How would he know about that? Jockeys get their shells battered all the time, fly them ’til they’re little more than scrap, but the connection never lasts. The pain is there to let you know where the damage is, nothing more. It isn’t supposed to follow you around.

I glare at the divider. How did you know?

But Salt saves me asking. “I hear they needed extra crew just to get it straightened out.”

I look down at my knuckles. Oh.

Not this hand, then.

“They’re busy reattaching. As it turns out, Folau actually has his uses.”

Salt laughs at that. It’s contagious. “I’d have to see it to believe i—” he trails off.

“Salt?”

There’s a pause. “Did you feel that?”

Feel what?

The ship answers before I can ask. A shiver runs through the deck and up along my spine. Reflex makes me tense, throws my hands out against the stall sides, but if there’s another tide on the way, I’m in all kinds of trouble. I don’t have Salt’s upper-body strength, and nothing to stop myself being dashed against the ceiling, floor, ceiling, thrown around like a fucking ragdoll, cracked open on the steel.

And here I thought I’d die with my boots on.

A few heartbeats later, and I can feel Salt relax on the other side, the bend in the divider only obvious once it’s settling back to its original shape. It takes me a second more, with gritted teeth and eyes screwed up, feeling the blood run back into my right hand.

No tide. No more shivers. Just a groan as the ship settles around us.

And then silence.

“You all right?” whispers Salt, just a little out of breath.

I start to reply, but a siren cuts me off.

“General quarters. General quarters,” says an automated voice. “All hands to battle stations. This is not a drill. Repeat, all hands to battle stations. This is not a drill.”

Fourteen

FOURTEEN

HORIZON’S WIDENETS ARE all sound and chaos: a thousand voices shouting orders, begging for information, or just adding to the confusion. We blink our way through every channel we can reach, hear jockeys complaining that they’re stuck in their blocks or pacing through their hangars, sitting in saddles and waiting for Tower to make sense for the thirty seconds they need to get launching. SOs yell at the ground crews clogging up their flight decks, and the ’dragger chiefs shout back, voices straining: You let us work, or there’ll be no flying today. Fire crews chase phantom fires and accident reports. Marines call out from their reserve bays, tracing rumours of hostile boots on Horizon’s decks.