Her twelfth call to Jock — this hour — rang out. Rat winced as she flicked the phone shut. No way of telling if Jock was dead, incapacitated, or not bothering to pick up. Even Hideo wasn’t returning her calls. She didn’t want to give up hope until she knew for sure, but it was getting harder by the minute.      About fifty other people in the cafe had their...

     All sorts of thoughts were leaking out of Gina’s head as she walked across rubble, ash and molten tarmac. Visions of Rat and Bomber swam in and out of focus, interspersed with other significant memories.      Her father featured prominently. She saw Onounu, and Alfie, and even Mahmoud. Still she kept coming back to the image of Gabriel’s eyes glowing in the dark of a City...

     He turned the flight helmet over and over in his hands. Painted on the side was Pia Gonzalez’s name and callsign in red-yellow lettering, now peeling from age and neglect. The memory foam inside had reset, ready to mould itself to fit a new face, and Bomber prepared himself mentally for the process. It wouldn’t be pleasant.      The past had a funny way of catching up with...

     Gina refused to speak to anyone else. She sat by the pond in the warm night air, alone, while her emotions swung back and forth between extremes. One moment her heart would say, Artificial wombs are so expensive . . . The next, Pick up a fucking wire hanger and get this thing out of me!      Even Gabriel kept nagging at the back of her brain, wanting to know what was wrong, but she...

     The three of them stood in the shadow of Bomber’s helicopter, staring up at the massive grey airship through the fog. Red and blue landing lights blinked slowly on and off along its sides. Gina followed the black dot of her father’s dropship as it made its final approach. A large panel swung out from the side of the skybase, marked with the Federation black sunburst, offering a helipad on which to...