The vid-feed moved on to a review of commodities output from the major ports. Those were going up, too, despite all he’d heard about the interstellar trade volume being moribund for months. Brecht had told him a few months back he’d seen classified Navy material talking of a major rupture in the warp lanes, something that had got even sector command scrambling to respond, but then Brecht, for all his undoubted sharpness in many ways, had always been a little too fond of believing in conspiracies. He hadn’t mentioned it again. Maybe he’d made it up.

Zidarov finished his caffeine, then went back to the unit to make a cup for Milija. He’d leave it for her on the hotplate, as usual, for when she woke up.

Then it was time to link his iris to the dataveil. He activated the line threaded under his cheekbone, and felt the itch as it filled up with stored content. He reviewed it, piece by piece, blinking each update away in turn. The runes hovered briefly in front of him, projected in lurid green as if thrown out by a lithcaster, though the entire thing was internal, fed direct to the image lattice scored across the back of his eyeball.

Most of it was routine – Vongella siphoning stuff down to the probators, things she didn’t want to handle herself or refer up to command. It would all be noted and referenced and, when time allowed, something might be done.

One entry caught his attention.

> 456aa78-X, incident record: Udmil Terashova, Terashova Combine [file, detail] PJv

The ‘P’ code suffix indicated that a probator was required to attend. The named subject hadn’t been brought to the precinct, so that meant an outside visit. Zidarov scrolled past it – this was one he’d happily pass to Brecht, just to pay him back.

> Castellan directive: Zidarov, A: assigned

His heart sank. Damn. He stowed the remainder of the comm-feed in his iris’ storage – it would have to wait.

He got up, put a carb-bar in the heater on low power for Milija, and headed for the hygiene-chamber. The pulse-shower worked on the first attempt, which was a bonus. He washed the chem-filth off, shaved, gargled with antisep, checked the red lines under his eyes. He looked into the blotchy mirror, and saw a heavyset man looking back at him: early forties, short dark hair, sallow complexion. The scar on his chest was livid under the single white lumen. His stomach wasn’t quite as slab-solid as it had been, even a couple of years ago. It had got bigger, too.