“Or looking for a couple of pebbles in the froth.”

“Mm-hm.” She tugs something loose, flicks a little lamp on her shoulder, lighting her hollow cheeks from below. “It is very good at wide-band, though.”

“Like a distress beacon?”

“Like a distress beacon. Even better when you know what to listen for.”

“Why didn’t we come here in the first place?”

“I had to do a little digging first.” She pats the console. “And I can’t guarantee that this will work. Hell, I can’t even get the lights on.”

“You knew that, and still flew us all the way out here.”

“Oh, I don’t have it working yet, but I know the odds. There’s a difference.”

I cross my arms. “Really, Hail?”

She stands, heads back to where she started. She flicks the switch from before, gets the same electric hum. She tries another, but this one fights her. She jams her thumb down hard, puts a little weight on top. “It’s the thought that counts.”

Click.

WE WAIT IN the dark.

Hail spits. “Christs-dammit—”

She doesn’t have time to finish the curse. Long fluorescents flash and buzz, crackling through layers of grime and fur. The screens and equipment look even rougher now that there’s light to see them.

“Cosy.”

Hail gives me side-eye. “You should try sleeping in this place, pretending it isn’t the actual, observable hell outside.”

I can’t help the smile. “How fresh were you?”

“Greener than green. The worst kind, too.” She spreads her hands. “Sigurd sent me here, after all.”

I look past her, up at the displays. Behind the mess of salvage are things that look like they could’ve been mounted into a Juno’s cockpit. Not the saddle or the new wetware pivots, or the runners that hold the nerve-jacks. The stuff behind that. The displays that spoke to me in the dark.

“How do we do this?”

Hail picks her way across the clutter. “Good question.”

“You’re serious.”

“Deadly.” She finds a break in the panelling, just wide enough to fit her if she turns her shoulder and holds her breath.

I put my head through after her. She’s standing in a crowded space, looking down on a solid, silver-black cube. It looks just like I’d expect from Sigurd, but it’s the only thing in this room that does. Everything else is centuries old, from before Sigurd started coating everything in mirrors.

VINE, says an etching along the side.

“This place has an intelligence?”

Hail waves its display into being; a holographic interface, projected across the top. She toggles the mind-state, gets it warming up. “‘AI’ is probably a stretch. As far as I ever knew, VINE was Chinese-room, shallow learning only. At least, that was the idea.”

“The idea?”

“The personality is a preload, scavenged out of an old capital-ship. Sigurd dusted it off and shoved it in here.”