‘But you want to increase your landing cycles.’

‘I trust in His providence, probator. Things will improve. When they do, we will be ready.’

Zidarov looked around him. Again, he was struck by the spareness. Aside from her dress, this did not look like a ­prosperous operation. ‘Why the disruption?’

‘I don’t know.’ She laughed, a little self-consciously. ‘Really, who knows anything, once you go off-world? It’s a fog of ignorance. I get reasonably reliable bulletins from the true-orbital stations. After that, you’re relying on astropathic relays, and only the praesidium gets ready access to those. For all the good they do. That’s the way it’s always been in our profession. You put material on a ship, you send it up, you hope something comes back.’

‘But you have theories.’

‘We do. We think something fundamental has interfered with intra-system travel. The Chartist Captains’ network. Remember, two years ago, when we lost all comms entirely? And they said then that nothing was moving at all, and the astropaths up at the Varangantua spire had all lost their minds? They did a lot of work to persuade us that it was a glitch – an isolated warp storm in the Bolatta Nexus – and that it was over now. But it’s been difficult ever since. I heard reports from conveyer captains – second-hand, third-hand – that the true-void ships were still struggling with their Navigators. So it’s a knock-on. If that’s systemic, then it filters down. You can’t get a Chartist ship out of dock? Then you can’t get orbital carriers out of dock either, and you can’t get suborbital landers out of dock, and so on. We’re just at the end of it all.’

‘And that makes things difficult for you.’

Genova gave a little shrug. ‘There are always difficulties.’

‘A shrinking pool brings out predators,’ said Zidarov, calmly. ‘I’d imagine you’d have some tussles, from the guilds, running down the opportunities left.’

‘It’s never been a safe place,’ said Genova, playing it straight. ‘We have our problems, but the cargo’s still moving. You can check the records, if you wish.’

Zidarov smiled. ‘I might do, later. But, here’s the thing. I hear some trades are becoming lucrative again, due to all this disruption, ones that really should have been shut down a long time ago. The demand for rejuve’s never going away, is it? So there’s pressure to increase stem-culture export.’

‘Undeniably true. The manifests for medicae import-export have remained solid.’

‘It’s how it’s produced that troubles me. We believe cell-draining has been taking place, in Urgeyena, to meet the demand.’

‘A loathsome practice.’

‘So everybody says. Ever intercepted anything like that, in your routine sweeps?’

Genova shook her head. ‘The products derived from legal and illegal medicae culture are more or less identical. You can’t tell them apart from a standard sweep, at least with the equipment we have here.’