Tovera shifted her body, working muscle groups with a minimum of movement. She was perfectly cool, but after all she had no more emotion than the submachine gun in her hands. She looked at Adele and said, “I wouldn’t be any better at long range than you would, mistress. Though I suppose either of us could manage if the need arose.”
“I suppose,” Adele agreed coldly. Why should it bother her that Tovera considered her mistress and herself merely a pair of killers at this moment? It was true, after all.
Unlike Adele, Tovera had no conscience. But that wouldn’t make any difference. It never had before.
The van pulled up beside the aircar. Koop was driving, wearing a Sexburgan caftan and a soft cap. The rest of the team were in RCN utilities, comfortable and unobtrusively colored. If this event went wrong, there was no chance of hiding who was responsible for it, no matter what they wore.
Well, Adele didn’t intend that it go wrong.
Woetjans lifted the roller gate and jerked Adele into the cargo box. Bemish offered Tovera a hand, but she’d already hopped aboard with her usual economy. Tovera didn’t look graceful, but she moved without error. It was rather like watching a door open and close. The motion was without art, but it was always the same and always flawless.
“Go!” Woetjans shouted, and the van accelerated from its rolling stop. There were five spacers in the back; Koop drove with a submachine gun under a towel on the seat beside him. More personnel would have crowded the vehicle and wouldn’t, in the opinion of Woetjans and Mon, have contributed to the success of the operation.
There were twenty-one people in the Captal’s compound; the number hadn’t changed since Dorotige had returned from South Land. They were on alert, but that was different from really being alert. The van delivered food to the compound on a regular schedule. The guards would search the vehicle, but they wouldn’t be surprised to see it arriving.
Adele smiled faintly. The surprise would come shortly after that arrival.
Adele looked at the faces around her, lighted through the opera window in one of the door’s upper slats. “Is everyone ready for this?” she asked, more because the spacers seemed to expect something from her than out of real concern for the answer.
“Ain’t we just!” said Liebig, hugging his submachine gun to his chest. The others’ guttural sounds of approval blended well with the groans of the van’s suspension.
Adele put her visor down momentarily to check the distance to the Captal’s front gate. She still wasn’t comfortable with getting information from the helmet display; it made her resentful and more than a little angry not to be able to be able to use her personal data unit in normal fashion.
Normally she wouldn’t be bouncing around in the back of a delivery van. Besides, the helmet display worked perfectly well as it read down the distance in yards: 831, 830, 829—a lurch as the vehicle rounded a switchback and its transmission shifted to a lower gear—827 . . .
Moronick began to sing under his breath: “When I’m home you call me sugar honey, but when I’m gone . . .” His thumb covered and uncovered the receiver switch that controlled his impeller’s power. It was in the off, safe, position. He didn’t turn it on, but the touch of the plastic fascinated him.
” . . . you run around and play.”
Adele was the only one of those present who didn’t carry a shoulder weapon, either a submachine gun or a semiautomatic impeller throwing heavy slugs. There was a small pistol in her left side pocket. It was the weapon she knew, the weapon she pointed as if her eye and not her hand controlled it.
It would do. It had done many times in the past.
The van slowed gradually, then slewed shrieking to the right as a brake grabbed. 14, 13, 11 . . . Koop corrected with his steering wheel and brought them to a juddering halt.
Adele could hear the wind now, blowing the last of the grit kicked up by the truck’s wheels against the metal body. “Hey, where’s Mariakakis?” an unfamiliar voice called.