The lance point entered the first plate and stopped in the second.
Iven held his stance until the target settled. Then he drew the shaft back, let the point cool, and looked at the collar behind it.
A thin bright line had appeared along one edge.
Hend saw it at the same moment. “That’s the limit of that sleeve.”
“Of the sleeve,” Iven agreed.
The target stood against a timber block on the old gate maintenance foundation. Three ordinary steel plates had been fixed at a slight angle, with room behind them for fragments to fall into sand. Nobody stood in the line. The point was a physical tool, the force delivered through it a graft function, and the recoil had somewhere real to go through Iven’s planted feet.
Twenty-eight charges had opened the first layer and damaged the second. More power through the same thin sleeve would have bent the tool before doing useful work at the point.
They had learned that before he needed to learn it under fire.
