The alien thing is in our shadow, already coiling up below us. We’ve dropped our rifle, but it doesn’t have time to fall. We’ve thrown one hand back, clamped it around the handle of our blade, already pulling free of its mounts.

99.89

We judge the scything blow, the points of those sharp fingers rising to meet us. We shape our open hand into a fist and drive it forwards, collect the glassy gauntlet at the palm. The claw doesn’t have time to close. The impact knocks it back, staggers the strange shell for half a heartbeat. Long enough for us to raise the blade to meet it, swinging backhand as hard as our joints can handle.

We connect, feel the transparent hull resist. We haven’t finished the blow before we lose traction, suddenly load-free and cutting through open air.

The glassy thing has skipped away, but Salt has its number. He times a shot while the thing’s still stepping, the rail-slug airborne before it has a target. The strange shell comes to a halt in time to find the round with its ankle joint, just between its flaring plates. It sticks, stumbles, falls, suddenly short a foot.

And Salt is all over it. His machine drops from above, boosting his movements with micromanaged thrust, recoil ridden out to make every next move faster. His augurs have mapped every dust mote, and his networks use our eyes. The Decatur rides us, slaves our ranging suite to its will, and swallows data from every sense we have. Its fire-control systems ring out across the cavern, sympathetic calculations rolling in from every piece of friendly hardware. War-god magic and machine reflex clocked past the margins of sanity.

He drowns the alien shell in fire that runs liquid quicksilver and tungsten white, actinic aftershock and lightning bolts. Warheads already know where to go, pulling Mach 15 on the curve. He scalps it in a flash-cone of wreckage, scores a pair of fingers with a slug only just as big as its target, sends it wheeling. He pummels it with kinetic bubbles and heat shimmer missile blossoms, collects it with hardshot aimed clear at the tiny cracks that open in its skin.

By the time we’ve found our balance, to catch our eyes up with what we’ve just seen, it’s over.

Decatur stands in a cloud of froth and corkscrew contrails, surrounded by obsidian dust and broken stone, heaving steam from its shoulders and glowing gently around its vents.

But the glassy thing is dead.

Twenty-Four

TWENTY-FOUR

THE SPIRIT IS a walking wreck. It can stand, but only just, and then with weak knees and a shiver in its step. Hail can balance it enough to keep upright, but it’ll need months in the foundry blocks before she’ll have it flying again.