Lear nods across our little desert. “Is this the right place?”

“Looks that way,” I say. “Not quite what I was expecting.”

“I hate it already.”

Salt chuckles. “Doesn’t look like enough to hate it, Lear.”

“I’ll make do.” He aims his rail at the shadow on the horizon. “That’s our object, then?”

I follow his gesture. Aoki’s Lighthouse looms. “As far as I can tell.”

“It gives me the creeps.”

Hail’s shell straightens. “We’ll deal with the creeps later. Looks like we’ve got the right place.” The Spirit glances over at me with its faceless head. “If Rook’s shadow was a surveyor, we’d better get moving before anyone else shows up.”

“It might be a bit late for that,” I say. I push an image across the net: the chunk of armour from before.

“Dammit,” she mutters. “Looks like Hasei beat us to the punch.”

“It’s the right shade of orange.”

I pile on the rest of my readings, and the other shells share it amongst themselves.

“Where’d you find it?” asks Lear.

“Right where Salt’s standing now. No sign of the owner.”

Salt’s machine checks the dirt between its feet. “There’s nothing here now.”

“Could it be driftwood?” I ask.

“Difficult to say, without the rest of it.” Hail surveys the dunes. “Lear.”

“Here.”

“I heard ’Kustar trains its jockeys to track, old style. Any truth to that?”

His shell raps a knuckle against the side of its head. “Well, we didn’t have anything so fancy as this.”

“Rook, you and Salt”—Hail’s shell puts two fingers out in front, shaped in a V—“take right and left, hunting pack. Eyes open.” She glances back at Lear. “You’re on me, Locust. Get sniffing.”

I take the starboard flank, and Salt moves to port, almost hidden by the dunes. Lear and Hail are at the point of the V, and we’re the tips. They guide us as we advance, Lear watching for a trail, Hail coordinating.

It’s NorCol standard: if one of the flanks trips an ambush, the survivors are already facing the fire, arranged in a gunline.

Salt finds something first, and it doesn’t kill him. He’s almost all the way to the ridgeline when he calls out, pushes a stream from his hull cameras. The window in my field of view shows a pair of tracks cut deep into the stone, the treads of thin, three-toed feet. Around them, scratchmarks and fallen rock.

“Hasei must’ve been aiming for the flat,” he says. “Same as we were.” He tags a waypoint in the middle of the screen. “Paint here.” It comes into focus; streaks of neon orange, marking the places where the ground cracked but didn’t shatter, gouging steel. The feed turns, picks out something else. A trail of scratches, and furrows cut into the talus.