Rick had readjusted his own Invid rifle's sling so that he could lug it, leveled in firing position, at waist height with the sling over his left shoulder, right hand on the grip and trigger. It was unbelievably heavy, the sling pressing deep into his flesh. He said, "Everybody ready? No objections?"
No objections. The Sentinels descended into the slave-pens of Haydon IV.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Awright, so the mecha are in dinged-up shape and the weapons barrels are shot out and the replacement parts stocks are all gone. Boys and girls, we're all functioning beyond manufacturer's specifications.
Rick Hunter, quoted in Mizner's Rakes and Rogues: The True Story of the SDF-3 Expeditionary Mission
"I forbid it!"
Vowad hovered before Sarna as she sought to take control of the giant flying carpet. Some two acres in area, it would hold all the Sentinels and all the freed slaves, too-provided that any of them survived the uprising.
And it wasn't every Haydonite who could command and control such a carpet alone. But she was the daughter of the greatest intellect of her species.
Nevertheless, Vowad blocked her way as she tried to take control of the carpet there on the immense landing surface at the summit of the city's tallest tower-the roof of her home.
"I forbid you to become involved in this bestial business!" Vowad ranted. "Let the lower orders settle their own vendettas! Let them kill and kill one another if that's what they want
so badly! You have a far higher destiny!"
"Why do you always talk like a god to me," Sarna asked him, "but bow your head like a slave to the Invid?"
Hearing that he went rigid, the only movement being his robe's hem wafting in the breeze. She went around him, took control of the vast carpet, and bade it rise into the air.
Moments later, she was streaking for the Central Slave-pen.
Bela stabbed her shortsword tip in the elevator floor to jam the doors open.
The Invid in the command center were preoccupied with reports of a firefight at the arsenal, and the sudden silence from the guard station by the slavepen entrance, when Jack and his raiders opened up.
The two ranks put out the heaviest volume of fire they could, aware that the Invid would respond very quickly, and that the pneumatic reservoirs of the Karbarran long-guns would empty rapidly. Even the submachine-gun magazines would last only three or four seconds at full auto. The Sentinels were all, including Burak, on the firing line; Gnea and Bela had abandoned their traditional weapons in favor of automatic weapons.
Tesla, Garak, and Pye cringed in the furthest corner of the elevator, making no move to either interfere with or break past their captors.
In that first onslaught the team threw the command center into complete chaos and irreparably cut the Invid chain of command. Explosive armor-piercing bullets could penetrate vulnerable spots even in Enforcer alloy at such short range; the unarmored Invid were targets assigned to Burak, the ursinoid Karbarrans, and the foxlike Garudans.
And the vital equipment that made the Invid nerve center function was everybody's bull's-eye.
Components exploded and clear-polymer indicator faces blew apart; power connectors shorted and splintered housing became deadly shrapnel. Invid who had been calling for mass execution of hostage-slaves only a moment before died, clutching terrible wounds.
"Fire in the hole!" the amazons yelled, as per REF training. With their teeth 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 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 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 st
yle, 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 faded and threadbare, and her high, soft hide boots were worn through, yet she had a regal manner, her head erect.
"Who are you, and why have you come?" she demanded. "Are you allies of the Invid?"
Lisa recognized the woman from pictures she had seen on Praxis. "We're allies of your daughter Bela, Your Majesty, and of others who fight the Invid!"
Queen Arla-Non tossed back her mane proudly. "Then, you're our allies, too."
Rick had gone to study the mechanisms that suspended the cage, while Vince, Max, and Jean fanned out as security. Even Miriya was on alert, holding her pistol ready.
Veidt was standing near a systems juncture, in some kind of trance. Cabell went to look over Rick's shoulder, offering his input. It was some kind of complicated drum-and-gear affair, needlessly primitive.
"Don't touch anything till we can-" Rick was saying.
"Perhaps this tiny lever," Cabell ventured, flicking it.
Arla-Non and her sisters shouted angrily as the cage dropped. Rick let out a squawk and rammed in the manual brake, which luckily held, and the prisoners were jounced every which way among the bars.
"Hmm, interesting," Cabell allowed.
The cages were lowered without further mishap, and Sisters of Praxis crowded one another, stepping free. Arla-Non clapped Lisa and Jean on the shoulders. "Thanks to you,
Sisters! And to your male subordinates as well!" She clasped forearms with Miriya.
Rick looked a little startled, but Vince gave a casual chuckle and Max muttered, "Oh, we were just along for company."
Those who had been freed were only a small fraction of the amazons being held in the center, and that in turn was only a part of the total number of Praxian slaves on Haydon IV. Arla-Non dispatched her warriors to the other cellblocks, to continue the liberation. Miriya and Lisa handed over their pistols, so the rescuers wouldn't have to go unarmed.
Just then Veidt came floating back. "Sarna will be here soon, but I fear the other news isn't good. The Regent is mustering his troops for an attack on the Central Slavepen. And...there is some other intellect in contact with the Awareness of Haydon IV. I cannot discern it well; a synthetic mentality, I believe."
"No time for that now," Rick said. "We've got to make sure Wolff and Karen don't get overrun up above, and we gotta get the Praxians armed. This thing's just begun."
Lisa conceded the sense of that. Once Arla-Non understood the situation she organized her women immediately, as capable as any field commander the REF fighters had ever seen. She gave orders by squads and platoons, and her warriors jumped to obey, some racing off to help in freeing the rest of the Praxians, the rest forming up to carry the battle back aboveground.
"What about patrols down here?" Lisa asked.
"We know the schedules of the regular patrols, believe me," Arla-Non said, "and we should be able to deal with them, at least for now."
The group set out, and Arla-Non was as good as her word. They ambushed the one skeleton crew of Enforcers that came their way, a pair walking guard. The newly acquired weapons were quickly distributed.
But as they were heading toward the surface, Karen Penn came loping tiredly from that direction. She had obviously been through some heavy fighting. At her back came a squad of the women from Zibyl's group, somewhat the worse for combat.
"That bunch from the armory got to us," she explained breathlessly to Rick. "We have most of the ground level secured. But a mob of Enforcers and Officers showed up and set up a crossfire at the entrance. Nobody can get in or out, and we think they're bringing up Inorganics."
"Other escape routes?" Rick asked.
Karen shook her head. "All covered, and the crossfire's murder."
More and more Praxians were showing up now, liberated from other cellblocks. Although there were thousands in the place, Rick knew that didn't mean much unless they were armed. "All right, let's get upstairs and see what we can-"
The entire complex trembled and shook as distant impact made the building rumble.
"Something heavy," Max remarked.
There were more voices, and streams of Praxians began coming from the direction of the surface. Many were wounded, some looking like they wouldn't make it. From among them came Wolff, supporting-practically carrying-Zibyl, whose head lolled.
"Inorganics got some licks in," Wolff explained. "Scrim and Odeons, mostly. We blew the slavepen entranceway and brought the roof down on 'em as they charged; no other option. But that won't stop those demons for long."
So much for improvised rescue plans, Rick thought.
"A good try anyway," Arla-Non judged grimly. "We prefer dying free to living in cages, and at least we can do that."
She was right. Zibyl's troops were weighted down with armaments, some carrying two of the heavy Invid rifles, or enormous makeshift packs loaded with ammunition and explosives. The other amazons surrounded them, grabbing weapons, preparing to make the Invid pay.
As the Praxians rushed to set up fields of fire and prepare ambushes, Lisa got Veidt's attention. "What about Sarna?"
He shook his head slowly. "The streets are filled with Inorganics, and there's no way she can land there."
Lisa was curious about Veidt's expanding powers now that he was back on Haydon IV, but she had no time to ponder it.
Moments later there was a tremendous explosion from the distance, and Wolff said aloud to himself, "The Inorganics."
The few portable crew-served guns the Praxians had were set for a crossfire. Further back, down in the warren of the slavepens, fallback positions were being set up. The only thing left to do was insure that the Invid victory was costly.
After a few minutes, they heard the sound of heavy footfalls-marching mecha, advancing on their prey without fear or hesitation.
A pair of colossal Odeons rounded a corner, filling the corridor. The amazon gunners waited until the optimal moment, then opened fire. The Odeons seemed to experience a rictus of agony as fire splashed over them and ripped them apart; then they collapsed in on themselves.
More Odeons appeared, moving more cautiously. The Sentinels and the Praxians held their fire until the right moment, then blasted away. One, its skull turret aflame, whirled and convulsed, then, trying to hold itself erect, went reeling toward a giant column.
A camouflaged panel at the base of the column slid open and Jack Baker was standing there, wide-eyed, as he watched a burning twenty-five-foot-tall mecha stagger directly toward him.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Well, naturally I wanted a war! But I didn't want a war I might lose!
The Regent, quoted by Lemuel Thicka in Temple of Flames: A History of the Invid Regent.
Still, she could not set down in the nearby plaza, as she had planned. The Invid had not yet started firing at Haydonites, but they would attack her if she dropped down among them. And, more to the point, the slaves wouldn't be coming out that way now.
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