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“That’s me,” Bobbie said “Can you send control of that node down to the panel in the machine shop?”

“Done,” Naomi said after a second

“Thanks,” Bobbie said, and killed the comm It took her a moment to re-familiarize herself with the Martian military video software, and to convince the systeorithe fro on the screen She set it to endless loop and sat back down on the deck with her suit

She finished bolting the back ar the torso’s power supply and h She tried not to feel anything about the inificance to them or think of them as a puzzle to be solved She just concentrated on her work on the suit with her mind and let her subconscious chew on the data fros occasionally as she worked, but that was fine She wasn’t on a deadline She finished attaching the power supply and hts lit up on the hand tered into the suit’s brain On the wall screen by her helmet, a UN soldier was hurled across the surface of Ganyed away When the ie steadied, both the UN Marine and her friend Tev Hillan reattaching it to the torso The monster had picked up a soldier in a suit of arh force to kill instantly There was no defense against that kind of strength except not to get hit She concentrated on putting the arain, the feed had restarted Thethe UN soldiers It killed one of the, followed by her entire platoon opening up

The creature was fast But when the UN soldiers suddenly turned to open a firing lane for the Martians, the creature didn’t react quickly So ht line, but not a lot of lateral speed That ain to the UN soldier being thrown into Private Hillh they didn’t slow it down She thought back to the video she’d seen of Holden and Ao hold It had largely ignored the it, and then it had erupted into violence

But the first creature had attacked the UN troop station So at least to soree, they could be directed Given orders Once they no longer had orders, they seeet increased energy and break the constraints While in that state, they ignored prettybut food and violence The next time she ran into one, unless it had specifically been ordered to attack her, she could probably pick her own battleground, draw it to her where she wanted to be That was useful too

She finished attaching the arm assembly and tested it Greens across the board Even if she wasn’t sure whootten how to do her job

On the screen, themech Yojimbo and tore the pilot’s hatch off Sa’id, the pilot, was hurled away Again with the ripping and throwing It th and virtual iht at your opponent, then ripping the heavy objects at lethal speeds went hand in hand with the strength And kinetic energy was a bitch Arht help cushion i off all the kinetic energy ih speed At least not in soarbage Duun

So when the et a grip on theht If it couldn’t do that, it tried to hurl heavy objects at the opponent The one in the cargo bay had nearly killed Ji a massive crate Unfortunately, her armor had a lot of the same restrictions it had While it made her very fast when she wanted to be, it was not particularly good at lateral s built for speed weren’t Cheetahs and horses didn’t do a lot of sideways running She was strong in her suit, but not nearly as strong as it was She did have an advantage with firearms in that she could run away froe The creature couldn’t throw aitself It hed what it weighed, and Newton had a few things to say about a light object throwing a heavy one

By the ti her suit, she’d watched the video over a hundred ti to take shape in her head In hand-to-hand co, she’d been able to overpower hters, the ones who kne to stick-and-ht She’d have to hit and run, never stopping for a moment And even then she’d need a lot of luck, because she was fighting way out of her weight class, and one shot froe was that she didn’t really have to win She just had to do enough dae to make the monster kill itself By the time she’d climbed into her newly refurbished suit and let it close around her for a final test, she was pretty sure she could do that

Bobbie thought her newfound peace about the battle to come would finally let her sleep, but after three hours of tossing and turning in her rack, she gave up So to find her Bushido, and there were still tooher pere fuzzy bathrobe she’d stolen from the Guanshiyin, and rode the ladder-lift up toward the ops deck It was third watch, so the ship was deserted Holden and Nao that hu to amid all the other uncertainty Avasarala was in her borrowed cabin, probably sending es to people back on Earth Alex would be asleep in his roo hienuine in a way she hadn’t seenactive duty But she also knew that waking a nals she didn’t intend Rather than try to explain that she just needed to talk to so