Hail nods, but it’s a moment before she replies. “She didn’t fly all the way out here with a hollow shell on her wing. Same goes for the other one. You talk, you trade nav and obs and ranging.”

I tap my helmet. “You’d notice if there was no one home.”

“You would. And you’d turn back. Especially if they’d been dead as long as this.”

“If these machines were just hollow, it would be easier to deal with. These two flew here with dead bodies in their saddles. They took off like this.”

“Maybe they weren’t the ones flying.”

I holster my weapon. “You think the shell did it? All on its own?”

Hail shrugs. “It wouldn’t be the strangest thing I’ve seen.” She flicks her safety on and turns back the way she came. “Let’s get out of here.”

Salt watches over us as we make tracks for our machines. “Aren’t they supposed to turn back? Hollow shells, I mean. Aren’t they supposed to head home?”

I shrug, and the Juno mimics it, before I’ve even sat down in the saddle. “It probably depends on the company.”

Hail comes up on the line, her own shell swaying gently as its jockey comes back into focus. “No, Salt’s right. Leaving a hollow on the field is a waste of a shell.”

I guess so. “Difficult to kill the jockey without breaking everything else along the way.”

The Spirit nods. “Which means that if the machine survives, it’s probably taken a big enough hit that it might as well be dead. It’s more cost effective to get the hardware back home, jockey or no jockey.”

“But there’ll be some things that keep them around.”

“A friendly machine under fire, maybe, but it’d have to be pretty grim. Something the shell figures is more valuable than itself.”

“So that’s half of it, then.” Salt’s Decatur peers into the dark. “What’s valuable enough to keep two hollows in the line of fire?”

“Probably the same thing that got Hasei into the mix.”

Hail’s machine glances over its shoulder. Even without eyes, the expression is clear enough. “We don’t know how long ago that was. That plate you found might have been driftwood.”

“It wasn’t.”

The Spirit spreads its hands. “Even so, a scrap of armour and some bullet holes isn’t much to go on.”

Now Salt is looking at me too. “It isn’t much to go on.” He doesn’t make it all the way to asking.

We come about. Even with the pain in our hands, I’m beginning to think that I only feel alive in the saddle. “How about a whole shell, then?”