WITH THE LIGHTNINGS(74)

Daniel grimaced as he stood. "Well, I didn't think you would've," he said. "Look, this is the safety; push it forward with your thumb to shoot. But it's probably better if you don't try that. You're likely to do more harm than good."

Adele opened her mouth in amazement. It took her a moment to realize that Daniel's question had been meant in a general nature—"Have you ever fired a gun?"—and she'd answered words that he'd actually used: "Have you ever used a Kostroman pistol like this one?"

"I'd like to wear it myself," Daniel added, looking toward the warehouse from which the sailors were now carrying the brandy they'd come here for in the first place. "I don't dare, though. The lieutenant of a detachment of armed Shore Police has to be armed herself. Oh, well."

He reholstered the pistol and handed it to Adele. She started to correct the misunderstanding, but the words caught in her throat from embarrassment and a degree of anger. Who was he to assume a Mundy of Chatsworth didn't know how to shoot?

Before she could decide what to say, Daniel walked over to the line of Kostromans his sailors had dragged out of the warehouse. They were bloody and bound with their own tunics, but none of them seemed as seriously injured as Adele would have assumed.

Daniel looked down at the captives with his hands on his hips. "You shouldn't find it hard to get free," he said in a pleasant tone. "What you do then is your own business. We're going to leave the warehouse open, so if you want to have a good time and make some money selling what you don't carry away inside you, go right ahead."

The Cinnabar sailors waited in respectful silence, listening to their commander with as much interest as the Kostromans showed. They knew their lives depended on Daniel making the right decisions.

"On the other hand, you may decide to report exactly what happened here," Daniel continued with a smile. "I'm sure your lieutenant will be particularly pleased to give her version of events. It's your choice."

He turned. "Everybody ready?" he said. "Adele? Then let's mount up. Police armbands in the gun truck, the rest of you as before. Hogg leads in the van and our police escort follows."

"Duty stations!" roared Woetjans, who wore a Shore Police brassard herself. She climbed behind the steering yoke of the gun truck.

Adele had barely settled herself on the other seat in the cab before Hogg pulled the laden van past them. Gunning her engine, Woetjans fought the truck through a turn and roared onto the roadway in pursuit.

Adele wondered what a lieutenant was supposed to do. As for what Adele Mundy was supposed to do—her computer was under the seat, ready for use.

And her own pistol was in the side pocket of the borrowed jacket.



Candace's uniform was too tight on Daniel's shoulders and thighs despite being loose at the waist and decidedly baggy in the butt. It might have made Daniel feel as though he was in better shape than he'd given himself credit for; in his present mood, he just felt uncomfortable.

A starship was landing in the Floating Harbor, waking echoes and ghostly reflections from the marshy landscape. Under the circumstances, this was probably an Alliance vessel concerned with the coup: a warship, or another transport loaded with troops and heavy weapons.

Daniel'd almost fallen backward when he climbed into the cab carrying a case of brandy. That didn't impress him with what it said about his physical abilities.

Hogg glanced over at the liquor balanced on Daniel's knees. "There was room enough in back, you know, even before the six of them transferred to the cop car."

"This is for our friends at the gate," Daniel said. "I don't want to open the back up when we stop for them."

"Ah," said Hogg. The road ahead wobbled like a topo map where seepage had softened the bedding layer; Hogg slacked the hand throttle slightly. "Seems to me," he went on with his eyes on his driving, "that changing styles after you find one that works isn't generally very smart."

"We could've locked the police patrol in the warehouse," Daniel agreed. "And we could bull our way out the way we got in, more or less."

He smiled to think about that. He'd treated the gate guards as he would have done a gang of recruits too raw to understand discipline of any but the most basic sort. An officer rarely had to use his hands on a properly manned ship, because the experienced personnel hammered insolence out of a cocky recruit during the first "lights out."

"But you know, if the whole complex is looted while the guards are drunk," Daniel continued aloud, "or better still by drunken guards, nobody will even know we existed. I prefer that to leaving a trail of bodies and pissed-off survivors behind. You take more flies with honey than vinegar, Hogg."