small disk began to glow white-hot; the sentry's shock-resistant plastic coating bubbled and peeled back from that intense source of heat like a curtain, and the metal beneath began to glow faintly red. The charge lasted only a few seconds but the damage was done, for smoke was pouring from every opening in the automaton's hull.
Velmeran noticed the smoke rolling out of the broken neck sleeve before he realized that the sentry was no longer pushing against him but was standing rigidly motionless, its legs firmly locked. He released his hold cautiously and, when he was sure that the thing was dead, began to fight against his helmet, releasing the clips and jerking it off as quickly as he could. He was panting for breath as he leaned heavily against the inert hulk of the sentry.
'Are you all right?' Dveyella asked, her voice sounding thinly through the backup phone in the collar of her suit.
He nodded, still gasping. 'I took a hit right on the cover plate of my controls. My air shut down.'
'Are all your systems out?' she asked, concerned. If he had lost his cooling as well, he would have to get out of his armor before he cooked in his own trapped body heat.
Velmeran understood what she meant and shook his head. 'I have cooling. Only my air is out.'
'This is my fault,' she said fiercely, to herself. She paused for only a moment before deciding. 'Marlena, can you hear me? Trouble. We are coming back out.'
'No, wait!' Velmeran said quickly, bending his head to the microphone in his collar. 'If we have to try again, it will only be that much harder. They know that we are here now?'
'Of course. That sentry would have warned all the others the moment it saw you. And the master computer would have warned the security officer on duty. Fighters are probably rolling out right now.'
'Then secrecy is lost,' he concluded. 'And now we have to act fast. We must go on. Threl can bring the transport down on the pavement outside the door, so that they can pick up Keth and go on for the fighter as soon as we come out. Marlena and Baress can shuttle our fighters down too, so that we can cover them until they are away. This air is no great problem for me; you keep your helmet on to do the heavy work.'
Dveyella crossed her arms as she listened to him, and he thought that she was watching him closely. After a moment she drew her guns. 'Valthyrra Methryn, are you listening through that drone?'
'Of course,' Valthyrra answered calmly.
'Send your packs in now. Keep them out of the atmosphere, but have them shoot anything in space that moves.
We need the interference they can create as soon as possible. Marlena? Threl?'
'Here!' Marlena answered.
'If you caught that, then carry out those plans. Move the fighters down but do not, I repeat, do not give battle without my approval. Make certain that the cabin air in Velmeran's fighter is working.'
'I can fly for him,' Marlena offered.
'Professional courtesy dictates that a pilot flies his own ship, if he is able,' Dveyella answered, and used one of her guns to indicate the doorway of the main corridor. 'We go on, then.'
'I hear a sentry coming.'
'The one I was following, no doubt. It came running the moment the first sentry gave warning.' She pulled a heat charge from his belt and handed it to him. 'You can hear it, so you know how close it is. Hide behind the door and put the charge on its back as it comes through. Ignore the head; as you may have noticed, that is not where they have their brains.'
Velmeran made a gesture to indicate that he was no longer free to speak aloud, and Dveyella hid in the adjoining chamber. Then he hurried to the doorway opening onto the main corridor and waited, taking up the heat charge and twisting the top as far as it would go. The sentry charged through the doorway. Velmeran slammed the disk against its shell and ducked out the door behind it, just as the sentry began to draw itself to an abrupt halt. The machine lifted a foreleg as it began to turn toward its attacker, and slowly lowered it as the heat charge, activated as its magnetic base attached itself to the thick metal hull, began to fry its electronics.
Velmeran glanced back inside the doorway to find the motionless machine standing in a cloud of smoke that continued to pour from its joints and vents. Dveyella returned from the side passage, pausing only a moment to regard the stricken automaton before she indicated for him to continue on.
'Better,' she said approvingly as they hurried down the wide hall. 'Our problem is going to be getting back out, since every sentry in the complex is going to be converging on this area. They might try to pin us on the stairs.'
Moments later they came upon the stairs they were looking for. The well was square, between five and six meters along each side, with long flights of steps descending down each side. The center of the well was filled by something clearly not of native manufacture; a lift platform, guided by metal rails fitted into each corner of the well. The stone rail had been removed on the nearest side, and a metal shelf extended the floor out to the edge of the lift platform. The Starwolves could see that, while the original inhabitants might have had no choice, the military was not about to lug supplies up and down those steps on the unreliable backs of enlistees. Necessity is the mother of invention, it is said. Then laziness is surely the father.
'I hope this thing is not too slow,' Dveyella said as she stepped aboard and triggered it to descend. 'Ah, not too bad.'
'I do not much like descending blind,' Velmeran remarked as he watched steps appear along the side of the platform, starting along one side and proceeding down the next.
'I do not like it either,' Dveyella agreed. 'A sentry could be waiting for us on any landing, ready to shoot as the platform clears.'
'Stop at the next level,' Velmeran said suddenly, holstering his guns.
Dveyella stopped the platform level with the next landing stage, and he stepped out. He quickly descended the steps until he passed below the lift. As he had guessed, there was a heavy metal framework that supported the platform and held the field projector that raised and lowered the lift. He climbed out onto the stone railing and leaped out to catch a bar of the framework, then swung up and arranged himself as best he could, facing down, with three of his four hands free. Two held guns, while a heat charge was in the fourth.
'Start down!' he ordered into his collar mike.
The platform started again. Velmeran watched the steps closely, waiting for a white rectangular head to appear over the rail near the corner landings. He did not know if the sentries could elevate their guns very high, although he did remember that the cameras were inset and not able to rotate very far up. He hoped that he could drop a heat charge on the machine before it saw him; he did not care to get into another shooting contest with a sentry.
'Hello, and welcome to beautiful Bineck,' Valthyrra's voice, radiating the commercial enthusiasm of a tour guide, announced over their corns. 'The weather at your location is threatening, turning to openly hostile at any given moment. I must also inform you that two wings of seven fighters each are taking off from the main base. Your twenty minutes have just begun.'
'This will be cutting it close,' Dveyella remarked.
'My packs will not be in time to intercept those fighters,' Valthyrra continued. 'They will have to be your problem. We will get anything else.'
Velmeran thought that he could see the bottom now, a square of pale gray stone far below. Five levels were past and the sixth opened beside him, so he was now halfway down. Then he saw an indistinct shape lean out over the railing far below, more than halfway down from where he was.
'Something on the stairs,' he warned. 'Just passing the second level, I would guess.'
'A sentry?' Dveyella asked.
'It really did not look like a sentry's head,' he replied. 'I believe that it was too small for a sentry, and there were no guns. Whatever it was, I am going to put a bolt through it if I see it again.'
'If it is something hidden with a gun, you should know that the two larger, rounded things on your belt are explosives,' she offered.
'They are?' Velmeran sounded surprised. 'Then I will use one of those if it tries to ambush us as we get nearer. It is dark under here, and it might not see me until too late.'
'Reverse ambush,' Dveyella agreed. 'But do not use the explosive if you get too close, since you have no helmet. Try throwing it from a fourth of a level up.'
'I will thank you not to,' a third voice said suddenly. 'If you two have come to collect me, I would prefer that
