Koop alone looked reserved. That was perhaps his normal reaction to things going well, but equally it might have had something to do with the bloodstains on his uniform where he’d knelt while securing the two living servants.
Tovera switched the ammunition tube under her weapon’s barrel for a fully loaded one from the pouch on her left side. Her eyes darted in all directions, and her smile was as thin and cold as a streak of hoarfrost.
“Three servants are in the kitchen, hiding behind the central counter,” Adele said. “They may as well stay there for now.”
She shook her head at the silliness of anyone thinking they could hide in a building with a surveillance system as complete as the Captal’s. Even his private suite was covered, though he probably believed he’d switched the cameras off when he realized that the compound was under attack.
“The owner is in his bedroom on the second floor,” Adele continued. “One guard is in the main room of the suite with a gun trained on the door. That has a mechanical bar, so we’ll have to blow it down.”
“Right,” Woetjans said. “That’s you, Jiangsi.”
The maintenance tech nodded. He was leaning against the doorjamb so that it supported some of the weight of his pack.
“Mistress?” Liebig asked. He’d looked hungrily at the Captal’s big aircar when he trotted past it beside the bosun. “The guy inside isn’t the one who flew the captain away, is he? Because if he is, he might know . . .”
“The driver, Dorotige, was the last one to come out of the barracks,” Tovera said. Like Adele herself, she was using imagery from the compound’s internal system to view their opponents.
The tip of Tovera’s tongue touched her lips. “The man inside, preparing to die for his master, is named benYamani. There’s no reason we shouldn’t take him up on his offer.”
“We’ll give him another chance to surrender anyway,” Adele said. She nodded to the open door. “Let’s go.”
In Adele’s normal state of mind she would have been irritated by Tovera’s enthusiasm for killing. At present—
She glanced down at the cratered back of the servant who’d tried to run. Blood was congealing in the holes where velocity had disintegrated the ten-grain pellets like tiny bombs when they struck.
If there is a God, may She forbid that I ever find this sort of business normal.
Woetjans left a man in the doorway and another in the foyer, then led the way up the staircase. Adele had locked the kitchen door and shut off the elevator, so there was no need of a guard down here. They wouldn’t need another man upstairs either, though, so she didn’t comment on the bosun’s arrangements.
An ornate metal door stood in the center of the second floor’s semicircular anteroom. It was finished to look like bronze, but Adele knew from the contractor’s specifications that it was actually tungsten over a core of lime.
“System,” Adele said as they faced the door. She’d set the compound’s intercom to be cued by her helmet. “Mister benYamani, unbolt the door and surrender. We won’t harm you or your master. We’ve come here to get information, that’s all.”
There was no response. “Mistress?” Tovera said.
Adele grimaced. It was so unnecessary. “Yes, go ahead,” she said.
“Officer Woetjans,” Tovera said, holding out her submachine gun. “Let me trade weapons with you for a moment.”
The bosun looked startled but handed over the stocked impeller when Adele nodded. Tovera, aiming by the image projected on her visor, pointed the weapon at the wall to the right of the armored door.
The whack! of the shot was startlingly loud in the enclosed space. The slug’s driving band flashed as it ionized; the ghostly yellow glow remained in the air for several seconds. The wall was of thick structural plastic, intended to deaden sound but not to stop rounds from an impeller. Chips flew into the anteroom and a cavity the size of a soup dish spalled off the inside.
The slug continued straight and true. The waiting guard leaped up, rolled over a table, and fell prone across the hand-knotted carpet. His blood splashed a broad pattern around the hole the slug took through the wall of the Captal’s bedroom.