The empty mecha stared down at them from its resting place across the pit. Giza stared right back.

  “Always wondered where those bandit bastards were finding these things,” Liam said.

  “We should destroy it,” Jack said, right off the bat.

  “Or-”

  “There is no ‘or’, Giza,” Liam said. “Everyone who can pilot one of those things is a psychopath.”

  “Rush’s suit works on the same system, and he’s not a psychopath.”

  The long silence that followed did not bother Rush at all.

  “That was different,” Liam said. “Someone built that suit for a brand new pilot. That thing hanging over there is probably still waiting for its old one.”

  The long, lonely vigil was almost sad, in concept. Liam reminded himself the mecha was inanimate, and also the pilot it was waiting for had probably been a murderous lunatic.

  “Well, speaking of the suit,” Giza said. “That thing that lives in your armor, ‘Elvis’, it can hear me, right?”

  “He says yes.”

  “Good. You can do all kinds of things, Elvis,” Giza said. “Can you reprogram a neural link? Make it work for someone else?”

  Rush stood around and did nothing. His head tilted curiously after a few seconds.

  “Why not?”

  Another few seconds of silence.

  “Then how did they change pilots?” Rush asked. After an answer no one else heard, Rush nodded. “That seems inefficient.”

  The conversation only he could hear ended, and Rush looked back at his tangible companions.

  “Nobody can change neural links,” Rush repeated. “Even Kal Kellarin had uninstall the old neural links and install new ones every time a linked system changed users.”

  “That seems ineff- right,” Liam said. “Guess there’s only one thing to do.”

  “Wait,” Giza demanded. “We could still give it a try. Maybe someone in the clan is a match for the neural system.”

  “I don’t want to take that risk,” Eiffel said. “You know what happened with Canis Clan.”

  The members of that now-extinct clan had stumbled across a hangar much like this one, and taken turns trying to pilot the mecha. They had hoped for the same thing as Giza; that the pilot would remember their allegiance to the clan and help protect their fellow Junkers. What they had gotten was a despot who pushed the clan to a breaking point and then left them for dead once they had broken, to become just another bandit prowling the wastes. Some people only had their worst impulses kept in check by a lack of power, and a mecha had more than enough power to set all those impulses loose.

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  “We’re not taking the risk,” Liam said. “Or letting this thing fall into the wrong hands. Rush, you need to disable it, at least.”

  “I can’t.”

  Liam stared at the armored mask. He wondered if Rush was trying to play into Giza’s desire to control the mecha.

  “You’ve taken on mechs that were actively trying to kill you and you can’t do anything to the motionless one?”

  Rush pointed sideways.

  “I can’t reach it.”

  Liam looked to his left at the black expanse separating them and the mecha.

  “Oh. Right.”

  What was left of the walkway still look unsteady, so Liam didn’t go far, but he did peer over the edge, and around the sides of the massive hangar. It looked like there had been another walkway connecting where they stood to the mecha’s launch platform, but three centuries of decay had broken it down to nothing before the rocks had even fallen.

  “You really can’t get over there?”

  “There’s no walkway and the walls aren’t magnetic,” Rush said. “I have no way to reach it.”

  Giza looked around, and leaned over to look up at the bright sky.

  “What if we went up top and lowered you with a cable, or something?”

  “I’m not doing that.”

  Rush was open to a certain level of risk, but only with an equivalent level of reward. Dangling himself over a bottomless pit to pull out a battery was not a worthwhile tradeoff in his mind.

  “I’d like to have it disabled, just to be safe,” Liam said. “But I suppose if you can’t reach it in the suit, no random Junker will be able to get to it either.”

  “Would’ve been nice to loot it, at least,” Jack sighed. “But I understand not wanting to mess with that hole. Thing looks like it goes all the way to Darkside.”

  Just as the Junkers labored on the side of Scrapworld where the sun never set, the station had a side cast in eternal night. Every Junker band had its own set of horror stories about Darkside: some said it was a lifeless, irradiated wasteland, others that it was haunted by the shells of domestic and security robots patrolling long-decayed cities. The most common story was that it was the secret source of all bandit attacks, a place where mech-wielding renegades gathered under the leadership of a secret bandit king.

  “Maybe it does,” Liam said. “All the more reason to avoid it. Don’t want the Red King sneaking up to steal all our loot.”

  Giza rolled her eyes. She’d grown out of believing in that kind of thing ages ago.

  “I think we can call this a wrap,” Liam said, getting back to business. “And the clan will probably want to know the mountain didn’t crush us. Head back and give the scrap team the all-clear. I’ll stay here and mark off this area so people stay away from the ledge.”

  “Need any help?”

  “I’m just drawing an X on a door, Rush, I’ll be fine,” Liam said. “Head back to the sleeper hauler and get some rest. You’ve earned it.”

  Rush nodded and headed for the exit, following the trail of the other teenagers. Liam grabbed a piece of chalk and marked off the door leading into the abyss, then stepped back through and sealed it behind him. He waited a few seconds to make sure the kids were really gone, then put the chalk away and pulled out a small disk of plastic and metal. He pressed his thumb down on a button and waited for the communicator to connect.

  “I’ve got news about the suit,” Liam said. “Very big, very good news.”

  He leaned on a wall and looked over the railing, down into the abyss that lead all the way to Darkside.

  “Let me to talk to the King.”