First came a series of soft tinks, barely louder than steel pellets dropped on the floor. Bullets. Someone was shooting at the airlock.

  Good luck with that. Crudmungers. The airlock door was thirty centimeters thick. No bullet short of an anti-ship rail gun would break through that.

  Then someone hit it with a grenade, a loud bang that echoed in the Belithain's hold. Hopefully, they'd stood by to watch. No way of knowing. If the Belithain had cameras overlooking the airlock, they weren't working.

  The hold was cold and dark. Even the flashlights moving off into the distance were nothing but pinpricks, stars there, then gone. It smelled of cold, a crisp, hard scent that reminded me of metal filings. Likely, the Belithain's ventilation system had failed and left residue in the air.

  Riina was directing the Kylians, mainly people with tools and tech kits. Engineers and mechanics, the future crew of the ship.

  "Maiko's dead," I said.

  She nodded, kept on working.

  "He was my squad commander," she said, almost absentmindedly. "We came through boot camp together."

  "I'm sorry," I said.

  "There will be time to mourn," Riina said. She sent another small work detail to a different part of the ship. Someone shot at the door again, a single soft tink.

  "Why doesn't Rimont station security break this up?" I asked Riina. "Gunfights can't be lawful."

  "Private docks," she said. "As long as there's no trade dispute, the Huragians get to do what they want."

  Which didn't bode well. But so far, the secs hadn't figured out the obvious way in. Every minute they vented their anger with their guns instead of thinking gave Hao more time to get to the Bucket, and pilot her over to the Belithain.

  Once we hooked the two ships up, we'd figure something out.

  And then came the sound that I'd feared. The heavy-breathing scrape of a plasma torch cutting into the airlock.

  Thirty centimeters of material. An industrial torch. At worst, it would be a mech-mounted ship repair kit. It could cut a hole in the airlock in ten or twenty minutes.

  And if they were really smart, they'd work the emergency release bar. Cut it off, then use the space to cut into the hydraulics and shove the door open with brute force.

  Riina must have gotten the same idea.

  "Where are the engines?" she shouted into her com.

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  So the Kylians did have coms, probably powered down while in Downbelow-town. But now secrecy was unimportant. Everyone knew where we were.

  "Gone," a thin voice replied. The whoosh of the plasma torch was getting louder. Five minutes, at most.

  I pulled out my engraving drill and stared at the airlock. Cut a flame ward at an angle in the sides. Another one opposite, assuming I didn't fall with the first one. That would stop the first wave.

  But there would be more waves. We couldn't fight them all. We needed to get out of here, someone to haul us away from the station. The Bucket.

  But the Bucket wasn't coming. Hao could have gotten caught, or killed. Even if she'd just been delayed, she'd be too late.

  Cutting flame wards into the airlock wouldn't help.

  I tried to figure out something smart, see a solution that I'd overlooked, and failed. Even my gut was out of suggestions.

  Time to do something crudmucking stupid. Time to move the Belithain with my mind.

  I laughed at that. Beyond crudmucking stupid. I'd seen mages who'd tried to use too much force. The lucky ones died, their brains ruptured. The unlucky ones survived, their minds forever scrambled.

  Still, better to die trying.

  I took a deep breath, walking over to one of the main spars running the length of the ship. They were gigantic iron girders that held the frame stable. I could have lain cross-wise on it, with room to spare. This one terminated beneath the airlock, widening into the airlock platform itself.

  A twenty meter wide, flat platform, part of the very core of the ship. A perfect canvas for a giant ward. A final breath, in, out.

  I got down to my knees and started cutting.

  Riina spoke to me, but I tuned her out. The whoosh of the plasma torch faded from my awareness. The only thing in the universe was me and my ward.

  It was the opposite of my cold battle rage. This was my hot focus, a needle in time, shutting out everything else. Draw the ward, long strokes, my engraving drill throwing off sparks as it chewed into the steel, a resistance against the motion of my hand, the diamond head catching on the steel.

  Dimly, I became aware of the heat. The airlock door had started to glow, a faintly illuminated spot of faded red. I kept drawing my ward.

  Curves, arcs, straights, all on freehand. My professors at the academy threw fits when they found out how I worked. No measure, no straight edge, no curve templates.

  It had worked then, it worked now, a level, meditative practice, a dance of hand, drill, and mind.

  The heat increased, the spot glowing orange.

  I cut the final line of my ward, a deep angle terminating next to the door. The direction funnel.

  Then I sat back.

  The push ward was a semi-circle before me, with the direction funnel pointing backward. A simple ward, drawn on a large scale. Insert force, push.

  Push an entire ship away from the docks.

  It wasn't possible. No one could conjure that much force. A team of collaborating warders, maybe. Push the thought from my mind. I would do it.

  Another breath, the steel floor hard and cold against my knees, my face hot and sweaty from the melting airlock. I reached out with my mind, searching for the threads of force that flowed around me.

  Cold void, cold steel. Life, in tiny patches, all around me. I touched them, pulled on them, gathering the threads of the void.

  My vision turned dark, a tunnel, swallowing me whole. It was going to kill me. It wouldn't be enough.

  I touched the ward with the threads of force I'd managed to gather, feeling myself sway, forward and back, unevenly. The ward activated, and I pushed more force into it, black spots dancing before my eyes.

  Not enough. The ship vibrated, moored against the station, grappled in place.

  And then it came, a single, hot thread, a thread I'd known before, I'd felt before.

  The hatchling, reaching out to me.

  Its force cut through the threads I'd managed to gather, showing them for the feeble spider-silk they were. This was force, power, a void wyrm in the making. The force flowed around me, past me, into the ward.

  With a gigantic squeal, as if the entire world was being ripped asunder, the Belithain tore away from Rimont station.