“Just get us to the terminal!” Falconi said.

Kira nodded, barely paying attention. Even though she couldn’t see what was in front of her, she kept using the suit to grab decking, panels off the wall, benches—any and everything she could use to protect them. She didn’t know how much weight the suit could move or support, but she was determined to find out.

Another grenade hit the shield. That one she barely felt.

Several of the suit’s tentacles encountered something long and smooth and warm (very warm, burning hot even; if she’d touched it with bare flesh, she suspected it would have seared a hole right through her skin): one of the laser turrets. That too she added to the pile, tearing the weapon free from the floor and jamming it into the gap between two benches.

“More drones!” said Vishal.

Before he’d finished speaking, Kira created a web of struts and rods (some metal, some made from the suit itself) between the shield, the ceiling, and the distant walls. In several places, she felt and heard the drones collide with the barrier; the tone of their blades increased from the strain.

She flinched as grenades blew open a hole in the web.

“Jesus!” shouted Falconi.

The drones swung toward the hole. One of them darted through, and Itari smacked it out of the air with a well-timed swing of a tentacle. Before the rest could make it past, and before they could find an angle that would allow them to shoot any of the crew, Kira snared the machines out of the air—like a frog snapping up flies—and crushed them.

All of them.

She could feel the suit growing in size, reinforcing itself with metal and carbon and whatever else it needed from the structure of the station. Her arms seemed thicker, her legs too, and a sense of power coursed through her; she felt as if she could claw her way through solid rock.

The gunfire subsided as the Marines in front of her stopped shooting and started to run back along the concourse, their heavy steps pounding a rapid beat.

Kira bared her teeth. So they’d realized it was pointless to fight. Good. Now if she could just get everyone safely to the Wallfish, then—

She heard, not saw, the pressure door in front of them slam shut. Then the one beyond it, and so forth and so on down the concourse.

“Shit!” said Nielsen. “They’ve locked us in.”

“Stay with me!” said Kira.

She continued forward until she felt her shield bump into the pressure door. The door itself was too large and heavy to cut through in a reasonable amount of time, but the frame around it wasn’t. It took her and the Soft Blade only a few moments of work before the door toppled outward and crashed with deafening results against the deck.

Ten meters down the corridor, the next blast door blocked their way.

Kira repeated the procedure, and the second door soon followed the example of the first. Then a third.… And a fourth.