WITH THE LIGHTNINGS(66)

Daniel wondered if it had been like this on Cinnabar during the proscriptions. He'd been kept in Bantry with his mother.

The most exciting thing that had happened to Daniel Leary during the period was seeing a migratory roc that rested on a high outcrop during the night. Hogg had carried Daniel near the cliff base. An hour after dawn the great flyer had spread its forty-meters vans and launched itself into the swelling updraft. The roc's scaly underbelly was almost close enough for a boy to touch when lift mastered gravity and the huge creature mounted skyward again on the next stage of its ten-thousand-mile flight.

Daniel wondered what Adele Mundy remembered about the proscriptions. She'd have heard about them much later, of course.

Banks of floodlights glared across the garden, throwing hard shadows and dazzling reflections that were more confusing than more muted illumination could have achieved. The mobile fusion powerplant that drove the lighting must have come from the Alliance transport.

The cage blocked one arm of the circle from street to street, so the vehicles carrying prisoners had to leave the same way they arrived. The remaining driveway into the gardens was a snarling traffic jam. Normally the route would have been tight but possible, but the construction equipment along the drive made movement a matter of skill and patience—both of which were in short supply.

Hogg walked to the back of a one-ton van marked GEDROSIAN AND DAUGHTERS. A Kostroman thug with a Zojira beret and his hands in his pockets stood nearby. He sauntered away whistling when he saw Hogg; neither man spoke.

The van's concertina rear door appeared to be padlocked, but Hogg slid it a few inches to the side by simple pressure. Daniel realized that the hasp was sawn through so that the door could be opened from inside or out.

"Some local friends of mine found this for me," Hogg muttered. "It won't be reported missing for the next two days."

The back of the van was full of Cinnabar ratings. "Sir!" said the figure nearest the narrow gap. "Bosun's Mate Ellie Woetjans reporting for orders!"

The relief in Woetjans's voice was as obvious as a cement block. Damned if she didn't throw a salute despite the cramped quarters. Daniel almost returned it. There were times reflex could get you killed. . . .

"Stand easy, Woetjans," Daniel said. He felt surprisingly calm. He was too busy to be scared, he supposed. "Now, what equipment do you have?"

"Not a fucking thing but ourselves, sir," Woetjans said. The ratings behind her were a restive mass of people trying not to breathe so that they could hear their superiors' low-voiced exchange. "No food, no weapons. Well, hammers and pipes, you know."

Daniel hoped it looked as though he and his two companions were having a conversation a little away from the angry traffic in the drive. They had to plan, and the worst thing they could do was to look furtive. Everyone suspected everyone else tonight, and Daniel's disguise wouldn't stand scrutiny.

"I'd been figuring we could lay up in a warehouse somewhere for a few days till things got sorted out, sir," Hogg said. "That was when I heard about the business. But I didn't know the Alliance was in it so deep. Those bastards're real soldiers, and I don't guess they're planning to leave any time soon."

"Right on both points," Daniel said. With no equipment or safe hiding place, his detachment had very few options. Their best chance would be to seize a starship tonight before the Alliance forces consolidated their hold on Kostroma.

There was almost certainly an Alliance squadron no more than a few hours out from the planet, though. The chance of the escapees being able to lift before the warships arrived was even slighter than the chances of twenty-odd unarmed Cinnabar citizens reaching the Floating Harbor alive, let alone capturing a ship there.

"Thing is, sir," Hogg said in great embarrassment, "I've got friends like I say, but it isn't like we're family or something. Maybe if it was you alone we could hole up for a good while, but if it's a whole army . . ."

"It's certainly the entire naval detachment I command," Daniel said more sharply than he'd intended. Hogg had worded the statement so carefully that it didn't have to be read as a suggestion that Lieutenant Leary abandon the ratings to save his own neck. "First we'll need clothing. Then—"

"I can get the password into the navy warehouses," Adele said. "I'll have to return to the library. My personal data unit got in the way while I was sorting books, so I took it out of its pocket and left it there."

"By God!" Daniel said. He could suddenly imagine a path to the future that didn't end in a flare of plasma or Zojiras laughing as they used swimming Cinnabars for target practice. "With Kostroman naval uniforms we just might pull this off! And there'll be food stores. If we can hide for the next few weeks till normal traffic in the port resumes, there's a damned good chance!"