With the Lightnings (30 page)

They were well out of sight of land. Daniel met Adele's eyes and grinned broadly. "Getting away was the first stage," he said over the wind roar. "Next thing is to get some
where
. Can you find us an uninhabited island at least a thousand miles out, Adele? Say, fifteen hundred miles."

"I can find an island," Adele said. As she spoke she squatted in the back corner of the cockpit and drew out her personal data unit. "I can't guarantee that there won't be anybody on it, but I can find something that doesn't have a permanent population registered. There's probably a thousand possibilities to choose from."

"Wonderful!" Daniel said. "We're heading due east now, but direction doesn't really matter. I want to drop off our prisoners where they won't be found any time soon. Then we'll go somewhere else to wait things out ourselves."

He stepped past Adele and up on deck. Ratings grinned at him, though many had gone to the cabins below. They'd be packed in tight to use sleeping quarters meant for six civilians, but that was the way most of the spacers would like it.

Daniel walked forward to the far bow, bending against the wind of the yacht's passage. He lay flat with his face over the edge of the deck. Because the hull didn't touch the water there was no roostertail of spray lifting to either side, but an occasional wind-blown droplet slapped him with its familiar sting.

Below, the vivid life of Kostroma's seabottom shimmered with a beauty that relaxed him. First, to get away. Second, to plan and prepare.

And finally to come back, bringing the message the RCN had always brought to the Republic's foes. But that could wait until it was time to think about it.

Adele sat in the swivel chair that unfolded from the right side of the bow, comparing the atoll before her with the image projected from the little computer in her lap. The seat and the similar one across the deck were intended for sport fishermen; each was fitted with a rail and safety belt. Even now as the
Ahura
slid toward the shore on inertia alone, Adele felt better when she was strapped in.

Daniel was at the controls again. Cafoldi stood in the extreme bow, shading his eyes with an arm as he peered toward the water ahead. The
Ahura
had electronic depth-ranging equipment of the standard to be expected on a luxury yacht, but none of the navy men trusted it.

"Ease her right!" Cafoldi called. The
Ahura
rode a flat, crackling bubble of electricity. At this slow speed, the ozone which the system generated wasn't blown astern. Adele's nostrils wrinkled. "That's it, just a cunt hair!"

Lamsoe stood at the automatic impeller, scanning the shore. Most of the sailors were armed and on deck, some of them aiming toward the vegetation. Adele wasn't sure whether they were really concerned about a threat from the island or if they were just showing off with the armament they'd captured from Kostromans of various stripe. It seemed an empty exercise to her.

According to the satellite image, the atoll was comprised of a ring of eight islands connected by reefs. All Adele saw from the sea was a heavily overgrown hump against the lighter green of the water. Small birds flitted from the twisted shrubbery to the sea and back, dipping among the insects; their larger ocean-coursing brethren circled high overhead.

The
Ahura
glided toward the spill of tawny sand at the island's left end. Still farther left, water frothed in the currents and occasionally showed the teeth of the coral which combed just below its surface. The next island of the chain was a quarter mile beyond, shimmering like a mirage in the sea haze and the noonday sun.

The
Ahura
's static fields collapsed. She slid onto the beach, her hull grinding softly on the coral sand. Daniel threw switches in the cockpit, shutting down all the yacht's driving systems.

Adele felt enormous relief at the removal of the high-frequency tremble that had been a part of her existence for the day and a quarter of high-speed running. She'd become aware of the vibration only now that it stopped, but it had been present all the time—creating discomfort that she'd blamed on psychological factors.

"All right, let's get this cargo off-loaded!" Woetjans ordered. "Port watch, haul them up from the bilge; starboard watch stay on guard."

Adele put her computer away and unstrapped herself. Insects glittered silently in the air, sometimes lighting on her skin with a ghost touch. One brushed her eye; she grimaced and blinked rapidly in an attempt to wash it away.

Daniel came forward to join her. "Lovely, isn't it?" he said. "A real paradise. Of course, I don't suppose our prisoners are going to feel that way about it."

"I'm on their side," Adele said dryly. "Thus far it reminds me of the unsorted storage in the subbasement of the Academic Collections building, bugs and all. Mind, the lighting's a lot better."

She waved her hand in front of her to keep more of the minute insects from landing on her face. It was like trying to sweep back the tide.

Cinnabar crewmen were bringing the prisoners up from below. Ganser and his thugs looked sickly and gray. They'd remained trussed like hogs throughout the run with only minimal time on deck for sanitation.

"Of course," Adele added, "some of them may be smart enough to remember what the alternative was. I doubt it. People like that prefer to invent realities in which they're always in the right."

"Not only people like that," Daniel said with a smile.

Four sailors hopped to the sand. Four others on deck took the bound prisoners by the shoulders and ankles and tossed them over the side. Adele blinked in surprise. She'd wondered how the thugs would be landed, but she hadn't expected anything so brutally efficient.

Although . . . it wasn't actually brutal. The Cinnabars treated their captives like so many full duffelbags, but the sailors on the ground caught each flung body and lowered it to the sand brusquely but gently. Most of the sailors would have been willing to put Ganser and his killers over the side in deep water, but needless cruelty wasn't a part of their character.

The sea moved in long swells, licking the shore of the island and surging against the reef. The water of the lagoon stood still and jewel-like, unmarred even by diving seabirds. It was dark blue in contrast to the pale green of the open ocean.

"Where do you want to go now?" Adele asked Daniel quietly. Most of the prisoners had been unloaded; Hogg walked among them with a pair of wire-cutters, snipping the bonds from their wrists and ankles. The Kostromans remained where they lay, perhaps unable as well as unwilling to rise while their captors grinned at them over gunsights.

"We'll get over the horizon before I decide," Daniel said. "Probably on a completely different course. I think we're all right, but I don't care to test our luck needlessly."

Adele nodded. She'd set the base unit in the Elector's Palace to search message traffic, Alliance and Kostroman alike, for any reference to Cinnabar, Daniel Leary, or Adele Mundy. She then used her personal data unit to scroll through the literally thousands of references to Cinnabar. Neither of the individual names had rated a mention.

And no reference to Cinnabar involved Daniel's detachment. He and his companions, Adele included, had dropped out of existence so far as anyone else on this planet was concerned.

The captives were all freed. The sailors reboarded the
Ahura
, grabbing the chromed rail at the deck's edge and hauling themselves up with a quick kick against the side of the hull. Dasi got a hand from his mate Barnes, but only Hogg bothered to use the ladder attached to the vessel's side.

"Woetjans, toss them a carton of rations," Daniel ordered. He faced the Kostroman thugs, his hands on his hips.

"I'm leaving you a little food," he said. "After that, you'll have to make do with what you find. There may not be fresh water here, but there's fruit and several of these plant species excrete salt to store water in their trunks."

He smiled brightly. "I hope you're up on your native biota," he said. "It's a fascinating one."

"You can't just leave us!" Ganser said.

"Oh, I certainly could," Daniel said. "But in fact I'll let people back in Kostroma City know where you are in thirty days or so. Of course, I can't guarantee that any of them will care."

Two sailors pitched a case of rations to the sand at Ganser's feet. The wood broke and steel cans rolled out.

Daniel turned. "Prepare to get under way!" he ordered. "I'll take the helm."

"The nozzle's clear, sir!" called Dasi, leaning over the stern to peer into the crystalline water. With the bow well up on the shore, Daniel preferred to drag the
Ahura
backwards with the waterjet rather than try to tickle a sufficient charge into dry sand.

"Everybody who doesn't have a job move back to the stern!" Woetjans ordered, a sensible command and one Daniel should have thought to give himself. The ratings trotted aft, lowering the stern by their weight and so lightening the portion of the vessel that was aground.

Daniel slowly advanced the throttle. He'd rotated the nozzle. The jet spewed forward, making the hull vibrate as though a hose were playing on the vessel's underside. The
Ahura
slid back in a boil of water, scrunching for the first few feet of her motion and then floating free.

Daniel chopped the throttle, looking over his shoulder to be sure that they were drifting clear and weren't about to hit something. He couldn't see behind because the crew was standing along the stern rail, but somebody would have shouted a warning if there was a problem.

On shore, the Kostromans glared at the vessel with undisguised hate. Adele stood at the rear of the cockpit. Daniel caught her eye and said, "There's plenty of natural food on the island, but I wonder whether that lot isn't more likely to try cannibalism instead?"

Adele sniffed. "For people of their sort," she said, "I suppose cannibalism
is
natural."

The yacht had left the sand at a slight angle. She now floated parallel to the shore and was beginning to curve back on her remaining momentum. "Spread yourselves out," Daniel ordered. "I'm going to bring her up on the skids."

He engaged the electrofoils while the ratings were still spreading forward. They moved with less immediacy than they'd run to the stern. The skids shuddered, but Daniel didn't hear a grinding as he had the first time he'd deployed them. Scale and caked lubricant had loosened with use; the
Ahura
was in better condition than she'd been in some while, probably since she was laid up.

Daniel Leary was in better shape than he'd been in a long while too. There was no worse way to treat tools or men than to leave them to rust.

The yacht lifted. Daniel knew he could trust the mechanism now, so he brought her directly into dynamic balance on the skids instead of waiting until the
Ahura
was under way on the waterjet. They were alone in this sea. They didn't need to adjust their conduct to the comfort of neighboring vessels.

"Clear at the bow, sir!" Cafoldi said; rote, since there was no doubt of the fact. A good crew handled even the most cut-and-dried operations by the book, never cutting corners.

Daniel twisted the joystick slightly to port, then increased the throttle pressure minusculely. The yacht wobbled ahead. The bow angled seaward. They slid past the end of the island.

"Don't forget to write!" Lamsoe called, waving to the stone-faced Kostromans twenty feet away on shore.

Spray exploded toward the
Ahura
. A pair of hundred-foot tentacles arched from the interior of the lagoon. The flattened tips were each the size of Daniel's torso and covered with fine cilia. They crossed the reef and seized the
Ahura
's starboard skid.

The yacht tilted with a wrenching clang. The electrofoils and the giant sweep's own bioelectrical charge interfered with one another. A rainbow nimbus lit the air twenty feet from the vessel's every surface.

The tentacles retracted, pulling the
Ahura
onto her stern. Ratings shouted curses as they went overboard. The sweep was dragging the skids and hull through the coral heads. There were a few shots, their sound almost lost in the vessel's grinding, snapping destruction.

Somebody with a submachine gun punched three holes and a spiderweb of crazing in the windshield. The pellets missed Daniel's head by less than he had time to worry about.

He let go of the joystick because whatever input he had on the yacht's controls just made things worse. Adele was spreadeagled against the cockpit's port bulkhead, gripping two handholds.

The power board shorted in blue fire as salt water reached a conduit whose sheathing had been scraped away on the coral. An instant later a generator blew explosively; foul black smoke spewed up through hatches and the fresh cracks in the decking.

Lamsoe had gone over the side at the first impact, but the automatic impeller was still on its mount. Daniel grabbed its twin spade grips. The deck was no longer down; it sloped at sixty degrees as the sweep's powerful tentacles continued to contract. The creature was tipping the
Ahura
on her back, using the coral reef as a fulcrum.

Daniel braced his feet against a stanchion and one of the cockpit handholds. He thumbed the plate trigger between the impeller's grips.

The gun recoiled violently but the jury-rigged mount held. The first projectiles raked water empty except for the surge and bubbles stirred by the sweep's tentacles. Daniel shot the burst on, adjusting his aim by twisting his whole body and using the gun itself as a support.

The projectiles' kinetic energy blew the lagoon into an instant fog. He continued to walk the impacts toward the memory of his target: the point where the tentacles emerged together from the lagoon.

The
Ahura
was nearly vertical. Men and debris floated about her in the churning sea. Daniel's right leg twisted around the gun mount, but his left foot dangled in the air.

Bright yellow blood geysered in the steam at Daniel's point of aim. Chunks of flesh, some of them bigger than a man, spun in all directions. A tentacle writhed across the water like a beheaded snake, both ends free. The other tentacle contracted in its final convulsion as the impeller emptied its magazine.