The Juno crouches to the left, our shortened rifle resting on the body of something with Sigurd’s markings. My machine has blown some of the ruddy sand onto itself with its engines, fading the burgundy paint to rust. It could have been buried at the same time as the broken shape beneath it. If I was coming down fast, I’d have skipped right past it. Chances are, the first part of Juno you’d see would be its muzzle flash.

The Decatur holds the opposite side, low and compact. Its paintjob doesn’t help with hiding, and its rest-state is loud enough that even the little sensors in my suit can pick it up, and they’re almost deaf by a shell’s standards.

The machine’s crouched behind a mass of metal and fallen stone, folded in a way that the machine can only manage without a jockey at the controls. Salt is a good operator, and I’ve never seen anyone run gunnery the way he did less than an hour ago, but he’d have a hard time imagining how to fold his knees like that.

The Spirit is gone.

Hail switches to voice. “What happened?” she asks them, heavier than I was expecting. She sounds like someone who’s just heard that an old friend has died.

The Decatur responds first, with a report that’s dull and technical for all it’s meant to say. A line of familiar echoes, recorded and listed with timestamps. Three reactor signatures: Spirit, Juno, and a placeholder for the glassy thing that doesn’t have a name yet. Radiation outputs and propellant assays, matched to weapon pulses and engine flares. There’s a playback of network activity, and the thoughts of our communal fire-control.

It’s a replay of the fight we had out here—the storm that killed the last of the cell’s glass guardians. One machine on three, and odds barely enough to carry the day. It’s all there; every quake we caused in the surrounding stone, the howl of wideband networking, and the heat-ghosts of the fires we started.

I don’t remember it being so loud.

After that, the Decatur attaches a new feed, this time from its augurs. Timestamps are just a few minutes ago, and all of the contacts are new. Six machines all told. Our shells tagged them before they even came into sight, flagged them hostile.

Threat assessment: low/moderate. Closer to the first than the second, but enough to cause concern.

After that come the sounds—stumbling footsteps and stuttering engines, this time far ahead, back in the graveyard where we landed. The half dead and the lame, left behind when Sigurd’s survivors pulled away. As much of a threat as healthy machinery, assuming they can get eyes down their sights.