The petty officer reached for the radio in a belt sheath, then quailed before Adele’s stony glare. “Nawroos, take them to the bridge,” he ordered abruptly.
An Alliance sailor handed his impeller to one of his fellows, then crooked a finger for Adele and Daniel to follow him into the Aglaia. He led them into one of the armored staircases off the entrance lobby.
Adele noticed that Daniel had started for the opposite set of stairs; he caught himself, she thought, before the sailor noticed. Familiarity with the Aglaia’s regulations as a Cinnabar ship had almost caused a problem.
“The ship seems pretty big for a sixteen-strong guard detachment,” she remarked to the guide ahead of her in the echoing stairwell. “Is that enough for the job?”
They wound past a door open to the next deck. The guide lifted his hands in unconcern. “All the Merks we captured are in Hold Two, sir,” he said. He didn’t bother to turn around, so dialect and reverberation blurred his words to the edge of understandability. “No light, no running water, and no fucking trouble for us.”
Adele’s submachine gun hung beneath her right arm on a short-looped sling. Her hand lay on the receiver to keep the gun from swinging, but she didn’t really think of it as a weapon.
Her weapon rode, as usual, in the left side pocket of her tunic.
The guide stepped through the next door off the stairwell and turned left. They were in a hallway of some sort, lighted by surface-glow paneling. Daniel was a half step behind Adele, his head swiveling to observe points of distinction in what was to her a featureless landscape.
Offices to either side of the hall had been ransacked messily; drawers had been turned over on the floor. There’d been no attempt to clean up after the search, if it was anything as formal as a search. Looting was, perhaps, more likely.
“Hey, Lieutenant?” the guide called to the open door at the end of the hall. “Here’s some soldiers that think they’ve got the duty here. Blaney sent ’em up to you.”
The guide waved Adele and Daniel on and headed for the stairs by which they’d come. Obviously he felt no need to get into a discussion with his commanding officer. Adele strode through the door before any of the occupants decided to come out to meet her.
There were six tan-uniformed people inside a room with a great deal of built-in electronic equipment. None of the Alliance sailors looked particularly interested to have company. Two were playing a board game, not chess; another poured herself a cup of coffee from a carafe on a hotplate, and two watched an erotic recording on a holographic display.
The sixth, an overweight man, put on a cap decorated with gold braid and rose from the swivel chair where he’d been sitting. The console behind him was live. It was of a standard pattern, one that Adele could operate in her sleep.
“Yes?” the Alliance officer said. He wasn’t impolite but he wasn’t welcoming either. Adele didn’t know how their two ranks compared.
“I need to check with my commander,” Adele said. She walked past the naval officer as though he were a doorman and sat at the console. The seat was still warm.
“Who the hell do you think you are?” the Alliance officer asked indignantly. “You can’t just come barging in here and taking over!”
Adele locked the console and all outgoing communications links, the matter of a few quick commands. There was no certainty of what would happen in the next minute or two, and the guards couldn’t be permitted to summon help.
Adele swiveled the chair around. “All right,” she said to Daniel.
Daniel looked down the corridor, then closed the door. It was a massive, armored panel and took all his weight to swing it home.
“Hey!” said a sailor.
The door banged against its countersunk jamb. Daniel unslung his submachine gun. “All of you against the port bulkhead,” he ordered with a nod.
The nearest sailor flung her coffee and jumped at Daniel. He stiff-armed her away with his free hand. Adele shot the sailor in the shoulder.