It sounded like an order rather than a request to her; perfectly proper under the circumstances. She went to Daniel’s side.
He was unfastening the officer’s belt and holster. Now that the victim was lying in the beams of the gun truck’s lights Adele could see she was a young woman with tight blonde curls and ratlike features. The right side of her scalp oozed red, but she was breathing normally.
Looking up again, Daniel said, “I think this’ll fit you. Get into it fast. We’ll have to hope that the gate guards don’t pay a lot of attention to you as we leave.”
“Oh,” said Adele. She saw the logic immediately: the guards had called a squad of Shore Police to check on the van they’d passed into the compound. If the van tried to leave unescorted, the guards were going to wonder what had happened to the squad. It was at least possible that they’d come up with the right answer. None of the female Cinnabar sailors was slim enough to pass for the police commander.
Understanding was one thing. The thought of actually pretending to be a Kostroman officer, acting, made Adele queasy with stage fright. She’d never liked being in front of groups or having everyone look at her.
Aloud she said, “Yes, all right.”
She shrugged out of her tunic. The Kostroman uniform wouldn’t have a pocket for her personal data unit. For now she could bundle her own trousers around it and carry the packet under the seat of the police vehicle.
Daniel finished stripping the Kostroman officer, then walked to the warehouse doorway while Adele dressed. “Tie them but not too tight,” he ordered the sailors inside. “I want them to be able to get loose after we’re gone.”
Adele pulled on the officer’s trousers. They fit properly, but the uniform was cut tighter than she liked. Frustration at the rub of the cloth built to momentary fury. She reminded herself that she was merely transferring her anger at the whole situation to something trivial—and the situation was more her own fault than that of anyone else around her.
Perhaps that was why she was so very angry.
Daniel came back to her. He pulled the pistol from its gilt leather holster and said, “I don’t suppose you’ve ever used one of these, Adele?”
“No,” she said. It was an electromotive pistol of local manufacture; she’d never fired or even handled one. The weapon was very bulky, but its projectiles were no bigger or faster than those of the little Cinnabar weapon in Adele’s pocket.
For all that, Kostroman weapons were satisfactory if you didn’t mind their size. Vanness’s death was proof of that.
Daniel grimaced as he stood. “Well, I didn’t think you would’ve,” he said. “Look, this is the safety; push it forward with your thumb to shoot. But it’s probably better if you don’t try that. You’re likely to do more harm than good.”
Adele opened her mouth in amazement. It took her a moment to realize that Daniel’s question had been meant in a general nature—”Have you ever fired a gun?”—and she’d answered words that he’d actually used: “Have you ever used a Kostroman pistol like this one?”
“I’d like to wear it myself,” Daniel added, looking toward the warehouse from which the sailors were now carrying the brandy they’d come here for in the first place. “I don’t dare, though. The lieutenant of a detachment of armed Shore Police has to be armed herself. Oh, well.”
He reholstered the pistol and handed it to Adele. She started to correct the misunderstanding, but the words caught in her throat from embarrassment and a degree of anger. Who was he to assume a Mundy of Chatsworth didn’t know how to shoot?
Before she could decide what to say, Daniel walked over to the line of Kostromans his sailors had dragged out of the warehouse. They were bloody and bound with their own tunics, but none of them seemed as seriously injured as Adele would have assumed.
Daniel looked down at the captives with his hands on his hips. “You shouldn’t find it hard to get free,” he said in a pleasant tone. “What you do then is your own business. We’re going to leave the warehouse open, so if you want to have a good time and make some money selling what you don’t carry away inside you, go right ahead.”