“Don’t look at it!” said Sparrow. “It’s too bright. It’ll burn out your retinas.”

“Hwa-jung—”

“Ready!” said the machine boss. Kira and everyone else turned to face her. The turret lay in parts between her feet. The power pack had been pried open, and wires led from it into the machinery that filled the car’s undercarriage.

“Listen to me,” said Hwa-jung. She tapped the power pack. “This is damaged. When I turn it on, it might melt and explode.”

“We’ll risk it,” said Falconi.

“There is more.”

“Not really the time for a lecture right now.”

“Listen! Aish!” Hwa-jung’s eyes gleamed with the searing light of the thermal lance. “I was able to splice into the feeds for the electromagnets. This thing will lift us, but that is all. I can’t access the directional controls; it won’t move us forward or backward.”

“Then how—” Nielsen tried to say.

“Kira, you do this: break off a chair for each of us, and then knock out the windows, there and there.” Hwa-jung pointed at each side of the car. “When I activate the circuit, you use your suit to pull us forward, and we will coast into the main tube. The supercapacitors only have enough charge to keep us suspended for forty-three seconds. We’re going about two hundred and fifty klicks per hour relative to the docking ring. We have to shed as much of that speed as possible before we crash. The way we do that is by sticking the chairs out the windows and pushing them against the walls of the tube. They will act as brakes. Clear?”

Kira nodded along with the others. Outside, the fountain of molten metal vanished for a second as the thermal lance reached the floor. Then it reappeared at the top of the dripping incision and started to make a horizontal cut.

“You will have to push very hard,” said Hwa-jung. “As hard as you can. Otherwise the crash will kill us.”

Kira grabbed the nearest chair and wrenched it off its gimbaled mount with a hollow ping. The next three chairs produced similar sounds. With a quick exchange of scents, she explained what they were doing to Itari, and the Jelly also grabbed a pair of chairs with its coiled limbs.

“This is some shit-crazy plan, Unni,” said Sparrow.

Hwa-jung grunted. “It’ll work, punk. You’ll see.”

“Watch your eyes,” Kira said. Then she lashed out with the Soft Blade and smashed the windows along both sides of the maglev.

A furnace-blast of heat washed over them from the interior of the half-shell dome. Falconi, Nielsen, Vishal, and the Entropists dropped to the floor, and Falconi said, “Seven hells!”

The thermal lance started its second downward cut.

“Get ready,” said Hwa-jung. “Contact in three, two, one.”

The floor rose a few centimeters underneath Kira. It listed slightly and then stabilized.

Lifting her arms, she launched several ropy strands from her fingers, through the shattered windows, and onto the walls outside. The xeno understood her intent, and they stuck, like lines of spider silk, and she pulled.