I push the buzzard hard all night, running the aircraft to the point of overheating until, at noon the next day, I reach the station Bebe talked about. I land the buzzard in the holding pen near the stable, keeping my head low beneath the Marshal’s hat. No one looks at me much, and if they do they recoil in distaste. With a surge of relief I see the Charis docked at the far end, looking shabbier than ever, but locked up. Shouldering the pack, I set off to find the others.

For a no-hope, hard-bitten place in the middle of nowhere, Drax is busy. There are miners from the mineral pits, leaving on rotation or reluctantly returning. Mica dust is engrained in the pores of their skin and the lines of their faces, so that they shimmer strangely in the light. There are traders with wagons of supplies – airtights and illegal water canisters and soil bulkers and pre-spawned fungus blocks – on their way to the settlements, and a snake oil salesman, displaying serpent wines labelled Rượu Rắn and coils of dried meat and vials of “restorative” venom. Two grubhawkers, hoping to outdo each other, snatching sales from the bored and the hungry.

But, to my dismay, the place is crawling with Accord. It doesn’t take me long to realise there must be a fort nearby, and that the station exists mostly to support it. From here, the Accord draft in new recruits, promising decent food, pay, and most alluring of all, the chance to leave Factus.

The street outside the Air Line platform is crowded, folk jostling and pushing to get a look at something that gleams on the track. I stop among them. It’s the strangest Air Line wagon I have ever seen. It squats on the rails like a huge, metal insect, windowless and armour-plated, shining with newness, sparking with small lights that tell of high-grade tech. It looks like something from another world. Which it is.

‘What the hell?’ I murmur, as figures in Accord uniforms start to emerge, filling tanks and checking panelling.

‘It’s an Iron Slug,’ a woman in dark-lensed glasses beside me says, chewing hard on her century leaves. ‘Came from Landfall before sun-up. We ain’t never had one here before. Not even when they finally caught the Chow Baron. They transported him to trial on the regular Air Line, in a crate.’

‘It’s for prisoner transfer?’ I look again at the soldiers. These aren’t sun-worn, hungry, hastily instructed local recruits. They’re Air Fleet: well-trained, well-armed. Well able to hold their own.

‘Sure.’ The woman sucks her green teeth. ‘And I’ll tell you this for free—’ She stops, seeing me for the first time. I catch a glimpse of myself in her lenses, wrapped neck to brow in yellow-stained bandages. ‘Ugh,’ she utters, edging away from me without another word.