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
But I’m not watching her. In the light from her helmet-lamps I see ice inside his visor. The glass is silver-grey with frost. Ice.
Inside his helmet.
I find my feet. “Look.”
“Christs.”
I reach under the helmet’s chin, feeling for the emergency release. They work on pressure; if there’s air inside, it won’t break the seal until there’s air on the outside too.
If it’s empty—
The helmet pops loose without a fight, almost dropping into my hand. We can see the patch on his chest now. The jockey’s name is Dane.
Dane doesn’t look up as I pull the helmet clear. He can’t. He stares straight ahead, eyelids puckered around a pair of open sockets. His skin is a deep red, and almost rubbery. It flakes in places, and cracks where the ice has turned it black. His jaw hangs open, stretched tight over empty cheeks.
Dane has been dead a long time.
“No gunshot wounds,” says Hail. “Suit’s still intact, by the look of it.” She checks his chest. “Trauma plates are still green.” She dials her headlamps up, runs them across Dane’s withered face. “Freeze-dried, rather than frostburned.”
I nod. “Dead before the cold got in.”
“Impact?”
I shake my head. “He’s still in the saddle. If the gee was high enough to kill him, it would have messed his connections up with it.”
Hail shrugs. “The shell seemed pretty functional to me.”
That’s one way of putting it.
I peer at the nerve-jacks still locked into his legs. The suit is torn around them, and crimson crystals show where they shredded muscle and skin underneath. “Too fast for freezing and too clean for impact. He suffocated.”
Hail’s eyes glow in the light of the displays inside her helmet. “No holes in the hull. And he didn’t die today.” She looks up at the ceiling. “This thing was flying hollow. No air, no jockey.”
“Worse than that.” I guide her eyes to the bloody jacks. “He choked, and the saddle held him while it happened.”
Ten
TEN
ISIT ON the Juno’s knee and drink from the little tube in my helmet. The water is warm and my skin is cold, but I’m not sure how much of it I feel. Not sure I’m feeling very much of anything right now.
I hold up my right hand and turn it over where I can see. It’s the one thing I can feel. My knuckles throb like I’ve just thrown them against a concrete wall.