“Come on back, the rest of you!” Daniel ordered. “Hold this doorway!”
He tossed the manager into the corner diagonally away from the toilet alcove. If the fellow had good sense he’d stay there, squeezed into as tight a ball as his waistline would allow. If he didn’t, well, that was his lookout.
Barnes and Dasi, Woetjans and Szurovsky, jerked themselves away from the struggle at the two stairheads. Alliance spacers followed, but not instantly. The newcomers pouring up the stairs turned their first attention to the civilians in the card room who’d begun to move when they saw the Sissies leaving.
“I’m ready!” Hogg said. “Master, get up the ladder!”
“I’ll wait till—” Daniel said.
“Woetjans, haul his ass out of here!” Hogg said. “Quick!”
The bosun turned and reached for Daniel’s arm. He was ahead of her, springing for the ladder. Knowing when to decline battle against overwhelming force was a necessary skill for an RCN officer. The ladder built into the wall was iron, red with rust inhibitor and rust—mostly the latter, but the metal remained sturdy enough for the job.
Woetjans was directly behind him. As Daniel went through the trap door he shouted over his shoulder, “Szurovsky next, Barnes and Dasi follow as soon as he’s on the ladder. Move it—”
Hands, at least three sets of them, jerked Daniel onto the roof.
“—Sissies!”
“There’s no way down!” Portus said. “There’s Alliance spacers all around the building, sir, it’s like the tide coming in down there!”
Daniel rolled to his belly and glanced back through the trap door. Woetjans was out and Szurovsky, a lanky man of nearly six feet six, slithered up behind her. Dasi and Barnes ran back from the doorway. As they did Hogg rose to his feet, lifting with him the chairleg on which he’d wrapped the other end of the fishline crisscrossing the doorway as an invisible shimmer.
Three Alliance spacers charged into the doorway, then tripped screaming onto the service room’s floor. One had a cut deep into his shin bone. There was blood on the threshold and blood in the air, clinging to the boron fiber and giving it visible presence.
Hogg dropped the chairleg with which he’d tensioned the snare and ran for the ladder just as Barnes cleared it. Nobody else rushed into the service room for a moment. An Alliance spacer threw a statuette into Hogg’s back as he mounted the ladder; Hogg climbed the rest of the way with only a grunt and a curse to show he’d been hit.
Sissies jerked Hogg onto the roof; Portus and Lamsoe, bright-eyed again, slammed the door down on its jamb. There wasn’t a lock on this side, but the two spacers stood on the panel while four others staggered over with a section of stone cornice they’d torn from the facade.
Daniel stuck the pistol he’d taken from the floor manager back into his sash. He hadn’t been going to let Hogg be kicked to death in front of him, even if that meant shooting somebody.
Only now did Daniel step to the edge and look down. He’d hoped they’d be able to jump to the roof of the building on the other side of the narrow alley, but it was two stories taller and the brick wall facing the Anyo Nuevo was blank.
The alley itself was full of green Alliance utility uniforms. Some of the more enterprising of the Goldenfels’ crew were climbing the gap, bracing themselves between the walls as they would in a narrow crevasse. They weren’t a serious threat, but in all likelihood their fellows would be on top of the adjacent building shortly and using twenty-foot height advantage to hurl bricks—if they didn’t use guns.
“Bloody hell, sir, come look at this!” Woetjans shouted as she gazed over the front of the building. Daniel stepped to her side, grimacing at the damage to his dress uniform. Still, it’d gotten him into the card room without alerting the mob of Alliance spacers below.
He followed Woetjans’ gesture. Up Straight Street—it wasn’t particularly straight, except by comparison with most streets in San Juan—from the direction of the harbor came a line of vehicles. Most were armored after a fashion, and all were armed. They flew streamers and flags of many varieties—house colors, Daniel assumed—but every single one of them wore the red-on-gold—