With the Lightnings (25 page)

The truck ground to a halt six feet from the barricade; the engine ran at a chattering idle. Three sailors were outside the gate. They moved to the sides, out of the fan of light from the headlamp mounted in the center of the truck's hood. Only the first of the four light standards along the entranceway worked, and it was now behind the vehicle.

"I'll take care of this," Daniel muttered into the cab. He dropped from the running board and strode to the sailor who wore a holstered pistol instead of carrying a heavy impeller. "We're here with a delivery for Grand Admiral Sanaus," he said to the Kostroman. "Items for safekeeping during the present awkwardness. The password is Greatorix."

"The password's canceled," the Kostroman said. "We've got orders not to let anybody in tonight. Go on back. Maybe in the morning things'll be different."

Hogg leaned out the window on his side so that he could hear better. Adele did the same. The sailors were nervous and looked frequently back the way the truck had come, toward the glow of fires over Kostroma City.

"Dammit, man!" Daniel snapped. "I've given you the password. This is Admiral Sanaus's personal brandy stock. If anything happens to it you'll have him on your necks, not some politician who's here today and gone tomorrow!"

The pistol-armed Kostroman shook his head in a combination of concern and denial. "Look, I can't open up. If you want to park here till morning—"

"If you can't carry out the admiral's orders," Daniel said, "then get an officer out here who can. Your obstructionism means the ass of everybody in your chain of command, don't you see?"

"Where do you suppose he comes from?" said a bearded sailor leaning against the gate from the inside. He was ostensibly talking to the petty officer in charge, but his loud voice was meant for everybody in the guard detachment. "He sounds funny to me."

Hogg swore softly as he twitched away the wiping rag covering the bulky electromotive pistol in his lap. He leaned back in his seat and muttered, "Get ready for trouble!" to the small open panel between the driver's compartment and the back of the van.

Daniel Leary took two strides to the gate and grabbed the sailor by the throat with his right hand. His fingers choked the man's yelp before it reached his lips.

"Scum don't normally criticize the accent of a gentleman of L'ven!" Daniel said. "Do you understand that, scum, or shall I use your mouth for a latrine?"

The Kostroman sailor held an impeller at the balance. Daniel shook him violently, banging the man's chest against the barrier's crossbars. The weapon rattled until the sailor dropped it.

None of the others interfered, though two half-raised their impellers without pointing the muzzles anywhere. Daniel looked around the detachment with fierce scorn, then hurled his victim back into the compound. The sailor's face had started to turn blue.

Fixing his glare on the Kostroman petty officer, Daniel said, "Hogg, we're going to drive through this gate if the scum don't open it for us. And if they shoot, they'll learn what Hell is like
before
they reach it!"

He strode back to the truck, scowling in utter fury. Adele didn't remember ever having seen a better piece of acting, or a better place for it.

Her hands were on her lap. She relaxed them to her sides, putting her fingers a little farther from the opening to her left pocket.

The petty officer turned toward the compound, his expression troubled. Hogg revved the diesel into a ringing whine. His hand held the brake firmly.

"Open it!" the Kostroman shouted. "Let them in and to hell with them!"

A sailor drew out the thick pin locking one end of the barrier to the brick post. The whole detachment worked together to swing the gate into the compound. It was so heavy that they didn't seem to notice they were also pushing the man whom Daniel had dropped within the gate's arc in wheezing incapacity.

Daniel jumped onto the running board. His face was as distorted as a bomb-burst. Hogg eased the truck forward, just enough to spur the sailors to a final effort.

"I can't believe that scum!" Daniel said in a hoarse whisper. "What kind of navy is it when a rating thinks he can be discourteous to a superior officer?"

"But . . ." Adele said. She didn't know how to continue. "You're not a superior officer" was so obvious that she couldn't very well say it.

The way was clear. Hogg drove into the compound, accelerating as hard as the tons of human cargo in the back of the truck permitted. Their headlight swept the buildings. The warehouse facades were decorated with brick pilasters and swags of cut stone despite their utilitarian function.

"We're looking for Building Forty-four," Adele said to Hogg. She set her personal data unit on her lap, although she'd memorized all the necessary information when she called it up the first time. "It's in the third row, according to the plan."

"What
kind
of navy?" Daniel repeated. Adele finally had to admit silently that the Cinnabar lieutenant hadn't been acting after all.

Considering that his fury was directed at a gross lapse of professionalism, Adele found herself inclined to agree.

Daniel punched the last of eight digits into the keypad on the door of Warehouse 12 and stepped back. The lock clicked. Woetjans thrust a short prybar into the door seam instead of struggling with the recessed handle. She pulled and Dasi, the huskiest man in the detachment, shoved on the back of the bar.

The door jerked sideways as though blown along its track. Several ratings grabbed the edge while it still had rolling inertia and slammed it all the way to the stop.

Hogg had the truck angled so that the headlight shone into the warehouse. Miscellaneous junk was piled in the aisle at the front of the building just as it had been at Warehouse 44, but Bell hopped nimbly over the obstruction and cried, "Here's the ration cartons!"

Adele had gotten out of the truck. She walked over and stood beside Daniel as he watched in satisfaction. He grinned at her as he called to the ratings, "Just one layer of boxes to cover the floor. You're packed tight enough already."

The Cinnabars now wore Kostroman utility uniforms, loose red shirts and blue trousers. They were barefoot as well, a problem for feet not hardened to it but necessary if they were to avoid comment. For an officer to wear the wrong kind of shoes meant little or nothing; a rating with any footgear at all was instantly noticeable.

"Is there liquor stored in the compound?" Daniel asked. "Can you find it?"

Adele looked surprised, but she squatted without comment. She leaned her back against the warehouse wall so that she could balance the little computer on her knees.

The gear piled in the doorway was bedding. Instead of simply tossing it aside, the Cinnabars cleared their path by stacking the pads and blankets in a side bay. The result was neater than the situation the Kostromans themselves had left.

Daniel grinned in quiet pleasure. He was an officer of the RCN in command of a naval detachment. Even if he died before he became captain of a starship, he had this.

"Building Fifty," Adele said. "It's listed as paint in the manifest, but it's in a triple-locked warehouse along with high-value electronics, not with the rest of the paint in Thirty-one and Thirty-two."

She looked up at Daniel. With a careful lack of emphasis she added, "Are you sure the liquor's a good idea?"

Daniel chuckled. "Oh, good God, it's not for us," he said. "Not—"

He felt himself sober. Two ratings had jumped into the back of the truck. The remainder of the detachment formed a chain to pass heavy cartons of ration packs, all in metal cans, from the warehouse to the vehicle.

"—that I'd worry about this crew drinking itself incapable while there was a job to be done. I want it for trading material."

Adele switched off her computer and slid the control wands into their recess, but she didn't return the unit to the pocket of her trousers. She straightened, raising an eyebrow to Daniel in further question.

"We need to hide," he explained. "We'll either have to fight or barter our way off the island."

He felt a little diffident about verbalizing his plan. Growing up under Corder Leary instilled a feeling that if you stated an idea, someone in authority would ram it down your throat to prove they
were
in authority. The Navy School had done very little to counteract that impression.

Adele nodded understanding. Daniel grinned. "Being a civilized person," he continued, "I prefer to barter. Not to mention the fact we don't have proper weapons."

"Three more cases!" Woetjans called from where she viewed the loading. "Then lock the place. We don't need to leave tracks."

"L'ven is one of the northern islands, isn't it?" Adele said. Daniel followed the line of her eyes south toward the city. An APC, a bug at this distance, crawled across a backdrop of rosy flame.

"Right, there's an amazing colonial shellfish that lives around the shoreline there," he said. "They're called castle clams. They build towers that actually siphon the tide through the entire colony. The augmented flow means they can live in water as much as five hundred feet deep."

"That's how you were able to mimic a L'ven accent?" Adele asked carefully.

Daniel finally understood her real question. Why didn't people just say what they meant? "Oh, I haven't the faintest notion of what a L'ven accent sounds like," he admitted cheerfully. "I don't even know that the island's inhabited, though I suppose it is. I just happened to think of the place because of the clams. And I thought I'd better say something fast."

"Yes," Adele said in a tone as dry as straw rustling. "I think you were right about that."

"Sir, we're loaded," Woetjans said. The ratings were already jumping aboard the van. The reduced ceiling height meant the taller ones had to bend over. The vehicle already sagged on its springs, but it'd have to do.

"Right!" said Daniel. "Warehouse Fifty and then we can get out of this place for good!"

He hadn't any right to feel cheerful as he hooked himself onto the running board again; but he did.

Adele opened Warehouse 50's three separate locks. Daniel and Hogg were in conversation through the cab window about the next stage of the escape. Woetjans and Dasi had the door in motion almost before Adele's finger left the last key. A dozen more sailors jostled her as they sped the panel fully open. Adele stepped out of the way.

Working around these Cinnabar sailors was like using a powerful machine. You had to be very careful of where you stood when you put them in motion.

Warehouse 50 was at the end of a row. On the farther side was woven-wire fencing and supposedly a minefield. Mines didn't seem practical in the marshy ground beyond the fenceline, but the bog itself was a considerable barrier to anyone trying to break in.

Farther still to the north, the sky over Kostroma City glowed. Occasionally a fleck of greater brightness snapped through the night; projectiles, she supposed, but they could have been reflections from an aircar.

Sounds were lost in the distance. All Adele could hear from where she stood were the cries of seabirds and valves slapping at the mouth of the Navy Pool. The tide was coming in to fill the lagoon.

"Found it, sir!" a sailor called from the mouth of the warehouse. "How much do we take?"

"Four—no, six cases!" Daniel said, stepping from the driver's side running board to look into the building. "And the stronger the better. Brandies, not wine, all right?"

Adele saw a spotlight finger the roof of the warehouse on the other side of this short street. The beam dropped to vanish in the skyglow. "Someone's coming!" she called. "On the main—"

A four-wheeled vehicle pulled across the intersection, blocking the only way for the Cinnabars to get out. The passenger in the vehicle's open cab shone a spotlight down this street as he had the one before. The beam locked on the sailors and Hogg's van with its nose toward the open warehouse.

"Hold where you are!" a woman's voice ordered. "Get your hands up!"

Adele couldn't see well against the beam of the spotlight, but she could make out several figures in the back of the other vehicle. One of them was manning the automatic impeller mounted on a pintle in the middle of the deck.

Daniel stepped forward, twisting his mouth into a smile as the gun truck pulled into the cul-de-sac. The truck's twin headlights lit the van and the Cinnabars around it, so the officer in the passenger's seat turned her spotlight on the warehouse door. There were half a dozen ratings inside, but Woetjans, who had the only pistol, was in plain view.

Four Kostroman sailors were in the back of the truck. On the sleeves of their utility uniforms were broad white armbands with embroidered anchors: this was a detachment of Shore Police. Three carried stocked impellers, while the last was behind the automatic weapon trained on Daniel's navel. A submachine gun stood upright in a boot between the driver and passenger so that either could grab it at need.

"It's all right, officer," Daniel called, wondering if his accent was going to be a problem again. "We're authorized to be here. The password's Greatorix, and Admiral Sanaus gave us the door codes, as you see."

He wanted to shade his eyes from the headlight glare, but he decided that would be a bad idea. He was better off showing the police a pleasant smile than looking uncomfortable for any reason whatever.

"Put your damned hands up!" the officer repeated. The gun truck stopped ten feet from Hogg's van; she stood but didn't get out of the vehicle. "How many of you are there, anyway? They told me there was two civilians and a lieutenant."

She sounded peevish. Daniel couldn't see her rank tabs at this distance but she couldn't be more than a lieutenant. There was nothing obviously wrong about Daniel's presence here—he had the codes and password, just as he'd said. He'd never known an RCN shore policeman to cut any slack for personnel in the real navy, though, and he didn't imagine the situation was different on Kostroma.

An unusually loud explosion in Kostroma City made roofing tiles click here in the warehouse compound. The muzzle of the automatic impeller wobbled as the gunner holding the grips flinched. The Shore Police would know just enough about the coup to make them nervous, but that didn't make the Cinnabars' situation easier.