Something stung the back of her right calf. She ignored it. She fired at the truck driver. The windshield shattered but she doubted pellets from her little pistol had enough mass to actually penetrate normal glass.
The driver leaped out of the cab, screaming and covering his face with one hand. He held a submachine gun in the other. He was moving and the light was bad. She fired twice more with no better target than his upper torso. He went down, but she could hear him still wheezing and gurgling in the darkness.
Adele walked toward the truck; it had stalled when the driver bailed out. The barrel of her pistol glowed red from the rapid fire. Pocket weapons like hers weren’t intended for continuous use. The magnetic flux that accelerated pellets to 9,000 feet per second was dissipated as heat, and the light barrel didn’t have enough mass to be a good heat sink. In an hour she’d have blisters on the web of her thumb and the side of her index finger where it touched the receiver.
She drew the Kostroman pistol with her right hand and dropped her own weapon into the empty holster. The leather would scorch but it wasn’t likely to burn the way her pocket lining would. If she tossed the little pistol onto the bricks it might not be at hand the next time she needed it.
Nobody was paying any attention to her. All her opponents were dead. With the truck between her and the office, Adele looked over her shoulder.
Three bodies sprawled on the pavement. A sailor and a Kostroman thug wrestled for the latter’s weapon. A Kostroman stepped out of the harbormaster’s office and sprayed both indiscriminately with his submachine gun. An impeller slug fired from the Ahura tore the shooter’s left arm off and flung his body sideways to thrash in a widening pool of blood.
The gang members had run into the brick office to join their leader when the shooting started. All the living Cinnabars were on the vessel or hidden beneath the lip of the seawall. The Ahura was far enough back that those aboard it could see over the seawall to a degree, but only the upper half of the building was visible to them.
Adele tried twice to climb onto the truck, using a back tire as a step. Finally she laid the service pistol on the truck bed to free both hands. She was still awkward but she got up.
The gunner had rolled off the vehicle. The loader still lay there on his back, his hands clawing spasmodically. Her pellet had cratered the left side of his face, but his right eye remained. It was open.
She’d never used an automatic impeller, but this one had a grip and a trigger like a pistol’s. Adele depressed the weapon as far as it would and pulled the trigger.
The gun cycled three times before she could let up. The heavy projectiles cracked like thunderbolts, making the truck shudder violently from recoil.
The rounds blew platter-sized openings in roofing tiles as they hit; on exit they smashed even larger holes through the brick wall on the other side. A cloud of glowing gas slowly dissipated in front of the muzzle. It was the vestiges of the projectiles’ aluminum driving skirts, ionized by the dense magnetic flux.
Without backing the truck, she couldn’t lower the muzzle enough to hit the people sheltering inside the building. There was nothing more she could do.
“All right, Ganser!” Daniel Leary shouted from the Ahura’s bow. “That’s your warning! Come out unarmed with your hands up or Lieutenant Mundy will blow you all into a crater in the street. Now!”
Adele retrieved the Kostroman pistol. If the gangsters tried to fight, she could at least use it.
“How do we know you won’t just shoot us?” Ganser called from inside the office. He began to cough; a rosy haze of brick dust swirled from the shattered walls.
“You know we will shoot you if you don’t give up!” Daniel said. He jumped from the ship.
“Master!” Hogg cried. Daniel ignored the servant and walked up the seawall’s slope in plain sight of anyone looking out a window of the office. He was still unarmed.