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Paxton toggles his sights. The light in the room spasms off, then back on. A low whine goes through the ship.

“What was that?” Fig asks the soldiers.

“Electronic surge.”

Fig tilts her head at the small creature. “Fuck this.” She shoots it in the chest. The creature is kicked back three meters by the blast. It lies with a hole in its guts, as if the skin parted itself for some invisible wedge. There is no burning scent.

Never seen anything like that gun.

It made the light in the room bend. The soldiers glance sideways at the weapon, but Fig’s already dialing the big bitch.

“Madam Julii, a situation is developing on L22Z2. We have a breach party. Do you have that White’s shuttle on your scopes? Nothing else? Definitely not Vox. Maybe Core deeplabs. Sending visual. No suits. Perforated the hull without tripping thermal sensors. That’s right. Vacuum with no suits. Breach is somehow pressure sealed—a membrane. I recommend you perform a hull integrity test. Might not be isolated.” A beat. “Copy.” Fig shuts off her com. “You two.” She points at me and Volga. “I’m not getting paid enough for this. On me. You boys got the ball. She’s sending a squad of Peerless.”

A low, horrible sound comes from the corpse of the smaller intruder.

Fig turns. It isn’t dead after all. It is laughing. A deep laugh, like the one you’d hear from a monster in the deeptunnels of Lagalos. Like the laugh of a nightmare.

But the nightmare just deepens.

The creature pulls itself up, entrails hanging from its open gut. It licks its lips, its eyes like that of a waiting crocodile.

The Julii Sol Guards aren’t slagging with this.

“Medici can inspect the pieces,” the officer drones. “Put them down.”

Then the lights go out.

“Null G’s!” Paxton shouts.

I feel it myself. A slow lightness as gravity disappears and I drift upward. But there is no upward in the shower block. I feel like I’m floating in an endless gulf, in a darkness so deep even my cave-born eyes can’t see my hands in front of my face.

A deep, manly voice bellows, “Nag ag ak, berserker!”

Light erupts from Sol Guard weapons, showing the horror in stuttered frames.

The small intruder scuttles along the floor like a demon crab as the soldiers float upward.

Fig zips away from them as if by magic.

The six larger intruders lunge from the ground toward the floating soldiers.

Bloody mouths.

Black eyes.

Huge metal weapons with runes painted upon them are pulled from their bags. Guns puke fire. I pinwheel aimlessly in the drift as carnage swirls around me.

The Sol Guard captain fires, the force sending him into a backward spin across my path. A crooked spear tipped in something shimmering whizzes past my ears through his low back, out his belly, and into his forearm, hurling him out of sight. I hear a metal thunk as he’s stapled to the wall, screaming.

Spent cartridges float past.

An arm.

Globules of blood.

Shards of tile.

Then a big intruder.