It’s what happens when you use a shell like a battering ram. The flicks are full of jockeys hurling themselves at each other, body and soul, but in reality the machines could never take it. Hail’s is no different. She threw it at the strange, delicate thing that met us at the doors, but the glassy shape was tougher than it looked.

There are fractures through the Spirit’s superstructure, and thousands of hairline cracks in its hull. It’s got a shattered collar strut and a line of matching breaks all along the inside of its chest. Even with all of that, it should still be able to fly; the real damage is halfway between her burn-chambers and the rest of the machine: a split down one of the heat-shields meant to keep its thrusters from cooking its insides out. The gap isn’t big enough to do any real damage, at least not yet, but if she turned too hard or too sudden, or hit windshear along the way, then it’ll grow into a fullblown breach.

We watch over her while she bottles the shell’s most recent mind-state and wipes its stacks of anything NorCol’s competitors couldn’t find out for themselves. At least, the Juno and I watch over her; Salt has got other things to worry about.

The Decatur stands, swaying gently in the breeze while it tries to understand all of the harm it’s managed to do itself, and the jockey waits for the antiflam to kick in. He worked his machine well past its margins, but the damage won’t be deep. The fight didn’t last long enough for that. A couple of his sensors will be strained and a few of his cooling vanes fused together, but anything that won’t heal with a couple of reboots can be worked around, isolated while backup systems take the load. Salt will be feeling it as badly as his shell, but he isn’t complaining where we can hear him.

We lost a few plates to the fight, put ourselves under load heavier than we should have, but Juno was always a brawler. Built from solid-cast blocks, tough and rangy.

No word on the jockey, though.

“You got space for one more?”

I blink, or rather, we do, lens covers acting out my surprise. Hail is standing in the dust at our feet, one hand resting easy on the butt of her service weapon, the other holding up a sturdy silver case with 4131 stencilled across the front. The Spirit rests on one knee behind her, silent but not quite inert. Not quite.

“Decatur’s feeling bruised,” she shakes the case, “and I’d like 31 to have some head space until we can get back to Horizon.”

Shit.

“We do,” we reply, relieved that I’m not the one who has to talk. “Just give me a second,” says a snippet of pre-recorded voice.