Hector watched as Jiang stared over the edge of the hole where Lucky had been sucked down and away. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Lucky had just been hanging there, saying some smartass thing to Jiang, and then he was gone.

“Lucky!” she screamed down.

Hector was up on his feet before he knew what he was doing, Tobin shouting something behind him. Jiang was still staring down, motionless, clearly in shock and completely ignoring the damn railgun drone that had made the hole in the first place and was about to put one in the middle of Jiang’s back next.

Hector tackled Jiang just as the drone fired. The projectile sailed silently right out the same hole it had just made. Hector felt the crackle of energy in the air around them as it dissipated, following the plasma-charged impactor out of the station wall.

The railgun drone swung around, training its cannon on the pair of them sprawled on the ground. Hector knew he could fire right down the barrel of the cannon just as it was warming to fire and blow the drone up, but his rifle was gone, thrown clear along with Jiang’s when he dove head-first into her.

Hector wasn’t a small man, and he was wearing armor—at least some armor—compared to Jiang, who was half his size without the armor. He was about to roll over her and hope for the best when he saw a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye.

“Eat this, bitch!” Malby screamed as he ran at the drone, then used the top of an overturned pod to leap up in the air and kick the drone.

He seemed to realize mid-jump that he’d miscalculated, and his kick was going to go sailing right under the floating drone.

Malby reached both his arms up over his head and smashed into the drone with his face and arms, sending it spinning wildly through the air just as the bottom-mounted cannon fired.

Rather than blasting Jiang and Hector to hell, the huge impactor slug smashed into the floor of the recovery room, just in front of the line of oncoming tank drones. Two of them disappeared as they toppled soundlessly into the hole in the ground that the cannon blast had made.

Hector wasn’t sure what the station’s building materials were, but either they were flimsier than he’d expected—first blowing open the side wall, and now a giant hole in the ground—or the railgun drones were way overpowered.

“Move!” screamed Malby from where he’d landed awkwardly on his ass, bleeding from a cut opened up by the edge of the drone he’d used his face to move.

Jiang leapt to her feet; but rather than running back to the hatch they’d been just been at with Tobin, she immediately spun around toward the gaping hole in the side of the station.

“Stop!” Hector screamed at her just as Tobin, running low to the ground as a stream of fire shot from the tank drones, joined them. “We can’t help him if we’re dead.”