I take a deep breath and blink my way through a couple of prompts. My flight suit shifts, lines its own valves up with the plugs in my skin.

“All right,” I tell the shell. “I’m ready as I’ll ever be.”

It hesitates. I smile into my helmet. “I’ll survive, old bird.”

The counter skips a beat. You’d better.

The saddle shudders, drops down into the hollow in the floor. Consoles inch closer as the space arranges itself around me. Armour shifts to compensate, internal airlocks and buffers closing tight. The shell settles, the cockpit maybe half the size it was when I climbed inside. Bulbs flick off in the corners and along the floor, leaving me alone in the dark.

Shackles close around my ankles, pulling them tight against the saddle. I can hear the jacks themselves, servos whining as they move around me. Little feelers with hypodermic tips. Even if I could see anything past the edges of my visor, I wouldn’t go looking for them.

I don’t feel them connect.

A dull throb warms my muscles and rides my spine, growing hotter every second. The plugs shift, and I can feel them moving. Their needle-tips will be splitting now, tiny filaments spreading out, burrowing in. I wish I didn’t know what it looked like.

I get a flash of silver across my eyes, and pain lances through every part of me. The Juno holds back as I twitch and shudder and burn. I’ve been shot before, and it’s easier than this. At least your body has the sense to go into shock.

Establishing connection...

Christs-dammit.

The Juno floods my veins with painkillers and trauma-blockers, and the ache fades, leaving me cold and panting. In its place, the hot shadows of where my body thinks it ought to hurt.

Connection established.

The first time is always this way. Always. The saddle has to get a feel for your pathways, and every jockey is different. The best way to understand you is to make you hurt, to follow a map of blazing neurons.

Converting signal. Begin transference?

But I’m still shaking. “Give me a second.”

The shell is very still.

“All right.” I grit my teeth and jam my eyes shut. “Go.”

I die from the waist down. One moment, my legs are throbbing, feeling bruised; in the next, there is nothing. No sense of anything below the belt-line, just the oldest parts of my brain wondering why I’m not bleeding out. I drift, and try to swallow the panic building in my throat.

Transferring...

I really hate this part.

The pilot-sync gives the shell a way in, lets it in on what you mean to do and how you want to do it. At first there’s a delay, the shell always catching you up; but when you’ve been at this as long as I have, it’s like your own body.