Thorne woke up to the sound of rain.It was not the acid rain of the scrap heaps. It was not the golden mist of the Nolan. It was heavy, cool, and smelled like wet earth. He opened his golden eye. He was lying on a bed of cold iron inside the Earth-Fortress. His back felt like it had been welded back together by a blind man. Every time he breathed, his chest made a clicking sound."Don't move," a voice said.Su Qing was sitting next to him. She looked tired. Her hair was messy, and there was grease on her cheek. She was holding a small welding tool. She had been working on his armor while he slept."How long?" Thorne rasped. His throat felt like it was full of sand."Two days," Su Qing said. She reached out and touched his metal forehead. Her hand was cool. "The jump back to our sector was rough. The Star-Eater almost died out. But we made it."Thorne tried to sit up. The gears in his spine screamed. He ignored them. He looked through the large reinforced window of the medical bay.He

The giant iron tree stopped moving. The black space outside the Earth-Fortress was completely quiet. The ruined pieces of the Nolan Star-Crusher floated away. They looked like dead leaves floating in a dark, empty pond.Thorne sat heavily in the captain's chair. His breath was shallow. His breath was fast. The giant railgun welded to his shoulder was finally cold. His cosmic iron armor was cracked in dozens of places. Dark oil leaked from his joints. It dripped slowly onto the new green moss growing on the floor."General," Su Qing said softly.She walked up to his chair. Her boots made no sound on the thick grass. She looked at his missing left arm. She looked at his melted chest plates. Tears filled her brown eyes again. She reached out and touched his cold, scarred metal face."You won," she whispered. Her voice was shaking."We won," Thorne corrected her. He tried to smile. His metal jaw was stuck. It hurt terribly to move it. "The dirt fought back."Su Qing knelt beside his chair

The "Great Lock" was not a sound. It was a feeling. It was the feeling of a heavy door slamming shut in a deep tunnel. Space around the Earth-Fortress turned thick and black. The distant stars did not twinkle anymore. They simply vanished. The Nolan had folded the universe, leaving the iron planet alone in a pocket of nothing.Thorne stood on the high observation deck. He looked out at the void. He was no longer wearing his heavy combat armor. He wore a simple gray tunic. His missing left arm was gone, but in its place was a prosthetic made of twisted iron-wood and glowing vines. It moved when he thought. It felt like real skin, but it smelled like rain."Physics Lesson 705," Zero said. Her voice came from a small, flowering vine wrapped around the deck's railing. "Static Isolation. A bird in a cage is safe from the hawk. But if the bird learns to grow its own forest inside the cage, the cage becomes the world. The Nolan think they are the hawks. They think we are the bird. They have

The vacuum of space around Mars-3 was filled with floating debris. The black needles of the Nolan Destroyers were now jagged metal bones. The Earth-Fortress hung above the small red moon like a giant, protective shield. Its massive roots were still glowing orange, slowly cooling down after the violent jump through space.Thorne stood at the edge of the docking bay. The heavy blast doors were open, protected by a thin shimmering force-field. Below him, the mining moon looked like a wounded animal. Smoke rose from the deep craters where the Nolan beams had struck."Physics Lesson 707," Zero’s voice whispered in his ear. "Atmospheric Recovery. When a world loses its air, it dies. But if you have enough leaves, you can breathe life back into the stone. We are no longer just a ship. We are an iron lung."The first transport ships from the mines began to arrive. They were old, battered crates held together by rust and prayer. As they entered the Earth-Fortress, the miners inside gasped.The

The Earth-Fortress was silent, but it was the silence of a wounded animal trying to breathe. The white shards of the Saint-Guard ship were still hitting the red cliffs like a rain of frozen needles. Thorne lay on the ground, his face pressed into the warm, red dust. His iron armor was so hot it was cooking the moss beneath him."General! Thorne! Answer me!"Su Qing’s voice was a scream in his ear-link. He heard the sound of running boots. Then, he felt her hands. She didn't care that his armor was hot enough to burn her skin. She grabbed his shoulders and rolled him over.Thorne’s golden eye was dim. His wooden arm was a blackened, smoking branch. He looked up at Su Qing. Her face was covered in soot, and her eyes were red from the smoke."Did we... get him?" Thorne rasped."He’s gone, Thorne. You broke him," Su Qing whispered, her voice shaking. She pulled a cooling gel pack from her kit and pressed it against his chest plates. "But look at the ship. Look at what you did to the fortr