We had to do something similar on a place called Rotahn, lost in an electric storm. Twice before that during the original operations against Sanctuary, every channel hot with Sigurd jamming. Six times between that and our first taste of civil war. The first time we went flying with NorCol’s colours, back when their shells wore red and silver.

I got lucky, we reply. Remembered reading about it somewhere.

Good call.

We signal an acknowledgement, the closest we can manage to a shrug. What have you got?

The flashes get thicker coming back, straining to carry a payload across the narrow line. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was a landing path.

We open it, and watch a holographic corridor map itself out in three dimensions. The route coils and twists, dives between clouds and plates and shadows in Horizon’s sensor-net.

Little red pinpricks light up across the holographic model of a dreadnought, marking where augurs and PHADAR have been damaged or disabled, turning orange where they’re running slow or underpowered. Others have been nudged a few degrees out of alignment, set to watch stretches of open air and Eye-light noise.

Green highlights show the zones where the net is still working as intended, but the path adds awkward turns and sudden breaks, all so we’ll keep to where the feeds don’t overlap. Where the sensor bands are stretched thin, and struggling to beat the wind.

A way back home.

Someone’s been busy.

If you want to call it that, comes the reply, probably from Hail. Just having a map like this is court-martial material.

I’d smile, if I could. Been there, done that.

Not like this. This’ll get you pressed up against a bulkhead.

For having it, or not reporting the faults?

A bit of both, assuming they didn’t try to pin the whole thing on you in the process. There’s a pause. This took work. Months, maybe a year or two.

Or longer, if you were using it already.

A HULK BREAKS the cloud cover, mirrored steel and Sigurd’s odd glyphs and stencils a dozen decks tall. A huge strike-face stands out amidships, carrying the company’s logo where it’s impossible to ignore. A sword and coiling serpent, bone-white on reflective black.

The last letters of DEMIURGE catch the light.

Every part of it is dreadnought-big, oversized in ways that don’t make sense until you’ve seen it all move together. Even then, it’s smaller in every dimension than the plains of NorCol steel opening up in the distance. Horizon has mass and density, but the Demiurge is all odd edges and rounded corners.