“Have you got air for them?” asks Hail, whip-crack. “Extra space? What if you pull someone out and they’re bleeding, or burnt? Can you patch them?” Her voice breaks before the end. “Christs, I don’t like it either, Salt. I don’t like any of this.”

“But they’re dead already?” Salt has a little fire left, but he doesn’t have much of anything else.

Worst of all, it wouldn’t make a difference. Every ejector we find is as cold as the last, ringing hollow with every ping we send. There’s no one looking for help, no one to accept it even if we were offering.

We spot a few jockeys, out on the wind with just their suits for company. Some are in freefall, twisted where the impacts tore them from their saddles. Others hang by their jacks and straps, still connected, trailing behind their pods. They’re tricky to see out here, but we aren’t trying.

The other two machines check bodies as we pass, rolling augurs over them and listening for heartbeats, but it’s just another trail of wreckage, frozen stiff in the cold.

We don’t speak much; there isn’t much to say. This used to be my business, but Hail and Salt will have done their fair share. NorCol’s jockeys call it ‘vulture duty,’ even if the company pretends it doesn’t happen. If we get wind of trouble coming up, we’ll make sure there’s a crew of vultures launching next, following in the wake of whoever’s drawn the short straw, circling nearby until someone calls for help. The same goes for the competitors, and I’d bet it goes for the Authority too.

I was a vulture longer than most, and I met others like me that just happened to be wearing a different colour on their plates. I even got to know a few, just not by name. By colour and number and the tallies on their hulls, or by the pinup boys and girls they’d painted on their skins. We’d come up on duels, dogfights, on entire squadrons hurling themselves at each other. We’d keep to the edges until the fires had dimmed, and then we’d crawl closer, trading notes on where we’d seen each other’s kin.

It might be days after the fact, but this place should be flickering. It should be a field of flares and extra stars, emergency strobes and long-range repeaters. The air should be crackling with auto-SOS and recovery nets open on every channel. We should have to block out the moans of stranded jockeys, cover our ears against the screaming.

No company leaves their wounded on the winds. Not here, not anywhere. We’re worth more than that, even if we’re cons. Even if you have to stitch us back together. Sigurd knows better, and so do their competitors.