It only takes one. One of us to miss the step, to lose our place, and the rest of the gang topples over us. Through us, if our luck’s running low. Chances are, the steel is the only thing that’ll have a say in how it all turns out, and you can do better than hoping the chain will show you mercy. This old tether wraps everybody on this stretch, holds us straight, and keeps us from fighting back. It makes us measure every step, forces us to set our movements to the rhythm, humming a tune that’s just enough to keep us all in line and all in time.

The loudest hum comes from a big Palmirran by the name of Salt, dead ahead, the next one up the chain from me. He’s colonial gene-stock, engineered around a chest full of lung and muscle. More muscle than lung, but his airways have more power than the rest of us stitched together, even singing for our lives. He shakes the space around him, setting the whole world to a song that only he seems to know for certain. The chain gang has caught the tune now, and it follows us everywhere.

It came with us off the barges from Kiruna, and now it trails us through mouldy corridors and acid-etched spillways, past pressure heads locked with massive hydraulics, between huge magazines and air-gapped blocks of armour plate.

A squad of long jackets guides us deeper, matching our pace and setting the path ahead. They belong to the company; you can see it on shoulders stitched with NorCol’s heavy logo-blocks, sleeves tracked with unit insignias and assignments, cuffs embroidered with a warden’s gate.

They watch us through breathermask goggles, and swing steel batons from their hands, not speaking unless we give them reason to. We don’t, for the most part, but I can almost hear them carrying the song on the other side of their filters. It seems Salt’s odd tune is infectious.

And the echoes get longer with every step.

Long enough now that we’re starting to lose the returns. We’re floors deeper now than where we began, though I couldn’t tell you how far. There’s nothing keeping track, and the bowels of this old ship look the same as anything NorCol has to offer. The same grey paint, thick and prone to flaking, streaked ruddy where rust brews and blisters underneath. Cloudy bulbs mark the walls on every eleventh step: every one that’s still alive is matched by a neighbour that flickers and spits, and another that leaves its sector in the black. The moist air puts a sheen on everything and a haze around every source of light.