The Component Run
With every piece for the Bridge wake finally aboard, the crew must run a night blockade across open water to Guardian Island's Wake Site before Harry Brown's boats — who somehow already know exactly where they're going — run them down.
The last components gathered across the Terraces, the Mines and the Rookery are loaded onto a single overloaded launch bound for the Wake Site, and the taker blockade Harry Brown has spent weeks assembling springs shut around them in open water. When their engine is shot dead, the crew rows by hand, singing to hold pace and nerve, while Skyhawks and Predator Falcons buy them air cover and a hastily built Upzie decoy peels pursuers away. They reach the Wake Site — but not before learning a tracker was sewn into their own cargo, meaning Harry Brown didn't get lucky: someone on the inside gave him the heading, and now he has the one thing they most needed to keep hidden.