WITH THE LIGHTNINGS(55)

There were about a hundred figures, mostly young men, gathered on the quay and boarding the boats tied up there. Most carried submachine guns, but Daniel saw a leavening of shoulder-stocked impellers. The gunmen wore two-tone armbands as a uniform, but the light on the quay wasn't good enough to tell what the colors were.

Daniel himself would have been in plain sight if there'd been better illumination, but in the starlight his gray uniform blended well with the weathered stone building. He raised his eyes to the Floating Harbor and increased his goggles' magnification.

The Aglaia looked as she had when he was last aboard her a few days earlier. The guards in the main hatchway were relaxed, but they kept their weapons slung or resting on their laps. The petty officer in charge spit into the sea; because of the magnification he looked close enough to touch.

Daniel didn't have a radio. There were underwater telephone cables from shore to the Floating Harbor, but he wasn't sure any of the locals would let him use their phone. He could go walk back to the palace, or he could—

Vapor spewed from all the Aglaia's open hatches. Daniel thought the ship had blown up, but the thumps that reached the shore several seconds later were muted. As the mist cleared, he could see that the Aglaia's lights were still on and her hull was unharmed. Gas bombs . . .

Three of the guards were down. The petty officer had been a few meters from the hatch. He had time to unsling his submachine gun and start for the pontoon, but the puff of gas caught him. He ran two steps more and collapsed.

The fellow must have been a rigger: even unconscious, he managed to land on the narrow catwalk. Only his weapon splashed into the water to sink the thousand feet or more to the bottom.

The boats full of armed Kostromans roared from the quay, several of them wallowing from the overloads they carried. Some idiot in the lead boat fired a full magazine from his submachine gun. Daniel couldn't imagine what he thought he was shooting at.

Even before the sound of the gas bombs reached Daniel, he saw cargo hatches open in the side of the just-landed Alliance transport. A vehicle flew from the starship with an echoing roar. An aircar, Daniel thought, but as the car swung in silhouette against the lights of a Kostroman starship he saw that it was really an armored personnel carrier.

Though lifted and propelled by ducted fans like those of an ordinary aircar, the APC could carry twenty troops behind ceramic armor thick enough to stop small-arms projectiles. The small turret above the bow held a plasma weapon.

The APC turned toward the Aglaia, flying just above the water. Its downdraft blew a trough into the foam. A second APC followed the first. The transport continued to disgorge similar armored vehicles from several hatches, but the later ones headed for Kostroma City itself at low level. To unaided eyesight on the seawall their approach would look like great Vees of starlit spray.

Daniel went back down the street by which he'd approached the waterfront. He walked at a steady pace rather than calling attention to himself by running, and he stayed as close to the building fronts as projecting porches allowed.

It wouldn't have been difficult to smuggle gas bombs aboard the Aglaia along with the whores and the hawkers. All the hatches were open and half the crew was on liberty or drunk at any given time. After all, Kostroma was the next thing to an ally.

Not all Kostromans were allies, though. More to the point, Kostroman clans that were out of power might be willing to deal with Satan himself to change their status. Guarantor Porra was at least the next thing to a devil, but that might not be as obvious in Kostroma City as it was to an officer of the RCN.

Kostroma City would learn how free the stars of the Alliance really were. Of that Daniel was certain.

He turned left at the first corner. His own apartment was only a few blocks away, but going there would mean flipping a coin for his life. This coup had been planned with obvious attention to detail. There was an even chance that those in charge had included in their calculations Cinnabar personnel billeted in the city.

Daniel doubted that any faction on Kostroma could have carried off this operation by itself. The APCs full of Alliance commandoes were a less important factor than the Alliance intelligence officers who must have done the planning.

A pair of jitneys drove past at top speed, bouncing and squealing on irregularities in the pavement. Daniel swept off his cap and goggles, thrusting them into opposite side pockets of his jacket. He hated to lose the vision aids in the goggle lenses, but they marked him as unusual to anyone he met.

Daniel continued walking at his measured pace. He hoped he could locate Candace's townhouse; he'd only been there twice before and both times was being driven by someone else.

He needed clothing and a place to hide. If Candace could provide him with a weapon and an aircar also, that would be even better. If.