It slid out of my scabbard without a sound, a meter-long piece of sharpened steel.

  Some mages decorate their foils, creating patterns of Damascus steel, dark whorls and lines reminiscent of wards.

  Idiots.

  My foil was plain. A bar of thin spring steel, flexible yet relatively strong, sharpened on both edges with a tiny ball at the end. A ball holding a piece of ripstone.

  The ball-shaped holder was heavily warded. Not my work. You needed a microscope and several remote-controlled micro-cutters to create all the wards on the holder. Someday, I’d ward the foil myself, freehand on an up-scaled ball, then mill it down using remotes. For now, I made sure the wards were whole and secure, allowing me to infuse the ripstone with force.

  I slid the thread into the holder, feeling the raging, chaotic heat of the ripstone.

  With a whoosh, it lit, spewing blinding light before me like an artillery-launched magnesium flare, strong enough to cast our shadows into the well-lighted cargo hold behind us. The air around the ripstone burned, the molecules disintegrated, the atoms stripped of their electrons. Anything too close to the ripstone turned to plasma. A meter away was much too close for my liking.

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  I shoved it into the airlock, where a slight bulge in the ship’s hull indicated pistons.

  The foil went in, burning sparks of melted steel blowing back into my face.

  No stockman, right. I shielded my eyes and cheeks with my free arm.

  “Void me,” Hao whispered.

  The second piston cracked with a clang, and I stabbed the airlock itself. The metal was thinner here, five centimeters or so.

  No wards that could have saved it. It glowed, and the lock cracked. I up-tuned the wards on the holder, feeling them struggle against the force of the ripstone. For a second, I thought they’d break, and I’d have a piece of pure destruction loose on the deck. Then they flowed along the ripstone’s force, clamping it down.

  The light diminished, becoming merely glaring instead of burning. The stench of burning paint and melted steel clawed at my lungs, the bleating alarms sounded closer.

  “Open it,” I said, pointing the foil at the airlock.

  “Get that thing away from me,” Hao said, standing off to the side, her crowbar clutched in both hands, the Tornado swinging freely on its sling.

  I moved the tip of the foil away. She dashed forward, jabbing the crowbar into the break. The metal groaned, fell away.

  We were in.