The Juno never had the fire to fly the way they did, and so we played to our strengths. We only had to hide our little sun, barely an ember to the distant fire that dominates the sky. We cooled our engines, cut the non-essentials, and the Eye drowned us out in heartbeats. As the Juno and I turn in, we pick more of the Stepping Stone out against the clouds. Whatever it is, it’s made to fit shells. Four of them, to be precise, with hand- and footholds arranged around the central column.

We edge closer, working our thrust to keep us steady on the wind. The Stone looks like it isn’t moving, but that’s an illusion—a mistake made by my ridiculous monkey eyes. Everything moves; you just have to know the beat it’s moving to.

We catch turbulence off the edge of the leading plate, an umbrella of boiling air where the currents hit the windward face. We could burn hard and hurl ourselves through the noise, but that’d be a problem when we hit the quiet on the other side.

I take a deep breath. Or I think I do; I’m not sure I can tell the difference between our heartbeats.

We bring ourselves alongside and face the flow head on, burn hard enough to level out, grinding the jitters down until it feels like we’re suspended in mid-air, perfectly still as the universe turns around us.

“Ready?” I whisper.

The Juno is hot and certain, impossible to ignore.

We inch forward against the wind, fighting the Stone’s twisted wake with bursts of directional thrust. We get as close to the leading plate as we can, and give ourselves some space to fall.

A little network brushes up against us.

“I’ll catch you,” says Salt, right beside my ear.

We can’t turn to look at him—we’re fighting hard enough just to keep ourselves from spinning into the wash—but his shell sketches itself out for us where our sensors can feel it. He sets a marker in his open hand and sends it across the net. We can’t see him, but we know where he is and what he’s doing.

“Isn’t there an easier way?”

“If there is, I haven’t seen it. I’ll catch you.”

I wish I felt half as calm as he sounds.

The Juno swells around me, a bubble of my own, solid against the wind.

“Dropping now.”

We thrust full ahead for half a second, punching to the side just before cutting it off. The wind drives us back, but inertia carries us into the sudden quiet. Salt’s shell finds us, rides the landing out with a heavy grip and NorCol-branded muscle.

“Gotcha.”