WE SET DOWN near the first Sigurd wreck. I didn’t see where the ejector went, but I remember my way back to the shell. In the end, Salt tracks the pod back, following a thermal shadow only his big eyes can see. It’s resting up against a pillar, the snout buried in fallen brickwork. The Decatur dusts it off with its fingers while Hail and I dismount.

“Want me to open it up?” he asks.

Hail looks up at him. “You’re a gun platform, Salt. Stick to what you’re good at. Cover us.”

The pale machine turns away, rail crackling. “Aye aye,” he says, a little acid creeping in.

Hail’s already at the hatch, and I pull in behind her. She tries the lock-handle first, but it doesn’t budge.

“If there’s a key, we’re missing it.”

She spares me a glance, then looks up and blinks at her machine. The Spirit leans over and taps one of its slender fingers against the hatch.

Hail nods, turns and waves me back. “Get clear.”

We drop into the dust, and the shell sets down on one knee, clenching a fist. I shy away, but I’m expecting this to work the way the Juno would. I haven’t flown a Spirit in a while.

It draws a bead, and lands a punch that’s just exactly hard enough. It rocks the ground beneath our feet and spills dust from the pod’s armour, but where the Juno and I would’ve crumpled it under our fist, the Spirit lands a hit dead centre, warping the door and popping the bolts. It leaves everything else intact.

Cockpit pods are built to ride the sudden gee as they eject, to drift through storms and atmosphere until someone picks them up, but that means less than you’d expect. They’ll take a hit from just about anything a human being could carry on their own, maybe even a glancing shot from a shell, but it isn’t enough to stop the Spirit, not now. Hail’s machine pulls at the buckled door, hinges holding maybe ten seconds before it all falls clear to the dust, trailing cables and twisted metal.

Hail and I stack up, but she’s in the lead this time. I line up behind her, slap her shoulder to signal Go. We rush in guns drawn, circling around through a pod almost identical to the first. We find a jockey in the same black flight suit as the first, and she’s just about as dead. Judging by the body, she’s been cold as long as her wingmate has. She’s got the same odd tears around her jacks, the same frost in her visor-glass, and nothing else to say what killed her.

“I don’t know what we were expecting.”