Instructions come from the control room. Xito Green-2 and Jota Red-4 latch onto their targets and begin the tedious, ungainly wrestling they trade in. Ono Red-2 has its instructions as well. But that is of no interest to the archangel Misery Nomaki. Zie rises on thruster engines and locks onto the Heretic warship, hir true enemy. Despite hir omniscience the warship remains frustratingly opaque, defying the will and laws of the Forge. Its shell of black holystone resists knowledge, and the archangel Misery Nomaki cannot elucidate its anatomy. But zie understands that a human ship will have human occupants, and human occupants require the webbed infrastructure in each of these bastardized vessels to stay alive. A human ship will have a human interior. Such things are easily destroyed.

Zie sails forward. Hir blades cannot be denied. Zie will cut the ship open as one cuts open a sacrificial pod, spilling gut and gelatin into the universe. The Heretic warship corkscrews into greater speed, their respective trajectories headed for collision. They share an understanding, then. Their meeting is fated. It’s one or the other.

In the background, chaos. Ono Red-2, one seraph short, struggles against Sailor, all their learned patterns inadequate. A serving hobbled before the battle starts. Sailor’s bladestrike clips a seraph mech in the shoulder, the one belonging to the manufactured pilot Ghost, which spins out of control, deeply wounded.

The free seraph has seen enough. It has held back in training, exercising patience to keep its secret safe. But now its fellows are in danger, and it can hide its prowess no longer. It stops listening to its captain. Thrusters flare and it shoots straight up before diving at an impossible angle, spinning like a moon past the enemy’s attacks. Its blade finds Sailor’s golden heart. Sailor did not expect it. Could not have expected it. Did not and could not block the blade. The free seraph has cut right into its pilot’s module: the beating heart of any mech, Heretic or Faithful.

Things go to shit. It’s like bullet hell. The commlines between seraph and station erupt in confusion and dismay while the battle explodes in a dozen unexpected directions, too much for mortal minds to take in simultaneously.