“Mariakakis tells the boss he wants a raise,” Koop said. The cab door opened, then slammed. “Boss tells Mariakakis fuck your raise, you’re not worth what I pay you now. Mariakakis says fuck your job, then. And me, I get promoted when I just started work.”
Adele blinked. Her impression of Koop was that he was rather more dense than the run of spacers. She’d told him to say, “Mariakakis is sick today,” if asked. Koop’s embellishment was wholly convincing, even though she knew it was nonsense.
“Yeah, well, get the back open and let’s take a look,” the gateman said, his voice moving along the side of the van as boots crunched on the road metal. Everyone in the cargo compartment squatted. Woetjans handed her impeller to Bemish and drew an arm’s-length piece of high-pressure tubing from beneath her belt.
“Dorotige’s got a wild hair up his ass and not letting us into town when we’re off duty,” the gateman continued. “There better be extra booze in this—”
The door rattled at Koop’s touch, then shot upward as fast as Liebig and Gansevoort could raise it from the inside.
“—shipment—hey!!”
The gateman was a lanky fellow whose ginger whiskers tried to cover serious acne scars. Woetjans grabbed his throat with her left hand.
WHACK! sounded from the top of the stone guard tower.
Woetjans rang the tubing off the gateman’s skull, knocking off his mauve beret and putting a welt across his forehead. He went limp in her grip. Adele grabbed the keypad chained to his belt and punched in 5154, the code that raised the gate today. She could have entered the compound’s security system through its communications link, but this was faster and simpler.
The body of the guard who’d watched from the tower’s walkway fell flat on the ground beside the vehicle. There was a hole precisely between her staring eyes; apart from that she looked perfectly normal. From the amount of matter oozing through the fan of her hair, the slug had removed the back of her skull like the top of a soft-boiled egg.
The gate’s two leaves cammed open; the row of spikes beyond began to sink into concrete sheaths. Koop scrambled back into the cab, pausing to snatch up the hat he’d lost in the flurry of activity.
The door at the foot of the guard tower was open. Adele and Gansevoort jumped out of the cargo compartment as Woetjans slung the unconscious gateman behind her rather than leave him on the ground. The sprawled corpse couldn’t be seen through the open gate.
“Go!” Adele said, but it was only her adrenaline-speeded senses that made it seem that Koop was delaying. The van jerked into motion, making those in the cargo compartment sway forward and back. Under cover of the vehicle, Adele and the spacer with her darted into the tower.
The van’s back door was still open. Woetjans had retrieved her impeller from Liebig. The bosun’s face had a detached expression, as though she were deciding who to assign to a mildly onerous duty.
Stairs led up from the anteroom of the guard tower. Through the other door was an office with a couch and refrigerator besides the control station. Adele sat at the control station while Gansevoort took the stairs two at a time, heading for the automatic impeller on top of the tower. He was Sun’s striker, working toward a rating of gunner’s mate.
The display was swirling pearly light. Adele brought up the main screen. A dozen keystrokes took her through the interlocks to first enter the security system, then to take complete control of all the compound’s electronics. She displayed the courtyard imagery in a corner so that as she worked she could see the van driving past the barracks to the separated power room.
The power room door stood open, so she didn’t have to bother unlocking it. Woetjans had a crate of explosives in the van against the possibility that the door would be closed with a manual bolt, but Adele was glad they could avoid noise for the moment.
Her control station had a touchplate. Adele’s finger’s danced across it, moving with precision if not what she would call verve. First she shut down communications to the other two guard towers, then switched their power off as well. The automatic impellers could still be fired, but without power traverse the guards would have to horse the weapons around manually to aim toward the courtyard. That would take minutes that they most certainly would not be allowed.