“Two hundred and seventeen, subjective. Two hundred and seventeen years, and they still have no idea what’s out there. No idea what to do with all of the things we bring out of the froth. You should see the storage vaults. The things we’ve found. It all just sits and rots.”

“So you got ahead. You got someone to hack into Sigurd’s beacon. Pulled the logs.”

“I did what I had to.”

“Was it worth it?”

Hail shrugs. “Most of it was encrypted, obviously.”

“Sure.”

“And what was left was fuzzy, like it had hit a storm. We did get a look at the run time, though. The beacon was broadcasting when it made landfall, but the signal died eleven hours before we arrived.”

I frown at her. “But the hollows—” I trail off. “Those bodies were older than that.”

“Much.” She takes a sip of black tar, flinches at the taste. “If it was a storm that made a mess of the logs, it did a number on the power source as well. A couple of systems survived, but it was all backup and redundancy. Not enough to keep the beacon running as intended.”

“So what do you think happened? Sigurd hears a squealer, scrambles, but the signal dies before they arrive.”

“They triangulate.”

“And bump into Hasei, who’s been doing the same.”

Hail sets her cup down. “It isn’t supposed to go that way. Beacons don’t squeal on open bands.”

“Where I come from they do.”

“Yes, but where you come from, a distress beacon means you’re trying to be rescued.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Surprisingly, yes.”

“Out here, it isn’t so simple.”

“You mean, the companies will kill their crews before they point the way to something valuable.”

“More or less.” She rubs her eyes. “Thing is, this one was open wide. No ciphers, none of Sigurd’s proprietary access-control. Anyone with ears and an antenna could hear it.”

“Why? Why do that?”

She shrugs. “Someone wanted it found, and not just by Sigurd.”

“Or not by Sigurd at all.”

Hail clicks a finger at me. “Exactly.”

I sit back. “They couldn’t hide from their own, though.”

“They tried.”

I frown at her.

“The signal cut out eleven hours before we arrived, but it only started eight hours before that.”

“If Sigurd only launched when they heard the squealer, then those shells put out—”

I already know the answer. Sigurd-Lem sent four hollow shells out into the wind, and four dead jockeys, still strapped to their saddles like it didn’t make a difference.

For what?

“Those machines had been running on their own for weeks, no human interference,” says Hail. “Judging by the state the jockeys were in. They were cold when they launched, doing their own thing. Haywire, hollow, whatever you want to call it.”