Chapters (41)
- Title
- Indicia
- Steel Frame
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Acknowledgements
- About The Author
- 'Ironclads' by Adrian Tchaikovsky
- 'NineFox Gambit' by Yoon Ha Lee
- 'Grunt Life' by Weston Ochse
Chains run out from its shoulders into a cage of cranes and scaffolding above. The shell body hangs loose, head forward, arms and legs dangling, unresponsive.
But something’s missing. “There’s no runway.”
Andrade nods. “No launch rails either.”
A wave of vertigo rocks me on my feet, and I catch myself on the handrails.
The Werewolf grins at me. “She understands.”
The other two frown at us.
“Understands what, exactly?” asks Salt.
He aims a finger over the edge. “That.”
Somewhere in the deep below us, maybe a whole K away, a pair of stars flicker in place. It takes me a second to work up the courage to put a little zoom on my optics. When I do, I can just about see a pair of hazard-lamps. Between them, something that might be the outline of a door.
Andrade doesn’t launch, he falls.
“You’re insane.”
“Not insane,” he says, even if he can’t bury the mad edge creeping into his smile, “just quiet.”
ANDRADE SENDS US out to another blast-lock, just like the one that led us here. His machine is ready to go, but ours are someplace distant, behind all this char and blackened metal. Salt waits with me while Hail works the locks, staring back over my head. The old colonial hasn’t taken his eyes off the Werewolf since we arrived, watching Andrade as he starts the process of waking his machine. Salt’s gaze doesn’t have an edge to it—he looks like he’s trying to memorise the details, the subtle quirks he can’t quite place. Or maybe it’s the other way ’round. Maybe he’s seen something similar before, and is trying to remember where, exactly.
I mean to ask, make it halfway there, but a gleam behind him catches my eye. If I lean a little to the side, I can just about make a shape. A little way back, and I’ve lost it again. I flick through visor-settings, but they don’t give me much more than I had already. A steely edge, spiralling up along the wall and out of sight.
11.88
It feels like a flick to the back of my skull. A little shiver, and a flash of something half-remembered.
Andrade’s hangar has rifle grooves.
There’s a hiss behind me, and it brings me back to earth. Seems some parts of his hangar have pressured air as well, a little of it rushing out as Hail cycles the door, herds us through. There’s more atmo after that. It feels like another part of the ship—another ship altogether, if I didn’t know better