The airlock entry hall of Hangar Three had been transformed into a butcher shop of frozen foam, snapped silver-steel. Then he rusted through light metal.
Three self-running defense turrets hung from the ceiling heavy beams, their twin barrels melted into slagged stumps that dripped cold eerie-glowing grease onto the deck. Through the vaporous haze of the depressurizing compartment, Arthur could see the leftovers of the station’s first security cordon. Two heavy powered-exoskeleton suits, their chest plates crushed inward by huge crushing pressure, their magnetic boots still welded to the floor. Meanwhile, their upper torsos drifted at forty-five-degree angles like derelict buoys.
Inside those suits, the pilots had died instantly of acute barotrauma when the seals parted. Their visors were frosted white from frozen moisture, obscuring their features. Arthur gave the fallen soldiers a single, solemn salute with his gloved knuckles against his chestplate, acknowledging the debt, before stepping past them into the breach.
He paused for five seconds beside the nearest melted turret, his Monocle Taxonomy Loupe humming as it focused on the slagged firing assembly. The damage was not caused by star-fire or moving friction. The copper-beryllium spark buses had been selectively dissolved by an ultra-packed organic acid. A mixture of fluorosulfonic compounds and reactive proteases that melted man-made heat padding while leaving organic tissue intact.
