The Juno and I aim a reply, careful not to clip the machine between us. How many?

Two, says Hail.

See one. My twelve. Other?

Your ten. Eight hundred metres.

I can’t see anything. No visual on two. Options?

Have blindside, Hail replies.

The back of the hull, the awkward armour around their engines and between their shoulder-blades. Blindside is both a place and an intention.

We’d cut through it from two directions at once, hope to force an ejection before its sibling could respond.

But I see something else. Timer, I send.

Three minutes and change until Salt and Lear bring the noise.

Hail sends a wordless confirmation.

I hold my breath and watch the nearest shell creep, listening for its own phantoms in the darkness around us. It’s a hundred metres away, less. Spitting distance, so far as a shell’s concerned.

It’s a Mirai, of Sigurd-Lem. A little older than the Spirit, but it could probably take both of us in a stand-up fight.

It’s shaped like a person, and moves like one: at least, more than the angular, functional things NorCol likes to fly. Stubby wing surfaces rest around its shoulders, but they’re folded in tight. A combat shield covers part of its left arm, a slab of armour with explosive bands bolted across the front. An assault cannon rests in its hands, massive magazine blocks joined to either side. High-gain lenses pattern its head and shoulders. There’ll be others spread out around its body, top to toe. When I look out, I see what the Juno sees, visual feeds rolling in through two rows of optics in our skull. The Mirai lives in a flood of inputs, every limb and joint with its own set of eyes.

But it hasn’t seen me yet.

I take a deep breath and let it out again. That’s three companies on the same, tiny scrap of rock. So much for ‘uninhabited.’

At least there are only two of them. We glance to our left, trying to see if we can pick Hail’s other contact out of the gloom. One shadow gradually resolves out of the others, outline blurring as it moves to take a step. Another Mirai.

Something glints. An eye. Then another. My heart stops.

Shit.

It’s looking right at us.

I bury the urge to twitch, to kick for thrust and skip back into cover. I want to turn, to get our muzzle on target.

Instead, we freeze, cold as the void, completely still.

And there’s nothing but open air in the way.

THE WORLD OPENS up behind us.

I kill my low-light just in time. Screamer-flares erupt and infrared needles strobe through the dust. Every channel bubbles with white noise and signature-mirage. Two massive shocks run through the ground as Lear and Salt fall from altitude, weapons hot, their massive augur-arrays crackling through the air.