He reached for reverse, only to see another hauler emerge from a side lane, driving across the narrow artery and boxing him in. He cut the engine and reached for his Tzarina, but by then three figures, armoured and helmeted, had already emerged at his window. They weren’t sanctioners, but they all carried autoguns, all of which were pointed through the armourglass right at him.

Zidarov took a look up at the weapons. He wasn’t any kind of true ballistics expert, but it looked very much like those things used shredder rounds.

‘Don’t be stupid, probator,’ came the vox-distorted voice of the leader. ‘He only wants to talk.’

‘Who’s “he”?’ asked Zidarov.

‘Turn the engine off, open the door. We’ll do the rest.’

He considered the options. He might get lucky. Take one out, use the Luxer’s reinforced panels to keep him alive while he went for the others. Then he remembered Borodina’s body in the medicae-bay, and what those guns had done to her. She’d had a sanctioner with her, too.

So he did as they said. He cracked the door, pushed it open, and emerged into the rain, his hands up.

‘Just don’t scratch my transport,’ he said, handing over the access control. ‘That would make me really angry.’

They put a hood over his head, tying it loosely around his neck. That, he thought, was a pointless thing to do – his iris would keep a record of his movements. But then he saw that they’d got some kind of jammer working too, which made the gesture less futile.

They put him into another groundcar, one that smelled clean and expensive. One of the guards got in next to him, keeping an immobiliser jammed up against his ribs. They drove for a long time. He tried to relax. If they’d wanted him dead, they could have done it a long time ago. Still, there were worse things than dying in a gunfight. Many worse things.

Eventually, the groundcar halted, and he heard the doors open. A pair of armoured hands seized him and pulled him out. He felt rain speckle on his shoulders, but only for a short while. He heard a door slam, and then another. It got warmer, and smelled like mould and rusted metal. He was pushed into a chair, his arms straightened, and then the hood was taken off.

He was in a small chamber, no windows. A couple of candle-lumens burned in the corners, placed on what looked like old storage crates. The floor was damp, the walls bare cinder blocks. The guards who had brought him in had left, it seemed, closing a thick plastek door behind them. There were two chairs. He sat in one, and the off-worlder sat in the other.