Beyond the northern outskirts of Kostroma City the road became gravel and was in increasingly poor repair. The van was so overloaded that its rear springs were bottomed even before a wheel hit a pothole. Daniel supposed the jolts weren't as bad in the cab as they were in the back, but they were bad enough.

"Okay, there it is," Hogg said as their headlight swept the corner of a building through a screen of vegetation. "Now, I'm not telling you what to do, sir, but these are probably folks I know."

"Yes, of course," Daniel said. "You'll handle the negotiation if the situation's as we expect."

The road turned ninety degrees; Hogg slowed. As the van wallowed through the deep rut on the outside of the curve, its headlight painted a sizable waterfront community of two- and three-story buildings.

"Why, these are real houses," Daniel said in surprise. For the past several miles the only dwellings he'd seen along the roadside were shacks with roofs of sheeting and walls of scrap wood. "I hadn't expected . . ."

"Smuggling's a pretty good way to get rich, sir," Hogg said. "A pretty common one, too."

The buildings had shops on the ground floor and housing on the upper stories. The brick used to build them had a rustier shade than the peach and pale yellow general in Kostroma City. The broad pavement between the buildings and the harbor was brick also. Goods were stacked there, sometimes under tarpaulins, but the only permanent structure was an octagonal brick office for the harbormaster.

The harbor sheltered at least a hundred vessels. Small boats were in the majority, many of them racked three and four high in roofed sheds. A number of barges and yachts lay along the quay.

The community built around this little harbor wasn't as abjectly terrified by the coup as Kostroma City. Windows were shuttered, but lights were on inside as the residents waited for the next act in the drama. The harbormaster's office was lighted also. It seemed to be the headquarters for the twenty-strong garrison.

Daniel assessed the guards coldly: thugs, few of whom had taken the trouble to pin on Zojira colors. Much as he and Hogg had expected.

The headlights had warned the garrison of company coming. Each had a submachine gun, and many wore pistols or knives to look even more threatening. In addition to personal weapons, there was a six-wheeled flatbed truck with an automatic impeller pointing out over the cab.

The heavy weapon was aimed at Daniel and Hogg. That was as expected also.

"Okay," Hogg said softly as he slowed the van to a stop twenty yards from the harbormaster's office. The armed flatbed was parked alongside, while most of the thugs used the seawall as a trench and aimed their weapons over it. "It's Ganser's lot, okay. I've done business with him, but he's not one I'd ever want to turn my back on."

"All right," said Daniel. He and Hogg opened their doors together, slowly and smoothly. "You deal with him and I'll brief the detachment."

"You bastards turn around and go back where you come!" a male voice called from the office. "This is ours, do you hear?"

"It's me, Ganser," Hogg called. He stepped in front of the van so that the headlight fell across him at an angle. Hogg had a big Kostroman pistol shoved under his belt, but he kept his hands clearly in the open. "Time for us to do some trading, that's all."

Hogg sauntered toward the office. Daniel nodded in acknowledgment to the garrison, then walked to the back of the van and opened it. He didn't need to have seen the jitney riddled to know what a burst from the automatic impeller would do to everyone in the back of the van.

He smiled pleasantly to reassure any watching thugs who might have itchy trigger fingers. "Get some distance between you," he said to the ratings poised tensely within. Sun now had the pistol Woetjans had given up when she moved to the gun truck. "If anything happens, run for the marsh."

Whistling, his hands in his trouser pockets as he mimed carefree innocence, Daniel walked to the gun truck. Woetjans had stopped twenty yards away. She'd switched off her headlights so that they didn't silhouette the van if shooting started.

The ratings with stocked impellers had spread out from the vehicle; one of them watched the road behind in case the garrison'd had sense enough to set an outpost there. Daniel doubted they had, but it was a professional concern that spoke well of his personnel.

Woetjans remained in the driver's seat. Lamsoe, the gunner, had his automatic weapon aimed not at the garrison's truck but at the harbormaster's office. A burst would disintegrate the small brick building. Adele Mundy, looking more like an officer than anyone else Daniel had seen in a Kostroman uniform, stood slim and disdainful beside the gun truck.

Daniel'd been amazed at the way the librarian had breezed them through the checkpoint. He'd been counting on the confusion to get his Cinnabars out of Kostroma City. The Zojiras weren't organized enough to freeze all movement, and Daniel's story of being on a personal mission for Grand Admiral Sanaus was both believable and impossible to check in the present chaos. His accent was a danger, but this wasn't a night they could hope to survive without danger.

"Hogg is going to rent a ship for us if things work out," Daniel said. He didn't want to shout, so the three ratings at a distance probably weren't able to hear him. "He says that the people we're dealing with aren't to be trusted, so keep a particularly close watch until we're out of here."

Adele sniffed. "I wouldn't think anyone on Kostroma tonight is to be trusted," she said. She didn't sound concerned; just analytical.

"Except ourselves," Daniel agreed.

Hogg left the harbormaster's office after a brief conference. Daniel went to meet him, striding more purposefully now. Kostroman gunmen were climbing up to sit on the seawall instead of sheltering beneath it. A shouted summons brought them all into the office, even the trio manning the automatic weapon.

"There's a twenty-meter yacht, the Ahura," Hogg said as he met Daniel beside the van's cab. It was a tribute to Cinnabar discipline that the ratings who'd moved away from the vehicle didn't bunch closer to hear what Hogg was discussing with their commander. "Solar powered, electrostatic foils, a real beauty. They'll let us have it for two cases of brandy and the trucks we come in."

"It's stolen?" Daniel said, squinting toward the harbor. He saw what he thought was the vessel, a trim craft tied up at a quay just at the edge of the lighted area. A yacht like Hogg described was at least as expensive as a luxury aircar.

"Next thing to it," Hogg agreed. "The owners were on the wrong side when the Hajas took over, so it got confiscated along with their houses and all. Now that the Hajas are out, the survivors are going to come claiming their stuff. Ganser figures if the Ahura goes missing, nobody's going to be able to prove it was his lot responsible."

Daniel looked from the yacht to the office. With his goggles down he'd be able to see through the building's windows, but identifying himself to this gang by using Cinnabar gear probably wouldn't be smart. "It still seems too good a bargain," he said.

"Yeah, I think so too," said Hogg with a sour expression. "But I don't see much choice but to keep our eyes open and go ahead."

Daniel clapped his servant on the shoulder. "When we drive to the quay to unload, we'll be on the back side of their automatic," he said. "Without an edge like that, this sort won't start anything."

He waved to the scattered ratings. "Mount up!" he ordered. "We'll transfer our rations to the ship over there, then we'll take a little vacation."

Daniel believed in planning if you had the time and information to do it; but if you didn't, you acted anyway. There was only one thing worse than trying to imagine every possible occurrence when you were for all practical purposes flying blind: remaining frozen because you couldn't imagine every possible occurrence.

"And if they do start something, Hogg," Daniel said as he got into the cab beside his servant, "then we'll deal with it."

Adele had made a half-hearted offer to help load the ship. Woetjans had said, "No, mistress, you're an officer," in a tone that made it sound like, "You'd be more trouble than you're worth."

Adele didn't take the implication as an insult since it was objectively true in her opinion. She stood at the top of the seawall, out of the line of traffic, and observed events.

Hogg had backed the van to where steps led down to the quay, but the distance from there to the Ahura was too great for the Cinnabar sailors to form a human chain. They carried the rations, one carton per trip.

Woetjans and three other sailors dismounted the automatic impeller from the police vehicle, then carried it and its case of ammunition to the ship also. The weapon had to be rigidly mounted to be of any use; the truck's pintle was welded to the frame and couldn't be removed. Either Woetjans thought she could jury-rig a mounting on the Ahura, or she was just making sure the gun wasn't in Ganser's hands while the Cinnabars were still in range.

The Kostromans hadn't volunteered to help load the Ahura. Adele doubted that Daniel would have permitted them to become involved anyway. They stood watching and occasionally talked among themselves in low voices. She knew that she was imputing sinister motives to the gang members because of their appearance, but people who went to so much effort to look sinister probably were a scurvy lot.

The armed sailors stayed aboard the Ahura while their fellows made multiple trips with the cargo. Daniel must have decided that he wanted his available weapons concentrated aboard the vehicle on which the Cinnabars hoped to escape. He'd called Adele to him; she'd shaken her head and remained where she was.

The back of the flatbed truck was twenty feet away from her. The heavy sheet of armor welded behind the cab protected the gun crew from fire from the front, but because of the way the automatic impeller was mounted, it could only sweep an arc of about sixty degrees to the right or left of the direction the truck was pointing. So long as the truck stayed where it was, the gun didn't threaten the Ahura.

Adele might not be any use in carrying boxes to the ship, but she was quite confident that the automatic impeller wasn't a danger to the Cinnabars so long as she survived.

Daniel had vanished within the Ahura to check the hull. Only then did he reappear to examine the cockpit. Now that Adele thought about it, there was only a superficial similarity between a spaceship and a marine vessel. Daniel might be the only Cinnabar present who knew anything about craft like the Ahura, and that because he was raised on the coast rather than from any sort of training.

Five Kostromans came out of the harbormaster's office and walked in Adele's direction. They were talking among themselves with studied innocence, but the strands of "conversation" didn't interweave: none of the thugs was listening to the others.

They were about to attack.

Three of the Kostromans, all men, went to the truck. The other two, a man and a woman, split off and stood on the seawall to Adele's other side, only six feet away. They faced the harbor, but their eyes flicked sideways toward Adele every few seconds. The man was describing the Ahura; the woman talked about the leaking roof that made a pool in her room every time it rained.

Adele turned her back on the pair beside her and watched them as reflections in a window of the office. When the Kostromans thought their target was no longer able to see them, both tensed.

Two of the other group hopped onto the back of the truck and sat there with their legs dangling over the side. The third man got into the cab. The engine ground for a moment, then started.

Adele lifted her right hand and ostentatiously scratched the back of her neck. Her left hand dipped into her tunic pocket and brought out the pistol, hidden in her palm.

The gun vehicle pulled twenty feet forward in a curve, then stopped. Its transmission went into reverse with a clang. The men pretending to relax on the back stood up. A sailor on the Ahura shouted a warning.

Adele turned toward the thugs beside her. The man started to point his submachine gun. Adele shot him at the top of the chest. The pistol snapped like a mousetrap in her hand, but the sound of the pellet hitting the man's breastbone was as loud as boards slapping. A muscle spasm threw the Kostroman backward over the seawall.

The woman lunged toward Adele instead of trying to use a weapon. Adele shot her in the throat. The pellet's temporary shock cavity gaped as wide as the woman's shoulders, nearly decapitating her. Most of the blood sprayed upward and back, but Adele felt droplets fleck her face. She turned, ignoring the touch of the dead woman's hand as inertia tried to complete the intended movement.

The truck was backing with the steering yoke reversed to bring the automatic impeller to bear on the Ahura. Several weapons were firing behind Adele. An impeller projectile hit the truck's armor and blew a glowing trench in the metal without penetrating.

The Kostroman gunners were behind their weapon; only their heads showed. They were thirty yards away from Adele. She aimed at the loader's nose and hit within a finger's breadth of that.

His head spun around as though a horse had kicked him; he went down. The gunner, his hand still on the impeller's charging handle, turned in surprise to look at his partner. Adele shot him in the temple.

Something stung the back of her right calf. She ignored it. She fired at the truck driver. The windshield shattered but she doubted pellets from her little pistol had enough mass to actually penetrate normal glass.

The driver leaped out of the cab, screaming and covering his face with one hand. He held a submachine gun in the other. He was moving and the light was bad. She fired twice more with no better target than his upper torso. He went down, but she could hear him still wheezing and gurgling in the darkness.

Adele walked toward the truck; it had stalled when the driver bailed out. The barrel of her pistol glowed red from the rapid fire. Pocket weapons like hers weren't intended for continuous use. The magnetic flux that accelerated pellets to 9,000 feet per second was dissipated as heat, and the light barrel didn't have enough mass to be a good heat sink. In an hour she'd have blisters on the web of her thumb and the side of her index finger where it touched the receiver.

She drew the Kostroman pistol with her right hand and dropped her own weapon into the empty holster. The leather would scorch but it wasn't likely to burn the way her pocket lining would. If she tossed the little pistol onto the bricks it might not be at hand the next time she needed it.

Nobody was paying any attention to her. All her opponents were dead. With the truck between her and the office, Adele looked over her shoulder.

Three bodies sprawled on the pavement. A sailor and a Kostroman thug wrestled for the latter's weapon. A Kostroman stepped out of the harbormaster's office and sprayed both indiscriminately with his submachine gun. An impeller slug fired from the Ahura tore the shooter's left arm off and flung his body sideways to thrash in a widening pool of blood.

The gang members had run into the brick office to join their leader when the shooting started. All the living Cinnabars were on the vessel or hidden beneath the lip of the seawall. The Ahura was far enough back that those aboard it could see over the seawall to a degree, but only the upper half of the building was visible to them.

Adele tried twice to climb onto the truck, using a back tire as a step. Finally she laid the service pistol on the truck bed to free both hands. She was still awkward but she got up.

The gunner had rolled off the vehicle. The loader still lay there on his back, his hands clawing spasmodically. Her pellet had cratered the left side of his face, but his right eye remained. It was open.

She'd never used an automatic impeller, but this one had a grip and a trigger like a pistol's. Adele depressed the weapon as far as it would and pulled the trigger.

The gun cycled three times before she could let up. The heavy projectiles cracked like thunderbolts, making the truck shudder violently from recoil.

The rounds blew platter-sized openings in roofing tiles as they hit; on exit they smashed even larger holes through the brick wall on the other side. A cloud of glowing gas slowly dissipated in front of the muzzle. It was the vestiges of the projectiles' aluminum driving skirts, ionized by the dense magnetic flux.

Without backing the truck, she couldn't lower the muzzle enough to hit the people sheltering inside the building. There was nothing more she could do.

"All right, Ganser!" Daniel Leary shouted from the Ahura's bow. "That's your warning! Come out unarmed with your hands up or Lieutenant Mundy will blow you all into a crater in the street. Now!"

Adele retrieved the Kostroman pistol. If the gangsters tried to fight, she could at least use it.

"How do we know you won't just shoot us?" Ganser called from inside the office. He began to cough; a rosy haze of brick dust swirled from the shattered walls.

"You know we will shoot you if you don't give up!" Daniel said. He jumped from the ship.

"Master!" Hogg cried. Daniel ignored the servant and walked up the seawall's slope in plain sight of anyone looking out a window of the office. He was still unarmed.

"Last chance, Ganser," Daniel said cheerfully.

Somebody threw a submachine gun out the door. More guns followed. Sailors looked over the edge of seawall, some of them aiming weapons they must have taken from Kostromans in the initial confusion.

There was a long pause before the first of the thugs scuttled through the doorway, her hands raised and her eyes closed. Others crept behind her.

Adele felt her muscles relax without her conscious volition. She sat down in the truck bed because otherwise she would have fallen.

Daniel watched as Woetjans and Dasi finished tying the Kostromans with wire stripped from the back garden of one of the nearby houses. Daniel was willing to pay if the owner complained about the ruin of his snap beans, but nobody came from the house.

Daniel wasn't in a mood to volunteer anything.

Munsford and Olechuk were dead. Whitebread's belly looked like a rat had chewed her, but the wounds were superficial. The pellet had hit the carton she was carrying. It sprayed her with terne plate and fish stew instead of disemboweling her as direct impact would have done.

"You said you wouldn't kill us!" said Ganser, desperate to keep the question in his mind out of his voice. He was a fat man and already half bald despite being younger than Adele.

"Yes," said Daniel, thinking of Munsford and Olechuk. "I did say that."

Lamsoe was in line for an armorer's warrant. He and Tairouley were cutting down the Ahura's flagstaff to mount the automatic impeller.

Hogg and the bulk of the detachment were on a scrounging expedition through the harbor's other vessels. The Ahura was in generally good condition, but she'd been laid up without maintenance for long enough that there were a few problems. Daniel's quick check had convinced him that the batteries wouldn't hold enough of a charge to keep the vessel under way long by themselves. The last thing they needed was a ship that was a sitting duck except in bright sunlight.

"Sir," said Woetjans quietly. Air-hardening ointment sheathed her right forearm to replace the skin she'd scraped off in diving over the seawall to safety. "They must have some friends at least in the houses here."

She nodded toward the facades. Stray projectiles had blown holes in the bricks; curtains fluttered behind a shattered windowpane. "If we leave them alive, they'll be free before we're out of the harbor. And the right man with an impeller can nail something as big as the boat from here to the horizon."

"You promised!" Ganser cried. "You promised—"

Dasi bent down and slapped the Kostroman with a hand as hard as a boot. Ganser screamed, spraying blood from lips cut against his teeth.

"Shut up," Daniel said in a quiet voice, "or I'll have your mouth taped."

If the tape covered Ganser's nostrils as well, the thug's face would darken until it was almost black; and then he would die. Like Munsford and Olechuk.

It'd be simpler just to tie a boat anchor to Ganser's ankles and those of the ten surviving members of his gang before dropping them into the harbor. There'd be nothing to watch but bubbles in that case, however.

"I didn't promise them anything, sir," Woetjans said. "Come on, Dasi, let's get this lot over the seawall."

Several prisoners began to scream or plead, but to Daniel's surprise most of the Kostromans continued to lie in numb silence. They'd been sure they were going to die from the moment they'd surrendered. It was the only sensible course for their Cinnabar captors to take.

And Daniel couldn't do it.

Woetjans rolled Ganser over on his belly and gripped the wire that bound the prisoner's wrists and ankles behind his back. She walked toward the harbor, hunching as she dragged her burden over the slick, wet bricks.

Adele Mundy walked out of the office. She'd been cleaning the pistol she'd used to end the attack almost before it started.

"No," she said. "Put them down."

Woetjans slacked the wire and looked at Daniel. "Sir?" she said.

Dasi stepped back from the two thugs he'd started to lift. They babbled in high-pitched voices. He kicked them to silence, one and then the other, as he waited for Daniel's response.

"I watched your other delegates executed earlier today," Adele said. "I don't want to see anything like that again. And I'm certainly not going to be a party to it."

She returned the flat pistol to her tunic pocket. She apparently carried it all the time, though Daniel hadn't had the least notion of the weapon's presence. He'd been surprised, but not nearly as surprised as the majority of the Kostromans who'd died here tonight.

"No," said Daniel Leary. "I'm not going to be party to it either."

He stood. "Woetjans," he said, "the Ahura isn't particularly spacious but there's room for more ballast. We'll carry this lot in the bilges and off-load them on an island when we're a good ways out."

Daniel smiled. A door in his mind had closed. He was very glad not to be looking at what lay behind it anymore.

"I wonder how well the bilge pumps work?" he added cheerfully.

Adele sat cross-legged on the yacht's bow, out of the bustle of sailors carrying equipment aboard and striding back for more. She tested the system once more, then switched off her data unit with a sigh of relief. She'd hoped she would be finished long before the Ahura left harbor. She'd made that personal deadline, but the business had taken nearly an hour longer than she'd expected.

Her expectations had been unrealistic. She should've known that Kostroma's comsat switching protocols would be as ineptly designed as the government data network had been. It was harder to overcome incompetence than it would have been to defeat deliberate protection.

She stood up with the care that her cramped thigh muscles required. She slid the little computer back in its pocket. She'd changed into her own clothes as soon as she'd finished cleaning her pistol. This way she didn't have to worry about the computer falling over the side unless she was going with it; in which case she didn't think she'd care.

The yacht rocked as two sailors boarded carrying a large piece of equipment slung to a pole between them. Adele didn't have any idea what it was. More batteries, perhaps, though she'd have thought the crew had by now stripped every vessel in the harbor that had a compatible electrical system.

Adele stepped around the forward solar sail; its furling mechanism was under discussion by three sailors. The sky was still an hour short of true dawn, but the crew needed to learn how to operate the equipment on which their lives would depend.

She entered the open cockpit just as Hogg left Daniel with a wave and a loud, "Okay, sir, you leave it to me!" Woetjans had been about to speak, but she nodded to Adele in deference.

"Daniel, you said you didn't trust the ship's navigation equipment," Adele said. "The Alliance fleet dropped a geopositioning system in orbit as soon as they arrived. I've tapped it. On a minute's notice I can tell you our location within three meters."

"You can?" Daniel said. "You did? That's wonderful! Woetjans, tell Racine to stop worrying about harmonizing the gyros and go help the team rigging the charging system shunts."

"Right," said the petty officer as she left the cockpit at a gliding run. After a lifetime among academics, it amazed Adele to see people who moved fast as a regular practice.

"I also modified the satellite controller to void all record of our use of the system," Adele added. "There's no risk of anyone tracing us back through our queries."

"What?" Daniel said in a tenser version of his previous surprise. "Is that really possible? I didn't think it was."

Adele sniffed. Her smile mirrored the cold pride within her. "I could do it," she said. "Though since the trace would have to be done through the Kostroman grid, I couldn't do it very easily."

Daniel laughed and clapped her on the shoulder. She blinked. That sort of friendly contact wasn't a part of academe either. "Well, we're getting there," he said. He seemed to relax to a degree as he talked to her. "I want to get under way as soon as the sun's up enough to power the engines, but . . ."

He shrugged, grinning like a little boy. "Until it happens, I won't be sure," he said.

Palfrey walked down the quay toward the yacht with fishing rods over one shoulder and a large case of some sort in the opposite hand. "The material you're taking," Adele said, nodding toward the sailor. "We're taking . . . ?"

She let her voice trail off in question.

"As of earlier today," Daniel said, "Cinnabar is at war with the Commonwealth of Kostroma." His voice now had no more give in it than a stone block does. "I won't countenance looting by any person under my command, but I'll cheerfully seize any material of military value."

His mouth quirked up at one corner; the expression was nothing at all like Daniel's normal friendly smile. "And if it's necessary to destroy civilian property to disrupt the enemy's military objectives," he went on, "I'll do that too. One of their objectives being to neutralize my detachment."

"Ah," said Adele. "Yes, I see that."

She wasn't used to thinking in military terms. She wasn't a member of the military herself, of course. She wondered if that meant she'd be hanged as a—what, pirate?—if she was captured.

Daniel cleared his throat. He'd turned his head to examine the automatic impeller mounted at the right rear of the cockpit. With his eyes still on the weapon he said, "You know, if that was really the first time you'd used a pistol, you're a very fast learner."

He met her eyes and grinned shyly. "And a good thing for us, too."

"Yes, I'm sorry about that," Adele said. She caught herself turning away and overcame that embarrassed reflex by effort of will. Fiercely she continued, "I'd misunderstood your original question and I didn't correct my statement when I did understand. The Mundys of Chatsworth have always been great duelists. That tradition, at least, was one to which my father subscribed."

"He taught you well," Daniel said, nodding approval. "My family wasn't much for duels. I suppose if I'd lived in town I'd have had some training, but in the country it wasn't the thing. I'm a good wing-shot for bird hunting, but it's not the same thing."

"No," said Adele, "it's not. As you say, dueling is a skill of urban life, like eating with ruffed sleeves, that I'd prefer never to need. Never to have needed."

Hogg trotted down the quay, paused, and jumped the narrow gap to the Ahura's stern. He stumbled as he landed but two sailors grabbed him before he fell.

"It's all set, master!" Hogg wheezed. "Transmit on fifteen point five for three seconds, that's all it takes."

"Woetjans?" Daniel called.

The busy confusion of moments before on the yacht's deck was past. Lamsoe took the grip of the automatic impeller and rotated it to point toward the buildings. Dawn was already lighting the roofs of the little community. The tiles were fiery orange, and the topmost windows reflected the sun in opalescent splendor.

"All present and accounted for, sir!" Woetjans said. She stood beside the cockpit, splitting her attention between the vessel and the shore. Sailors held the bow and stern lines, which were looped around posts but no longer tied.

"I have the helm," Daniel said, gripping the Ahura's joystick control. He squeezed the thumb button; the two masts squealed as they rotated, aligning the solar sails with the rising sun.

"Twenty percent," Racine called from the power board readouts on the left side of the cockpit. "Thirty-two percent."

The sailors had rigged four analog dials in addition to the original light-column display. The Ahura was designed for one-man operation if necessary, but Adele wouldn't have wanted to be that single man even without the equipment the Cinnabars had added.

"Cast off," Daniel ordered. Sailors whipped the lines they were holding away from the mooring posts.

Daniel's index finger touched another button on the joystick; a pump began to whir without load. "Fend us away from the dock."

Barnes and Dasi leaned into poles—cut-down jackstaffs. The yacht quivered, then inched sideways into the harbor.

Daniel twisted his joystick slightly and squeezed the throttle lever. The pump throbbed as water entered it and spewed out the rear. The Ahura drove forward, her bow swinging to port and Woetjans adding her strength to Dasi's pole to prevent the stern from rubbing.

"Fifty-nine percent!" Racine called.

"All right, Hogg," Daniel said. His servant touched a key of the cockpit radio.

A white flash lit the underside of Ganser's truck, still parked beside the ruined harbormaster's office. The sharp bang an instant later was simultaneous with the billow of orange fire enveloping the front of the vehicle. Hogg's small explosive charge had ruptured the fuel tank and ignited the contents.

The Ahura drove toward the harbor entrance at increasing speed. The blaze on the waterfront would hold the attention of those in the houses. Lamsoe kept the automatic impeller trained on the community; other sailors had their weapons ready as well, but the yacht might have been leaving a city of the dead for all the response Adele saw.

The masts adjusted automatically so that the solar panels gathered the maximum available sunlight. Daniel was giving orders and the Cinnabar crew seethed with meaningful activity as the shore receded, but Adele's mind was in a place of its own.

The boy she'd killed had haunted her dreams for fifteen years. Now that accusing corpse would have five fellows for company.

"We're at a hundred percent and rising, sir," Racine called. "Shall I bring the charging system on line?"

Racine was a fitter from the Aglaia's power room and seemed comfortable with the inside of delicate electronics. The riggers who made up the bulk of Daniel's detachment were resourceful and extremely good with their hands, but they tended to think in terms of breaking strain rather than impedances.

"Not yet," Daniel said. "I want her up on the skids first."

He turned toward Woetjans and said, "Prepare to deploy skids!"

"Grab hold, everybody!" Woetjans bellowed.

Daniel wasn't concerned about the ratings knowing what to do, but he glanced over his shoulder in the other direction to make sure that Adele had obeyed. She held one of the handgrips bolted to the cockpit sides. Her hair, almost as short as that of the naval personnel, ruffled in the twenty mile per hour breeze. This was the best speed of which the Ahura was capable with its hull wet.

Daniel grasped the lever in front of him with his left hand. He drew it back firmly.

The two narrow skids made a grinding noise as they rotated out of their housings in the forward hull. Miniature ball lightnings appeared to port and starboard, six feet from the cockpit. Daniel's hair rose on end. He'd been aboard electrofoils a dozen times, but this transition phase always made him wish he'd stayed on shore.

The Ahura lurched onto her skids with a crackling roar. Without the drag of her hull the yacht jumped ahead, though for the moment the waterjet continued to provide the propulsion.

The Ahura was levitating on static charges induced in the sea beneath her and precisely equal charges in the skids. Unlike a hydrofoil, the electrofoil could hover at a dead stop without any portion of the vessel touching the water.

"No drop in power, sir!" Racine said. "She's clean and the current's still going up. Shall I—"

"Not yet!" Daniel repeated. He set the automatic pilot for 60 mph, then engaged it while watching the bubble level.

The waterjet, the vessel's last contact with the sea over which she floated, retracted into the lower hull.

The Ahura surged ahead again, her speed continuing to build. The electrical charges were no longer in balance: the induced field migrated sternward by a matter of a few centimeters. The difference meant that the charges' repulsion thrust the hull forward instead of merely lifting it.

The yacht reached sixty miles an hour and steadied. Windthrust was a serious force, particularly for the ratings on the open deck. Daniel was sure he could increase speed by another twenty miles an hour, perhaps more, but the punishment the crew would take wasn't worth the increment.

The Ahura was as sweet a craft as a man could wish. She handled this heavy load with a smooth ride and perfect docility in the controls.

"Engage the charging system, Racine," Daniel ordered. "Cafoldi, come take the helm."

The batteries would charge from the excess of solar power over the needs of the foils. With luck the Ahura would be able to continue all night without reducing speed.

Cafoldi squirmed into the cockpit. He'd been a fisherman before he enlisted in the RCN. He placed his hand over Daniel's, then took control as Daniel stepped back.

Daniel relaxed with a great sigh. He hadn't realized how tense he'd been for how long.

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 somewhere. 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.