I blink at that. I don’t know where it came from. It’s a lie, but a heartbeat later, I realise that it’s a good one.

Hail nods. “Understood.”

I call up a window on my visor and blink my way through the helmet’s networking options. It doesn’t have much in the way of range: maybe ten metres or so, and then only through open air. It’s designed to give you initial access and handshaking to the machine you’re going to be jockeying, and the first few strands of connection before you actually plug yourself in.

I cast a quiet net, broadcasting my service numbers and ID.

Is anyone out there?

Something returns.

It’s quiet, barely enough to register, but I can feel it. I don’t know how much the Juno can see, but it knows I’m here.

“On three,” I tell Hail.

She and Lear lean into the airlock.

“One.”

Breathe in, breathe out.

“Two.”

I take the door ahead of me by its handles and put a little force on the lock.

The “Three” dies in my throat, drowned by a sudden rush of air-pressure, and a shriek of rolling steel.

Behind it, almost an echo, is Hail.

“Kadi?”

But there’s no reply.

“Kadi?” again, shouted into nowhere.

And something giant moves outside.

I pull on the door with both hands, feet skidding on the deck, kicking hard to beat the gout out of these hinges. They don’t give without a fight, but I’ve got some to spare, boot jammed against the frame and knuckles straining. Three tugs and I’ve bought enough room to push my head around the corner.

The Juno rests on one knee in the middle of the hangar—a mountain of armour and hydraulics, dark eye-sockets waiting near the peak. I feel its attentions shift to me, but only for a moment. It shutters the little net my helmet casts before it, cuts the connection to the jockey’s suite in its cockpit. Kadi has killed any chance I had of breaking through. I’m just another threat now: mapped, categorised, de-prioritised.

And that dull gaze has moved already. It’s looking up at the hangar doors, and the tall shape walking through them.

The other machine steps into the light, pale and glimmering turquoise, craggy plates arranging themselves for impact, deflector surfaces in bloom. The Decatur is a wall of strange geometries and stencilled livery, branded by the Nor Collective.

The machine is big enough, strong enough to fight its way clear of one ancient shell; all it has to do is stand there, let all that armour do its job. But the jockey’s twitchy. They bring that rusty signal mast up in an awkward grip: worth its weight in extra steel, but only if the operator has the skill.