Enveloped in flame, the Ataraxis leaps forward with sudden and tremendous urgency, and only through the action of the strengthened internal stabilizers does the vessel not tear itself apart under the force. The floor rumbles beneath Salim. On his way to the stairs, heart pumping with the fury of a beating drum, he pauses in the halo of angry white-red light pouring in through a starboard porthole. The new kinetic shield is a deltoid shape that more closely hugs the vessel’s avian structure, curving so close to the hull the flames appear just inches away from the porthole. The thunder of the
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