There are no Jackals down here. Instead, Bor aims a tightline at a cold slab of steel, resting up against another broken door. We work our low-light and catch the silhouette of a shell, but there’s something wrong with the outline. We understand when the rest of it comes into view; it’s a battle-damaged Spirit, stripped down to its hindbrain and jacked into a point-defence gun.

You can’t tell a spinal column what to do or where to go, but you can wire it so that nerves will fire and fingers will tighten. Reflex does the rest.

Checkpoint two is on the other side of an airlock; a pair of hatches dense enough to stop the radio crackle in the air. Bor makes contact again, but we don’t see who she’s talking to until we pass them. A marine anti-armour crew, on foot, carrying shoulder-rails and recoilless launcher-tubes. On a level field, they wouldn’t last a moment against one of us, but the passage is tight enough to give us pause, shell or no shell.

Wherever we are, it’s too deep for central circuits. All of the doors need to be worked by hand, and each airlock works as a little murder-hole, more NorCol boots peering in through the cracks.

We don’t see another living shell until we hit the deepest part of this deck, looking at Andrade’s oddly shaped machine over the sights of its railgun.

“Nice to see you too,” we manage.

Twenty-Seven

TWENTY-SEVEN

I DON’T REMEMBER the dismount, but maybe it’s better that way. Every part of me is running too hot, like I’ve caught a shipboard fever, and a deep ache thrums with my heartbeat. The painkiller haze tries to hide it, but all they do is keep it out of focus: I can’t tell exactly where I hurt, or how bad, but there’s no doubting that I do.

My head has the worst of it. There’s pressure on either side of my eyes, and a ringing in my ears that seems to come from everywhere at once.

Judging by the scrap of plastic in my hand and the trail of crumbs across my lap, I’ve already auto-piloted through the calorie bar in my thigh pocket, but all it does is remind me how long I’ve gone without a meal. The hunger is a certain thing, and I cling to it; it anchors everything else. I know that I’m awake, and hungry, and alive enough to hurt, but after that I’m not so sure.