The squad leader did not promise to believe everything on Juno’s receiver. She asked where Juno had stood, which measurements came from the earlier entry, and which belonged to the minutes after activation. Juno placed the images in order with a dusty finger. Beyond them, two hunters had already wheeled the containment frame toward the western side.
“Stop there,” the leader called.
One hunter looked back. The machine kept rolling until his partner caught the rear handle. Its forward foot rested on pavement scored by a thin new line.
Juno enlarged the last usable threshold image. The western edge had appeared solid immediately before the floor folded inward. Her receiver showed a pulse arriving through that side, but she could not say whether the visible edge would hold another load. The squad leader compared the street with the image and changed the approach to the narrower southern margin.
“That costs us time,” the hunter at the frame said.
“It costs us a turn,” she replied. “We still have the frame.”
Eli helped clear the turn. He carried broken boards while the Aegis operators repositioned their machine, and no inherited talent made the work easier. His observer stayed in the receiving yard with him after another acknowledgment check. The two brief assignments were over. What remained was ordinary carrying and the unpleasant discipline of leaving some tasks to better equipped people.
