The flood came to Horizon looking for a weapon—another dreadnought it could use to crack the ancient cells still hidden in the currents, more hardware to grind against the wardens. It found the Demiurge before, and thousands of machines to seed its graveyards with. Now it has something else: the biggest ship ever built by human hands, the biggest guns our species has ever used in anger.

And there are four more cells out there. Four more things the Eye was built to bury.

We could try and sink this ship: Horizon, hollows, and every soul on board. End it all right here, consumed in reactor glow. Thankfully, Andrade has something else in mind. He’s using the simplest article of naval theory. Simple enough for even a jockey to understand.

A ship this size is only as good as its turning speed. No good at all, if all it can do is drift.

And the hollows know it.

The storm thins in an instant, and the remaining Cluster plots a new path even faster than before. Taken machines join the air around us, some still shooting, still trying to bring us down, but Andrade has their attention now. Three old shells aren’t worth the losses they’d have to take to sink us.

Not while there’s a Werewolf threatening everything.

We pass them all in moments, mix into the hollow cloud for half a second as they pour through the cracks in Hangar D. We plot a path that uses taken machines for cover, drops us down and away as they clear the hull. We dive into the dark below the hangar doors, cutting currents with micromanaged thrust and tiny movements of our wings. We beat a few hollows on the turn, but only a few try to keep up. Shrieking machinery coils through the froth above and below, tearing along the length of the ship, headed for the stormclouds crackling near the stern.

Rook! The burst draws us into the shadows against the dreadnought’s skin. Two Decaturs and a Juno, still too hot to hide, but still too hard to hit among the crags.

They guide us into cover, give us a heartbeat to find our feet.

Hail is on us the moment we’re standing still.

“Don’t you ever do that again.”

ANDRADE WAS SUPPOSED to buy us time and space; enough open air to get ourselves clear of Hangar D, and a few moments in the Eye-light after that. His crews were supposed to find the manual breakers that the company builds into any piece of hardware that bears its name—something inside everything that will give under the weight of a human hand. They were supposed to strand Horizon here, with us, and give us time to work before the flood made a graveyard of the ship and everything on it.