CHAPTER 1: THE FRICTION OF IRON
The heat inside the hangar didn’t move; it settled into the marrow like the damp air of a low-altitude tarmac before dawn. Frank “Mac” MacAllister kept his right thumb hooked inside the lip of his denim pocket, his skin catching on the coarse weave until it met the cold, hexagonal flats of the brass nut. He rolled it twice. The metal was dull, stripped of its plating forty years ago by hydraulic wash, but it remained heavy enough to anchor his hand.
Above him, the underbelly of the shuttle rose like a blackened cliff. The silicate tiles were scarred, pitted by fires that had burned out before the kid in the blue polo shirt had even learned to draw breath.
The kid was loud. It wasn’t the volume of a man who wanted to be heard; it was the sharp, aggressive pitch of a modern creature who assumed the world was an unmonitored hallway. He had his palm flat against the anodized aluminum stanchion that held the woven boundary rope, leaning his athletic frame forward until the braided nylon groaned under the tension. His khakis were crisp, the crease down the front sharp enough to cut lard.
“Look at the sign,” Frank said. His voice didn’t carry through the hangar; it stayed low, dropped directly into the two-foot space between them like a dry washer on a bolt. “It says keep clear of the landing gear assembly.”
The kid didn’t take his hand off the stanchion. He turned his head sideways, his eyes scanning the faded blue lettering on Frank’s cap before settling on the deep, cross-hatched wrinkles around Frank’s jaw. A small, thin smirk twitched the corner of his mouth—the specific look of a man who calculated value by the speed of a stride and found Frank entirely bankrupt.
“I’m just getting a look at the hydraulic lines, old man,” the kid said. His tone had the slick, transactional grease of a city salesman. He shifted his weight, his shoulder checking Frank’s left flank to clear a path toward the restricted platform. “Some of us have a schedule. Move out of the way before you get hurt out here.”
Frank didn’t shift his boots. They were old leather, the soles worn flat but wide, planted against the gray concrete with the absolute stillness of a bulkhead. He felt the grease-slicked air of the hangar pass through his teeth as he breathed. He didn’t look at the crowd that was beginning to slow down near the cockpit replica twenty yards away; he looked at the bridge of the kid’s nose, right where the bone met the cartilage.
“I’ve stood my ground against far worse than you,” Frank murmured.
The kid laughed—a dry, sharp bark that died instantly in the vast overhead rafters. He took a full step forward, his chest crowding Frank’s shoulder, his right hand rising to shove Frank’s chest away from the rope. The movement was fast, driven by the easy confidence of a man who had never felt his center of gravity stolen by someone who knew exactly where the human skeleton failed under load.
Frank’s hand came out of his pocket. His fingers were stiff with the early winter chill, but the wrist was grease-hardened and heavy. He didn’t strike; he simply cleared the space between his ribs and the kid’s advancing palm, his forearm catching the kid’s sleeve with a dry, sand-paper scrape that turned the momentum entirely sideways.
Underneath the black tiles of the shuttle, something small and metallic—a forgotten inspection tag Frank hadn’t noticed during his morning rounds—swung loose against the main landing strut, its copper wire snapping with a sudden, high-pitched ping that echoed off the concrete.
