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they had yanked out the pins of the stick grenades they held in each hand. Now
they lofted them off in assorted directions as the rest of the raiders hugged
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the floor.
The Praxians had been careful to angle the throws so that the pylon/elevator
would shield the party from the blast and shrapnel. The
Sentinels clapped their hands to their ears and opened their mouths to reduce
the effects of the explosions.
The world seemed to jump, and there was a whirlwind of shredded tissue and
equipment outside the elevator doorway. When Jack looked up, he saw the dead
and dying and heard the moans of the injured-but that was mere background.
Tottering toward the elevator was an Enforcer, its armor pitted and
lead-smeared by impacts. It was lurching, and Jack could see green Invid soupy
stuff leaking from its right knee joint.
"LAW!" he yelled, even while he was emptying his chattergun magazine at the
thing, lead-smearing it some more. But the Enforcer was bringing its rifle
sights into alignment with the elevator car.
Janice Em shouldered Jack aside, out of the doorway. She peered through the
sights of the light antitank weapon, fixed the Enforcer in the reticle, and
pulled the thumb-trigger. The Enforcer took the shaped charge in the middle of
its abdomen and swelled, its armor cracking open like a hard-boiled egg with
an expanding yoke. By then Jan was on the floor with her head covered. The
blast went toward the ceiling, but left all of them partly deaf.
Jack shook his head in an effort to stop the ringing. "Everybody on your
feet!" Bela was shouting. "Move it!"
The raiders rushed out into the command center to find that secondary blowups
from the systemry had done even more damage than the bullets and the grenades
had. There was smoke everywhere, and the stench of the cracked-open armor; a
few small fires still burned.
"If you see any Protoculture weapons, grab 'em!" Jack called out.
Gnea looked around at the devastation. "This equipment is useless!
Janice Em, you said you would be able to find out where Arla-Non and our other
sisters are being held!"
"And I shall." Jan didn't seem to need direct physical connection to
Haydon's Awareness now that she had interfaced with it once; instead, she went
straight to a small terminal and punched up a schematic.
She studied the glowing displays for a moment then switched off the terminal.
"There: that's our route."
She pointed toward a column on the far side of the command center, an even
bigger one than they had arrived in.
The raiders hurried over toward the column. Lron and Crysta had Invid rifles
now, and Kami and Learna pistols. The Garudans were still keeping a wary eye
on Tesla, Garak, and Pye. Jack himself never let Burak stray from his sight.
Some unseen manipulation of Jan's caused the second column to open and reveal
another elevator whose existence the Invid had never suspected.
"Other Sentinels are already in the complex, and battle's begun," she said.
"But the Invid are rushing reinforcments here."
"Everybody in," Jack said, standing by the doors of the second elevator.
When the three Invid captives hesitated, Gnea and Bela prodded them with
still-hot rifle muzzles.
"Why can't you just release us?" Pye wailed.
"We might still have use for you, worm," Bela said, ominously guttural.
Her whole world had died; she had no forbearance with the Invid anymore and
would just as soon kill them.
"The suffering you've endured is nothing compared to the suffering you've
inflicted, so do not try my patience!"
Jack got them all boarded, even Burak, who seemed to be in another of his
strange, incommunicative moods. The elevator dropped toward the subsurface
levels.
Rick led his group at a fast walk, stopping himself whenever he found that he
had broken into a trot. Stumbling into an ambush wouldn't help anything right
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now, even though he felt each ticking second as a possible loss
of Praxian lives.
Just before they had started down, they had heard the distant firefight,
realizing that Zibyl's bunch had armed themselves and were keeping the Invid
busy. But it would still only be a matter of time before the Regent arrived
with fresh troops and mecha, enough to crush any resistance the escaped slaves
could put up.
Lisa had yielded the point position to her husband, but continued to conduct
herself as overall commander of the contingent. Rick, Max, Vince, and
Jean accepted that, as they accepted the fact that Veidt and Cabell were
determined to come the whole distance despite the fact that the Haydonite
couldn't-and the old sage wouldn't-use a weapon.
Their path led down through a complex refurbished in Invid style, feeling more
like a walk through a living organism than a raid on a prison facility. But on
the third level below the surface, they encountered the first of the cages.
The Praxian slaves were being kept in big ironwork affairs suspended from the
ceilings, more like captured birds or sideshow exhibits than prisoners of war.
When Rick spotted the first cage, the women crowded into it looked at him
listlessly for a second or two, then suddenly realized what they were seeing.
One dragged herself halfway to her feet, fists clasped on the bars.
"Sisters! Look here!"
It was easy to see that the women knew something was up; the cold evercrete
floor below their pens was littered with twisted and broken slave headbands.
Evidently the Praxians had lost no time getting rid of them once the bands
were deactivated.
In another moment the prisoners were murmuring and exclaiming to one another,
but there were no shouted greetings or hails. The Sentinels were unknown to
the Praxians, and this just might be some new Invid ploy. Still, the amazons
jostled to see what was going on, making their cages swing and turn.
Someone made her way through the press of captives to the bars of the first
cage. She was one of the tallest there, powerfully built, with a long leonine
mane of sun-bleached hair. The colorful rags of her fighting costume were
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