‘Good of you.’

The lens flickered on, and a line of green runes glowed into life. Zidarov got to work. He pulled the residuals from Vongella’s transmission out of the dataveil stack, and they spilled onto the terminal.

> Udmil Terashova. Priority assistance-request, lodged 34-56-302, receiver Yeratov, F. Subject reports missing family member. Subject suspects abduction, industry-related, high probability of harm.

Urgeyena saw hundreds of persons go missing every day. Few were genuinely missed. It was all part of the churn of a big district, one that sucked in people like a blast furnace pulled in fuel, and spewed them out just as quickly.

He made further enquiries.

> Terashova, U. Recorded donations to standing Bastion-U funds: 16 instances. [Details]

He sorted through them. The woman had been generous. Not obscenely so, but she’d done her bit to keep the sanctioners in armour. No wonder Vongella wanted her looked after.

‘The Terashova Combine,’ he said out loud. He turned his head to look at Brecht. ‘Know much about them?’

Brecht looked up. ‘Seriously?’

‘Yes.’

Brecht put his paper down. ‘Where do I start?’

‘Run a case with them, though?’

‘No. And happy to keep it that way.’

Zidarov sighed.

He had never met Udmil Terashova. That was not surprising – she was the joint head of one of Urgeyena’s most influential industrial groups, the matriarch of a family-owned conglomerate with interests from off-world cargo to on-world ore processing. Those kind of people did not mix with his kind of people. If he was lucky, or unlucky, he might have brushed up against one of her lackeys, far down the food chain. A facility manager, or a site overseer – that kind of thing.

He pulled out more datafiles, and put in an order for a ­scrivener menial to trawl the archives. The assignment was terse, giving him very little context. That was probably a result of the method of transmission – he doubted Udmil herself had made the call, though she was rich enough to have iris-access to the dataveil’s comm-tier.

‘So what do they want with you?’ Brecht asked, looking a bit more intrigued.

Zidarov read on. There was a lot to digest before he headed out again. It would have been good to speak with Vongella before doing so, but of course she was otherwise engaged.

‘Not sure yet,’ he murmured. ‘Maybe just some legal scrits. Maybe do some digging. Either way, the outcome’ll be the same.’

His eyes began to water. The lens-glare gave him a headache after a while, and the effect of the caffeine was beginning to wear off.

‘Go missing in Varangantua,’ he murmured, to himself as much as to Brecht. ‘Stay missing in Varangantua.’

Her place was a long way out. Of course it was. An hour west on the main sector arterial, watching the towers get less shabby the whole way out, all the way to the gilded Revenna habclave.