WITH THE LIGHTNINGS(41)

He coughed. "Expansion will mean promotion for trained officers, you know. It stands to reason."

All the officers in the warehouse were in uniform, but again the word meant something different in Kostroman terms. Daniel was wearing the full dress uniform of the RCN: white silk with gold braid on every seam. It made a dazzling array in most gatherings, but here it seemed as dull as the building's brick walls.

Candace wore a magenta tunic over blue breeches and high boots; Welcome was in orange with trousers of vertical black and gold stripes; and Parzifal's ensemble was a candy-striped green and yellow jumpsuit with a shoulder cape of lustrous white fur. All three men had enough medals to stock a jeweler and a ribbon counter besides. Each could point to a regulation permitting their choice of garb—not that any of their superiors were likely to object.

"Look, Leary," Candace said earnestly as Parzifal pressed a pinkish drink into Daniel's hand. "Let me tell you my idea. You lot on Cinnabar ought to build up our navy yourselves, transfer battleships to us. You see?"

"Umm," Daniel said as he swigged from the glass cup. He'd heard this notion before. Every time Candace got outside a couple drinks, as a matter of fact.

"Now, Kostroma's a friend of Cinnabar, we've always been a friend of Cinnabar," Candace continued. He tossed off the rest of his drink, looking flushed. It wasn't exactly punch. The base was plum brandy, the usual tipple of the Kostroman Navy, with a dash of bitters that gave the fluid color. The mixture was at least sixty percent alcohol by volume. "Ships in our navy are just the same as in your own, only you won't have to find officers for them. You see the beauty of it?"

"You'd want to transfer them with crews, though," Welcome said. "There's the devil's own time finding ordinary spacers here. They're all lazy and don't want to work."

Daniel rolled brandy around in his mouth to avoid having to speak; though another "umm" would probably have been sufficient. Kostroman merchant captains paid good wages—and paid them on time, as well. Naval ratings were rarely so fortunate.

"Say . . ." said Candace, his head swiveling. Daniel followed the Kostroman's eyes to a blonde woman in a backless dress.

"Not a lot of front either," Welcome noted approvingly. He snagged another cup of brandy from the buffet table. "To the dress, I mean."

"She's not for us, though," Welcome added. "I saw her come in on the arm of Admiral Sanaus. Rank hath its privileges."

"I didn't think I'd better bring my friend tonight," Candace said regretfully. "Her husband's offplanet, but you know, still . . ."

"It's important that your Admiral Lasowski knows how valuable we can be to your cause if Cinnabar just gives us the help we need," said Parzifal, the most focused of the three lieutenants. "I don't think those politicians in the palace really understand."

"Not that Hajas isn't a first-rate man and a real supporter of the navy," Candace put in. "The advisors he's got around him, though, I don't think a one of them's been aboard a warship."

He sounded to Daniel as if he was giving an honest opinion, not suddenly concerned that somebody would take his friends' opinions as treasonous. The Kostroman navy—like the RCN—was nonpolitical. On Cinnabar the power of the navy was greater than that of any faction that might want to use it; here on Kostroma it was more a matter of the navy being of so little importance that those looking for power didn't bother with it.

"It's a mistake to rely on orbital defenses," Welcome said as he passed Daniel a fresh drink. "They can't do a thing for our ships beyond Kostroma proper. Not even for the mining and manufacturing at Port Starway in the asteroid belt!"

Daniel opened his mouth to argue, then took a sip of his drink instead. The clear brandy was a taste he'd had to acquire since he arrived on Kostroma. Acquisition was complete by the end of his first night of partying with local officers.

Arguing with these men about Kostroman defense policy was as useless as trying to convince somebody that the world wasn't really flat. They were going to believe what it suited their own needs to believe, and argument otherwise would only damage friendships.

In fact Kostroma's defenses were lamentably poor, but building up the fleet to the relative strength it had two generations before wasn't a practical alternative. Kostroma couldn't crew both the warships and her trading vessels, and she couldn't at this point take political control of independent worlds in place of her age-old practice of reciprocal trading links.

Both the Alliance and Cinnabar controlled multiworld empires which were by now held together by self-interest. The star systems of Cinnabar's protectorate had no external political authority, but the local magnates could move to Cinnabar and gain a degree of influence over the affairs of the whole Republic. Protected worlds were in a position clearly inferior to that of Cinnabar itself, but with equal clarity they were better off than they would have been if fully independent.