The Ouroboros throat emptied us into Tycho's airlock, where lights burn clean and the dust smell never quite leaves the filters. The main corridor curved like a bone rib toward the dome. Through the inner glass we could see the Yard: dark posts in neat grid, floodlights throwing long stripes, and beyond them the crater rim. Earth hung too blue over the horizon, beautiful enough to pull eyes off work if you let it.
Chief Imani Hale waited with her helmet under one arm and the stance of someone who had been awake one hour too long. A faint hum lived in the metal at our boots—soft, insistent, tugging west like a river trying to change banks.
"Boss," she said to Reika, then to me with the same calm. "We've got a hum that isn't ours. The yard lattice keeps wanting to settle into the wrong note. I can hold safe idle, but it's like a bad habit trying to teach itself."
"We'll listen before we touch," I said. "No heroics."
"Music to my ears," she said, deadpan.
