A Furnace Mantis runs its own core hot enough to work metal, which is where the name comes from and where every account of them stops being useful. What matters about a Grade Six is the exchange rate rather than the heat.
Vell has held Grade Five for eleven days and had it for four of them.
One grade is not a step and it is not a percentage either. A Grade Six trades once and the thing in front of it stops being a fighter, which is why the Association's own literature recommends evacuation rather than engagement at any city frontage.
He did not say any part of that to anybody standing in the corridor.
What he told them instead was the arrangement, which took ninety seconds and used the word exchange exactly once. Nobody was to trade with the mantis under any circumstance, at any opening, for any reason that looked worth it at the time.
Jia took the cutting lanes, which is the assignment she would have asked for.
