The case started to fall over. The burst of gunfire had smashed the forward static generator in a shower of sparks.
Coke grabbed the handle of the case. “Please, sirs!” he cried in a voice intended to sound terrified. “We’re businessmen! Please!”
“Fuck you!” a tall man with a pair of pistols cried. “You’re dancers, that’s what you are!”
He fired twice into the pavement at Coke’s feet. Glass and pebbles from the compressed-earth roadway spattered Coke’s legs above his shoe tops. Coke staggered forward, lifting the front of the damaged case in his left hand. He squeaked in simulated terror.
The fear was real, but not terror, not anything that prevented Matthew Coke from acting in whatever fashion was necessary.
He didn’t know whether or not the actions he’d set in motion were survivable. It was like a free-fall jump. Once you’d committed, you could only hope the support mechanism—static repulsion, parachute, or whatever—would work as intended. The team couldn’t change its collective mind now.
A 2-cm bolt blew off the lower back corner of the damaged case and the rest of the static suspension. With the plating and the hardware inside, the case weighed nearly a hundred kilos. Coke lurched onward with it, bleating. He was through the cordon, but a bullet could flick through the back of his head and take his face off at any gunman’s whim.
Mary Margulies touched the latch of her tight-band case with a finger so swift that the luggage appeared to have flown open by accident. Frilly underwear and lounging garments flew out onto the roadway.
“Hey lookee-lookee-lookee!” shouted a gunman. He grabbed a teddy and modeled it against his scarred chest.
The cordon collapsed into a rush for loot. The clothing had no value except as a matter of amusement, but that’s all the cordon was to begin with: a way for men with a childish mindset to amuse themselves.
“Hey, sweetie!” a gunman cried. He grabbed, not very seriously, for Margulies’ crotch. The lieutenant weaseled past with her remaining suitcase. “Stay with me! I’ll give you more dick than all five of them pussies together!”
The door of Hathaway House opened in front of Coke. His left arm felt as though the shoulder tendons would snap with the weight of the case they supported. He stepped aside to check on his team.
“Get in, curse your eyes!” Johann Vierziger shouted. “I’ll handle—”
Vierziger slid one of his cases into the doorway with a sweep of his left arm.
“—this!” and he sent the second case after the first, skidding like driverless cars.
Though the static suspension balanced the weight of the luggage, its inertia was unchanged. Vierziger’s movements, as smooth and practiced as those of an expert lawn-bowler, required strength that one wouldn’t assume in someone as pretty as the little man.
A voice yelped from inside the hotel. The door started to close, but Barbour was there, using the mass of his cases to slam the panel fully open. He twisted aside. Niko Daun followed him in.
A pair of L’Escorial gunmen were dancing. One wore a pair of delicate panties as a crown; his partner had thrust his arms into leggings whose multiple shimmering colors shifted as they caught varied light-sources. Other L’Escorials cheered and clapped, or pawed through the open case for their own trophies.
Coke pointed Margulies in. She obeyed at a hasty rush, aware that her presence as a woman made the risk to every member of the team greater. The expression on her face was set and terrible.
Sten Moden tossed his huge case after her, picked up both of Coke’s cases in his one hand and tossed them; and wrapped his arm around Coke’s waist. Moden swept the major with him into the lobby of Hathaway House. Coke could as well have wrestled an oak tree for the good his protests did.
Somebody had to be last in; and yeah, that was probably a job for the security detail, for Sergeant Vierziger, but it didn’t seem right …
The sixtyish woman with orange hair started to push the door closed. Daun and Barbour were already doing that. Vierziger danced backward through the opening.
The panel clanged against its jamb. It rang again an instant later: a L’Escorial had fired a powergun into the armor as a farewell. The door’s refractory core, lime or ceramic, absorbed the discharge without damage.
The woman swept her hair out of her eyes. She was healthy looking though on the plump side. A man of similar age with a luxuriant, obviously implanted, mane of hair stood to the side, wringing his hands.
Several tables stood in a saloon alcove off the foyer. A few men were seated in the shadows there. They stared pointedly at their drinks rather than at the newcomers. The silence within the hotel was a balm after the noisy violence of the street.
The woman planted her arms akimbo, fists on her hips. “Welcome to Cantilucca, mistress and sirs,” she said. “Now, if you’re smart, you’ll head right back to the port and take the next ship out of this pigsty!”
“Oh, Evie, it’s not so bad as that,” the man said. “It’s just with the, you know, with the syndicates on edge like they are, there’s more, ah …”
“More murderous bandits in town than usual?” the woman snapped. “Yes, there are, and it’s an open question whether they kill everybody else off before they kill each other or after!”
“I’m Georg Hathaway,” the man said, bowing to Moden— probably because the logistics officer was the most imposing presence of this or most other groups. “This is my wife Evie, and I’m sorry for this trouble, usually things are better, it’s just there are so many of the patrolmen in Potosi these last few months, and you know, the boys will let off steam.”
“Usually things are almost bearable,” Evie Hathaway said sharply. “That hasn’t been the case since the bandits began gearing up to fight—and they don’t fight, they just squeeze decent citizens harder yet. When will it stop, I’d like to know?”
“Evie, now, don’t upset the gentlemen and lady,” Georg Hathaway said. “They’ve had a difficult time already, we mustn’t make it worse. Are you the Coke party, then, booking from Nieuw Friesland?”
Moden gestured, palm up. “This is Master Coke,” he said. “You have rooms for us?”
“Oh, we have rooms, all right,” Evie said. “What we don’t have is patrons who can pay us for them. Since this trouble started three months ago, nobody with money and sense comes anywhere near Potosi.”
She stared fiercely at Coke. “And we have our standards. Are you here on behalf of the gage cartel on Delos, Master Coke?”
“No,” Coke said, “we don’t have anything to do with gage.”
Hathaway House was a two-story building. The lobby, saloon, and service quarters were on the ground floor, while the guest rooms were up a flight of stairs. Judged from outside, the protective concrete wall was of equal thickness all the way up, so Coke didn’t see any need for special arrangements.
“Speaking of gage,” said Niko Daun hopefully, “I don’t suppose this would be a good time to have a cone or two?”
Moden looked at the younger man with an icy fury that shocked Coke. “No,” the big man said in a voice as still as death, “it would not. Not so long as the operation is going on.”
Daun blushed. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said, looking toward the lower wall molding, gray against the lobby’s general peach decor. “I just thought that since we had a break after, well, after …”
“There’s no breaks until we lift out of here, T-tech, Niko,” Sten Moden said more gently. “But I’m sorry, it wasn’t mine to speak—”
He nodded formally toward Coke.
“—and I’m sorry for my tone. I—wouldn’t care for others to make such a mistake as I made in the past, thinking I could let down.”
Margulies and Vierziger had conferred briefly. The lieutenant trotted upstairs to check protection and fields of fire there, while Vierziger prowled the ground floor. The Hathaways watched him askance but neither of them spoke—even when he disappeared into their own quarters.