The sled did not drop straight. It tore sideways along a broken gravity rail, sparks fanning out as the mag-plates fought to hold. Chains screamed. The two maintenance cradles bucked like hooked fish. Bodies slammed into lattice walls. Someone's arm snapped with a crack like dry wood.
"Hold the couplers," Tyven roared from the control yoke. Pistons in his exo-frame hissed as he leaned into the manual brake lever.
A cable snapped behind us with a gunshot pop. The rear cradle lurched, swung out, then smashed back into the rail spine. Three people flew. One hit the frame and burst like fruit, red and white across the steel. The other two pinwheeled into the dark and vanished in smoke.
Naeva gripped the support strut beside me, knuckles bloodless, eyes locked on mine. Dirt streaked her face, yet she was steady. My shoulder burned like a furnace, but I held the line and kept my feet. We were not adding new wounds today. Not us.
The sled struck a kink in the rail and rolled halfway onto its side. Everyone slid. Boots scraped. Fingers clawed for purchase. A noble in a shredded emerald coat kicked a Companion away to gain a grip. Rell yanked the Companion back with one hand and smashed the noble's face with the butt of his spanner. Teeth scattered. The noble tumbled out between the rail slats and vanished.
Ahead, the main descent conduit opened into raw structure. Skyterra's underbelly was a maze of dangling gantries and hanging cables. No solid tunnel. Only a web of transit lines twisting downward in arcs. Sections of the upper city had fallen through here. Slabs of habitat decks hung by half-melted beams. Fire streamed upward like an inverted waterfall.
"Splice incoming," Danika shouted. Her good arm was jammed into an access panel, hotwiring a secondary grav-pad. "We jump lines or we ride this into a dead loop."
Tyven cursed. "Give me a vector."
"Left drift, seventeen degrees. Grab the orange spine."
"Orange?"
The sled careened. There was no orange, only rust and haze. Tyven hauled the yoke anyway. The sled skated across a void, mag-field whining, then slammed onto another rail that bowed under our weight. Bolts sheared. The structure sagged. A chorus of screams rose.
A heavy service winch above tore loose and swung. Its steel cable whipped across the cradle, slicing a man in half at the waist. His upper torso flopped into the sled, eyes blinking, mouth working. Sister Mave, a ground-born medic in a gray veil, shoved him back out before the rest of him spilled. She cried as she did it, then kept moving.
Something black clattered along the overhead truss. Eight legs. Acid hissed. A drop splattered a girl's cheek in the front cradle. She clawed at her face. Skin slid off like wax. Joren slammed a power cell into his coilgun and fired a tight radiation burst. The creature's carapace blistered. Two legs snapped. It toppled into the abyss, acid trailing like comet dust.
"Another," Lyss shrieked, pointing. Two more skittered along a hanging beam, mandibles chattering. Platform turrets below tried to pivot, but their tracking was ruined. One spat. The glob hit a heavy cable above us. The cable smoked, then snapped. It fell like a guillotine, decapitating three people in the maintenance cradle. Blood sheeted. Bodies twitched, still strapped.
The sled ground into a transfer brace. Tyven dumped power. We skidded onto a half-collapsed docking ring: Transfer Tier Kappa, peeling yellow paint. Half the deck was gone, opening into a chasm where the city's ribs arched into smoke. Dozens were already there: fighting, bleeding, begging.
Vehicles cluttered the platform. Most were dead husks. One still lived: a battered grav-barge with external harness racks, built to ferry ore drums along the lower arcs. Its pilot argued with four hybrid soldiers over the throttle.
"It only goes down-core," the pilot yelled, voice breaking. "No cosmics, no uplink, no jump. Down or nothing."
"Down is fine," the tallest hybrid said. His jaw was chrome, eyes black glass. "Move."
He shot the pilot in the leg. Not lethal. Just cruel. The pilot screamed. The hybrids began loading.
We bailed off the sled. My boots hit hard. The world tilted. I swallowed the urge to black out. Naeva was at my side instantly, hand on my back, eyes scanning for threats even as she fought the urge to scrub blood off her knees.
"Kael, focus," she whispered. "We need seats. Now."
Rell and Danika sprinted for the barge's side rails. Joren dragged the last crate of cells, face ash-gray. Sister Mave pulled two children in sky-blue uniforms behind scrap and told them to shut their eyes. Tyven slammed the sled's emergency locks and kicked the last survivors onto firmer footing.
More people poured in. A preacher in a soot-black cassock screamed about repentance. A woman in an exo-sleeve laughed hysterically. A man with both legs broken crawled, leaving twin red smears.
The monsters hit the rim.
Acid steamed across the deck. Steel screamed and buckled. One leg punched through the barge's side plating. The hybrids opened fire with beam rifles. One creature reeled, armor cracking. The second spat at the fuel manifold. Danika dove and slapped a sealant patch onto the leak. The patch smoked but held.
"Load it," Tyven bellowed. "We do not have time."
We shoved people into harness racks, strapping them until leather snapped. Someone bit me. I elbowed him off. He rolled under a cargo tire. Crunch.
Naeva pushed a sobbing Companion boy into a cradle, wiped his face with her filthy sleeve, murmured, "Close your eyes, little one." He nodded, instantly obedient. She turned and saw a woman's hand clawing at the barge lip, nails tearing. Naeva grabbed her wrist and hauled her in with a grunt that sounded more like anger than fear.
A cable above gave way with a deaf shriek. It whipped across the platform and smashed through three people at the waist. Upper halves flopped into the barge. One head landed in my lap. I shoved it off, bile burning my throat.
"Seal," Tyven yelled.
"Not yet," Rell shouted back. "Joren."
Joren hurled the last plasma cell into the barge bay. "Done."
A black leg stabbed through the deck where he had stood. He rolled. Acid sizzled on his coat. He screamed and tore it off before it fused.
Naeva shoved him into a seat. "Sit. Shut up. Breathe."
"Seal it," Danika snapped, slamming the cargo latch. Tyven hit ignition.
The grav-barge lurched, coughed, then surged off the cracked ring. Cables snapped behind us like broken harp strings. We hung in open space for a heartbeat, then the ventral thrusters caught the next arc-rail. We skated downward along a spiraling spine of bent steel and hanging pylons. No shaft. No walls. Only open superstructure collapsing as Skyterra hemorrhaged itself into freefall.
Above, Platform Kappa imploded. The monsters shrieked. The preacher fell with it, arms spread.
Wind tore at us. Blood misted off the deck and vanished into the dark.
The barge jolted. One side dropped as a stabilizer failed. Everyone slid. Harnesses snapped. Sister Mave caught a child by the ankle as he went over the edge. Rell grabbed her belt and held. His shoulder dislocated with a pop. He screamed and did not let go.
I threw my weight to the high side, dragging Naeva. We slammed into the railing. It bent. Held.
The barge bucked again. A cable thicker than a tree trunk swung across our path. It caught the nose and ripped off the sensor mast. Sparks cascaded. Pilot controls flickered. Tyven swore, yanked a manual stick that should not have existed, and wrestled the barge like a feral beast.
"We lose the rail in thirty seconds," Danika shouted, eyes on a dying display. "After that it is gravity and prayer."
"Then we jump rails again," Lyss yelled, suddenly there, soaked in someone else's blood, pupils blown wide. "See that blue ribbon ahead? That is a coolant spine. It curves to the core drop. Hit it or die."
Tyven grinned. "Love your optimism, kid."
The barge slammed off the current line, dipped, belly-scraped a crossbeam, rattled teeth. The blue spine loomed, faint in the smoke. Tyven gunned the thrusters, clipped the spine, and slid onto it. Sparks screamed under the hull.
We held.
The city above howled as another section tore free. A rain of debris chased us: flaming furniture, shattered glass, a gilded balcony spinning end over end. It smashed into the maintenance cradle chained to our rear. The cradle disintegrated. A dozen souls vanished in a spray of red vapor.
Naeva pressed her forehead to mine for one breath that tasted like ash and iron. "We are still here."
"We stay that way."
The blue spine dove toward lower girders. Below, through smoke and fire and falling steel, a smear of gray horizon showed where the ground waited like a forgotten memory.
We were not there yet. Not close. But the sky behind us was dying, piece by burning piece, and we were still moving.