There’s a line of light, almost unbearably bright. A railgun strike cuts a pillar in half, spilling glowing brick and metal sparks across the open. It’s too big to be anything but the Decatur.

Don’t forget to tell Salt.

I CAN SEE Lear. He was trying to make a break, looking for an angle. Locusts are famous for pulling rabbits out of hats, helmets, and plain old holes in the ground, but it looks like his luck cut short. His Decatur lost its left leg just below the knee and its right arm at the collarbone. He’s pushed his wing-mounts out, spreading the blades for cover. They aren’t doing him much good: they’re nearly half gone already. His hull is holding up, but there’s no telling how much longer that will last. He’s stranded in the middle of the noise and light, stretched across his own personal no-man’s-land.

Still alive, at least.

Hail and Salt are working to get close enough to get a grip on his machine, to drag him back from the brink, but the Sigurd jockey is good. Every time they break cover, or start looking for angles of their own, the Mirai brackets Lear. The shots aren’t aimed, not yet, but that isn’t the point.

A few shots hit, and Lear loses a couple of feathers, starts shouting back to Hail and Salt.

The tactic is as old as war itself. You aim to wound, not to kill, and force the other side to work their calculators. They can trade their wounded for a shot at you, but the field isn’t level: they might lose more in the process. They’ve still got to draw a bead, but you’ve got your sights dialled in. Whoever’s lying on the ground is getting buried, and there isn’t much anyone can do about it.

Nothing Hail and Salt can do, at least.

The Juno and I inch closer, rising every time another load of munitions screams across the breach. We’re quiet as the void and about as cold, using the hot noise for cover, dropping back when the air stills and the shadows flood back.

We’re all optical, squinting at the dark and feeling our path with the Juno’s sensitive feet. It’s all we can do to keep from blinding ourselves. The low-light can’t react fast enough to filter out the muzzle flash, and the infrared has to fight through a haze of boiling smoke. We can see the edge of a dark hull up ahead, but we don’t need more than that. We can feel its heels as they slam against the ground, ringing to the weight of its shots.