Chapter One: Tomorrow in the Wheel

Missing outside the city for eight years, it had rolled up to the southern gate yesterday under its own momentum. Its batteries were dead, its navigation log empty, and its four wheels had become three and a half. A black fracture split the right front wheel from rim to bearing like a dry riverbed. Han Tuo was chief mechanic and, officially, her master. He was fifty-seven, missing two fingers on his left hand, and fond of tapping her helmet with the three that remained. “Mark it for scrap,” he said. “Material fatigue. Melt the whole wheel.” “It isn’t fatigue.” “Broken is broken.” “Natural cracks go around the high-density lattice. This one cuts through it.”