Lt. Leary, Commanding (38 page)

The tower guard braced himself on the catwalk rail, holding his pistol in both hands, and fired across the courtyard. Dust flew from the facade of the residence.

Tovera turned like mercury flowing. Even before she could fire, the top of the northeast tower erupted into dust, chunks of stone, and streaks of vivid color where osmium slugs struck the turret's metal fittings. Adele's control station vibrated with the violence of Gansevoort's long burst above her.

Gansevoort stopped firing. Woetjans' team and the guards in front of the barracks had thrown themselves on the ground. Bits continued to drop off the crumbled tower: the slugs had chewed away the west face of the railing and turret. The wind drifted dust from the compound like torn russet gauze. The only visible portion of the guard was his right arm lying among the debris in the courtyard, severed at the elbow by fifty grains of osmium moving at Mach 8.

"Everyone in the barracks," Adele said, "come out unarmed,
now
! In thirty seconds we'll begin raking the building until it falls in and crushes everyone who hasn't been killed by the projectiles."

Another man came from the barracks, doubled over as if he were walking into a storm. Liebig taped his arms behind him. Two more guards crept out, their hands high. A woman came from the south tower, stumbling in her haste.

Woetjans cupped her hands and shouted in the direction of the gate. Adele grimaced and switched the helmet intercoms live again. "Unit, your helmets work now," she said. "Signals out."

"
Signals, that's everybody from here
," Woetjans voice said in synchrony with her lips on the other side of the courtyard. "
There's six servants and a guard in the residence with the boss, they say. Team One over.
"

"Team One, all right," Adele said, rising to her feet. "Leave a guard on the captives and join me at the residence. Ah, out."

She'd never get used to RCN communications protocols. Of course, communications had never interested her very much. Knowledge for its own sake had been her focus.

She was smiling as she walked from the gate tower toward the residence building. A great deal had changed since she met Lt. Daniel Leary.

For the most part the spacers were exhilarated from the operation's present success. Bemish was babbling that by
God
we're showing these wogs how it's done, but Adele didn't let her distaste for the vulgar chauvinism touch the surface of her mind.

Koop alone looked reserved. That was perhaps his normal reaction to things going well, but equally it might have had something to do with the bloodstains on his uniform where he'd knelt while securing the two living servants.

Tovera switched the ammunition tube under her weapon's barrel for a fully loaded one from the pouch on her left side. Her eyes darted in all directions, and her smile was as thin and cold as a streak of hoarfrost.

"Three servants are in the kitchen, hiding behind the central counter," Adele said. "They may as well stay there for now."

She shook her head at the silliness of anyone thinking they could hide in a building with a surveillance system as complete as the Captal's. Even his private suite was covered, though he probably believed he'd switched the cameras off when he realized that the compound was under attack.

"The owner is in his bedroom on the second floor," Adele continued. "One guard is in the main room of the suite with a gun trained on the door. That has a mechanical bar, so we'll have to blow it down."

"Right," Woetjans said. "That's you, Jiangsi."

The maintenance tech nodded. He was leaning against the doorjamb so that it supported some of the weight of his pack.

"Mistress?" Liebig asked. He'd looked hungrily at the Captal's big aircar when he trotted past it beside the bosun. "The guy inside isn't the one who flew the captain away, is he? Because if he is, he might know . . ."

"The driver, Dorotige, was the last one to come out of the barracks," Tovera said. Like Adele herself, she was using imagery from the compound's internal system to view their opponents.

The tip of Tovera's tongue touched her lips. "The man inside, preparing to die for his master, is named benYamani. There's no reason we shouldn't take him up on his offer."

"We'll give him another chance to surrender anyway," Adele said. She nodded to the open door. "Let's go."

In Adele's normal state of mind she would have been irritated by Tovera's enthusiasm for killing. At present—

She glanced down at the cratered back of the servant who'd tried to run. Blood was congealing in the holes where velocity had disintegrated the ten-grain pellets like tiny bombs when they struck.

If there is a God, may She forbid that I ever find this sort of business normal.
 

Woetjans left a man in the doorway and another in the foyer, then led the way up the staircase. Adele had locked the kitchen door and shut off the elevator, so there was no need of a guard down here. They wouldn't need another man upstairs either, though, so she didn't comment on the bosun's arrangements.

An ornate metal door stood in the center of the second floor's semicircular anteroom. It was finished to look like bronze, but Adele knew from the contractor's specifications that it was actually tungsten over a core of lime.

"System," Adele said as they faced the door. She'd set the compound's intercom to be cued by her helmet. "Mister benYamani, unbolt the door and surrender. We won't harm you or your master. We've come here to get information, that's all."

There was no response. "Mistress?" Tovera said.

Adele grimaced. It was so unnecessary. "Yes, go ahead," she said.

"Officer Woetjans," Tovera said, holding out her submachine gun. "Let me trade weapons with you for a moment."

The bosun looked startled but handed over the stocked impeller when Adele nodded. Tovera, aiming by the image projected on her visor, pointed the weapon at the wall to the right of the armored door.

The
whack!
of the shot was startlingly loud in the enclosed space. The slug's driving band flashed as it ionized; it was a ghostly yellow glow remained in the air for several seconds. The wall was of thick structural plastic, intended to deaden sound but not to stop rounds from an impeller. Chips flew into the anteroom and a cavity the size of a soup dish spalled off the inside.

The slug continued straight and true. The waiting guard leaped up, rolled over a table, and fell prone across the hand-knotted carpet. His blood splashed a broad pattern around the hole the slug took through the wall of the Captal's bedroom.

Tovera gave the impeller back to Woetjans. "That should do," she said.

Adele squatted and took out her personal data unit; the helmet's inputs weren't sufficient for what she needed now. At a nod from the bosun, Jiangsi shrugged off his pack and began lifting out blocks of explosive with the blasting caps already in preformed sockets.

"Wait," said Adele, concentrating on her display. "We could do more damage than we intend with that."

"You want me to take down the wall instead of the door, mistress?" Jiangsi offered. "That won't be hard."

"
Wait
," Adele repeated.

She turned on the vision panel above the Captal's huge circular bed and routed to it the output of the security camera in the main room of suite; she focused the image closely on what was left of the guard's head. The slug must have been tumbling slightly when it came through the wall.

"Captal da Lund!" Adele said through the intercom. "We will let you and all your surviving personnel go free once you've answered our questions about what happened to Lieutenant Leary. Open the door to your suite. If we have to blow our way in, there's a possibility you'll be killed and a near certainty that you'll be badly injured."

"No `near' about that," Woetjans muttered. Her big scarred hand patted the length of tubing in her belt. She'd wrapped tape around one end for a better grip.

"You've got thirty seconds," Adele continued. "I'm going to begin counting down. Thirty, twenty-nine—"

The man cowering in the bedroom suddenly snatched open his door. "Wait!" he cried. "For the love of God, wait!"

Adele rose to her feet and put her data unit back in its pocket. She lifted her visor; she didn't need to watch further. The spacers tensed, but Tovera merely shook her head in disappointment.

The bar scraped on the other side of the door. When Woetjans heard it click free of the staples, she kicked the panel open with the heel of her boot. It bloodied the Captal's nose as it knocked him down.

Adele had never seen the exiled dictator in the flesh. He would have looked distinguished under most circumstances, but blubbering so that tears streaked the blood on his cheeks was not his best moment. Woetjans and Jiangsi thrust their guns in his face.

"Please, please, I'll pay you more money than you ever dreamed!" the Captal cried. "I'll make you rich for life, only don't kill me!"

It was funny in its way. "Tovera," Adele said. "How much money would it take for you not to kill this gentleman if I told you to do it?"

"If you allowed me to do it, you mean, mistress," Tovera said. They were playing a game, she and her mistress, but every word of it was true. She shrugged. "I don't need money, mistress."

Adele was unable to keep to keep from sneering when she looked down at the sniveling exile, but perhaps that was the right expression for the purpose anyway. "When you've told us how to find Lieutenant Leary," she said evenly, "we'll release you and your personnel."

"They're all right, they're perfectly safe," the Captal said. He'd pulled his knees up to his chest and his fingers covered his face, pressing to either side of his nose. Was it broken, or was it simply fear that had so unmanned him? "It was nothing to do with me, really, I was just helping Vaughn out of friendship for his father. Getting your captain out of the way so that no one would give the alarm until Vaughn was safely back on Strymon."

Woetjans tapped the Captal's left wrist with her impeller muzzle. The heat shield was still hot from the recently fired slug; the prisoner jerked his hand down with a cry of terror.

"
Where?
" Woetjans said. "Or I'll tie your dick to the aircar and fly back to town. So help me God."

"At Site Two on South Land!" the Captal cried. "Dorotige took them there, he can find them again. Besides, it's in the car's navigation system!"

Adele frowned. "Is that true?" she asked the bosun.

Woetjans shrugged. "Likely enough," she said. "Liebig'll know."

She switched to intercom. Her lips continued to move, but the helmet's dampers smothered the words. A moment later she nodded and said, "Yeah, that's right unless they cleared the system. Liebig's going to check the car right now."

"We weren't going to do Leary any harm," the Captal said. "Just keep him out of the way till your fleet had gone. He had plenty of food with him and there's water at the site. And then Dorotige would have flown him and his servants back."

The Captal had brought his right hand to his face again but seemed generally to have relaxed. A good sign, Adele supposed. The heat shield hadn't even raised a blister. From the way he'd jumped, one might have thought his hand was being singed off.

"Mistress?" Woetjans said. "Liebig says that's right, the navigation record's still intact. If he can use that car, likely he can drive back himself to get the captain."

"We'll use the car," Adele said. "We'll take this gentleman and Mr. Dorotige with us as guides, however. Just in case."

The Captal slowly lowered his hands and let his legs extend slightly. "And then you'll let me go?" he said, his voice husky with fear.

"Yes, we will," Adele said. "And if Daniel and all his crew, his
servants
as you called them, are all right, we'll even leave you food."

Woetjans grinned, though she still had a worried expression. "Let's get going," she said. "I don't see any way in hell we're going to get the captain back before time the squadron's supposed to lift, but maybe the
Winckelmann
'll lose all her thrusters when she lights 'em. There's a chance."

Jiangsi rolled the Captal over on his belly and taped his wrists. Woetjans looked sourly at the captive, then said to Adele, "Ah, mistress? How do you figure to go on from here?"

"Get all the prisoners out of the compound as planned," Adele said. "Dorst and Tavastierna will fly to the ship in their vehicle, the rest of us will go there in the Captal's. I suppose Koop should drive the van back; we said we'd return it."

"Mistress, time's
awful
short," the bosun said.

Adele nodded. "Yes," she said. "But I need to inform Lieutenant Mon about what I'm doing, which I'll do face-to-face rather than in any fashion that could be intercepted or recorded. He may request that Tovera and I carry on from here alone so that the ship can lift with as full a crew as possible."

"Right," said Woetjans. She bent and lifted the Captal by his bound wrists. He screamed until he got his feet under him to take the weight from his arms. "And the Senate may make me Speaker tomorrow—but the smart money bets that I'll be collecting bosun's pay for the next while."

She slung the Captal toward the stairwell. "Let's go tell Lieutenant Mon," she said, "that we'll be a while bringing the captain back to the
Sissie
."

_"W
e're about to land, ma'am," Jiangsi warned, looking out
the side of the servants' compartment.

"All right," Adele said, but her mind was on entering the names and descriptions of the members of the conspiracy as the Captal Da Lund remembered them. He and Dorotige were curled on the compartment floor, their limbs taped. The Captal babbled while his guard chief remained as silent as a corpse except to answer direct questions.

Adele was making an audio recording of the information, but by entering key words manually on her personal data unit she put it in a far more accessible place: her current memory. She didn't know what she might need in the future, so she learned as much as she could.

Liebig rotated the aircar 180 degrees on its axis. They'd flown so smoothly that Adele had forgotten that she was in a vehicle; now she tilted forward out of the jump seat. Only Jiangsi's snatching arm kept her from toppling onto the prisoners.