Mostly, they should be slow and brittle, and nowhere near as thick as the walls that keep Hail and Salt in control of their machines. Even my old Spirit was built quick and clever, the defences around its behavioural platform like a beach paved in broken mirror. You could fight your way over it, but you’ll be disorientated, bleeding out by the time you reached the top, and easy pickings for the things that watch the battlements.

The Juno is the sea. Its mind lives in the deeps, kept company by fractal shadows and things that don’t have faces or names. NorCol gave the new-gen shells their defences, but the Juno made its own. Dreamt them, and shaped them into nightmares in the dark.

It still has battle damage from our brush with the hollows; its firewalls bear spiral wounds left by the thing that tried to force its way into us. Scar tissue has grown over the top, learning from the damage done beneath it. The Juno cycles its magazines for good measure, just so I can feel the weight of our munitions.

It tells me what I need to hear. This thing cannot touch us.

I take a deep breath, pull myself back from the machine, and glare at VINE. “Fine. Get it over with.”

VINE opens its own nets wide, and I watch the Juno’s systems coil.

Two machine-minds watch each other across the gap, but the shell strikes first. It breaks VINE’s defences in a moment, salting the earth behind it. It takes no risks and shows no weakness. It is a military machine, after all.

The screens flicker.

If the Sigurd AI replies, I don’t feel much past its attempts at handshaking.

Targeting data received, says my visor, just as the connection breaks.

The Juno pushes an integrity check across my visor. Its hull is still intact, but I know that already. Its mind-state is stable, and nothing has challenged its walls. Its augurs creep in through the walls, wrap themselves around the room, around me. There isn’t a way for the machine to say it, but I understand what it means. I am here.

Hail rests a hand on my shoulder, brings me back to where I stand.

“The Juno?”

I brush her off. “Is fine.”

She nods, but watches me for a second more before she turns back to VINE. “Do we have a deal?”

Somewhere near the bottom of the screen, two words glow.

We do.

Twenty-One

TWENTY-ONE

IT STARTS WITH a little fleck, a few pixels wide, about the same colour as a clot. It hovers in the middle of the screen, skipping slightly like there’s trouble with the feed. Grainy ripples spread out around it and onto the wide screens on either side, curving around the room.