Chapters (41)
- Title
- Indicia
- Steel Frame
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Acknowledgements
- About The Author
- 'Ironclads' by Adrian Tchaikovsky
- 'NineFox Gambit' by Yoon Ha Lee
- 'Grunt Life' by Weston Ochse
We mirror everything the Cluster machines do, evolving our own calculations to keep the pace. The two Junos don’t resist—we’re too close in, there’s no turning back. They add us to their coiling holographics, three parts of the same machine, so fast it’s drawing froth along its blades.
The Cluster machines hit first, claim a Decatur in a flash of sparks, hip to shoulder and every angular plate between. Another dies just like it, spewing oil and condensing atmosphere through the massive rent that used to be its chest. A third tries to pull away, raises wings and hands to shield its body, but it loses fingers and feathers to the first impact, everything above its ribcage to the second.
We’re half a heartbeat behind; close enough to feel the fractured armour patter on our hull, slow enough to mark the two survivors. A hollow shape leans from the contour of the hull, brings a weapon out to follow the Cluster. We extend our blade to meet it, take the tip of its rail, fingers, wrist, collar and throat behind it, all in less than a second. The next is a Mirai, and it doesn’t have time to turn. Steel rings through our arm and shoulder, but we hold, and the impact nearly cuts the mirror-black thing in half.
Behind us, we feel three stars pass through the break and into the froth.
“Rook—” is all Hail can manage before the thick armour cuts the signal away.
We don’t stop, but we can’t. Our nets hum together with the remnants of the Cluster, Salt’s tune following us back through the blocks again—something warm and solid to drown out all the warnings in our head, all the augurs ringing against our skin. Horizon keeps burning, keeps forcing our paths to adjust to the shifting cliffs.
We will fight until we die, but it wasn’t supposed to end like this.
Andrade was supposed to—
The blocks shudder on either side of us, and we correct a moment too late, lose a wingtip to a cliff-face that’s suddenly a little slower than it was going to be.
The engines!
That was Andrade, we send.
But the flash doesn’t have time to fade before the ship starts accelerating again. The Cluster corrects, hurls us wide of the next near miss. The engines aren’t dead, just choking.
It’s enough. It means that somewhere near the aft of the ship, deep in the engineering decks, Andrade’s crews have finally made a breach.