Andrade’s machine looks nothing like the surveyor I saw in the hangar. That one had a body made for depth and darkness, but this has every sign of being a Hasei shell.

All the angles are right, but some of the scale is off. You wouldn’t know it from a distance, and your augurs would call back with a Hasei tag. Look closely, though, and you can still see some of the surveyor’s machine hidden under the awkward orange plates. He’s changed the shapes enough to give the right silhouette, but that was all he had time for.

Andrade is a Werewolf.

This is how NorCol starts its wars.

He streaks past, but we don’t wait to see what comes. We’re already clear of the doors, throwing out as much thrust as our engines can stand; dumping screamers, flares, crackling ammo and burning fuel. We make for a line of Decaturs straight ahead, the patrol who flagged us first. We turn and burn, flying so close to them that their wingmates lock up, a moment’s hesitation as their systems try to keep them from killing each other. Some of them don’t even turn to follow, still focussed on the orange flare that’s suddenly opened across their scopes.

We’re clear before they can work their triggers again. I can feel the destroyer’s long-guns tracking, but we’ve got Horizon at our backs and a cloud of friendlies in the way, a small sun lighting up the space behind us.

Andrade dives deep, but he doesn’t cut the noise. His systems cloud my vision and drown my hearing out, and they aren’t even aimed at us.

We do the same. There’s open air for a few heartbeats before the clouds swallow us, a rippling ravine lit from behind. Beyond that, the dark wind waits for us, rattles us when we finally hit, the sudden change in density almost as loud as the raging fires on either side.

We spin clear of hard shot and tracer, watch fountains of flack tear through the froth on either side. We dump flares into the missiles creeping up behind us, feel them crump and rattle as the warheads die.

We count off thirty seconds, then a minute. After five minutes, it feels like a whole day has come and gone.

We start killing sensors after that; every piece of ranging, comms, and networking. Everything we can spare, and then a little more. We open our engines to the currents, let them run quiet as the wind rushes past. We cut the strobes and close our eyes. Most of them, anyway.

Outside, a storm cell swallows up the light, broken here and there where the Eye peeks through the cracks. A few lost tracers follow us into the deeps, still burning.

We let our passives feel the way ahead, but we don’t look back.

We let the cold wind carry us.