“Turn right at the next intersection and stop!” Daniel said, his left hand on Barnes’ shoulder to get his attention. He was watching the road through a street map projected as a thirty percent mask on his faceshield. A moving red bead indicated the aircar, a gold one their intended destination.
Barnes tried to corner and tried to stop, each with partial success. The streets joined at more than a right angle, and they had the speed up to keep the overweight car from dropping like an anchor. At the last instant Barnes did the best thing possible, jerking the steering yoke hard right so that they were banked at 45 degrees when they slammed into the front of a food stall, then caromed off before bouncing to a halt.
Locals who’d a moment ago been gaping at the vehicle coming toward them on screaming fans scattered like a covey of birds. Daniel was pretty sure the aircar hadn’t hit anybody—all the people he could see were running and cursing at the top of their lungs—but the good Lord knew there’d be damage claims from at least the stall-holder whose soup tureens were sprayed across her back wall. That was a matter for later, and for Count Klimov—if they got him out alive.
“This way!” Daniel shouted, forcing his way up against the weight of several spacers using his body to launch themselves out of the moaning vehicle. “And keep out of sight till I’m through the door!”
Daniel handed Hogg the commo helmet Woetjans had brought for him, donned his gleaming white saucer cap—slightly squished in the controlled crash of their landing—and straightened his rows of medal ribbons. When Daniel was as presentable as possible under the circumstances, he strode into an alley whose sides he could’ve brushed with both elbows. Twenty feet down he knocked at the metal back door of the Anyo Nuevo.
The door didn’t have a peephole, but the diode on a thumb-sized camera clipped to the transom went red. “Name?” squeaked a sexless voice from the camera’s speaker.
“Daniel Leary of Bantry,” Daniel said, brushing the name tape on his left breast: Leary in gold letters against the white cloth. “The password is ‘Lusiads,’ whatever that means.”
And your name is Ramon Echevaria, he thought. My signals officer has told me absolutely everything on record about this house.
“You’re not on the list,” the voice said in puzzlement. “Who recommended you?”
“Commander Adrian Purvis,” Daniel lied nonchalantly. “My cousin.”
“All right, get out of the way,” said the voice. “The door opens out.”
Daniel moved sideways as he heard the bolts withdraw. The door—goodness, it was two inches thick and solid metal!—whined open on hydraulic rams. Echevaria, a small man with a goatee, sat on a cushioned chair, watching a hologram involving two women and a wombat.
Daniel grabbed him by the throat, not hard until Echevaria tried to reach the holstered pistol hanging from his chair. Hogg thrust a wedge of tool steel—an antenna lock—into the door hinge and waved forward the spacers waiting at the head of the alley.
“I got him, master,” said Hogg as he wired Echevaria’s wrists together. “Now listen—if you’re a good little wog and don’t make a peep, I’ll cut you free when I come back by. If you start screaming, I’ll pull your tongue out instead. Understand?”
Daniel started up the stairs to the private room on the third floor, above the saloon at ground level and the women’s apartments on the floor above. He wasn’t sure Hogg would bother to free the doorman if he stayed quiet, but he’d bet his hopes for a captaincy that the rest of Hogg’s promise was real.
Amber-colored rods inset into the wainscoting lighted the stairs. Figures of a darker golden color danced in their depths. There wasn’t a door at the top, only a plush drapery. Daniel pushed it aside and stepped through, leaving Hogg behind in the archway.
Daniel expected to arouse attention when he entered, but the twenty or so people already present were focused on the table at the edge of the lush room. A house man sat on the side, dealing five-card stud to Count Klimov at one end across from a short, trim man with brush-cut hair—Captain Bertram. The Alliance officer wore a suit of lace ruffles over puce that made him look like a clown. Daniel knew that the civilian outfit was the height of fashion on Pleasaunce, so far on the cutting edge that it’d been only just beginning to be copied on Xenos when the Sissie lifted.