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
It disappears as fast as we can pick it out, as fast as the others did. We’ve passed three of them since we left Horizon, outlines blurry, but holding still against the currents. More of the froth’s strange geography; another Lighthouse, perhaps.
They register on our ranging suite, but only as long as we have line of sight. Walls of interference meet us where the flow turns to eddies and winds curl over on themselves.
We get little hotspots every now and then, tiny sparks on the passives where driftwood collides in the storm’s heavy darkness, moments of impact heat as they shatter themselves on one another, gradually becoming the dust that carries them. The signatures are impossibly small, but when everything else out here is dark and crushing, we can see them clear enough.
The Juno shivers just a little, only as much as it needs to catch my attention. We’ve been holding steady long enough, followed this line for as long as we’re supposed to. Now we turn, feel the current against our hull. We were tacking before, off-centre, but now we’re flying into a headwind.
A contact appears above us, but I don’t even register at first. I’m expecting another phantom in the haze, blink and it’s gone, but this one holds our eyes.
Come with me
to the bottom of the sea.
The dust parts for a moment, gives us a taste of wings and an unusual hull, blurring as currents roil around it. The observer, just for a moment.
Rest your feet in muddy ground
see all the faces of the drowned.
Nineteen
NINETEEN
THE STEPPING STONE is right where Hail’s instructions said it would be, even if it isn’t what I was expecting to see. I was holding out for another Lighthouse-thing: a slab of windborne rock, a little island in the froth.
It waits for me, strangely static against the currents, but the Stone seems to be anything but stone. It’s human-origin, for a start.
A station, a pair of flat plates sheltering a pillar between them, making the whole thing look like a barbell. The windward plate has been worn smooth, but the trailing side has markings etched into the surface. Patterns that fork like lightning bolts, like roots or veins or rivers from afar.
Hail and Salt are there already, their shells tucked in behind the leading edge. They cling to the station’s central column, everything folded away and clear of the breeze.