WITH THE LIGHTNINGS(113)

"Sir, what'll happen to us if we raise the containment bulkhead?" Gershon's voice asked. "Are they, you know . . . ?"

"You'll be confined aboard the Princess Cecile until just before we're ready to leave Kostroma, Gershon," Daniel said mildly. He rested his right forearm on top of the console in order to look even more relaxed than his voice projected. "Then we'll let you and all those with you go."

As a smiling afterthought he added, "Or you can join us, if you like. The Republic of Cinnabar Navy can always use brisk fellows who know how to act in a crisis."

"Christ help us," Gershon muttered miserably. The shirt slipped away from the pickup. The bald, gray-bearded Kostroman at the power room communicator looked as though he'd just volunteered to jump into vacuum.

"Open the bulkhead, Carney," he ordered. He pulled his shirt on to cover his scarred torso. A worm gear began to whine, hauling back the massive barrier intended to prevent a fusion bottle ruptured during combat from venting its contents through the entire vessel.

"We may as well give up," said Gershon. He was speaking toward Daniel, not Candace in the foreground. "We haven't got any rations or even water in here."

"You won't be sorry, I assure you," Daniel said. Commando-garbed Cinnabar ratings poured into the power room behind Gershon. They were securing the Kostromans without any serious roughness so far as Daniel could tell.

"Damn right," said Hogg, moving into the pickup's field for the first time. "And if you're smart, you'll sign up with Mr. Leary. You'll like serving under a real officer for a change."



Adele stood in the hatchway of the APC, waiting for Daniel to take his restraining hand off the coaming. She was so irritated that she'd have driven away while he was still talking, but Barnes was more respectful of his lieutenant.

The Alliance aircar approached the tender in a trough of spray, returning from the Aglaia with another load of sailors. Gambier was driving, but a Kostroman—Warrant Officer Gershon, the man who'd closed down the power room during the assault—sat beside him to provide an authentically non-Cinnabar voice for Tarnhelm Control.

"Look, Adele," Daniel said, raising his voice to be heard over the car's fans. "I think I'd better come along after all. It isn't proper for a civilian to be in charge of this. Freeing RCN officers is RCN business, and—"

"Mr. Leary," Adele said in a tone of very genuine cold anger, "in your company I have taken part in looting naval warehouses and in capturing not one but two naval vessels. There is no one in our mutual enterprise who knows the Elector's Palace as well as I do, nor whose accent can pass for that of an Alliance citizen. Your presence is necessary to ready the Princess Cecile for our escape. The twelve of us—"

She nodded toward Hogg and the ten sailors under Woetjans already within the vehicle. They and Adele wore commando uniforms.

"—can deal with the matter of the Aglaia's officers just as readily as we could if your presence made our number thirteen."

She wrinkled her nose dismissively. "I don't object to you coming on grounds of superstition," she said, "merely because it would be stupid."

The aircar landed, rocking the tender despite the APC's centered mass. Gambier idled the fans and the noise level dropped.

"Sir?" said Hogg. "Have this bitch of a wog ship ready to lift when we get back, all right? Because sure as shit, we're going to be ready."

"Too fucking true," agreed Woetjans.

"Yes," said Daniel. "All right."

The car was disgorging its load of sailors. "Hold for me, Gambier," Daniel called. "I need to prepare the Aglaia for when we lift."

He looked at Adele and smiled wistfully. "Odd that it's so much easier to do something dangerous than to ask friends to do so, isn't it? Good luck. And Hogg?"

"Yessir?" the servant called. Adele had already started to pull the hatch to.

"Ms. Mundy has all the skills desirable in an affair of this nature," Daniel said. "She does not have experience, however. Don't let anything happen to her."

"On my honor, sir!" Hogg shouted as Adele angrily clanged the hatch closed.

Barnes skidded the armored personnel carrier away from the tender. Adele's stomach churned as they dropped to the water, then rose.

She wondered how many officers really thought it was easier to take risks than to order others to do so. If Daniel was an example, perhaps all the good ones did.



The Aglaia's tactical operations center was an armored citadel at the opposite end of Deck E from the bridge. All the sensor inputs were routed here as well as to the bridge, through separate trunks.