I nod, and blink my way past the locks. The seals pop with a hiss of escaping air, and the suit goes limp. I twist the helmet off its ring and haul it over my head. The air is icy against my hair, bitter and salty from whatever it was they used to wash me down.

I hold it out for him, but pull it back. “Lose it,” I say, a thumb over my shoulder at the Juno, “and we’ll kill you.”

It’s a whole second before he decides if I’m joking or not. He tugs at his covers to get at the jacket underneath, showing me a name: Andrade, embroidered light blue on a dirty tab. Beneath that is a strip of unit markings. He might as well have given me his home address. He waits for me to read it. “That won’t be necessary.”

The private is back, but she’s keeping her distance now, gaze slipping from the sergeant, to me, to the machine watching over us all.

“Whenever you’re ready,” she whispers.

I break the clasps around my neck, and two more behind the collar. “Your turn.”

She fumbles the rest of the way down my spine, and offers her shoulder for balance as another of her squad helps tug me clear of the armoured outer skin. Arms first, and the chest-plates with them, leaving me standing in black conductives from the waist up. I don’t have gloves any more, and so the private pulls my boots for me, taking turns with the other trooper to prop me up along the way. Together, they thread me out of the last of the flight suit and set me down on dry ground.

When I look up, the rest of the crew is already cleaning up, pushing ruddy water along the ground with the hose. The sergeant stands off to one side, my helmet in one hand, a silver blanket in the other.

He offers both. “I knew the last jockey who worked it.” He nods up at the machine above us. “The Juno. Didn’t think I’d see it fly again.”

“You used to be decontam for this bird?”

He gives me that strange look again. “Something like that.”

I pull the blanket around my shoulders and take the helmet on its straps. I feel almost feverish. “Thank you, sergeant.”

He shakes his head, but motions for the other corner of the hangar. “I’d get clear before they start.”

I turn to see another crew approaching. Their hoses look like the kind you use to put out fires, three jackets to a line, and instead of spraycans, they have pressurised tanks.

I look up at the Juno, and it looks down on me. I can hear the tick of systems rolling down inside my helmet, and only just feel the last nets shuttering. The connection slips away, but not all at once. The Juno’s watching me.