Shit. “They’re on board.”

“Confirmed. Both machines are on board.”

“Any word from the hangar?”

“None. Ground crew and emergency services called in ready to receive, but the whole block went dark after the shells put down.” She swallows, but it’s loud enough that I can hear the cramp in her throat. “Tower Actual has ordered it sealed.”

“Understood. We’re on it.”

“Thank you, two-eleven. Your instructions are to launch and come about, make entry into block two-eight. We’ll open up when you’re on site.”

“And then?”

“Report back to me. Use this channel.”

“What if—?” I stop.

“If anything happens, you are to contain.”

“Contain, Bell Tower?”

“Not my words, two-eleven.”

“Understood.” But I don’t like it.

New message received, says a window in the middle of my eyes. It’s text-only, like the kind you’d send on a tightline, or sneak in under the noise of everything else. The Juno tests it, but it comes back clean. We let it run.

Forward Obs. reports: at least one shell haywire. Rec. extreme caution.

—B

NorCol is made of people, but it’s the machines that keep it running. Some of them are designed to move when there’s no one at the wheel, and some think for themselves, but it’s always with safeguards in place, backed up with locking-bolts and explosive charges. Made to crack metal spines and destroy mechanical synapses. ‘Haywire’ is what the company calls it when something has come off of the rails, and the safeguards aren’t calling home.

Jockeys have their own name for it. ‘Flying hollow’.

Horizon’s got hollows on board.

If we were anywhere else, Bell Tower might have come right out and said it, but I’d take a bet that Flight Control is as paralysed as the rest of the ship. They can’t understand what they’re dealing with, but instead of trying to solve the problem, they’re sitting on it and hoping it goes away.

Only that hasn’t worked either, so they’re sending a couple of jockeys out to blow it all away. Typical.

“We’ll deal, Bell Tower. Give us a window.”

“Understood, two-eleven. Window on the way.”

Armour crawls across the outside of the hull, plates so heavy that they shake the deck beneath our feet. We balance on our launch-rails, feel them crackle underneath us. We stretch our wings and warm our engines, feel our nuclear heartbeat throb.

Eye-light dawns through the hangar doors.

WE LAUNCH, TRIMMING our airspeed as soon as we’re clear of the hangars, turning to meet Salt on one of Horizon’s many outcrops. We settle on a spur covered in communications masts, as far from the nearest cloud tops as we are from the curve of hull and armour that holds D’s hangar blocks.