He padded back down the hall and into the second dorm-chamber. That had once been Naxi’s room, and still had her old hardcopy picts pinned to the walls – defence force recruitment posters, most with the chiselled features of young male recruits looking steely and determined in pressed dress uniforms. A few report cards from her old scholam lay on the bedside table in a clear plasfilm file, plus a handwritten letter from a classmate. On the far wall, looking incongruous amid all that, was a dark metal strongbox. Next to it was a rack holding flak vests in a row. Beyond that was a wardrobe alcove ­containing civilian clothes – jackets, boots, a dark-brown half-length synth­leather coat.

It always seemed a shame to keep all his gear in there, mixed up with Naxi’s old things, but it cleared some space in the main dorm-chamber, and even a probator’s stipend didn’t stretch to a three-dorm unit in a decent residential habclave.

He punched the access code into the strongbox and withdrew the Tzarina again. He checked it over, then got dressed, clipping the flak-panels closed under his open-necked shirt and jerkin. He reached for his jawsnapper, a brushed-steel knuckleduster with an impact-reactive kinetic field, and stowed it. He pulled on his coat, and holstered his pistol.

It was still dark outside. It would be dark for another hour or so until the red sun rose. He thought of Milija, sleeping still, grabbing an hour of rest before her own duties took her off into the city.

I could sleep, he thought. I could stay here, with her, and sleep.

But then he was out of the hab’s front door, into the internal corridor where dozens of other identical doors remained locked shut, just like every other one of them on every other level. He headed for the elevator shafts, his stomach grumbling, muscles aching, scar tissue itching.

Chapter Three

Chapter Three

He took a groundcar, his own – a twin-engined Shiiv Luxer. Other probators used vehicles from the Bastion fleet, but he preferred his, with its slightly more efficient power unit and thicker plasteel armour panels. It made him more anonymous, too – you could always detect a Bastion groundcar, somehow, however hard they worked to make them look ordinary.

He trundled down the exit ramp from the hab-tower’s storage pens and nudged his way onto the main elevated transitway. The access lane was already slow-moving, blocked by both ground and mag traffic. It took him more than twenty minutes to edge and jostle into the freer lanes, heading upclave.