Daniel swung out of his seat and headed for the door. Baylor followed in his wake, frowning again. It was a familiar expression on the little man’s face.
“We might’ve left them where they are,” Baylor said over the clash of his boots and Daniel’s on the metal stair treads. “Though I don’t guess a bunch of groundhogs’re going to reprogram the targeting computer in the time they’ll have to try.”
“I don’t guess they are,” Daniel agreed, feeling his irritation rise again.
As Baylor said, the Alliance personnel were from the ground forces rather than the navy. If they even knew where the TOC was, the chance they could reset the programmed sequence was less than the possibility of them flapping their arms and flying to the Princess Cecile ahead of the aircar.
Besides, leaving the prisoners locked in the Aglaia was a sentence of death by fire or suffocation. Daniel didn’t hate anybody that much. He hoped he’d never hate anybody that much.
He hit the Deck C landing and sprinted down the corridor toward the hatch. The Chief Missileer ran at his side.
“It sounds like Woetjans is really in the middle of it,” Baylor said. He talked out of nervousness. Also, he was displacing his fear rather than acknowledging that his real concern was the certain doom of the Aglaia and his beloved missiles with it.
A rating stood in the main hatch with a submachine gun. When the officers reached the concourse he shouted, “Here they come!” over his shoulder to the aircar quivering in dynamic balance on the pontoon.
“They’re professionals,” Daniel said to Baylor. He was out of the Aglaia’s hatch for the last time, into warm salt air and a sky not far short of dawn. He crossed the catwalk and paused, gesturing Baylor and the rating into the vehicle ahead of him.
They were professionals, Adele and Hogg as surely as the Aglaia’s crewmen. They would do the best they could under the circumstances.
And by God! so would Daniel Leary and the contingent directly under him.
“Remember,” said Woetjans to the detachment, “shoot anything you please but don’t shoot the fucking APC, right? And keep moving but help your buddies. We don’t leave nobody behind even if their head’s blown off. Ready?”
The general murmur of assent sounded to Adele like feeding time in a bear garden. She smiled faintly. Everyone in the immediate area would shortly prefer that a pack of bears had rushed up from the depths of the Elector’s Palace.
Woetjans keyed her helmet. “Barnes, get moving,” she said.
Two clicks on Adele’s helmet intercom signaled wordless agreement. The APC was going into action two high levels above the poised detachment.
“Remember,” Woetjans said. She sounded peevish, like an adult trying to control unruly children. “I fire the first shot.”
She nodded to Dasi and Koop; the big sailors put their whole strength into sliding the equipment door sideways so that the detachment could exit as a group rather than dribbling one at a time through the pedestrian doorway.
The door’s rattle drew the attention of the entire detachment on the landing twenty feet above. The Alliance troops stared in amazement at the squad of commandoes starting up the broad stairs toward them.
Woetjans was on the left end; Adele was beside the bosun’s mate, holding only her pistol, and Hogg was to Adele’s right with her submachine gun in his hands and the impeller slung across his back. Three more sailors completed the first rank; Dasi and Koop fell in behind with the two men supporting Markos by the elbows.
“Buddha!” cried an Alliance soldier. He pointed toward Markos, pinioned and groggy. “They’ve got—”
Faces—angry, surprised; none of them frightened, not yet, because they didn’t have time. They were lighted from above by a glaring fixture the Alliance had bolted to the wall. Ten soldiers, perhaps a dozen.
Woetjans may have squeezed her trigger first, but Adele doubted there’d been a heartbeat between any of the five weapons firing. Only Hogg of the five shooters failed to empty the 300-round magazine of his submachine gun. The guard detachment melted like frost in a torrent.
Adele ran up the stairs. A mist of dust and blood pulsed in the floodlight. She didn’t know why she was shouting. Her foot slipped and she did know why, but she didn’t look down to make sure.