He offered the insect to the prisoner. Adele looked closely as well; she hadn’t seen the creatures by good light before. The bright red wing cases were edged with cream. It was quite attractive in its way.
“They only live a few minutes after they come out of the nest,” Daniel said in a friendly, informational tone. “Striking colors, don’t you think? These aren’t fangs, exactly, they’re really modified antennae, but they certainly carry poison the way fangs do. I guess you know that better than me.”
Daniel grinned. He wiggled the insect in the direction of the prisoner’s swollen shoulder. The prisoner screamed and tried to twist away. Barnes cuffed him back; he screamed again and slumped.
Daniel tossed the insect into the lagoon. “Tie him to the tree between those other two,” he ordered. He spit at the floating bug and spun it over in a swirl of bubbles. “And don’t bump the fungus yourself, all right?”
“What do you want to know?” mumbled the sergeant. “I swear to God, I’m just a soldier, but I’ll tell you what I know.”
“Let him sit,” Daniel said to Barnes, “but keep hold of the pole.”
He looked at the prisoner and said, “Where’s the crew of the Aglaia being held? The Cinnabar naval vessel that was in harbor when you landed, the Aglaia.”
The prisoner’s eyes were closed. “All those guys are locked up in the ship,” he said through thick lips. “Not the officers, though. I think they’re in the palace but I don’t know, I never had that duty myself. They’ll be taken off-planet as soon as the rest of the squadron lands, I heard.”
Adele withdrew her data unit and seated herself cross-legged in the mud. She got out the wands and began to enter the sergeant’s information.
“When do you expect the rest of the squadron?” Daniel was asking.
Kostroman birds and insects buzzed warmly in the grove, devouring the luscious fungus which Adele had shot open earlier in the morning. For the most part, the local creatures ignored the human corpses.
The Alliance soldiers were among the six who had been killed by multiple bites inside the APC, unable to escape when Adele flung the nest through the hatchway the night before.
Gambier and Barnes had endorsements on their paybooks indicating the RCN thought they could fly ducted-fan vehicles. Half a dozen other ratings had experience as well, either in civilian life or less officially in the service. Daniel didn’t have to worry about who could fly the armored personnel carrier.
There was plenty else to worry about, of course, but right at the moment Daniel Leary was feeling pretty good. Pretty damned good.
The APC revved, then lifted. Gambier was at the controls. The sides were folded down as if for a quick insertion, so the ratings in the troop compartment were clearly visible. They and their fellows on the ground cheered as the big vehicle slid along the inlet. It rose slowly until the downdraft no longer exploded the water away to either side.
“Isn’t it dangerous to have passengers aboard when you’re testing the equipment?” Adele asked as she watched the APC at his side.
Daniel shrugged. “There might have been a problem getting off the ground,” he said, “though it’s all pretty automated.”
Adele turned her head to look at him. “I suppose if you’d thought it was really dangerous,” she said, “you’d have been aboard yourself.”
Daniel grinned. “I didn’t think it was dangerous,” he said, avoiding the direct answer that would have made him sound like he was trying to be a hero. The ratings expected an officer to share their dangers; to avoid doing so would be unprofessional.
Likewise, it would be unprofessional for an officer to involve himself in the common dirtiness of naval life, washing dishes or scrubbing grease from hydraulic control systems. That was where the extreme democrats went wrong. Though . . .
He’d now gotten to know the surviving representative of the Mundys of Chatsworth, the family who according to Corder Leary were the life and breath of radical democracy on Cinnabar. Adele wasn’t what Daniel would call a radical democrat.
Perhaps there’d been some misrepresentation on both sides of the question. That was pretty generally true in politics, he supposed.