“Peaceful out here,” Jad said, as if making the discovery for the first time.

I grunted and wheeled us left as the skimmer’s lights picked out a sprawl of tepes root ahead. The outermost branches scraped loudly on the metal of the skirt as we passed. Jad winced.

“Maybe we should have waited for morning.”

I shrugged. “Go back if you like.”

“No, I think—”

The radar blipped.

We both looked at the console, then at each other. The reported presence blipped again, louder.

“Maybe a bale freighter,” I said.

“Maybe.” But there was a hardened deCom dislike in her face as she watched the signal build.

I killed the forward drives and waited as the skimmer coasted to a gentle halt on the murmur of lift stabilisers. The scent of weed pressed inward. I stood up and leaned on the edge of the opened roof panels. Faintly, along with the smells of the Expanse, the breeze carried the sound of motors approaching.

I dropped back into the body of the cockpit.

“Jad, I think you’d better take the artillery and get up near the tail. Just in case.”

She nodded curtly and gestured for me to give her some space. I backed up and she swung herself effortlessly up onto the roof, then freed the shard blaster from its webbing holster. She glanced down at me.

“Fire control?”

I thought for a moment, then pumped the stabilisers. The murmuring of the lift system rose to a sustained growl, then sank back.

“Like that. You hear that, you shoot up everything in sight.”

“ ‘kay.”

Her feet scuffed on the superstructure, heading aft. I stood up again and watched as she settled into the cover of the skimmer’s tail assembly, then turned my attention back to the closing signal. The radar set was a bare minimum insurance necessity installation and it gave no detail beyond the steadily increasing blotch on the screen. But a couple of minutes later I didn’t need it. The gaunt, turreted silhouette rose on the horizon, came ploughing towards us and might as well have had an illuminum sign pasted on its prow.

Pirate.

Not dissimilar to a compact ocean-going hoverloader, it ran no navigation lights at all. It sat long and low on the surface of the Expanse, but bulked with crude plate armouring and weapons pods custom-welded to the original structure. I cranked neurachem vision and got the vague sense of figures moving about in low red lighting behind the glass panels at the nose, but no activity near the guns. As the vessel loomed and turned broadside to me, I saw lateral scrape marks in the metal of the skirt. Legacy of all the engagements that had ended in hull-to-hull boarding assault.