Georgia sprinted down the narrow, iron-ribbed maintenance ladder, her unpowered boots clattering violently against the metal rungs. Below her, the engine room of The Iron Saint yawned like the throat of a mechanical beast. At the center of the chamber floated the gravity core. It was a massive, spinning sphere of glass and brass, suspended in a ring of magnetic stabilizers. Inside, the raw, pressurized silver-oil swirled in a violent, glowing vortex of violet light, hummed with a frequency that rattled Georgia’s teeth and vibrated through the steel soles of her boots. A high-pitched hiss echoed from the catwalks above. "She's down there!" a voice barked. "Stop her before she touches the vents!" Two vanguard guards, their white armor gleaming under the pulsing emergency lights, stepped onto the upper platform, their rifles raised. Georgia didn't look up. She threw herself toward the primary conduit pipe jutting from the base of the core's containment ring. There, bolted to the iron chassis, was a heavy, rusted brass wheel painted in chipping crimson—the emergency core-vent. She grabbed the wheel with both hands, her metal gauntlets scraping against the cold brass. "Hold your fire! You'll rupture the fuel line!" one of the guards screamed from above, rushing down the stairs. Georgia gritted her teeth, throwing her entire weight against the wheel. It didn't budge. Without the active biometrics of her armor, her own muscles were fighting sixty pounds of dead steel plus the rusted resistance of the safety lock. "Turn, you bastard," she hissed, her eyes reflecting the blinding violet glare of the core. A heavy boot slammed into her back. Georgia gasped as she was thrown forward against the hot copper casing of the core. One of the vanguard guards had reached the platform, his heavy halberd raised to strike her down. She spun, grabbing the shaft of the weapon before it could cleave her shoulder, and used the guard's own momentum to slam his helmeted head against the iron railing. He crumpled to the floor. But the second guard was already at the top of the stairs, aiming his rifle directly at her chest. Georgia looked back at the red wheel. She let out a raw, guttural cry, her fingers locking onto the spokes. She didn't just pull with her arms—she threw her entire body downward, using the dead weight of the Vanguard armor as a counterweight. CLACK. The safety seal broke. The wheel turned. One. The humming of the core escalated, rising to a piercing, deafening shriek. The silver oil inside began to froth, turning a blinding, unstable white. Two. A hot, high-pressure jet of silver steam erupted from the bypass valves, searing the left side of Georgia's face and arms. She ignored the blinding pain, her muscles tearing as she forced the wheel through its final rotation. Three. With a violent, hydraulic shudder, the wheel locked to the right. High above, in the cockpit, Corin saw the main pressure gauge on his console shatter, raining glass over his knees. The engine temperature needles plunged into the red, and the entire ship tilted backward at a terrifying angle. "Hold on!" Corin screamed, slamming the primary lift-off lever forward. Outside, the three massive magnetic cables anchoring The Iron Saint to the ground towers groaned. The steel links, thick as tree trunks, stretched taut under the sudden, immense upward thrust. The towering wooden pylons in the vanguard camp began to splinter and crack under the physics-defying tension. Then, the cables sheared. With a succession of deafening, explosive cracks that sounded like thunderclaps, the magnetic locks snapped. The severed iron lines whipped through the air, crushing the watchtowers and tearing through the camp's canvas tents in a chaotic frenzy of flying sparks. The Iron Saint shot upward like a stone flung from a siege engine. The G-force slammed Georgia flat against the metal grating of the engine room floor. She couldn't breathe, her lungs compressed under the invisible, crushing weight of the rapid acceleration. Around her, unsecured toolboxes, iron bolts, and the bodies of the unconscious guards floated for a fraction of a second in zero-gravity before slamming back down as the stabilizers tried frantically to adjust. Through the forward viewports of the bridge, the gold fires of the vanguard camp shrank into a tiny, distant pinprick in the dark mountain gorge, then vanished entirely. The ship tore through the heavy, freezing storm clouds. The violent turbulence rattled the hull, the metal plates screaming in protest as they sheared through the ice and wind. And then, suddenly, the violent shaking stopped. A breathtaking, suffocating silence fell over the bridge. Corin slowly opened his eyes, wiping a smear of soot and glass dust from his forehead. He looked out the front viewport. The storm was gone. Below them lay a vast, endless sea of gray clouds, illuminated by the cold, serene glow of the moon. Above them, the sky was a deep, velvet black, salted with a million brilliant, unblinking stars. On the floor of the engine room, Georgia slowly dragged herself up, her raw, blistered hands gripping the railing. She looked out the narrow port-hole at the starlit sky. They were free. They were in the air.

Chapter 29: The Ascendant Ash