FIVE

 

 

I’VE BEEN ALL over on NorCol’s tab. All over, from the core to the bloody fringes, and across the border more than once. I’ve spent nearly all of that time hustled from one unfamiliar tub to another—never to anything the size of Horizon, but across every configuration of deck and bulkhead and hull that you can imagine, and a few you’d have to guess at. Century ships built by ancestor-engineers, and grandline vessels with lore and legends of their own. Fractal-shapes cooked up by neural networks and R&D acid trips. Nightmare-things built using stolen secrets, cold-forged from starlight and emptiness.

Some things change, others stay the same, even on a monster like Horizon. Even on a boat like this, bigger than anything and teetering on the edge of nothing, I don’t need a map for what I’m looking for. I follow passages I have no reason to recognise, steering by gut and instinct first, then by sound and smell. It’s a rumble in the distance, filling every vent and passage full of echoes and familiar scents. It’s a wall of noise when I find it, and a wash of heat and steam.

The chow hall is exactly what I’m expecting, exactly where I expect to find it. Long tables all in stainless steel, benches crowded with uniforms. Point-lamps glare from the ceiling, lighting cones through the low haze. One side of the hall is all countertops, the space behind them opening into the industrial workshop that NorCol probably calls a kitchen.

Half of Hangar D’s jockeys sit on one side, and half of its knuckledraggers keep to the other. A few tables mix near the middle, but they keep it personal—pilots and technicians paired off and talking shop, ignoring the odd looks they get from either side.

Hail, Salt and Lear have claimed a table to themselves, and they wave me down as soon as I clear the door. At least, Lear does. Salt has his head on the table, and Hail only looks up once I’m in range.

She spares me an eye. “Sleep all right?”

I roll my head around. “I’d forgotten what a bed felt like.”

“I’ll take that as a no.”

“You’d be right.”

“And the suit?” asks a familiar voice, just behind me.

I turn to find Arko Folau with a trayful of oily eggs in his hands, a jug of black coffee balanced on the corner.

“Better than the sleep.”

On the surface, my new flight suit is much like any other I’ve worn in NorCol’s service. There’s a conductive sleeve underneath, full-body, with fluid lines to keep you warm or cool or whatever it is you need. Over that, thick fabric mesh run through with strands of artificial muscle and covered in bands of soft armour, turquoise on a grey background. Composite plates are tucked in against my ribs, under my arms and over my shoulders, lining my hips and moulded to cushion my spine. If our shells take a hit, the inertia can kill us before the bullets do, and so the company pads our suits, covers them in carapace.

On the surface, you wouldn’t know anything was different, but I can feel where someone has tweaked it. Brand new, the suit should feel like a straitjacket. Too slow and too heavy, while its little mind gets used to wearing you.

But this one moves like it knows me.

I raise an eyebrow at Folau. “Your doing?”

He smiles, and drops himself into the seat next to Lear. “You’re welcome.”

Lear looks up from his chow. “What’re you doing here, knuckledragger? Need a map?”

Folau ignores him and gets busy on his breakfast, working his fork like a shovel. “You see, you noticed,” he says, talking through a mouthful of scramble, waving a finger at me. “Unlike my favourite Locust here. Did the same work on his suit as I did on yours, but it seems he doesn’t even need a helmet.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” growls Lear.

Folau grins at him. “Your skull is plenty thick on its own.”

“Fuck you.”

“Later, honey.” Folau taps his shoulder, right where a suit’s central processors would live. “I tweaked them, added a little homebrew. Defaults are for dipsticks.”

“Sounds like you’ve been busy,” says Hail, through a cloud of caffeinated steam. “How’d the swabbing go?”

“Swabbing?” Folau rolls his eyes. “No idea what you’re talking about.”

She grins at that. “Good thing you were so busy tweaking their suits. Newbie knuckledraggers usually get the whole hangar floor to themselves.”

I sit down across from Hail. “Thank you, Folau.”

He tips his brow at me. “You’re welcome, jockey.” He elbows Lear. “See that? Courtesy from my colleague over here.”

Lear loads his fork with a bubble of something grey and oily, flicks it between two fingers. He scores a direct hit, right in Folau’s ear.

“How are your implants doing?” asks Hail, over the noise that follows.

I set my helmet on the tabletop. “Medical pulled the last of the plugs out before I hit my bunk last night.”

I blink life into my eyes and a holographic display opens up, right above her face. I spread one of the menus with a glance and offer her a connect. She accepts, her eyes aglow for a moment as the request pops into existence where she can see, fading again as her devices pair with mine. I twitch as she filters in, a little weight settling against the front of my skull. Once Lear and Folau have finished flapping at each other, I do the same with the Locust. He reads as a wingmate, his position recorded, and medical data traded between us. Annoying right now, especially from Lear, but we’ll need to be used to it by the time the shooting starts.

I flinch at the connections. It’s been a long few years. “They’re still a bit raw, apparently.” My temples throb.

Lear looks up, but his eyes flicker and spark. He falls back, clutching at them. “Not as raw as mine,” he manages. He paws at the little streak of blood running down his lip. “Fuck.” He collects a napkin to bleed into.

Salt stirs like a mountainside and flicks another napkin across the table to Lear.

I glance at him. Lear is wearing a suit just like mine—just like Hail’s, if you don’t count all the rank and tabbing. Salt is something else.

“Didn’t they have anything in your size?”

“‘Good morning,’ you mean.” A blink, and his eyes glow golden, offering another connection to our net. His steady heart beats somewhere under all of it, just out of hearing.

“Something like that,” I reply. “Couldn’t NorCol find you anything that fit?”

He holds his hands up for inspection. He isn’t wearing the armoured gauntlets, just the soft gloves that fit the conduction layers underneath. They look thicker than mine, even with all of my hard casing counted in.

The rest of his body is covered in metal bands, with chunky bolts like lines of blisters down the sides. A fibre-mesh runs underneath, ruddy orange between slate-grey steel. It’s the kind of gear you’d expect if wars still happened on foot.

“Folau had to dig it out for me.” He nods to my helmet. “Probably older than that bucket of yours.”

I shrug. “It does what it needs to.”

“So does that.” Hail points to the yellow stuff on Folau’s tray, then waves me off my seat. “Go. Get some breakfast into you. We’ve got a long day ahead.”

“Longer than yesterday?”

She watches me, her gaze suddenly a few degrees colder. “No. But yesterday shouldn’t have happened the way it did, and it won’t again. It’s been dealt with.”

I hold my ground. “What does that mean?”

“Whatever you want it to,” she replies, low and toneless. “The Juno’s safe.”

“After everything that happened?”

“The damage is on Tower. They sent a nugget to do a jockey’s work, and they paid for it in steel.”

“And Kadi?”

Her jaw tightens. “He’s been dealt with too.” She tilts her head at the kitchen. “Go on. I need you eating.”

“It’s good,” offers Lear.

Folau nods, shedding crumbs. “Hate to agree with Locust here, but it really is. They’ve got real fuckin’ eggs, chief.”

I frown at him. “Chief?”

“That’s you.” Hail leans back, takes some of the edge off her gaze. “Standard practice. You had the highest rank before, so you’re the first in line for it now. You’re my new flight chief. Congratulations.”

“Also, we didn’t want it,” says Lear, behind his bloody rag.

Hail raises an eyebrow, but Salt stirs first. “He makes it sound like there was a vote. There wasn’t.” He tips his head. “Congratulations.”

Congratulations. Ha. First in line if Hail bites dust. First to take the reins if she gets wounded, or gee-locs through a turn. Lear made it sound like a joke, but he’s right. It’s a rough job, and anyone who had the option would pass.

Somewhere along the line, I remember to say, “Thank you.”

Hail raps a knuckle on the table. “Now get yourself fed.”

“Aye aye,” I reply, and my stomach tugs at me.

The chow line is immediately familiar. I collect a tray, and shuffle my way past sloppy eggs, spicy vitro-sausage wallowing in artificial grease, pale cheese, black beans, and folded flatbread, still hot and floury. NorCol’s grey nutri-bars have fuelled the company through more fights than anyone cares to count, but they aren’t made for comfort. In NorCol’s holds, that’s what breakfast is for.

The company’s soul is right here, floating between bubbles of imitation gristle. I don’t waste time filling my tray before tracing my way back through the noise. I set down across the table from Hail, but I can’t hold her eyes. I have to focus a little too hard on operating my fork, but it all goes down fast enough.

I probably don’t chew as often as I should. “Christs. It’s delicious.”

“Go for round two,” says Hail. “You’re going to need it.”

Lear follows me back for one of his own, and Folau helps us manage a third tray after that. We mop up, and wash it down with caffeine darker than night and thick as tar.

Hail watches. “Better?”

“In every way.”

“Good.” She crosses her arms on the table. “When you arrived, I asked you how much they’d told you.”

“Nothing,” I mutter. “Less than nothing.”

She nods. “Standard. Then you asked me where we were.”

“You didn’t give us much of an answer.” I pick at my teeth between speaking. “‘Horizon isn’t on the map,’ you said.”

“That’s because it isn’t.”

“Where are we, then?”

“That’s the trouble,” she replies, without hesitation. She’s given this talk before.

Salt spreads his hands out on the table. “Simple question, Hail.”

“Complicated answer,” she replies. “And useless without the right context. I told you that the Authority doesn’t touch your sentences, you remember that?”

Lear grumbles. “Should’ve known.”

“Why would they do that?” I clear my throat, try again. “Why go through all the trouble? I saw the paperwork—reduction of sentence is guaranteed, even if you don’t make full term.”

“Did you read it? I mean, actually read it.”

I frown at her. “Of course I did.”

Hail raises an eyebrow, but there’s half a grin beneath it. “Is that right? Do you remember what it said?”

I go and open my mouth, but I can’t find anything to say.

Salt swirls his cup, watching the reflection. “Ah. I see.”

“You remember?” Hail asks him.

“Fine print. Something about the duration of sentence, relative to what it would have been.” He furrows his brow. “It’s subjective, then?”

“It is.”

Lear rolls his eyes. “What the hell does that mean?”

Hail smiles at him without warmth. “They don’t take years off your sentence. It just feels shorter.”

I don’t understand, and I say as much.

“As I say, it’s hard to explain, but much easier to show you.” She turns on her seat, looking for something behind her. She picks out the moustache from yesterday, seated among his knuckledraggers. “Remember him?”

We do.

She nods. “Good. That’s Vikram, maintenance and scheduling for D-upper.”

Folau pulls a face. “What’s he got to do with anything?”

“How old do you think he is, exactly?”

“Fifty?” asks Lear.

“Eighty,” says Folau. “Definitely eighty. No, wait. Ninety? A hundred?”

Lear sniffs at that. “Not much good with humans, are you, greaser?”

Folau shrugs. “Two hundred? Three hundred? Throw me a bone here.”

“Fifty’s good,” says Salt.

I roll my hand. “Late forties, with some wear and tear.”

Hail shakes her head. “Folau is right. His first guess, anyway.”

Lear scoops dark caffeine out of the bottom of his mug, waves the tarry finger at Hail. “I call bullshit. No way he’s a day over sixty.”

“Biologically, he’s just had his fifty-eighth birthday,” says Hail. “Horizon medical could probably confirm that.” She leans back again. “Like to guess how long ago he was born?”

Salt smiles gradually. “More than fifty-eight years ago?”

“It’s difficult to be sure, but yes. Vik’s fifty-eight years old, subjective. Only, if you were one of NorCol’s bean counters back on Destiny, you could look up his payroll, his ID, and see that he was born on this ship about eighty years ago. Eighty and change, if you’re counting from the outside. If you’re counting at one gee.”

“You said he was born here—” I trail off. “No shimmer jumps?”

“He’s never left this ship. And Horizon has been anchored the whole time. No heavy acceleration. No shimmer.”

“How?” asks Lear.

“Not how,” says Hail. “I probably couldn’t explain it to you anyway. What’s important is where.”

“And where are we?” this from Salt.

She puts up a finger. “Give me thirty seconds.” With that, she stands, and wakes the displays in her eyes. “Read you, Switchboard. Mind getting Obs for me? Thank you.” She looks into the air above our heads, taps her foot. “Morning, Rorke, Hail here. Yes.” Another pause. “I need clearance on an Obs pod, as soon as you can get it for me.”

Her expression twists. “I’m asking nicely. This can be as difficult as you want it to be.”

She grins at the ceiling. It’s brutal. “Oh, you know I would.”

Another pause, and the smile loses all the harsh edges.

“That’s the correct answer, Observation. Thank you.” She blinks the glow away, and focusses back on us. “We’ve got clearance, but the window is short. We’ll have to run.” She raps a knuckle on my helmet. “Bring your buckets.” She spares a glance for Folau. “Sorry, greaser.”

He shrugs in his overalls. “I’ll find my own way.”

Hail doesn’t wait for us to stand. “Come on.”

We have to jog to keep up.

Salt pats Folau on the shoulder on the way past. Lear ruffles his hair. Folau replies with a well-exercised finger.

I catch Hail first. “Where are we going?”

She doesn’t break stride. “To take a peek outside.”

 

 

I EXPECT US to take another train. Everything on Horizon seems to move that way: monorail engines hurl themselves through the air over our heads and shriek through tunnels below our feet. The endless noise follows us throughout the ship.

We skip across a rail yard, between the cars of a massive train, but we don’t board. There’s a backlog. A Decatur lies on a flatbed, its feet peeking out from under an oil-stained tarpaulin. One of its hands has broken free of the rigging and dragged across the rails next door, leaving white scars across the steel. A crew of knuckledraggers is wheeling a crane around to lift it back into place.

We don’t take that train, or any other, but pick our way between the rails, catching a cargo-lift as it passes our level. It’s an open platform, wide enough that the Juno could stand in the middle with its arms outstretched.

A group of NorCol overalls watch us from between a cluster of walking loaders, passing comments we can’t quite hear. Hail glares downrange, and they turn back to their smokes and bickering.

“What’s their problem?” asks Lear, flexing his fists. “Don’t like jockeys on their deck?”

Hail spits. “Jockeys aren’t a problem, convicts are.”

It’s the same when we clear the lift, sixteen floors up. A checkpoint wants our IDs and an explanation. It happens again when a NorCol jacket and his troopers pull us over, wanting to know what we’re doing so far from the hangars.

Hail waits for them to drift out of earshot before she explains. “We’re the bottom of the ladder. To the regulars, we’re worse than the stiffs who work the bilge lines. At least they have the sense to stay out of sight.”

“Why?” I ask. “There must be cons all over this ship.”

“There are, but didn’t used to be. Used to be all professional.”

“But now we’re the ones who get the fighting done?” asks Salt.

“They don’t replace the full-timers on this ship any more, and the original units are too small for live ops. They’re spectators now, for the most part.”

He smiles broadly. “Nothing like watching from the sidelines.”

I chuckle at that. “They’re jealous of cons? Christs.”

“That isn’t all of it.” Hail ducks under a security boom that hasn’t moved in so long the rust has gummed it shut. She waits while we follow her in through the dust. “There aren’t that many full-time jockeys left. Chances are, if you see a shell walking around, there’s a con in the saddle.”

“So what? A jockey’s a jockey.”

She shakes her head. “It isn’t easy knowing someone who was in a chain-gang just a week ago could literally crush you under a thumb.”

“So why don’t you?” asks Lear, with a nasty grin. “They can only arrest you again.”

“It’s tempting,” says Hail, not looking back, “but NorCol’s got a couple of monsters on payroll, for moments just like that.” She stops us short. “Here we are.”

Lear squints into the dark. “If you say so.”

Her eyes glow. “We’ve hit the first lock,” she says to someone else.

The corridor lights up, bulbs bursting to life around us to show an airlock hatch looming over us. It stirs.

Bolts rock and seals part as the pressure equalises. Huge hydraulics add to the racket, whistling to match the creaking of the hinges. The door slips loose of its collar. It’s easily three metres thick—more of a plug than a door. Six bolts rest inside, each gleaming pin as wide as my arm is long. There’s a chamber on the other side, crowded with just the four of us inside.

“Helmets,” says Hail, pulling her own bucket up and over. “Quickly. We’re cutting this close.”

The rest of us follow suit. The helmet lock finds my collar, and this time it has something to dig its teeth into. It slides into the neck-ring and bites down, gears cycling as it locks itself around my throat.

Pressure test in progress, says a window in my visor. Air hisses past my ears. Pressure test complete. Sync with embedded systems?

‘Embedded’ below the surgical scars on my neck and behind my ears.

I blink and follow the little prompts as I see them.

My eyes feel it first, straining as the visor’s optics try to focus, the view blurring at first, but turning crisp as it finds a match.

With the helmet sealed tight, all I should be able to hear is my own breathing and the wheezing machinery that keeps the air pressure up. My wetware compensates for the silence, feeding in sound from receivers built into either side of the helmet. There’s a moment of vertigo, and my ears pop like I’m coming down from altitude. It plays with my balance, but I’ve got the sense to swallow and wait for my body to adjust.

It always feels like this. Like the steel has sprouted ears on my behalf.

My heartrate appears in the corner of the visor: steady, but faster than I’d like. Core temperature and blood pressure show up just beneath it, all normal enough. In the background, the suit takes stock of itself, working out the remaining O2 in its reserves.

There’s one more thing before the connection is complete; a little number appears in the middle of it all, right between my eyes.

00.00, it says.

That’s the pilot-sync, measured in percentage points. A record of how deep a paired machine can reach into my head, and how far I’m reaching out. The closer you are to zero, the more you are yourself. The closer to a hundred, the more you’re something else.

The last two digits flicker, just for a fraction of a second.

Somewhere far away, I can feel the Juno look up from where it stands.

Hail’s in my face before I can make more of the thought. “I said, are you sealed?” Her voice arrives direct to my ears, a repeat hitting my thoughts just as quickly as the sound finds the speakers. It’s like there’s an echo in here, one heard, one projected across the inside of my skull.

“Sealed,” I say, my voice strangely hollow.

“Sealed,” says Lear, his own echo running close behind.

“Sealed,” grumbles Salt. “This is going to take some getting used to.”

I look back at him. He’s wearing a bucket that actually deserves the nickname. Heavy bands run across the front, leaving only a narrow slit for the visor. Three camera-eyes cluster together on one corner, red lenses like a colony of blisters.

“I’ll get someone on the case,” says Hail. “We should be able to find something smaller, fudge the seals until they fit.”

Salt raps a knuckle on his jaw-plate. “I’ll take the suit as intended, thanks.”

Hail shrugs. “Your call.” She turns on her heel. “All right, Observation. We’ve just hit checkpoint 2. Good to go.”

The door slides back into place behind us, and the one ahead unwinds, mechanisms chattering. We follow Hail onto a narrow walkway maybe ten paces long.

A steel ravine stretches into the distance on either side of us. We can’t see the floor, we can’t see the ceiling, and the narrow horizon is cloudy with dust. Another door waits for us in the metal cliff ahead.

“Where are we?” I ask.

Hail smiles at me. “Between Horizon’s primary armour plates.”

We pass four more.

At the end of the line, we find a room, completely bare except for a single lamp in the ceiling. Must be the oldest thing I’ve seen on the ship so far. A crust of olive-green paint and corroded metal joins the lamp to its housing.

At first, it looks just like anything else that’s been around a few years, painted and re-painted every few maintenance cycles. It’s probably the same crew that does it—I doubt anyone else remembers where this is.

Looking closer, I realise the paint has been burned into place.

Hail faces us. “I need all of you to switch your filters on, full adaptive.”

I nod and cycle my visor settings. The world goes black for a second, and I blink again, scaling it back into grey, and finally into something closer to the way it was before.

“Ready?” she asks.

“Ready,” we reply, one after the other.

She nods, and I can just see the edge of her glowing eyes through her visor glass. “We’re here, Observation. Checkpoint 7.”

Silence for a second.

“Got it,” says Hail. “Pull the covers.”

Behind her, the wall splits across the centre. Two heavy plates roll away, and for a second, I’m blinded by the light. Every filter that can close, has.

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.”

I can feel the fear resting in the pit of my stomach, but it’s drowned out by the glow. Even with the suit doing everything it can to keep the light from baking my insides, filling me up with tumours and tremors and who knows what else, I can’t help but stretch myself out in the warmth.

“We’re holding orbit about a quarter of the way between the Transition Point and the outer sectors of the Eye.”

“Transition Point?” asks Salt.

“If you hadn’t guessed it, you’re some way out to sea, convict.” She rings a fingertip against the glass again. “Distance is a messy thing in here. The Transition Point is easy to find on this side, so long as your velocity is right, and you’re working the right equations. It’s easy enough to get back to normal space.” She cocks her helmet at the Eye. “It gets more complicated when you’re reaching for that. Every company’s tried getting closer, but no one has ever made it anywhere near. Not that I know of, anyway.” She traces an outline with her fingertip, where light curls around things we can’t see. “All we have is the rim, and it looks like you can’t reach that either, no matter how hard you push your engines. You always stall out, or find yourself turned around.”

I’m only half listening. The light holds me in place, wraps me up, washes in through my eyes, past them until it’s all I can see.

This is what it feels like to fly.

Not the turn and burn inside an atmosphere; a dirty curve of air and dust that doesn’t do it justice. The void isn’t much better; you can push yourself to the limit, pull so much gee that you’re splitting veins under the pressure, and all you’ll ever get is the pinprick scatter twisting past your cockpit.

This is what it should be.

Carried on winds that run forever, over clouds that rise like wave-tops on an endless sea.

I feel Hail’s hand on my shoulder. “We don’t have long, I need you on point.”

“Sorry.” I find her silhouetted. “Thank you,” I say, out loud, but it isn’t meant for her.

3.29, reads the counter in the middle of my visor.

The Juno has followed me out, kept just the echo of a connection between our systems. It filters in through the corners of my eyes. Something half remembered, and the feeling of wings and engine fire. Falling forever, or diving to impossible depths, fading away as the counter drops back to almost nothing.

I don’t feel the room tip. I don’t feel myself lose connection to the floor.

Hail catches me by my shoulder, hauls me up and fills my visor with her eyes. “Are you all right?”

I have to blink the sparks away. “Head rush,” I manage.

It’s a lie, but Hail doesn’t say anything more. She watches me.

I swallow and wave her away. “I’m okay. I’ve got it.”

She raises an eyebrow, but in the end, she leaves me to stand on my own two feet.

“I don’t understand,” says Lear. “Any of it. How does this change anything?”

Hail sets herself between us and the window. “Everything on this side of the Transition Point is part of an accelerated frame of reference. At this altitude, every second you spend is longer by a little less than a third of what it would be. If you fly deeper in, towards the outstations, it gets heavier. Fly back out to the Boundary, and it gets lighter.”

Lear cocks his head. “Longer than what?”

“Longer than a second at 1 gee.”

“NorCol doesn’t touch our sentences,” says Salt, “but it doesn’t have to.”

Hail nods. “You’re buying time. Twenty-four hours here is thirty and change at Old Earth standard. Ten years gets you a good return on whatever you’d have to spend in a cell somewhere else, assuming you live that long.”

“Some nasty flying out there,” says Salt, leaning for a look over the edge.

“You have no idea,” says Hail. “On this side of the Transition Point, there are four competitor machines for every one of ours.” She points upwind at something we can’t see. “Hasei has a dreadnought called the Orphan Source.” She does a moment’s calculation in her head, marks something else, this time up and to the left. “Sigurd has the Demiurge.” Now to the right. “Two Locust carriers hold near Rorschach: the Pacal and Aeryn Sun. Not as big as the dreads, but sharp enough.” One last time, down below. “Esper Kinetic has a converted seedship called the Immemorial.” She crosses her arms. “Horizon is the biggest by a long way, but don’t make the mistake of thinking NorCol is alone out here.”

“Where’s the Authority?” This from Salt, doing his own calculations.

“Outside, with a capital O. Other side of the Transition Point, where it’s sane.” Hail jerks a thumb over her shoulder. “It’s mad out here. They tried their luck after Sigurd made the first transition, but their losses weren’t sustainable. The companies have a better tolerance for it.”

“For what?”

She shrugs. “Grinding each other to a paste. Flying headlong into monster storms.”

“What could they possibly want out there?” asks Lear. “What? Don’t look at me like that—there has to be something of value. That’s the way these things work.”

“Stepping stones.”

We turn to watch Hail again. She lines us up and marks something we can see. A little dark spot against the glow, and a thin strip of shadow out behind it.

“See that?”

We do.

The clouds shift around it, but it doesn’t seem to move.

“Is that a rock?” asks Lear.

“No,” I say, “it’s matching our orbit. Look.”

But Hail shakes her head at me. “Other way round, and yes—you could call it a rock. It looks like one up close; a rock for all that you could tell the difference, but it won’t behave like one.”

“Artificial,” I reply. “That’s what you said. You called it artificial.”

“That’s because it is. That and almost every scrap of rock out there. Built, engineered, whatever. There are four more above us and eight behind us, all moving at the same speed. All keeping the same orbit from the Eye, for what that’s worth in a place like this.”

“Horizon’s moorings.”

“Everything sinks towards the centre, given enough time. Everything except these rocks. Without them, the storms would have us all over the place, and Horizon would have to burn just to keep from sinking. We don’t know how they do it, how they keep their altitude, but we stopped trying to figure it out a while back. Truth is, we need them.”

“There are others, then?”

“Thousands. Hundreds of thousands, millions. Some are small, no bigger than this room. Others are bigger than Horizon. Some aren’t much more than balls of dust, but NorCol’s found things that look like hangars, weather stations, cathedrals, and shapes we don’t have names for. So far, everything we’ve found has been uninhabited, but we’re still paddling in the shallows. A little deeper in, that might still change, we might find something that makes sense of all of this. But the truth is, we don’t know much of anything. None of this is human-origin, but nothing is natural either. That’s it. That’s what we’ve got.” She offers us a nasty smile. “This is your new day job, convicts. You are my new recovery team.”

“Recovery? You mean like—”

“Like the diplomatics do? Yes, only the Authority has too much on its plate to keep a Diplo crew flying out here, so the companies have taken over. Whatever anyone will tell you, NorCol is here to pick the bones of a dead civilisation. Same goes for everyone else.” She takes in our expressions, softens her smile just a little. “Welcome to the froth.”