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.
BOOK THREE
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.