With the Lightnings (39 page)

Adele had her pistol out butt-down at her side. It wasn't a magic wand; you didn't point it for threat the way sailors behind her were doing with their weapons. "Don't move or I'll kill you!" she said, her eyes holding those of the officer from Pleasaunce.

Paunchy, in his thirties . . . his light ginger hair would fluff out like a halo when the pellet penetrated his cranial vault through the light bones at the back of his eye socket. She could see it— 
 

Hogg stepped forward and made a quarter turn of his upper body. He planted the butt of his impeller in the pit of Candace's stomach. Candace fell to his knees, then spewed his dinner on the unscrubbed metal decking.

All around Adele Cinnabar sailors seized Kostroman and Alliance personnel alike, forcing them to their knees at gunpoint with shouted threats. Teams scrambled down the halls in both directions from the entrance alcove. A submachine gun fired, a needlessly long burst that sent bits of pellet and chips from the walls sparkling all the way back into the entrance. Someone screamed curses in a Cinnabar accent.

"Sir, they've locked the power room!" a voice cried.

"The bridge is secured!" another voice called.

The Alliance officer's nametag read Strachan in black letters on a gold field. He hadn't moved except to close his mouth since Adele spoke. Two sailors caught Strachan by the elbows, kicked his knees forward, and began strapping his wrists behind his back with cargo tape. He didn't resist, but his eyes never left Adele's.

The vessel shuddered as a heavy door slid to a stop. Daniel returned to the entrance alcove from the left; from the bridge, Adele supposed. "That was the power room containment bulkhead," he said with a scowl. "There's no override from the bridge."

He glanced around. A dozen captives lay on the deck, trussed like hens for market.

Hogg returned from the tender and gave Daniel a thumbs up. "We've got an aircar now too, sir," the servant announced. "We're coming up in the world."

Daniel's usual grin replaced the scowl. "Well," he said, "we can't burn through the containment bulkhead even with the plasma cannon, so I guess we'll have to talk some Kostroman sailors out of the power room."

"I guess we will," said Adele Mundy as she pocketed her pistol.

"Look, Leary . . ." Candace said. The gray sheen of his face made him look like a death mask of his normally handsome self. His seat was swiveled to face out from the Attack Console.

Candace rubbed his forehead and went on, "I'm sorry I ever met you! Are you trying to get me killed? First you come to my house, my
house
for God's sake! And now you think I'm going to help you and a gang of pirates steal a ship? You must be out of your mind!"

Daniel sighed. He'd thought he could bring Candace around if he took the Kostroman to the bridge. There were no open threats—though Hogg was nearby, trimming his fingernails with a knife as he pretended to watch Adele at one of the bridge consoles. The captured Alliance officers were in the wardroom, nearby but out of sight. All that was happening was that Leary and Candace, friends from different planets, were talking over a mutual problem.

Candace didn't see it that way. Well, Daniel hadn't really expected he would; but neither did Daniel see any other practical way of getting the Kostromans in the power room to surrender. Adele was sure that they couldn't get a message out, but Daniel and his Cinnabar crew couldn't lift the
Princess Cecile
with an unknown number of hostile sailors in charge of her power room.

At the moment the vessel was running on standby power from the auxiliary power unit in a bow compartment. The APU's output wasn't enough to operate the plasma motors, much less the antimatter conversion system of the High Drive.

"Leary," Candace said, speaking with the desperate earnestness of a man in fear of his life, "I'm neutral in this, just like I told you before. I don't wish you any harm, but the Alliance of Free Stars is in
power
now, there's no two ways about it."

Daniel sat on a fold-down jumpseat on one edge of the console. Candace tried to rotate his seat to face away from Daniel. Hogg held the chair where it was.

Candace acted like a kid hiding his head under the blanket to keep the bogeyman from finding him, Daniel thought. Cowardice like that in a man, let alone a fellow naval officer, turned Daniel's stomach.

"You've got to leave me out of whatever you're doing," Candace said. "They'll
kill
me!"

"Sir?" said Hogg as he looked down at the Kostroman in disgust equal to Daniel's own. "It sounds to me like the problem is he's more afraid of what the Alliance is going to do to him than he is of us. Let me have him for a couple minutes and he won't think that anymore."

Adele turned her head toward the three men without expression.

"No need for anybody else to watch," Hogg added in slight embarrassment. "I'll take him down to the forward magazine."

Candace hid his face in his hands. He was shaking. It suddenly struck Daniel that the Kostroman's fear wasn't really for his physical well-being but rather because he was being asked to make a decision. Candace was more afraid to act than he was to die.

Daniel stood. He smiled at Hogg and Adele. "No," he said. "Benno here's a friend of mine and I don't want anybody to hurt him."

He paused to let Candace relax slightly, then continued, "The Alliance officers he was squiring about the ship aren't friends of mine, though. Remember how we killed those first two commandoes to get the others to talk, Lt. Mundy? Go next door and do the same thing to Commander Strachan and his staff, one at a time."

He paused. "Until Benno decides to help us."

Adele rose from the commo officer's console, still without expression. "Take your submachine gun," Daniel said, nodding toward the weapon she'd left hanging from the back of her seat.

"Yes," Adele said. "That's the better choice for this purpose."

Candace stared at the three Cinnabars in horrified amazement. Daniel wasn't sure that the Kostroman was really taking in what was going on.

"Look, sir," said Hogg. He looked at least as concerned as Candace did. Hogg had been unconscious when Daniel and Adele put on their charade with the commandoes, so he thought this was real. "This is, you know, more up my alley. I'll take care of it."

"No," said Adele, "I will. I haven't killed anyone for a few days."

She looked critically at the Alliance submachine gun, then threw the lever on the back of the receiver to charge it. The mechanical
clack
within the weapon sounded like a dry chuckle.

She looked at Candace and said, "You'd best hope you don't fall into the hands of the Alliance after I've killed the six officers in your charge. The head of the operation is a man named Markos, from the Fifth Bureau. He's not a gentleman. The very best you can hope for is that you'll be quickly executed."

She smiled. Even Daniel felt his stomach clench to see the expression. Adele walked out of the bridge, holding the submachine gun in her right hand with the muzzle safely raised.

"Candace, I'm sorry as I can be," said Daniel, shaking his head, "but I need you to talk your people out of the power room. I've got nothing against you or them—I'll let you all go free before we lift ship. But if any of those Alliance officers die, God himself couldn't save you if you get into Markos's hands."

He wondered if Markos was a real person whose name Adele had gotten from signals intelligence or if she'd simply invented the name. When she was doing her sinister act, she was scarier than Hogg with a drawn knife—and Hogg wasn't acting.

"Leary—" Candace pleaded.

"Get out of the way," Adele's voice ordered from the wardroom. Her words clear and utterly calm. The bridge and wardroom hatches were both open. The noise of ratings inspecting and readying the vessel for space wasn't loud enough to dull Adele's perfect enunciation.

There was a mixed gabble of protest in Alliance accents. The examination team was a commander and two lieutenant commanders, with three midshipmen as aides. Daniel wondered if any of them had been present when Admiral Lasowski was murdered.

The submachine gun fired a short burst. Pellets disintegrated and spalled bits off the decking. A spark danced into the corridor to hiss on the lip of the bridge hatch. Alliance voices rose in screams.

There was a second burst.

The prisoners lay on the deck of the wardroom with their wrists and ankles taped. Daniel hadn't decided what to do with them; they were simply out of the way for the moment.

He'd expected Adele to shoot into the couch or one of the wardroom chairs, but from the terrified cries she must be putting each burst into the deck within an inch or two of a prisoner's ear. The carpet was glass fiber and nonflammable, but the stench of smoldering human hair indicated where some of the sparks were landing.

"Oh God oh God oh God!" Candace said. He'd squeezed his palms over his ears, but he still couldn't shut out the screams from the wardroom. "Stop it! Stop it!"

"Cease fire!" Daniel cried. He returned his attention to Candace. Quietly he resumed, "Now, I hope that means you're ready to help us, Benno. Because if you're not . . ."

Adele walked back onto the bridge. Behind her a rating clanged shut the wardroom hatch, smothering the prisoners' voices. The muzzle of her submachine gun glowed; heat waves shimmered in the air above the barrel shroud.

"I'll talk to them," Candace said. He wiped tears from his eyes, then lowered his hands and faced Daniel with an unexpected degree of dignity. "I'll say anything you please. And I don't care what you do then. You're all animals!"

Adele draped the sling of her submachine gun over the seatback again. She looked at her right wrist. The skin was smudged with a black residue: metal from the pellets' driving skirts, vaporized by the flux and redeposited on the shooter's skin.

Candace turned his seat. He stabbed a button on the left wing of his console and said, "Bridge to power room. This is Lieutenant Candace. Whoever's in charge of the power room, report now."

Daniel shifted position slightly so that he could look over the Kostroman's shoulder at the communicator's holographic display. That wasn't much help because though the display came alive, somebody had flung a shirt over the power room's imaging pickup.

"Sir, what's going on?" a male voice said. The words were a plea, not a demand.

Daniel nodded toward the console's pickup and gave it a pleasant smile. The ratings in the power room could see him even if he couldn't see them, so it was important to project an aura of friendly calm.

"Gershon?" Candace said. "It's all right. We've been captured by the Cinnabar navy but I know the officer in charge. Everything will be all right so long as you open the power room with no trouble. They, they're . . . It's really very important that you surrender right away, Gershon."

He swallowed. "Really very important."

A last tear dropped from Candace's chin to the sill of the console. His hands were folded in his lap, but they were still shaking.

"Sir, what'll happen to us if we raise the containment bulkhead?" Gershon's voice asked. "Are they, you know . . . ?"

"You'll be confined aboard the
Princess Cecile
until just before we're ready to leave Kostroma, Gershon," Daniel said mildly. He rested his right forearm on top of the console in order to look even more relaxed than his voice projected. "Then we'll let you and all those with you go."

As a smiling afterthought he added, "Or you can join us, if you like. The Republic of Cinnabar Navy can always use brisk fellows who know how to act in a crisis."

"Christ help us," Gershon muttered miserably. The shirt slipped away from the pickup. The bald, gray-bearded Kostroman at the power room communicator looked as though he'd just volunteered to jump into vacuum.

"Open the bulkhead, Carney," he ordered. He pulled his shirt on to cover his scarred torso. A worm gear began to whine, hauling back the massive barrier intended to prevent a fusion bottle ruptured during combat from venting its contents through the entire vessel.

"We may as well give up," said Gershon. He was speaking toward Daniel, not Candace in the foreground. "We haven't got any rations or even water in here."

"You won't be sorry, I assure you," Daniel said. Commando-garbed Cinnabar ratings poured into the power room behind Gershon. They were securing the Kostromans without any serious roughness so far as Daniel could tell.

"Damn right," said Hogg, moving into the pickup's field for the first time. "And if you're smart, you'll sign up with Mr. Leary. You'll like serving under a real officer for a change."

Adele stood in the hatchway of the APC, waiting for Daniel to take his restraining hand off the coaming. She was so irritated that she'd have driven away while he was still talking, but Barnes was more respectful of his lieutenant.

The Alliance aircar approached the tender in a trough of spray, returning from the
Aglaia
with another load of sailors. Gambier was driving, but a Kostroman—Warrant Officer Gershon, the man who'd closed down the power room during the assault—sat beside him to provide an authentically non-Cinnabar voice for Tarnhelm Control.

"Look, Adele," Daniel said, raising his voice to be heard over the car's fans. "I think I'd better come along after all. It isn't proper for a civilian to be in charge of this. Freeing RCN officers is RCN business, and—"

"Mr. Leary," Adele said in a tone of very genuine cold anger, "in your company I have taken part in looting naval warehouses and in capturing not one but two naval vessels. There is no one in our mutual enterprise who knows the Elector's Palace as well as I do, nor whose accent can pass for that of an Alliance citizen. Your presence is necessary to ready the
Princess Cecile
for our escape. The twelve of us—"

She nodded toward Hogg and the ten sailors under Woetjans already within the vehicle. They and Adele wore commando uniforms.

"—can deal with the matter of the
Aglaia
's officers just as readily as we could if your presence made our number thirteen."