Whatever the shell is watching for, that isn’t it. It bunches up behind a fist and drives it at me like a lance. I read the movement before it’s even taken a step. This thing is sick, slow, out of its mind.

I am steel. I step clear, and catch its hand in mine. I turn and twist, clamp down around it, splaying turquoise fingers between my own.

The Decatur recoils, trailing an arm that ends in a mangled stump. I can see the things that move in its nets, fading in and out of sight. They’re glassy things that move like snakes, curling around hull and broken armour. They screech, make sounds that aren’t sounds, but I hear them well enough. They weren’t expecting resistance.

I step in close before the pale shell can catch its balance, so close I’m inside its guard, trailing my sword and barely a heartbeat away. I claim the rest of its arm with a blade-tip, and then I shatter a shin. I cut through its shoulder, take the collar-bone and joint, some of the ribs below.

It’s still falling, fighting to find its balance, and I ride its surviving leg to the deck. When we hit, it’s hard enough that I leave a footprint in the floor plates. I drop a hammer-fist from on high, splitting its head apart on the ground.

I’m not angry, and I don’t scream at it. I don’t shout or whoop or anything. I’m not sure I could.

I mangle every limb and destroy every sensor. I blind it, and then I grind its armour away, driving fractures deep into its bones.

I’m not angry, but that doesn’t stop me doing what I need to do.

I must break this thing.

Good thing the jockey isn’t alive to feel it.

THE OPERATOR’S LOCK hisses clear of its housing, and I follow it out. Moving hurts, like I’ve got bruises down to the marrow. There’s a pulsing ache in my head, and the kind of tired like you’ve flown for days, and worse. My legs hold the first step well enough, but shake through the next. I don’t feel myself falling; part of me wonders why the hangar is tilting. I feel a rough grip on my shoulder as one of the ground crew hauls me up and shouts to someone I can’t see, distant shapes through the fogging corners of my eyes.

“Easy,” I tell them. “I don’t need—”