The Juno and I hold ourselves tight against the plating and let our sensors do some work. The doors are stuck fast, but the gap is probably big enough to fit us, assuming we hold our breath. Good thing Salt’s on overwatch; the Decatur’s too big and too heavy, no matter how he folds it. We’re just over half his size, all told, and even we have to tuck our wing-mounts in behind our shoulders.

It feels strange going without them. Naked, like we’d fall if we lost our grip. I can see the froth far below us, cloud-tops dancing in the Eye-light, bright and impossibly deep.

I have to swallow a moment’s vertigo, but the Juno holds us tight and steers a free hand to touch Avery’s sword, bolted into a recess in the small of our back. The grip is solid, and fits our fingers like it’s meant to.

I take a deep breath. “Breaching.”

We press our feet against the hull, pull our grip tight, and hurl ourselves into open air. We float for a heartbeat, maybe less, but it feels like minutes.

I kick for thrust, and our engines throw us like a curveball through the doors. We come down on the deck with a trail of sparks and a shriek of steel. No space for the long-gun in here, and so we reach for the blade again, raising the other hand in a guard.

A broken Decatur rests in one corner, streaks of paint and a trail of shattered armour marking its passage across the floor. Mangled wings prop it up against the wall, one arm twisted in its socket, the other in pieces on the ground. Its chest has been torn open, split around massive rents in the armour. Not bullet holes, or rail-wounds either; if I didn’t know better, I’d say another shell tried to claw its way inside.

We feel something take a step and we spin in place, tearing our blade free of its mounts. A pale shell limps into the light. Another Decatur, missing an arm at the shoulder—missing its head and a chunk of plating where its collar used to be. The top of its spine stands out above its chest, exposing steel vertebrae and heavy-duty arteries that sway as it stumbles across the deck. Whole plates of armour have been torn from their mounts, ablatives and strike-faces stripped down to the matte-grey hull underneath. There are bullet holes, hundreds of them, outlined in carbon and spidery cracks. It looks like it flew into a hailstorm.

I can see the cockpit-pod through the gap where its collarbone used to be. Worse, I can see the jockey, hanging out of a break in the pressure-vessel. The nerve-jacks are still in contact, but they tangle around the body. An ankle holds it up, impaled on a piece of twisted steel.

The shell shivers at us. The jockey dangles, unresponsive.

The Juno and I spread our feet. The sword rules the air ahead of us, and our free hand makes a fist.