pleasaunce.

Paunchy, in his thirties . . . his light ginger hair would fluff out like a halo when the pellet penetrated his cranial vault through the light bones at the back of his eye socket. She could see it—

Hogg stepped forward and made a quarter turn of his upper body. He planted the butt of his impeller in the pit of Candace's stomach. Candace fell to his knees, then spewed his dinner on the unscrubbed metal decking.

All around Adele Cinnabar sailors seized Kostroman and Alliance personnel alike, forcing them to their knees at gunpoint with shouted threats. Teams scrambled down the halls in both directions from the entrance alcove. A submachine gun fired, a needlessly long burst that sent bits of pellet and chips from the walls sparkling all the way back into the entrance. Someone screamed curses in a Cinnabar accent.

"Sir, they've locked the power room!" a voice cried.

"The bridge is secured!" another voice called.

The Alliance officer's nametag read STRACHAN in black letters on a gold field. He hadn't moved except to close his mouth since Adele spoke. Two sailors caught Strachan by the elbows, kicked his knees forward, and began strapping his wrists behind his back with cargo tape. He didn't resist, but his eyes never left Adele's.