AND JONATHAN LEAR is using some of that redundancy now. At least, that was the idea. Hail lost the line to Kadi almost an hour ago, and we can’t tell if the nets are down, or if he just isn’t picking up any more. Worse, we can still hear the Juno moving around right outside the door, ready to butter us the moment we step outside. We took a risk just getting here, and we’re not about to try it again. Not yet, anyway.

We’ve had to get creative. Hail has got rank and contacts, but only a few of them are willing to tread on the right toes to reach us. She’s still a con, after all, and Tower’s got her way down on their priority list, too busy cleaning up the tide-damage to bother with us. In the end, only one of them came through; a name I don’t quite catch, and a rank I’m sure I don’t hear right. There’s no way Hail knows a whole Werewolf by name.

Whoever she’s got on the line, they’ve just enough clout to get my chain-mates diverted to the roof of this block. They’ve snagged a knuckledragger crew as well; flight mechanics for the most part, assigned to stations that don’t need them right now. A crew that’s just fitted Lear into the auxiliary air supply.

“Where do you think?” I ask, running my fingers down the wall. There’s a vent near the floor. “Here?”

Hail watches something in her eye, a projection plotting out the nearby air ducts behind the walls in amber holographics. “Not here.” She pauses for a moment, blinks at something. “That one.”

I look up at her, turn to match her gaze. “Which?”

She steps past me, puts her hands on a metal locker and tips it to the floor with a crash. Behind it is a heavy grate.

“There.”

NorCol’s engineers built every block with a backup life-support system, but that wasn’t enough. Extra ducts run alongside the backups, with their own breather units and filters, big enough that they could keep this little hangar running through just about anything, come siege or sabotage or catastrophic accident. There isn’t much to the vent itself, and it’s nowhere near big enough to handle air for the whole hangar, but it isn’t intended to. It’s still more than what a few scared knuckledraggers would need if there was a fire in the block outside.

We sit down on either side of the vent and listen. It’s all we can do. Hail’s wrench is where we left it—

Somewhere back the way we came. Back behind a half-blind war machine.

“Is he through yet?” asks Hail. She isn’t speaking to me. “Understood. We’ve just found the exit.”