She’d just used one piece of the Machine Army. The Simurgh had been holding two earlier. There was no outline, no indicator, even as I could see labels and markings elsewhere.

“Shit!” I swore, as I flew up, back, taking in the cloud of mist, trying to remain peripherally aware. There were labels marking the people who’d been caught in the midst of the cloud of disturbed earth. I kept track of them, mapped her approximate location, reached into a handhold to turn a dial, to make the laser fatter.

The beam cut through suspended ice and dust, burned it, and cleared something of a path. I tried to trace the Simurgh’s path back to where she had been.

I found and hit a drone, and fried it beneath the laser. Metal turned to orange-white slag. Orange-white slag turned black, then became dust, caught by the stiff winds that didn’t budge this snow and grit.

Every time we grab her arm, reach inside her sleeve, and find the card she’s holding, it turns out there’s more waiting.

I was feeling the pressure. The scream, the fact we needed to win here, and the path to a win was beating her. There was a saying that people sometimes brought up when the Simurgh was mentioned. Win the battle, lose the war.

In part, I had been bracing myself for a hard-fought battle that we could ultimately win. We could subdue her or scare her away, disrupt every possible variable available with precogs and tech, and focus on the next leg of the plan, getting ahead of Fortuna. The Wardens had a plan and I had my doubts it would work, and I had a plan, with my doubts it would work. But between the two, leaning on that assumption about the Simurgh losing the battle but scoring a win later, I’d been able to see a way forward.

We weren’t winning this battle.

I killed another drone.

She’d brought two. One had latched onto Dragon’s ship. One had melted beneath the laser.

I shot another two glowing blue lights I could see in the smoke. Two more machines broken. I didn’t have the time to completely annihilate them, because I could see other lights and movements as the laser burned away more of the cloud.

Something clicked to my right. I twisted, flipping the gun over, using six different hands to roll it. A metal disc surrounded by claws had dug into the metal, and the disc was attached to a thin cable.

There was a pull.

Creating a face out of forcefield, I bit into the line, severing it.

There were more. Grappling-claws latching on, reaching out.

How?