Our sensors didn’t come back with much, but one thing’s for sure: this little pod isn’t killing anyone today. It doesn’t have any guidance fins or engines. No fuses, and no kind of warhead that any of us can see. It’s not a mortar or a mine, not a torpedo or an IED. Nothing that will sink one of us with it.

Hasei and Sigurd were fighting over something else.

“Didn’t think so,” she says. Even if Salt and I had anything to offer, I don’t think she’d let us another step closer. She hadn’t known Lear all that long, but that changes nothing. She’s the one with the officer’s stripes, and she’ll be feeling the weight of them now. I’ve done the same several times before—put my neck on the line to stop them getting any heavier. “Cover me.”

Salt and I hold our positions, fingers on triggers and eyes on the sky. Hail takes the last few steps and sets her machine on one knee, spreading a hand flat against the capsule’s metal skin.

Now there’s something you don’t see every day.

She leans in, and her shell quivers. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was a shiver riding her spine, or a sudden twitch of nerves. I do know better, though. Her machine is slowing down, and doing everything it can to make itself quiet.

I always thought it was a Search and Rescue trick. You lean against whatever it is that you’re about to pry open, and make use of the most sensitive surfaces of your hull—your hands or feet. S&R would use it to check a shuttle that looks like it’s still pressurised, or a machine that’s dead but not broken, with the jockey still inside.

Palm’s best—you press it flush against the other hull, as close as your machine can manage. And then you listen. For the first few seconds, it’ll sound like you’re underwater, but that clears up quickly enough. That’s when you take the other hand, and knock. If you hear an echo, it’s still got pressure. If it rings like a bell, whoever’s inside is holding their breath.

The capsule is only just big enough to take a single human being, assuming they didn’t have to breathe for long, and didn’t need all that much to drink. But then, Hail probably isn’t listening for air. As much as she trusts her instruments, I’ll bet that there’s a pit in her stomach just like mine.

If it’s a warhead, there’ll be a solid core. If it’s solid, she’ll hear it easily enough.

I grit my teeth. Gently now.

The seconds pass, cold and quiet.

“All clear,” she says, finally.