Hogg was right. If there was going to be shooting, it was best for the Cinnabars to start it.
Woetjans tossed Markos to the floor beside Adele; a sailor quickly bound the spy’s hands behind his back, using a belt stripped from a dead guard. Adele hadn’t heard any order pass. The sailor simply understood and executed the task.
Adele felt her face quiver with the beginning of a hysterical laugh. Why couldn’t Kostroma produce library assistants of that quality? She forced her cheeks into a frozen rictus until the fit passed.
“If it’s all right to use the helmet commo now I can set things up with Barnes and Lamsoe,” Woetjans said. “Unless you want to . . . ?”
A surviving guard fired a short burst from the bay where he and his fellows remained. A sailor fired back. Neither hit or could possibly hit anything but brick.
“Get out!” Captain Le Golif repeated.
He stood behind the wire, feet slightly spread. His arms were behind his back as though he were reviewing a parade. Pride in Cinnabar made Adele flush, despite the cold awareness that the men who cut her little sister’s throat might have been personally brave as well.
Adele hadn’t seen an armored personnel carrier until a week before. Among other things she had no idea of what might be the rate and duration of fire of the heavy weapons involved.
“No, you have a much better appreciation of the factors,” she said.
The petty officer glanced down at Markos. “And you want him along?” she said without emphasis.
“Yes,” Adele said. “I do.”
Markos was useless as a hostage: trying to negotiate their exit from Kostroma would simply alert the Alliance command to their presence. The detachment might escape in a rush; if the Alliance had time to set up, every Cinnabar on the planet would die or be captured.
Adele had called Markos a hostage because the only other alternatives were to kill him in cold blood, or to let him live. She’d meant it when she said she wouldn’t be party to a cold-blooded execution.
But she’d pull the trigger herself if it was that or setting free the monster she knew Markos was.
“Message received,” Daniel said, speaking into the integral microphone at his console in the Aglaia’s tactical operations center. Domenico was in charge at the Princess Cecile. He’d used his initiative—against Daniel’s orders for communications silence—to relay the warning from the detachment in the Elector’s Palace. “We’re on the way. Leary out.”
Chief Baylor looked at Daniel with concern. The missileer had just arrived to report his team was done with the starboard installations, Missile Tubes One and Three, but that there’d been damage to the port-side handling controls when the Aglaia was captured. It’d take an hour to clear, and the Cinnabars hadn’t had an hour even before the wheels came off for the palace detachment.
Daniel keyed the general communicator. “All personnel to the main hatch and begin loading,” he said calmly. “Bridge out.”
He’d hoped to make the final transfer from the Aglaia to the Princess Cecile in two stages, but the car could carry the nineteen Cinnabars so long as Gambier stayed low and used surface effect. That was an easy problem. If Daniel’d thought it would have helped the palace detachment, he’d have swum to the Navy Pool pulling the missile crew on a raft.
Chief Baylor didn’t leave the TOC. Daniel felt a surge of rage—did the man think orders weren’t meant for him?—but suppressed it instantly. Baylor didn’t need to guide his people to the main hatch. Daniel was jumpy because he held himself responsible for allowing the palace detachment to take a vain risk.
He touched the switch opening the hatch of Hold Two, then keyed the general communicator, audio only. Video required more bandwidth than might be available during combat. Trained naval personnel ought to have their eyes on their tasks anyway.
“You’re free to go,” Daniel announced to the former Alliance guard detachment. They’d be jumping up in their prison as light entered through the opening hatch. “We’ve left an inflatable liferaft tied to the mooring pontoon for you. I strongly recommend that you use it to get away from the Aglaia as fast as you can. Bridge out.”