I have lost my shell.

“Where are you, old bird?” It comes out a whisper.

The cockpit quakes around me.

00.89

00.00

I almost saw it there. A spark in the distance, too fleeting to follow.

The hull thunders as metal meets metal outside. I can hear the joints scream and whistle, hydraulics rumbling around me. I can feel the Juno turn, feel it shift its balance as it brings the sword around.

We aren’t dead yet.

I can hear the sound of our steps, and behind them, the edge of something else. A light step, skipping around us almost faster than the Juno can match. The sword makes contact with something, hits so hard it almost throws me back, and my sweat runs cold.

The thing in the hangar was a Decatur once, but its steps were ragged, dragging along the deck or jerking out of sync. This is lighter than that. More controlled. This sounds like Salt.

My heart stops. We are hollow.

1.13

Not yet.

An ancient display crackles and skips as it finds its way back to life. I recognise it: part of the old control surface, built into the walls of the cockpit when the Juno’s keel was first set. This machine is ancient; it’s easy to forget that. The nerve-jacks and pilot-sync came late in the game, bolted on over things that would let you move the shell around by hand, the way things had been done for centuries. Long-dead jockeys flew it with steel between their fingers and pedals under their feet, the outside filtered in through cameras and fibre-optics.

The old displays are still intact, and they’re waking up again, casting everything in a gentle silvery glow.

Juno, says a brass plaque just below the console.

Mk. 13, no. 11327

Savoi Roth Shellyards, 2219 AD

And Thus always to tyrants, engraved in bold.

The widest display glows brightest, a black mirror that warms into grey, static prickling through the dust on its surface.

JunOS

ver. 181.83-31

settles in the middle of it, pale-blue letters on a field of charcoal, blurry through a film of oil and grime. They flicker, then disappear from the display.

Boot, says the screen.

Text falls from the ceiling to the floor, flowing like a waterfall of code. It moves so fast I can barely follow, then stops suddenly, with a single letter flickering in the centre of it all. A single symbol, machine-speak shorthand, hovering in the middle of everything I can see.

It disappears. A little red spot takes its place, bloody bright on a field of grey and pinpricks.

Warning, says another part of the display. Hostile command injection detected.

The red spot blooms, spreading out across the displays, leaving new marks like spatter on every surface. Red drowns the silver-blue, replacing familiar shapes with words I don’t recognise and symbols I can’t read.

I can’t help but stare. “What are they?” I whisper.

00.91

They are a flood.