The firefight had left a vagrant tang in the air, the smell of ozone and scorched alloy.

"Atmosphere is ena4," he told the rest of his band. "But oxygen levels are equivalent to what you'd find at four thousand meters. Off your masks, but keep them handy-especially you t'bac addicts." With some muffled laughter, the team complied.

Beneath the apparatus, the human's dark-complexioned face was still a mask: thickly bearded with coarse black hair, and rashed from temple to temple with small diamond-shaped tattoos. His violet eyes surveyed the damage with obvious dispassion.

There wasn't a security droid in sight, but the deck was littered with their remains. Labor droids of several varieties continued to route a few pods to berthing spaces.

A human member of the team kicked aside the severed arm of a security droid. "These things could be dangerous if they ever learn to think straight."

"Shoot straight," the bearded man amended.

"Tell that to Rasper, Captain Cohl," another said-Boiny, a Rodian. "It was a droid that sent Rasper on his way." A green — skinned and round-eyed male, Boiny had a tapered snout and a crest of pliant yellow spines.

"A lucky droid, a luckier shot," a Rodian female remarked.

"That doesn't mean we treat this like an exercise," Cohl warned, eyeing everyone. "The central control computer will be deploying backup units soon enough, and we've got a kilometer to go before we hit the centersphere." The infiltrators glanced down the curved hangar toward a bulkhead that loomed in the distance. High overhead were massive box girders and I-beams, cranes, maintenance gantries, and hoists, a puzzle of atmosphere and vectoring ducts.

A human female-the only among them-whichistled softly. "Stars' end, you could hide an invasion force in here." As dark-complexioned as Cohl, she had short brown hair and an elegantly angular face. Even the mimetic suit could not camouflage her shapeliness.