At dawn, the sky above Aurelia looked like a cracked pearl. Light seeped through veils of vapor, turned the sail membranes honey‑gold, and woke the cables with a soft groan. Leena Okoye stood on a catwalk three hundred meters out from the central mast, gloved hands tucked under the glossy lip of a support girder. The air tasted faintly of salt and ozone, and the skin behind her ears prickled with the low, steady hum of the turbines. She closed one eye and watched the world move: the sky city of Skydrift swayed, gentle as a breathing animal; the ballast balloons, mottled and iridescent, expanded and released; the long kites drank the wind and angled it into usable force.
A gull analogue—more jellyfish than bird—bobbled in a buoyant updraft, tentacles tucked like a skirt. Leena smiled into her mask. “Go on, little parachute,” she whispered.
“Back on task, Okoye,” Rafi called from behind her. He clambered onto the catwalk with the easy arrogance of someone who had never fallen. His harness carabiner sang as it clipped, a sharp bright note in the morning’s dull choir. “C‑11’s guidance fin is fluttering again. Havel will grind my bones if we lose another kilowatt.”
“Governor Havel grinds everything,” Leena said. “Bones, budgets, patience.” She lifted the panel that hid the fin’s control spindle. Its housing smelled of hot polymer and lubricants. Her fingers found the set screw by reflex, and she tuned by ear and fingertip, quarter turns until the vibration slipped out of the teeth of her perception.
HELIA’s voice entered their helmets as a golden thread. “Guidance fin C‑11 within tolerance. Wind shear is increasing by two percent. Thank you, Leena.” The station AI’s tones shifted like sunlight through water.
“HELIA, schedule a check on the mast bearings,” Leena said. “They’re developing a sigh.”
“Noted,” HELIA said. “And poetic.”
“You’re rubbing off on each other,” Rafi muttered, but he grinned. His front tooth was chipped, a pale crescent. “Sori’s been asking for you. Something about lunch. Algae noodles with a crime scene of chilies.”
Leena secured the panel, gave it a testing knock, and started back along the catwalk. The wind pressed her suit to her ribs. Skydrift spread around them, a city of nets and rings and laced platforms, draped across the sky. Below, the cloudline was not a line so much as a threshold, a dim, rolling sea of white. No one went through it, not since the last descent years ago had returned a suit shredded like a moth’s wing.