I follow the mark, but our eyes can’t see past it. Something drifts into the light, glows like a dust mote. Salt pushes me the feed from his eyes, and I let it run: a Decatur’s arm, shattered at the shoulder, trailing cable and oil.

“Christs.”

The hangar doors stop dead while we watch, less than a third of the way open. We still can’t see past the glare, but we already know what we’re up against. If either of the two shells are still alive, they’ve taken a beating already. We either go in and put out the fires, rescue what we can; or we crush them.

The Juno and I glance back at Salt. “Cover me.”

His shell looks up at the long rails mounted in its shoulder, now tightly stowed. He can extend them in a moment, swing them around in a blur, but inside the hangar, he’ll have barely enough space to bring them to bear, let alone get a shot off. Worse, once he’d buttered the target, whatever it was, he’d also add some new ventilation to whatever was behind it. And his assault cannon isn’t much better.

“If there’s trouble on the other side, you fly out,” he growls. “You hear me? No heroics.”

“If there’s trouble out here, you call back. No heroics.”

The Decatur glances over a shoulder at the sky. “I’m a little past that. If that thing we saw breaks cover again, I’m lighting it up.”

We nod. “Sit tight.”

He gives us a massive thumbs-up.

I flip channels. “We’re going in.”

“Be careful, two-eleven.”

I almost smile. “Thank you, Bell Tower.”

We spread our wings and let our engines carry us into the wind. We loop back the way we came, keeping as close to the hull as our wingspan will allow; we could fly a straight line to the hangar, but just because we can’t see in doesn’t mean that the things inside can’t see out. Damaged or not, I’d rather not go flying down their throats.

We level off, following the hull across a hive of hangar doors. Tower probably has them locked down, but we keep ourselves clear where we can. Hovering around in front of a shell block is a great way to get yourself wrapped around another machine, and right now I don’t trust Tower not to fly someone into me.

Twenty-eight stands out from the rest—doors bowed in the middle, corners raised and jagged, strike-surfaces marked with deep gouges where shell bodies clipped them on the way down. If those machines still have their jockeys, they’ll be dead now—killed on impact. They hit so hard they cracked the hull beneath the hangar plates.