The Sentinel planetary defense gun fired again. The dim lights gradually returned to their normal brightness.

“What are they shooting at?” Zony asked in an urgent whisper. Colonel Moody stopped at the corridor intersection two levels beneath the subterranean asteroid station’s main deck. He looked both ways as surreptitiously as he could, then motioned for Zony and Yili to follow.

“They would have pulverized the Dunkerque by now. They could be lobbing proximity blasts at Argent, but at this range I doubt it would be worth the energy. There is one thing we do know.”

“What’s that?” Moo asked.

“This thing has power now, and I’m betting it is coming from their energy field tech. That could give us a huge advantage when the time come–”

An unsuspecting station crew member entered the corridor right in front of the colonel. The crewman reacted quickly, grappling with the much larger marine officer for only a moment before he was inelegantly slammed into the wall. He staggered back and reached for his weapon. A flash of intense light and the high-pitched sound of an energy discharge filled the corridor before the crewman’s blaster clattered to the floor.

Yili lowered her weapon. “Colonel? I believe you had dibs on the next toy.” Moody picked up the blaster pistol and examined it.

“Standard Skywatch issue. So help me, when I get my hands on Atwell, I’m going to change his whole attitude about life.” Apparently satisfied the weapon would serve, the colonel brandished it and motioned to the others to follow him to the unusual silver-colored door at the far end of the passage.

“Any clues on the layout of this place?” he asked.

“New to you, new to us,” Zony replied. “We know there’s a fair number of people working on something below this deck, and we’ve got a pretty good idea where the gun itself is, but the rest we have to map on our own unless we can find their information network.”

The station trembled and the lights dimmed again as another shot was fired from the Sentinel gun.

“Let’s hope the Dunkerque wasn’t destroyed by the first shot,” Zony said.

“It wasn’t,” Moo replied. “Whatever they started out shooting at, they’re still shooting at. Every fire command has the same cycle time. What do you make of this, lieutenant?” Colonel Moody stood to one side to give the other two officers a look at the silver door. A line of strange symbols was etched on a plate under the transparent portal in its center. On the left side, a control panel similar to the one on the alien device Zony had discovered on Argent was built into the wall. Its buttons glowed serenely with the same strange yellow light. There was no activity visible through the portal, although the room behind the door was at least illuminated.

“If I had my choice, I’d like that to be a room with some kind of console in it so we can figure this station out,” Zony replied.

“Ready?” Moo whispered with a smirk. Yili nodded. The colonel activated the manual lock on the door’s face and the vacuum seal discharged. The door slid to one side and Moo slipped through.

“Whoa!” There was a shout and a rapid flurry of activity. Several unidentified personnel whirled and reached for weapons a moment before Colonel Moody’s command voice just about shocked Zony out of her boots.

“Weapons down! Now!” Moody trained his pistol on what appeared to be the leader of the ragtag group standing among a bunch of unremarkable storage crates. His face was frozen in a furious stare through the sights of his raised gun. Zony was in an equally aggressive stance, aiming her weapon at someone she then realized was wearing an Argent uniform.

“Hatch?”

The strangely dressed people in the room looked back and forth at each other for a few moments before Toby DeMay lowered his weapon just a hair. “Lieutenant Tixia.”

“Well I suppose that answers the question of whether they destroyed Dunkerque,” Moo quipped, relaxing the grip on his blaster. “But it doesn’t answer the question of who the rest of you are.”

“This is Captain L’Orleans,” DeMay replied. “She uh– she picked the lock for us.”

Moo stared.

“We’ve met before, colonel.” Cerylia smiled sweetly as she touched the brim of her hat.

“I don’t believe this,” Moo sighed.