Something tugs at my helmet, and reflex makes me fight it. I’ve come across enough half-dead jockeys to know that I should never keep still, enough flash-burned bodies picked over by scavengers before they’d finished dying.

I twist and send one hand looking for my pistol, turn the other one into a claw. The first swipe catches nothing but air, and my weapon snags in its holster. Another pass, and I find a handful of NorCol’s rough fabric.

A gloved grip pulls me up. I can almost hear it talking, the halting, one-sided speak of radio transmissions.

“We have her,” it says. “Bringing her in.”

Cold steel rings my wrist, but I only know it was a shackle because of what came after. Just then, I don’t understand any more than ice against the burns and blisters of my skin.

A pair of fingers hooks under my visor.

No.

Don’t do that.

The seal pops and the helmet locks disengage. The lining peels away, along with several layers of scalp and skin. I don’t have the air to scream.

NorCol never throws anything away, not so long as it still has value. A maimed operator isn’t worth much—not as much as the whole shell diving back into the fire to pull them out.

And so three jockeys were left to die, worth less than the company would spend to save them. Destroyed, for some petty gain nearby. My three. Christs-dammit, they were ready to give themselves. Ready to do C-SAR’s ugly work with their bare hands if they had to, and they did. Their monument stands around me, shell-bodies split open and ejectors cleaned out, a field that glimmers with the brass they spent to hold it. Not a single human body save their own. Those three were glorious.

Those three were mine.

I’m broken too, now. Body broken trying to reach them, soul shattered when I did, when I tried to hold their ashes together in my hands. I’m worth less than the mission, and less than anything I could do to change it. Worth less than the trouble I’ll cause. Worthless. The NorCol enforcers know it, and I do too. I know it better, actually. There’s nothing like a C-SAR jock to tell you exactly how much a human life is worth.

That’s why I’m wheeling, riding numb rage and ampham overdose until I’m level with their eyes. I jam a pistol snout into the join between their helmet and chestplate, and two shots nearly take a whole head with them. I turn, make four more, centre-mass, and tear through chest-plate, sternum, and the heart behind them.

I coil in the smoke, but I’m alone with the scattered cinders that used to be my crew.

The next round belongs to me.