He settled the helmet in place as he turned. Woetjans had the Count with one arm around his waist and the other gripping the opposite shoulder. Neither of Klimov’s feet touched the ground in the normal fashion but his right boot tapped down occasionally as Woetjans headed for the back stairs as planned.
Klimov must figure to cash out some time, though it wouldn’t be tonight; he’d swept up the chips before the bosun grabbed him. That was fair, he’d won the hand, but there was something screwy about the game. . . .
Which could wait for more leisure than Daniel had right at this moment. “Six-three—that’s you, Adele—get the men from the bar clear,” he said. “We’re coming out the back way with the Count. He’ll fly back—”
If the car was still flyable; which it likely was, carrying just Klimov’s weight and that of a couple spacers as driver and escort.
“—while the rest of us return overland. Out.”
Four Sissies watched the stairs down which they’d thrown the roulette table. Daniel glanced past them. Save for sprawled bodies, none of the Alliance spacers were closer than the first landing. They had their captain, Daniel’d seen to that, so there wasn’t any reason to continue the fight except for honor—but that was a good enough reason, maybe the only good reason there was. With luck the roulette table would dampen their ardor enough to give the Sissies enough of a head start, though.
“Stand clear!” Daniel said to the self-appointed rear guard. They stepped sideways and he hurled a chair at the faces peering up from the landing. It struck the wall and shattered, flinging splinters and bits of delicate inlays in all directions.
“When I give the word,” he continued in a low voice to his spacers, “we’ll cross the room and head down the back stairs after the others. Ready?”
Shouts and the deadened crunch of battle burped up the back stairs. Daniel turned, his face blank.
“Bloody hell, captain!” shouted Lamsoe who’d just reached the curtained doorway on his way down. “They got around us, sir! Bloody hell, there’s a whole army of ’em!”
“Sissies defend the doorways!” Daniel bellowed. Some of the spacers had commo helmets on, but most did not. “Woetjans, back to the doorway and we’ll hold them here!”
For a while, but there’d better be another way out than the two I know about, Daniel thought, absently picking up another of the chairs. They were too flimsy to make good clubs or missiles, but four chairlegs in the face would give pause to a man willing to charge a brandished axe.
The staff and the room’s other patrons squeezed themselves against the walls. An elderly man in striped robes was dabbing the pressure cut on his left cheekbone, and a mannishly handsome woman was counting chips from the palm of her left hand into her reticule with an eye on the croupier shivering beside her clutching her own shoulders. In the bright overhead lighting, the female staff in their net tops looked like fish being landed rather than exotically sexual figures.
The wall hangings were disarrayed. Close to the back entrance, Daniel saw the jamb of a closed door. He stepped to it, tried the knob and found it locked.
“Careful, sir!” Dasi shouted. Daniel jumped back. Dasi and Barnes—mates from long before Daniel had known them—lunged forward with the porphyry shelf they’d wrenched from the wall. They smashed it into the latch.
The whole doorpanel disintegrated. Daniel jerked the remains out of his way and stepped into a service area. The floor manager was talking in violent agitation to someone over a flat-plate communicator. He saw Daniel, screamed, and reached into the half-open drawer under the communicator.
Daniel caught the fellow’s arm and twisted it up, taking the pistol out of the drawer with his free hand. He didn’t want a gun, but in a situation like this he didn’t intend to leave it in the hands of somebody who certainly wasn’t a friend.
“How do we get out?” he said, still holding the manager’s wrist but no more firmly than necessary to keep the pudgy little man from wriggling away. “Quick, if you please, so that we can take our troubles away from here.”