We’ll give it back to you, we whisper to the little silver box. As soon as this is all over, we say, where no one else can hear.

If the Spirit understands, it doesn’t respond.

“Good,” says Bor. “From here, tightline only.”

Her machine cuts itself off from our nets and turns back to face the wind. Her armour draws froth and condensation where the currents find her, feathers twitching as they adjust against the drag. Her hands hold steady on the silo doors on either side, and her feet spread across the lip.

A little further out, and she’s down to toes and fingertips, stretching out over nothing so she can take a measure of the drop.

Stay close, sends the dusty shell, just as it disappears.

We climb to where she was standing, but it isn’t as easy as she made it look. The silo cuts away to open air almost without warning. When we finally make it all the way to the edge, we have to lock a foot down on the armoured lip, let it carry our weight while we reach for the old sliding doors.

We’re shorter than the Decatur, and our arms don’t reach as far. When we turn to look where she’s gone, we have to stretch our whole body out, fighting the urge to spread our wings.

A vicious gale runs between the dreadnought’s cliffs and gulleys, and it whips at us as soon as we clear the edge. Reflex works our flaps and feathers, deflecting the worst of it, biting into the airflow to help us keep our grip.

Bor is most of a K below, standing on a narrow ledge formed on the seam between two of Horizon’s huge primary plates, the heat from her engines already carried away on the breeze.

We lean back into the curve of the hull and start bleeding pressure from our legs. A thought warms our reactor and feeds sparks into our engines. We spread our passives wide and set our eyes on the sky, checking for anything that might come hunting the heat.

Nothing stirs above us, even as we feel the chill in our hull replaced with nova glow. We’re alone with the light and the air and the open valleys between the clouds.

If only we could stay.

We kill the locks on our soles and let our fingers slip, feel our weight begin to tip. We release ourselves to the breeze, and for a few heartbeats, we fly.

We spit fire at the last moment, kill enough momentum that our feet don’t ring when they find the steel below. We stand straight, hold ourselves still a moment longer, listening for echoes underneath us and flaring our plates to the currents, the wind wrapping around our hull.