“Urgh. Here,” Kiem said. “At least, I think I am. Ow.” He sat up, in spite of an involuntary noise of protest from Jainan, who was thinking about broken ribs and internal injuries. But the movement didn’t seem to cause Kiem any more pain. He rubbed his head, looked around and said, “What h— Oh. Shit.” He jerked forward, drawing another half-formed protest that Jainan hadn’t meant to make, and grabbed Jainan’s arm. “Are you hurt?”

“No,” Jainan said, and Kiem released his grip. Jainan looked Kiem over closely. He raised his hand to a red graze on Kiem’s temple, not touching it.

“You went through the dome.”

Kiem started to say something but seemed to stutter. His eyes went to Jainan’s hand, and Jainan became aware he had brushed the hair away from Kiem’s forehead as if he had some sort of right to. He drew his hand back.

Kiem cleared his throat. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, that wasn’t in the plan. It’s just a graze. Could do with a stim tab, maybe.” He pushed himself to his feet, and dismay wrote itself across his face as he looked at the flybug. “Tell me this wasn’t because of the stunt we pulled with the river.”

Jainan stood as well, finding his limbs unexpectedly clumsy. It was hard to balance. “No,” he said. Planetside craft weren’t his specialty, but he knew the basics. “Nothing the stabilizers are linked to would have that effect.”

They both looked in silence at the remains of the flybug. The bulk of the shell was intact, but the front had been comprehensively smashed by the sheet of rock below. Much of the crumpling would have been intentional, built into the structure, but it was still only chance that they had survived.

“We got lucky,” Kiem said. “We were flying very low.”

He was right. If they’d been at a normal flying height, or in the tunnels, they would have had no chance. “Yes,” Jainan said. He didn’t want to think of the implications. The cold wind felt like it was boring into his bones.

“It was … an accident?” Kiem said. He sounded as if he would like that to be true but wasn’t holding out a lot of hope.

Jainan jerked his head around to look at Kiem. Of course, Kiem wasn’t an engineer, and he wouldn’t have understood the sound and location of the explosion. “It was a compressor failure.”

“Is that what took out—”

“—Taam’s flybug?” Jainan said emotionlessly. “Yes.”

Kiem winced. “I’m starting to hate flybugs.” He leaned over it and thumped

one of the crumpled panels, which broke off. “We’ve clearly pissed someone off. Shame we have no idea who.”