I lean over the end of my bunk and fish a ball of socks from inside one of my ship-side boots. The socks are NorCol’s blue-grey, coarse, and almost comically thick. Ships’ decks are always cold—there’s no getting around that—just not the kind that gives you frostbite. The company might be callous, but it understands human beings just enough to know that it ought to insulate the living quarters. The same doesn’t go for hangars, though. Shells don’t feel the cold.

I look at the little Juno.

Not unless you let them.

The socks go on first, and a thick pair of fatigue greys. A pullover comes from my locker, and I grab one of NorCol’s long coats off the hook behind my door, let it settle on my shoulders. The coat is almost brand-new, complete with my unit tabs and an embroidered strip that reads ROOK in dark capitals. I set a flight chief’s pin in the collar; I may be a con, but the pin has its own kind of weight. At the very least, the stiffs won’t look surprised when they earn themselves a boot.

After that, I go hunting for my gloves. The left goes on easily enough; the right hurts just as much as I’m expecting it to.

It wasn’t always like this. The original designs didn’t feed damage back to the jockey, not like they do now. They gave a little spark to draw your attention, but any part of the shell too damaged to move would register by going numb. That was the problem. Pain is easy; human beings hurt all the time, and we’re built to take it, body and mind. Sudden numbness means something has gone wrong—that you’ve taken a hit that’s so big, so total that your body can’t fully process it yet. The original designs didn’t survive because they kept sending jockeys into shock.

Feeling like I’ve broken a hand is better than the alternative, but it should have faded by now. I shake myself out, for all the good it does me. The ache still follows me: out through my lock and into the service passages behind it. Two doors down from there, a quick check for pressure, and I’m out into the hangar beyond.

It’s dark, and frosty without my flight suit. The block is in its night-cycle, lamps dimmed and heating at bare minimums. It’s quiet, but I can hear the rush of launching machinery on the far side the hull, and the crump and squeal of shells coming down in faraway blocks. I walk through the middle of the night, listening to a busy day in the distance.