“You there!” someone called. The subbasement was so huge and multi-bayed that the words, though shouted, didn’t seem loud. “What’s going on here?”
Adele recognized the voice.
“Kill them!” she shouted, reaching for her pocket.
Hogg carried his impeller slung under his right arm with the muzzle forward. His right hand had ridden lightly on the grip from the moment he left the Princess Cecile on this mission. The guard commander’s mouth gaped as Hogg’s slug punched him mid-chest before Adele could complete the second word of her warning.
The soldiers were too startled to react. Hogg killed three of them standing before the rest of the survivors threw themselves toward cover. Brick shattered and a Kostroman prisoner doubled up with a cry: an impeller slug didn’t stop when it hit its intended target.
The sailors had fast reflexes but they weren’t trained killers. Only Dasi fired at the two figures who dived into the nearest pump alcove. He missed, though his impeller blasted a head-sized divot in the brick wall.
Adele didn’t bother to shoot. The guards weren’t worth her concern, and she couldn’t get a clear shot past the members of her detachment before the real targets were under cover.
The voice had been that of Markos. He and his aide had decided to see the prisoners without giving electronic warning.
A volley of submachine gun pellets blew powder from the north wall and stuffing from the furniture. The sailors were trying to copy Hogg now that they understood what was required, but the surviving guards were mostly safe in a side bay.
A guard fired his submachine gun. Pellets slapped and scarred pillars on the other side of the vault, but the shooter couldn’t hit the Cinnabars for the same reason they couldn’t hit him and his fellows: at the present angle a three-foot-thick brick wall was in the way.
Hogg shouldered his impeller with more deliberation than he’d shown previously and fired one round through the seat of a red plush divan. The guard hiding there leaped up with a scream, then collapsed. The divan broke beneath her. The slug had smashed the frame on its way to her chest.
Civilian prisoners were screaming and throwing themselves into the back of their cells. Captain Le Golif pointed toward Adele and shouted, “Run for it! You’ll be killed if you try to get us now!”
He was right in one sense: at least six of the guards were alive and armed. The open front of their bay was only twenty feet from the mesh barrier enclosing the Aglaia’s officers.
The Alliance soldiers were shocked and frightened, but they were still capable of pulling a trigger. With a submachine gun, that’s all it would take to chop to mincemeat anybody trying to break open the prisoner cage.
Adele had the pistol in her left hand. Her right elbow held the burdensome submachine gun to her side to keep it from flopping. For a moment, only her head and eyes moved.
Le Golif was half right. Adele and her sailors couldn’t run, either, except past the pump alcove where Markos and his aide had taken refuge. Ruthless didn’t necessarily mean skillful, but Adele didn’t doubt that the pale sociopath could knock over human targets just as quickly as they appeared before her.
A submachine gun fired in the alcove. The burst wasn’t directed toward the opening. Brick shattered and a few pellets rang on the steel pump housing.
“Sun, Polin, Hafard!” Woetjans roared. Like Adele, the petty officer had seen that there was no way out for the detachment except past Markos. “On the count of three, with me.”
She pointed toward the front arch with her left index finger; the submachine gun was in her right hand, the stock extended to the crook of her elbow. The sailors she’d named were, like her, among the majority carrying submachine guns rather than impellers.
“One—”
A second burst within the alcove. The impacts sounded as though someone had thrown a case of glassware against the wall. A single bit of metal ricocheted through the arch, trailing a corkscrew of smoke.
“Stop!” Adele shouted. “Stop, she’ll kill you all!”
Woetjans turned with an expression combining surprise and frustration. “Sir!” she pleaded. “There’s no—”