[i]The most efficacious location for the head of a spear is in the place where your enemy will be. Be as the false-wolf, who waits with his jaws open in the burrow of the hare.[/i]
—Llameth ar Violé, Third Dynasty tactician

***

Ack! Redana presses herself against the bulkhead and wills herself to be invisible, as her auspex informs her through neural jolt that it is ready to give her volumes upon volumes of data: the number of men and women in the chamber beyond, their species, their medical histories, the ethnoaesthetics of their panoply, their resting heart rates and their likelihood to engage in criminal activities. If she disengaged the throttler, she’d be sitting here for hours trying to sift through the overwhelming amount of information. Heaven only knows how Mom handles it.

Okay. Breathe. Be quiet. (Redana presses a hand to her mouth, not trusting her ability [i]not[/i] to talk out loud.) Jas’o has already breached the hangar. It looked like there was a Boar[1] that had punched through the left hangar wall, and now there’s guards just waiting for panicked crewmen to surge for the skiffs. Which means that her best option for escaping is probably... the Plovers are designed to trade with anti-ship weaponry, though the best defense is always not getting hit. If she tried to burst out in one, though, they could just reel her back in by the cable. Unless... there’s some on-board power capacitors. They’re garbage in these circumstances— one shot and she’ll be floating dead in the water.

Unless.

Auspex, how many active reactors remain around the Eater of Worlds? Thank you. She closes her eyes and drags the information out. Okay. If she slingshots herself out, fully expecting to be hit but with too much velocity to be intercepted, and she has a rebreather on, and aimed just right... she could do it. The alternative is fighting an entrenched position using only the element of surprise.

(The Nemean[2] roils against the edges of her consciousness, but she bites down upon the thought. If she mantles herself inside, if she becomes glorious and shining and irresistible, she will be a beacon, and she cannot channel her divinity indefinitely. Jas’o will just have to wait and then peel her off the floor where she’s collapsed. No. We’re not becoming her today.)

So all she needs to do is find... “A path to the Plover.” It’s a Hurricane frame with belchers slung underneath the forearms and a Chors Anti-Denizen Longsword; the latter’s designed for killing void monsters and severing power cables, but the former’s an excellent if uncomfortably vicious way to clear a room. It’s non-lethal for Plover combat, but no one in here happens to be in one. Maybe they’ll all get behind shields and let themselves get blown away by the choking, furious smoke clouds, and nobody will get killed by the fragments of the pulverized slug the cannons destroy and accelerate?

Okay, how about a version of the plan where she holds off on firing those in an enclosed space and just barrels through. Then if anyone gets hurt, it’s because they’re Standing On The Landing Strip, which everyone knows you aren’t supposed to do with Plovers live. Yeah. That eases up on the knot in her stomach.

***

[1]: spacer slang, short for “Boarpedo,” short for “Boarding Torpedoes.” Recursively, many now have boar iconography alongside the peans to Artemis engraved along their sides, pleading for her to send these darts true into their quarry’s heart.

[2]: the Nemean is hers by the will of the gods. However, to explain her in a way you would understand, look to the Nocturne school of philosophy[3], which states that the gods always abide by the rules of the cosmos, their mother, and it is only their omniscience that allows them to do anything they like; if we understood as they do, had we ten kalpa to memorize the interplay of everything in existence and everything not in existence, then we could travel across the universe in a step and conjure forth being from nothing. In this framework, we may think of the Nemean as being the superposition of an unrealized potential, drawn forth from possibility into realspace by the Will of the prime instance. It is, of course, nonsense; but it is nonsense you may understand.

[3]: [i]”Ah! Of all I have heard this night, I love this delightful fancy most.”[/i] 
—The Phoebus Dialogues.

***

[[b]7[/b] on Look Closely: tell me about the route to the Plover. How can it hurt me? How can it help me?]