My systems slowly compensate. Little details emerge from the murk.

I’m expecting a window into Open Waters; the deep-field curve of dark and distant stars.

I don’t expect the clouds.

“CHRISTS,” I WHISPER.

Hail chuckles at that. “As far as anyone can tell, they didn’t have much to do with it. Either of them.”

Heavy glass holds the wall behind her, armour-treated panes as thick as my forearm is long. Behind that, a bubble of blue-tinged shield envelopes. They billow.

On the other side is a sea of wind and storm, cloudbanks thousands of K tall. They eddy and coil, forming little twisters that tear across the flats. Massive squalls live in the shadows, dark hearts curdled into storm cells, trading lightning across the open.

Gales whip past our window, close enough that I can see the texture. Streamers trail from the crags in Horizon’shull, making the old dreadnought look like it’s put down in the middle of some cold, ancient desert. Only I can’t see any sign of hard ground below us, and nothing to mark where the currents end and the void begins above. Open air condenses where it touches cold steel and turns to the same silvery stuff as the clouds behind it.

A radioactive dawn hangs in the middle of everything; a rush of fire and curving light, flickering between the wind-walls, turning the storms to backlit shadows. I have to work the zoom on my optics to get a better look, but from out here, there isn’t much past the wash. I can see that it isn’t a star, nor the core of something that used to be one.

There, the streams spin so fast that they glow under friction, colder orange and pale blue around the edge, but turning white hot near the rim of something else, curving away under gravity. The light spills out across the valleys between weather systems, streaks into the gaps and ravines, painting everything orange and red and purple, or shrouding it charcoal black. There’s more, turning static just on the edge of what I can see.

Even through the shields and layers of filtered glass, my suit is ticking off rads.

“They say it’s artificial.” Hail takes it in with a sweep of her hand. “Everything you see. The clouds”—she taps a finger on the window—“and the Eye.”

The radiation counters in my visor are starting to climb, and the suit chirps at me, concerned that I’m not looking for cover. When I don’t move, it flashes a warning at me, tells me to get out of the way, to get myself behind something dense and wait for medical attention, but I can’t pull myself away. Hell, I can barely close my eyes.

“How they know that”—she shrugs—“I have no idea. But it behaves like nothing you’ve ever seen, or ever will again.”