Zidarov had spent his entire life on-world, like virtually everyone else on Alecto. He had almost no idea what it must be like to travel through the warp to other systems. He doubted, however, that the Heroes of the Navy were really Never-Dying. He suspected that they died in rather greater numbers than those who kept their feet on the dirt of a real world. Maybe their hero­ism made up for that. Or maybe, once they had passed through their inductions and found themselves stuck on the fifty-third gun-level of a line battleship, buried in an iron-bound hovel of ever-clanging machinery and supervised by an overseer wielding an electro-lash, they realised they’d made a terrible mistake, and it would have been better never to have listened to the nice recruiting officer with the sympathetic eyes who had nodded at them and understood so much. If you weren’t a dupe, you knew that Alecto had to meet the tithe. Somehow, whatever the cost, Alecto had to meet the tithe.

And at that, predictably enough, he thought of Naxi, and that soured his mood.

He secured the groundcar, turned his coat collar up against the smattering of rain, got out and walked up to the hab-block ahead of him. His probator holo-seal was enough to get him past the outer security doors, as well as the officious guard manning the communal area on the ground level, who nonetheless looked at him poisonously, as if he were an enemy of some obscure kind and ought to be reported on for some obscure reason.

Zidarov ignored him. He was on time, which was unlike him. He entered an elevator, punched in the level number and leaned against the inner wall as the cage clattered upwards. He got out into a corridor that he had seen a thousand times already in a thousand other places – dark-green threadbare carpet, pale grey-green walls with a cheap glossy patina, notice­boards with tatty papers celebrating the hab-tower’s improved energy efficiency or the need to inform the authorities should your neighbour do anything out of the ordinary.

He flipped his collar down again, and wiped his hand over his hair. It was impossible not to feel guilty, however hard he had tried to get that out of his system. He followed the route he knew so well, coming up to hab 487, with its vomit-yellow door and the black flecks on the frame where the paint had come off.

He depressed the chime, and waited. He heard her feet along the hall, padding softly without shoes. Then the lock clunked back, the hinges squeaked, and Lena Vasteva opened the door. She was wearing a long orange dress-suit, with her hair loose and the silver circlet around her neck.

‘Right on time, Zido,’ she said, smiling warmly.

‘For once,’ he said, going in, embracing her, closing the door behind them both.

Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven