The ships of the Fourth Sphere fleet watching the planet opened fire with torrents of shells that exploded in low orbit. Waves of haywire energy and shrapnel ripped swarms of machines apart and sent them tumbling back down to the red dust below. Some remade themselves as they fell, flame-wreathed metal knitting together, wreckage gathering into new shapes that clawed back up into the sky.

Long gone was the silence that had wrapped Camba Diaz as he waited for this battle. Every ship and every channel echoed with the shaking roar of war. He heard it all, a deluge of sound: shouts echoing over breaking vox-channels, orders given with last breaths, the metallic howl of beast-machines rising through the air. Shells and munitions were exploding amongst the ships now. Scrap code bored into communications signals and spilled over into sensor units.

Camba Diaz listened, then cut the links and spoke to the warriors that had followed him through half a decade of war.

‘Break them,’ he said, his voice not loud, but weighted, a promise as much as a command.

Chaos spread through the defenders’ battle line. A wave of torpedoes, launched from a quartet of monitor ships, detonated as they exited their tubes, ripping the ships apart. The macro-carrier Daedalus vented atmosphere from two-thirds of its decks as scrap code flooded its cogitator systems. Squadrons vanished in spheres of cold light.

But Camba Diaz’s ships had faced and fought the forces of the false tech-priests many times. They heard the word of their commander and rose to meet their enemies without pause.

Seventeen

Within sight of safety
Occult resonance
Old friends

Freighter ship Antius, Jovian Caul

Mersadie held her breath for a moment, eyes closed, letting sound recede. The reek of blood and ash was thick on her tongue.

Blood on matted fur…

Teeth…

Vengeful Spirit…

Maloghurst’s eyes looking at her…

‘Loken, these are civilians.’

She released the breath and opened her eyes. Frightened faces turned towards her. Lights blinked on consoles. Hands trembled where they rested on levers and dials. In her niche, Chi-32-Beta was shivering in her cocoon of cables. The blood had clotted but the enginseer had curled her body into a tight ball. The rest of the crew stood, waiting. There were dock officers, a shuttle pilot, a bonded maintenance adept and landing guides. She had no idea if they knew enough to control a ship in the void for even a brief time. She had no idea whether or not they would fall apart when the next slice of the future fell. She had no idea if she would fall along with them. She thought of the hundreds of people still in the rest of the ship, of Noon and Mori huddled together in their stateroom.

‘Go,’ she said. At the helm, the big pilot called Gade nodded and tensed to pull down a brass lever. His skin was ice-pale.