With the Lightnings

by David Drake

  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 w
as 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.

  “Nobody’s supposed to enter the compound tonight,” the officer said. She remained standing in the cab of her vehicle. “I want you all in line against the front of the building. Everybody in the building come out right now or by God I’ll blow you out!”

  “Sir, there’s plenty of liquor here to go around,” Hogg called in an ingratiating voice. “Maybe the lady and her friends would like a case to, you know, make their duty easier?”

  “Who are you?” the officer said on a rising note. She unhooked her holster flap with one hand and gripped her pistol with the other. “Who do you think—”

  The rating standing behind her in the truck bed leaned forward. He clouted the officer across the head with the butt of his impeller.

  The impact sounded like an axe on a tree trunk. The officer’s arms flapped as she flew out of the gun truck and hit face-first on the brick roadway.

  The Kostroman who’d struck her pointed the impeller from his waist at Daniel. “You got a problem with that?” he said.

  “Hell, why should we save good booze for rich officers who never did anything for us?” Adele Mundy demanded shrilly. “Let’s drink it all ourselves, I say!”

  “Too damned right!” Hogg seconded. He hopped out of the van and stumped over to Daniel. “All of it!”

  “All right, all right,” Daniel whined in what he hoped sounded like angry resignation. “We’ll say it was hijacked. The way things are tonight, nobody’s going to know the difference.”

  Somebody cheered. The Kostroman who’d hit his officer jumped down and started for the warehouse door. The ratings from both the van and the gun truck surged after him. Woetjans and three of her huskier fellows held back slightly to be sure of entering behind the last of the Shore Police.

  Daniel put his hands in his waistband and began to whistle very softly.

  * * *

  Adele stood near the door of the warehouse. If she hadn’t known better, she’d have been sure that the activities within were carefully rehearsed.

  The van’s headlamp threw a fan of light into the building. The sailors’ figures cut it into wobbling, distorted shadows.

  “Now!” called Woetjans. She grabbed the barrels of two impellers and jerked the weapons upward, out of the hands of the policemen carrying them. Dasi hit one on the head with his prybar; Sun grabbed the other from behind by both elbows and ran him headfirst into a brick pillar.

  There wasn’t a shot or even a shout in the whole operation. Glass shattered as somebody broke a brandy bottle over a Kostroman’s head, but there were plenty more where that one came from. The Shore Police were down before they knew there was anything waiting for them except cases of liquor.

  “All shipshape, sir,” Woetjans called.

  “Five of you put their armbands on,” Daniel called. Hogg had gone to the warehouse doorway with his pistol ready, but his master was kneeling over the Kostroman officer. “Adele, come here if you will.”

  It sounded like an order rather than a request to her; perfectly proper under the circumstances. She went to Daniel’s side.

  He was unfastening the officer’s belt and holster. Now that the victim was lying in the beams of the gun truck’s lights Adele could see she was a young woman with tight blonde curls and ratlike features. The right side of her scalp oozed red, but she was breathing normally.

  Looking up again, Daniel said, “I think this’ll fit you. Get into it fast. We’ll have to hope that the gate guards don’t pay a lot of attention to you as we leave.”

  “Oh,” said Adele. She saw the logic immediately: the guards had called a squad of Shore Police to check on the van they’d passed into the compound. If the van tried to leave unescorted, the guards were going to wonder what had happened to the squad. It was at least possible that they’d come up with the right answer. None of the female Cinnabar sailors was slim enough to pass for the police commander.

  Understanding was one thing. The thought of actually pretending to be a Kostroman officer, acting, made Adele queasy with stage fright. She’d never liked being in front of groups or having everyone look at her.

  Aloud she said, “Yes, all right.”

  She shrugged out of her tunic. The Kostroman uniform wouldn’t have a pocket for her personal data unit. For now she could bundle her own trousers around it and carry the packet under the seat of the police vehicle.

  Daniel finished stripping the Kostroman officer, then walked to the warehouse doorway while Adele dressed. “Tie them but not too tight,” he ordered the sailors inside. “I want them to be able to get loose after we’re gone.”

  Adele pulled on the officer’s trousers. They fit properly, but the uniform was cut tighter than she liked. Frustration at the rub of the cloth built to momentary fury. She reminded herself that she was merely transferring her anger at the whole situation to something trivial—and the situation was more her own fault than that of anyone else around her.

  Perhaps that was why she was so very angry.

  Daniel came back to her. He pulled the pistol from its gilt leather holster and said, “I don’t suppose you’ve ever used one of these, Adele?”

  “No,” she said. It was an electromotive pistol of local manufacture; she’d never fired or even handled one. The weapon was very bulky, but its projectiles were no bigger or faster than those of the little Cinnabar weapon in Adele’s pocket.

  For all that, Kostroman weapons were satisfactory if you didn’t mind their size. Vanness’s death was proof of that.

  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 even
ts. 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.”