The Ali is all bare knuckles. Heavy accelerators extend from its upper decks, but there are only a few, and they’re made for shots across bows and long-gun salutes. Its crews claim a fair share of kills, but it wasn’t built for this kind of fight. The Ali is all about getting up close and bloody.

Stubby turrets cling to every flat surface, jutting like blisters. They whir in place, meeting incoming missiles with curtains of flak and spears of hypervelocity ball. They fight railshot with accelerated heavy metals of their own, surrounded by spark cones and crackle as they make interceptions just moments from the hull. The Ali flies through shrapnel and a headwind that’s quickly turning thicker with munitions, but it takes the hits just as easily as it churns them out. Huge deflector surfaces wear the worst of it, and ferrofluids creep across its plates like mercury, shoring up anything that can’t take the heat.

All to buy the Lane time to think.

Now it’s done; the bigger ship has tagged everything on the wind, accounted for anything with wings out or engines hot, nets open or augurs spitting. The Lane sees everything.

Tiny silos open up across its skin, thirty thousand hatches rolled clear of pores in the metal. Inside each one is a missile the size of a shell’s little finger, warming up to launch. A sudden glow warms the clouds around the destroyer, clothing every part of the ship in silver fizz and heat-shimmer, carrying the tiny warheads it’s manufactured on demand.

They aren’t like the long projectiles a Decatur carries in its tubes; those are made for capping other machines and whole-body kills. The Lane’s attack flows out in a swarm thirty thousand thick, a new stormfront described in propellant and condensation. The next wave ripples out a minute later, thrusters flickering like lightning.

Sixty thousand.

Ninety thousand, each little missile arcing for a target.

The hollows can see it just as well as we can, and most come about as the first volley closes in, spewing flares and screamers and unspent ammunition. Not that it helps. The Lane tracks each one, updating old contacts as the shells try to hide behind bursts of chaff and sound.

A few machines dig in, working their weapons overtime as they try to keep the hot wind from closing in around them. The Lane takes them first, impacts growing from sparks to blossoms to blistering gales as the little warheads find their marks, hundreds piling on in moments. Thirty-eight shells die in the first barrage, and a forth salvo is already headed for launch.