He had to drive quickly to make it – the light had faded fast, driven by new storms. By the time he arrived at the assigned location, it all looked so familiar. The rain-soaked hab-block was different – they were always different hab-blocks – but so much was still the same as the last one he’d visited. There was even a glowing chameleon-screen at the end of the access road advertising a career in the Alecto Third Urban Regiment, the major planetary defence levy. In the image, a brace of happy, uplifted faces marched across a parade ground, overflown by Brawler gunships and with an Imperial Guard general from one of the big regiments looking on admiringly. The rain had got behind some damaged diodes, making the general’s face blink on and off erratically. The slogan at the base of the image – The First Choice For Youth! – felt deeply inaccurate. When You’re Keen, But Not Good Enough For The Guard, might have been better.

Still, at least they were doing something, the levy. It’s what they’d wanted for Naxi, since the chances of actual combat were much lower. You might end up working on civil engineering projects, putting down the odd riot or two, maybe going into a correctional facility to take out some insurrectionists, but full-scale war? No, that was for the poor saps who got shipped out, off-world, into the wider galaxy where xenos horrors waited with sharpened fangs and luminous tentacles.

Zidarov got out of the groundcar, hunched against the cold drizzle, and entered the hab-block’s lobby, just as he had done so many times before in so many similar dives. He got the same old look from the identikit guard at the desk. Once out of the elevator, he saw that the corridor had its own dark-green carpet, the walls their own glossy sheen. The noticeboards had two tatty papers attached, one congratulating the occupants of unit 56 for reporting their neighbours’ slackness on the work-rota, a second advertising that unit 57 was now free for allocation to a diligent family-unit.

Zidarov went up to the twenty-fifth floor, found the right place, and pressed the chime. This time it wasn’t Vasteva who opened the door. It was a man he didn’t know. The man bowed, and Zidarov bowed back. He slipped inside, let the door close behind him, and was shown to a room two doors down a lightless corridor.

Vasteva was waiting for him in there, sitting at a long bench. She was dressed for the occasion – a long nightshade robe, clasped high at the neck, her hair tied up, her jewellery removed. She hadn’t put her mask on yet. Around her, hung on pegs set along three of the walls, were bundles of clothing – either every­day workwear or robes ready to be put on in their place. It smelled of the burning spiawood candles that took him right back, straight away, every time.