Rip ran to the nearest robot and jumped on its back. It remained docile and made no effort to thwack him, for which he felt grateful.

Climbing up to perch over its shoulders, he reached down with the screwdriver and attacked the silver disc on its chest. He noticed earlier they were held in place by two screws, one at the top and one on the bottom.

Rather than try to unscrew them, he went for a brute force approach and pried the screwdriver underneath the circle. It popped off easily and dropped to the floor.

He released the robot’s neck and slid back down to the floor as it moved forward another step. Apparently the bots in the front had cleared a path at the stairs, and the line advanced.

Rip looked down at the silver on the floor and said, “I wonder how many pounds that’s worth?”

Shrugging, he picked it up and threw it into his interspatial wallet.

“Do your thing on that one!”

Rip jogged ahead to the next unit in line as Liza misted and surrounded the denuded bot.

Over the next several minutes, the three developed an efficient rhythm. Rip jumped up on a bot, pried off its silver, and one of the girls misted to disable it from the inside.

He used [Vampiric Speed] again and again to speed things up, noting the uptick notifications with satisfaction. After a couple dozen bots were disabled, they began showing less frequently, though.

Ah, diminishing returns, he thought. Still, it’s going to be a nice haul on experience.

Now they approached the stairs. Twig and Chance saw them and watched as the last of the column was quickly dismantled, bot by bot. Higher up the steps, Blair watched too, along with Bixby and Sharp.

Rip stopped to pick up the last disc from a robot about to walk up the stairs. He moved over to the infiltrators while Liza misted and surrounded the unit’s head before seeping inside the cracks to destroy the vacuum tubes.

“If you pop the silver circles off their chests, the girls can get inside. That’s the fastest way to stop these things.”

“You get to keep the circles for loot,” Twig said with a note of wonder in his voice. “They look like giant coins.”

“Yeah, well, I’ll give the girls half of my share, seeing as how they’re doing most of the work.”

“Oh, sure, sure. I’ll be happy to split the proceeds.”

Twig fished around in his wallet for a screwdriver and jogged over to the nearest robot. He could not jump as high as Rip, though, and had to scrabble for purchase before finally pulling himself up the giant’s arm. He reached over to the chest and awkwardly pried at the disc.

Watching, Chance smiled and said, “I have a better idea.”

He walked up the steps to the where the nobles stood and consulted with Sharp for a moment. The colonel nodded and reached into Finley’s satchel, pulling out a wooden ladder.

“She packed almost everything in there, you know,” Sharp said.

Chance nodded and hefted the ladder back down the stairs to the nearest stationary robot standing past the debris field. He climbed up the front, popped the silver off and put it in his wallet, then climbed back down.

Twig watched him with envy. He walked up the steps to ask if anyone had another ladder. Fortunately, Bixby had packed one, too.

“I suppose we should partake as well,” Sharp said watching Twig run back down the stairs with the ladder. “Otherwise we’ll be here all night.”

“It’ll be a tad more difficult,” Bixby said. “Seeing as how they have our only ladders.”

The two men wandered down the stairs discussing options. Sharp suggested Bixby get down on all fours and let him use the other man’s back as a stepstool. Bixby deemed that idea less than suitable. Reluctantly, Sharp agreed they could take turns serving as the stepstool.

Rip looked up the steps at Blair and she smiled down at him.

“Have I ever told you how good a shot I am?” she said.

He smiled back.

“No, I don’t believe we’ve talked about it.”

“Well, it’s true. I actually had the skill when I first was enhanced, you know. Father taught me how to shoot as a young girl. So, anyway, I was thinking . . . the silver is not enhanced. And if the screws holding them are also not enhanced . . . well, I suspect a smaller caliber will do the job quite nicely.”

She pulled out a Walther semi-auto and aimed at one of the frontline robots, firing off two quick rounds. The silver medallion clanged to the floor.

Rip nodded, approvingly.

“Beats a screwdriver.”

He pulled out his own semi-auto and joined her, shooting at robots.

Sometime later, they finished disabling almost all of the units. Sharp decided the boffins might want to see an enhanced breadboard, so they held off disabling the last few units.

The sisters looked exhausted, with dark circles under their eyes. Again, Rip thought they reminded him of old women when they were spent like this. They did not complain as the men discussed the best way to retrieve an intact breadboard.

In all their journeys inside the bots, the girls found an access panel in their lower backs. No seams were visible from outside, artfully hiding it, but they discovered an inner lever. When they informed the colonels of this, the men were delighted. So, the women simply opened the last three bots rather than destroy them from the inside.

Rip spent a while with his head in one, looking over everything. He was surprised to find a crude radio inside the robots, using crystal tuners.

He pointed it out to the others while they looked at the electronics haul before storing it all away in Finley’s satchel.

“This is how they activate the robots. I wish Dar Caul had not destroyed the control booth, it would be interesting to see how that worked. Obviously, there is a setting for ‘hostile,’ somewhere. Right now they’re just in ‘evacuate the building’ mode.”

“Yes, speaking of which,” Bixby said, “We should go after those few who made it up the stairs.”

Everyone groaned at this. The girls in particular looked very tired. They collapsed to the floor in a dramatic fashion.

“Chin up,” Bixby said. “At least when we’re done, we’ll have to return to headquarters and file a report. Then we can go home and rest.”

Chance said, “‘Join the Venture Society,’ they say. ‘Explore the underworld!’ They don’t tell you about times like this, though.”

“No worries, mate,” Twig said. “We got a lot of silver out of this.”

This, Chance allowed, was certainly true. Even splitting everything halfway with the Verez sisters still meant a huge share of the profits for everyone else.

Bixby said, “Right, then. Let’s be on our way, shall we?”