“We fired.” Yili’s voice was even and confident. Her words, however, had a frozen edge. Both of her fellow officers had the same question.

Fired on whom?

“So much for our theories about how this thing is powered,” Moo offered, still dusting himself off. “But after what I’ve seen, I’d be willing to believe these beasts can do just about anything.”

“They’re advanced. No question about that,” Yili replied. “Diamond Jack over there fit the two pieces of the map together for us.”

“Good, then you’ll both be a big help when I lock Atwell in a box and ship him back to a five-flag court martial. He’s back on the Ithis planet or whatever it is. They’ve got Hughes and they’re doing something to his mind. Their next target is the Captain.”

The lights dimmed and the station shuddered as what all three officers presumed was another shot went off.

“Whatever our plans are, we need to make room for the war that just started up there,” Zony said as she scanned the ceiling for clues as to when the next shot might happen.

“They may have engaged the Dunkerque,” Yili pointed out. “DeMay’s orders were to commandeer this installation.”

“If that Sentinel opens up on his ship, they’ll be pulverized. Even with a full crew, the Dunkerque can’t take that kind of pounding. Even Argent would have her hands full,” Moo said. “We’ve got to sabotage it before whatever these people are shooting at is destroyed.”

“Agreed sir,” Zony replied. “There’s a couple of things you should know. We figured out their power system. If they’re using it to drive this installation, we can’t cut the power conventionally.”

“Signals is right,” Yili said. “They’re using a matter-energy transmission field. The only way to disrupt it is with a scattering technology. Even if we had the hardware, we don’t have the power.”

“Recommendations?”

“These guys are fanatics,” Zony replied. “Corporal Daysmith over there took himself out after we saw through his Skywatch story.”

“If we do this the old fashioned way, it’s going to be a slugging match to get to the controls and power down the gun. If we can’t cut the power, we have to throw the switch manually.”

“And there’s a big crowd guarding that switch I’ll wager,” Moo said. “All right. We’ll see how close we can get before all hell breaks loose.” The colonel relieved Daysmith’s body of all the electronics and anything else that looked useful. “First guy we find I’ll need to borrow his weapon. Signals, you give us direction and bearing. Engineer, you’ve got the point. Anything suspicious gets two in the chest and one between the headlamps.” Moo snapped the corporal’s equipment to his belt. “Let’s move.”