widening

was. Well,

was.
Well, I guess what goes around, comes around. Whoever these people are, they obviously don't much like Manpower, which means they aren't going to like anyone who works for it, either. So the only way to save my ass is to save Arnold's and Takashi's. The sorry bastards. If they'd done their jobs properly in the first place, none of us would—
Something clanged behind him. Metal on metal, his mind reported, but what kind of metal? He started to turn towards the sound, and a blur of motion caught at the corner of his eye.
His attention flicked towards it, and both eyes began to widen in disbelief as he saw the deck-to-ceiling ventilation grate lying on the deck and the Solarian Marine, battle armor in heavy-assault configuration, striding out of the opening.
Zenas Maguire's eyes never finished widening all the way, and his brain never quite completed the identification of what he saw, because the trigger finger of Corporal Jane Borkai, Company Bravo, Second Battalion, 877th Solarian Marines, closed the circuit on her plasma rifle first. That "rifle" was a cannon in all but name—the sort of weapon only someone in battle armor could carry—and the ravening packet of plasma it sent screaming across the compartment wiped out Maguire, Kawana, six more of Maguire's personnel, eight