He knew Draj wouldn’t look at it. He’d just suit up, clamber into the Bulwark, silent, staring at his shock maul, the thing they grimly referred to as a ‘tickler’, waiting to be shown which way to charge. After that, it was all automatic with him. Doing what he’d been created to do. Did he enjoy it? Hard to tell. It didn’t look like Draj enjoyed very much, but then it was hard to imagine him doing anything much else either.

‘Do you need anything more?’ Zidarov asked.

A sanctioner shoved past him, buck naked, on the way to the pulse-shower. His back was spotted with someone else’s blood. His body was stocky, short but absurdly muscled in the way a stimm-abuser’s body was muscled. His hair was clipped scalp-short, and tattoos rippled across his skin. That was the true squad uniform – scalp-cuts, fraternity marks, old and new scars, chem-spiced perspiration.

Draj barked a short, hard laugh, devoid of humour. ‘No, we’ll see you tomorrow, probator,’ he said.

So that was that. Zidarov shrugged, and left them all in the steam.

After that, he went to find Borodina. By the time he reached her desk, she was gone – out on assignment, presumably somewhere up by the suborbitals.

He didn’t vox her direct, in case she was engaged in something important. He went back to his own station and left a low-priority message for her to pick up when she could.

‘Thanks for the tip, probator,’ he said into the receiver. ‘I found more than I bargained for out in the habs – they’re into some unlicensed medical work, so we’re going to take the place out, see what we get. If we get hold of my target there, or Yellow­snake, I’ll notify you.’

And then it was on to other tasks – the dreary business of tying up existing cases, of replying to vox and lex messages on the dataveil sent by members of the Bastion about a hundred other things. By the time he got to the bottom of the list, it was late. The whole floor-section was darker, with probators and their assistants working by overhead lumen-glows. Noctis-shift workers were coming in, looking bleary, underslept, ready for the vigil through the long Varangantua night.

Zidarov stretched out, feeling the sweat stick under his armpits. He yawned. He would sleep badly, he knew, if he got any at all. The prospect of an action taking place at the crack of dawn always kept him tossing and turning. It wasn’t fear. It wasn’t anticipation. He didn’t really know what it was – just the knowledge that something was coming up, something with hard-to-predict outcomes, something that he needed to be on for, and so really had to be rested, and so he had to sleep, and so he wouldn’t.