We don’t have time to return the gesture. The train throws us back in our seats, pulls a couple of gee right out of the platform. It’s made to carry parts for Horizon’s massive guns, but a couple of jockeys is all that’s slowing it down now, and that isn’t saying much—or anything.

The first few seconds are a blur, the kind of acceleration that I’m used to in a shell, but the ride gets better after that. The seats are bolted to the deck, and there’s a windshield up ahead, but the sides are open, with a thin steel mesh stretched across where doors would normally be. If you could fly a shell with the top down, this is how I’d imagine it.

We shriek past crowded platforms, some writhing and shouting and lit orange by emergency lamps, others quiet and dim. A few jackets just stand and watch us pass, some offer passing words and single-finger salutes.

The line carries us through open air as Hangar D opens up around us, but we don’t stop. The track runs up and over crowded railyards, monorail queues nearly a K long in places, empty lines around them. NorCol efficiency at work.

The tram rolls to a halt on the edge of an actual engineering bay, sandwiched between C and D. The platforms are empty; they aren’t expecting anything from gunnery, after all. We follow Masz’s directions from the platform: first a left, then another, until we find a former Hasei con by the name of Silver holed up in an office box, patchwork diagrams on the walls that she sketched out by hand. It seems like every second person on this boat was brought here in chains.

She’s as prickly as the gunner said she’d be, but she takes a second to read Salt’s tattoos. Apparently she speaks colonial, and they trade a couple of barbs. Her eyes light up when we ask her if she can smuggle us past the snafu.

“Seriously, fuck this place,” are her last words as she sends us off, a priority line diverted from carrying spares to hauling a pair of jockeys instead. It glides into the space beneath our berthing blocks, leaving us to follow the inner hull on rusty ladders and rattling gangways. We have to jump across breaks in the plating, balance along paths and pipes and other things never designed to take our weight.

We take an elevator for the last stretch and find our way to my doorstep.

“See you on the other side.”

Salt nods. “If there is one.”

I blink my way past the locks and find the Juno’s ground crew on the other side. I’m expecting chaos, but they’re sitting on their thumbs, listening to the siren calls. Folau and Avery stand as I push my way to the centre.

“Rook.”