WITH THE LIGHTNINGS(93)

At this point things happened very fast and were fully recorded in electronic files from which Adele could retrieve them. The link to Ganser was still only the Ahura's emergency radio, but it and Kostroma's geopositioning satellites were adequate to the needs of the Alliance.

Adele finished her survey and leaned back with a sigh. She didn't shut down but her eyes were far enough back from the focal point that the display merged into a blur of mutually-interfering beams of coherent light.

Daniel and Woetjans were looking at her. "You've got something, Adele?" Daniel asked.

The whole detachment was now present, Hogg included. The servant looked worn, but the pupils of his eyes were the same size and he walked without help. The whole left side of his face was the livid purple yellow of a decaying bruise.

The sailors were armed, but the few who carried impellers held them by the barrel as clubs. Knives, spears, and clubs of the native wood predominated.

"Ganser is in radio contact with the Alliance military authorities," Adele said. She laid the information out as flatly and simply as possible so that she wouldn't be misunderstood. "The Kostromans are on the adjacent island, about three hundred meters from the shore nearest to this island. A platoon of Alliance commandoes in an armored personnel carrier will arrive at local midnight to kill or capture the Cinnabar naval personnel and to capture the Kostromans."

"Why so long?" Dasi asked. "An APC could make it here from Kostroma City by dusk, even if they just started."

"They want us to be asleep," Daniel guessed.

"Yes," Adele said. "Ganser warned them that we were armed. He said they should shoot us on sight and not take any chances."

"Wish we were armed," said Lamsoe. "Wish to fuck we were armed."

He looked wistfully at his impeller. A piece of flexible plastic dangled from the battery compartment. Lamsoe had disconnected the power pack so that there was no risk of his accidentally pulling the trigger and shorting the mechanism explosively.

Daniel looked at his chronometer, returned it to his pocket, and smiled purposefully to Adele and his sailors. "That gives us seven hours," he said. "Now, the first thing we'll need—"



Daniel swept the opposite shore slowly with his goggles set to maximum magnification on thermal imaging, then swept it again with the magnification backed off to normal. There was always the possibility that a glitch in the imaging software would mask a target when two systems were combined and pushed to their limits.

This wasn't a time Daniel could afford a glitch.

He took off the goggles and handed them to Woetjans, beside him in the undergrowth. The remainder of the detachment was a silent presence several feet deeper in the jungle, where the thick foliage would mask their body heat from any detection apparatus Daniel knew of. The Kostromans probably didn't have infrared equipment, but Daniel's margin of error was too slight for him to make things worse by any assumed "certainties."

"I don't see any sign of a guard," he said. "Keep watching, of course."

Daniel stretched to full height, bracing his paired hands on a treetrunk. He'd stripped to a belt, a sheath knife from one of the ratings, and his shorts. Woetjans held a long reel of fishing line whose free end was tied to Daniel's belt.

The shorts weren't for modesty but from a due concern for small swimming things that might nibble or sting in the darkness. A nipped toe wouldn't be disabling.

"I'll be off now," he said. He walked toward the water, feeling the gritty soil change to mud between his toes.

"Sir," said Woetjans as she stepped out of the undergrowth beside him. "I wish—"

"I'm the best swimmer in the detachment," Daniel said. "If there's a problem, Cafoldi's my backup. but you have to get a strike force to the Kostromans tonight. Now, go back to your duties."

At this moment Daniel wanted only to get on with the task, but he didn't let his nervous fury cause him to lash out at the petty officer. Woetjans was just as worried at being left in charge of a situation without clear orders as Daniel was at swimming the strait separating the islands. It ought to work out for both of them, but only a fool wouldn't wonder.

"Yessir," Woetjans said. She saluted and vanished into the jungle.

Daniel entered the water. It felt warmer than the night air on his naked skin. He began a leisurely breast stroke toward the distant shore, giving the wrecked yacht a wide berth.

Sundown was less than an hour past, but the night was so black that only by the pinpricks of starlight could Daniel separate the sky from the land and sea. Both Kostroma's tiny moons were up but they were scarcely more than bright planets even when full.