A burst of searing light obscured the room. Kira blinked, fear jolting through her at being suddenly blind.

Crimson dots mottled her vision as the light faded. In front of their group, she saw a fine net of monofilaments covering the walls, the broken corner of the building, and the vehicle outside—which was curled on its side and convulsing as tendrils of electricity crawled across the plates of its exposed carapace.

In the distance, more Jellies were approaching.

“Run!” the Entropists shouted.

They ran.

“What did you do?” Kira shouted.

“Magic!” Veera answered, which was wholly unsatisfying, but Kira didn’t have the breath to question her further.

They broke through the back of the building, and—across another plaza—Kira spotted the mausoleum-like structure she’d identified from the air. The two other armored Marines were crouched by the closed-off entrance, the blue-white light of cutting torches bright beneath their metal gauntlets.

They switched off the torches and laid down covering fire as Kira and her companions sprinted across the plaza.

One of the Marines next to Koyich stumbled and fell. Blood and bone sprayed from his knee. Trig picked him up with one hand and carried him the rest of the way to the temple.

Kira dropped behind a slab of rubble, using it for cover while she caught her breath. If the Jellies got close enough, she could take them out with the Soft Blade, but so far, they’d kept their distance. They knew what they were dealing with, and they were behaving accordingly, goddammit. Did they have to be so smart?

A Jelly drone popped up over the top of the slab. Nielsen fried it with a single burst of laser fire from her exo. Through her faceplate, she appeared red-faced and sweating. Strands of hair had broken free of her ponytail and fallen across her face.

Behind another slab, Trig laid the Marine with the mangled knee onto the ground. Redding said the tag on the front of his skinsuit. Sanchez ran over to them, and—before Kira could believe what she was seeing—he took his blaster and sliced off the rest of the Marine’s wounded leg.

Redding didn’t even scream, but he screwed his eyes shut during the cut. He must have been using a nerve-block to stop the pain. Sanchez cinched a tourniquet around the stump of the leg, sprayed the bloody end with medifoam, and then slapped the man on the shoulder and joined the rest of the Marines in firing over the tops of the rubble.

Kira looked at the front of the temple. The entrance was sealed with what looked like a plug of solid metal. The two Marines had only managed to cut into it a hand’s breadth or less.

Dirt showered her as Nielsen and Trig grabbed the slab of stone she was crouching behind and, with their exos, heaved it upright so it formed a barrier between them and the Jellies gathering at the edges of the plaza. The Marines did the same with the other slabs, setting them in a semicircle before the temple.