Lieutenants Curtiss and Tixia re-materialized at an altitude of six feet. Yili saw someone go for their weapon. She managed a crude shoulder-roll and came up shooting. Blinding white flashes crossed in the small room. The guard cried out and landed hard. His weapon clattered across the floor next to the overturned chair.

Footsteps thumped outside.

Curtiss scrambled to her feet and motioned for Zony to move back. Another guard appeared in the door. The impact of Yili’s twin blasts threw him back against the hatch edge. He landed face first and didn’t move again. The scent of burnt composite cloth and polyester drifted through the room.

Zony examined the bio-electric unit. Now all the lights were out. She spoke quietly into what she thought was the audio pickup. Nothing happened.

“It’s dead. Hope we can find a way off this rock, because we used our last free pass.”

“Or, maybe we can find another one of those things,” Yili said as she turned the two men over and relieved the second guard of his power packs. “These two jokers are fleet. Looks like we’ve kicked off a civil war.”

“Oh wow,” Zony said. “Would you take a look at that.” Outside the viewport the sweeping shape of the Sentinel planetary defense weapon rose like an ancient monument above the rocky formations surrounding it.

“Brand new,” Yili said. “Someone went to a whole lotta trouble to build one of those. That barrel is seven hundred feet. They must have been planning whatever is going on here for a year or more.”

“Good thing it isn’t powered,” Zony replied.

Yili went back to checking her weapons. “The more we talk about this, the less and less sense it makes to me, lieutenant.” She handed Zony a second blaster pistol and the holster to go with it. “Why build a big gun and make it the centerpiece of your whole strategy then fail to build a power system for it?”

“That’s been bugging me too.”

“There’s got to be power down here somewhere. I’m just not buying that “we sent enough for one shot’ stuff. Either they took their shot and blew out their relays or there’s more going on here than we know about.”

“Maybe some of their numbers got cold feet at the last minute.”

“Or they suddenly realized they had fired on a Skywatch strike battleship and didn’t want to be on the losing side when Argent shoots back.”

“Maybe there’s a weakness here we don’t know about?”

“Let’s go find it,” Yili said, peering out into the corridor.

“Affirmative, engineer. You’re in charge.” Zony drew her weapon and prepared to move out of the small guard post.

“Say again? We’re the same rank.”

“Order of precedence. Engineering outranks Signals.”

“Oh, well I never got that far in the regulations. If this thing has a power system, that portable sensor unit will tell us where it is. Let’s go find it and see if we can grant the skipper his wish.”

“What’s that?”

“We’re going to commandeer this gun and hit that enemy formation so hard they’ll be pulled over for speeding back at Core Two.”