Bor leads us into one of the huge spillways that run under Horizon’s master hangars. We crawl down it, silent and reduced to optics. We can almost hear the hollows whispering on the floors above, scratching at things we can’t see, probing the limits of the hangar with eyes and augurs and fingertips.

Nothing rises to meet us from the dark; we’re too deep for that.

And there’s a whole other ship down here.

We jog across a runway, actual open lanes and tarmac, made to send and receive NorCol’s ancient fighter wings, back when you needed a runup to clear the ship. We climb strange magazines and crawl through empty silos, pass weapons we don’t have names for.

We thread through the ship’s ancient arteries, following paths not meant to take our weight. We duck under Horizon’s massive spine, curving away into the dark, and step gently between the joints of its ribs.

At one point, we find a solid wall where Soto was expecting open passage. He rolls through his maps again, but Bor has already figured it out. She waves us up and we put our shoulders against the surface next to her. Together, we feel it creak, squealing as the ancient hinges tear.

“Not hollow,” she says, once we’re clear on the other side, looking the mechanism up and down. “Just old.”

Behind that is a lead-lined crypt. Huge pillars rise into vaults, tall enough that even the Decaturs can walk with their backs straight and heads level. Our steps raise dust from the deck, leaving the air prickly with rad. There’s grime and oil and rust, but this place is sterile in every other way we can measure. These are the halls that used to hold the waste from Horizon’s reactors, back when the ship still fed on solids.

We find the first signs of life in the middle of it: a bank of jury-rigged halide, and a couple of passives salvaged from the outside of the ship, stitched together into something that could just about see us coming. Passives are as good as you can get down here; nothing else could beat the thick walls, or all the interference from the rad. That’s the point. If you can’t see out, the hollows can’t see in.

Very clever, Andrade.

“We’re closing on the first checkpoint,” whispers Soto. “Keep clear, and let Bor make contact.”

We creep into the shadow of an old processing bay, shielded just as heavily as everything else. If this was a forward position, or a beachhead on hostile soil, NorCol would crew its boundaries with Jackals: nasty little drones built sharp and quick and expendable. They aren’t smart, not so you’d notice, but they make up for it with viciousness. Hollow, they’d be nightmares.