The Juno works the machinery in our right arm, flexing mechanical muscle that doesn’t feel connected to anything on the other side. My hand tingles and my heartrate climbs in time with the heat of our reactor. I understand the message.

If we can’t shoot, and can’t fight the muzzle for control, we’ll just let the whole thing go. Your average jockey fights from so far away that they’ll almost never see the opposition in person, and the companies build shells to match—machines like the Decatur in front of us, with a pair of rails so long that he has to fold their muzzles back for the breach. They’re deadly at range, but they don’t do so well when you’re stepping on their toes and aiming a battering ram at their chin.

Besides, we don’t need the hand to work. We just need it to hit.

Grit your teeth, and don’t give them anything.

“Ready?” asks Hail.

“Ready,” Salt and I reply.

“Countdown,” she says.

A red light blinks in the corner of my eye. A little tone plays in my head.

It flashes, and the sound keeps time.

Ding, ding, ding—

—deeeeeee—

It turns green, but Salt’s already on the move. One step forward and another to the right, burying the foot in the sand. He drops his left shoulder and slams it into the wall. Ruddy brick explodes around him and dust fills the air.

Hail’s Spirit zips through the haze after him, vanishes just as quickly as the Decatur did.

We throw ourselves out behind her, into open air and Eye-light, panning our weapon across a bowl of powdery sand. At least, the Juno does. It rides the transition, filters shielding its lenses as they adjust to the brightness. I’m out of practice, and not so lucky. The sudden change rides down the feeds, flows across my skull.

It’s raw, and painful enough that it dumps me back in the saddle. There’s still an edge of what I had a moment before, flashes of what the Juno can see as it turns across the open, hunting. Echoes of Hail and Salt on the network.

Clear left.

Clear right. All clear.

Fading away into a wash of static.

It leaves me cold and aching, my eyes desperately trying to adjust to light that isn’t there. It makes me dizzy, cutting back and forth between the Juno’s steady senses and my own. The machine makes the call; it drops me back into the dark with a blinding migraine and a surge in my stomach.

00.00

I can’t see.

It feels like my heart has stopped.