Six heavy struts run down from the ceiling, meeting six more rising from the floor. Massive pistons run through each one, cradling what looks like a single hunk of rock.

It takes me a second to understand what I’m seeing. I spend the next trying to keep my feet.

It’s pitted and dusty, like the other things that keep themselves steady against the winds. It’s the same colour as the Lighthouse, stony red with the same grainy texture.

That’s it, isn’t it?

I don’t want to hear myself ask the question. Worse, I already know the answer.

It’s all that’s keeping this place afloat.

And I could hold it in my hands.

Hail puts a grip on my shoulder, holds me steady. “Welcome to the Stepping Stone.”

Twenty

TWENTY

THERE ISN’T MUCH space to stand, but it doesn’t look like this place was designed with that in mind. Designed with anything in mind, now that I can see it. The pillars and the Stepping Stone take up most of the room. The Stone itself shifts slightly every now and then, and the pistons correct. It doesn’t look like much, but it’s easy to forget what I’m looking at. The Stone keeps its own orbit, and the station has been built around it. When the pistons hiss, and the little chunk of rock turns in their grip, it isn’t the stone moving, it’s us.

I swallow the vertigo as the roles reverse. The floor tilts, but the Stone stays flat.

Christs.

The clutter doesn’t leave much room to keep my feet.

If there are lamps in this compartment, they’ve been cut from the rest of the facility. Hail has a string of emergency bulbs running, held to the ceiling with tape. The rest of the light comes in through the door—and some of the bullet holes—and falls down around our boots.

The terminals are cased in dirty plastic and peeling paint, rustproofing swollen from underneath. Every single one of them was built for somewhere else, ripped out by the roots and bolted down wherever Sigurd’s knuckledraggers could find space.

“They never expected it to work, did they?”

Hail leans over what looks like a control surface, shaped from a heap of salvage, and welded together with chunky, beady seams. Someone came along after the fact and jammed a couple of switches over the top, ran open wiring down the back.

“For a while, they hoped. The Stone uses the same PHADAR arrays as dreadnoughts, heavy-duty and long-range.”

“Good for finding other dreadnoughts.”

“True.” She leans in, following a cable with her fingers. “Sigurd had only just arrived, then. There’s a knack to working in the froth, and they didn’t have it yet.”

“So they went for something solid. Tried and tested.”