The armed sailors stayed aboard the Ahura while their fellows made multiple trips with the cargo. Daniel must have decided that he wanted his available weapons concentrated aboard the vehicle on which the Cinnabars hoped to escape. He’d called Adele to him; she’d shaken her head and remained where she was.
The back of the flatbed truck was twenty feet away from her. The heavy sheet of armor welded behind the cab protected the gun crew from fire from the front, but because of the way the automatic impeller was mounted, it could only sweep an arc of about sixty degrees to the right or left of the direction the truck was pointing. So long as the truck stayed where it was, the gun didn’t threaten the Ahura.
Adele might not be any use in carrying boxes to the ship, but she was quite confident that the automatic impeller wasn’t a danger to the Cinnabars so long as she survived.
Daniel had vanished within the Ahura to check the hull. Only then did he reappear to examine the cockpit. Now that Adele thought about it, there was only a superficial similarity between a spaceship and a marine vessel. Daniel might be the only Cinnabar present who knew anything about craft like the Ahura, and that because he was raised on the coast rather than from any sort of training.
Five Kostromans came out of the harbormaster’s office and walked in Adele’s direction. They were talking among themselves with studied innocence, but the strands of “conversation” didn’t interweave: none of the thugs was listening to the others.
They were about to attack.
Three of the Kostromans, all men, went to the truck. The other two, a man and a woman, split off and stood on the seawall to Adele’s other side, only six feet away. They faced the harbor, but their eyes flicked sideways toward Adele every few seconds. The man was describing the Ahura; the woman talked about the leaking roof that made a pool in her room every time it rained.
Adele turned her back on the pair beside her and watched them as reflections in a window of the office. When the Kostromans thought their target was no longer able to see them, both tensed.
Two of the other group hopped onto the back of the truck and sat there with their legs dangling over the side. The third man got into the cab. The engine ground for a moment, then started.
Adele lifted her right hand and ostentatiously scratched the back of her neck. Her left hand dipped into her tunic pocket and brought out the pistol, hidden in her palm.
The gun vehicle pulled twenty feet forward in a curve, then stopped. Its transmission went into reverse with a clang. The men pretending to relax on the back stood up. A sailor on the Ahura shouted a warning.
Adele turned toward the thugs beside her. The man started to point his submachine gun. Adele shot him at the top of the chest. The pistol snapped like a mousetrap in her hand, but the sound of the pellet hitting the man’s breastbone was as loud as boards slapping. A muscle spasm threw the Kostroman backward over the seawall.
The woman lunged toward Adele instead of trying to use a weapon. Adele shot her in the throat. The pellet’s temporary shock cavity gaped as wide as the woman’s shoulders, nearly decapitating her. Most of the blood sprayed upward and back, but Adele felt droplets fleck her face. She turned, ignoring the touch of the dead woman’s hand as inertia tried to complete the intended movement.
The truck was backing with the steering yoke reversed to bring the automatic impeller to bear on the Ahura. Several weapons were firing behind Adele. An impeller projectile hit the truck’s armor and blew a glowing trench in the metal without penetrating.
The Kostroman gunners were behind their weapon; only their heads showed. They were thirty yards away from Adele. She aimed at the loader’s nose and hit within a finger’s breadth of that.
His head spun around as though a horse had kicked him; he went down. The gunner, his hand still on the impeller’s charging handle, turned in surprise to look at his partner. Adele shot him in the temple.