Zidarov kept on going under the lip of the disc, sliding into an underworld of struts and gullies and arches. The lumens never went off down here – even in the middle of the day it was a gloomy kingdom, studded with blotches of bright red and green, rocked by the thunder of turbines kicking in, a scurrying world of transients and merchant princes. Every surface seemed to be scrawled with the icons of the trade houses – he saw the leonine head more than once, picked out on grit-blasted hoardings and metal-framed commercia plates.

The loc-ref transponder bleeped, and a completion rune swelled up on the virtual display. He saw flashing lumens ahead, and the silhouette of sanctioner-standard groundcars. From overhead, hidden from view by the landing stages, he could hear the thud-thud-thud of turbine-copters holding position. Cordon-beacons glimmered in the dark, sealing off the area ahead with translucent beams.

He pulled up, and got out of the Luxer. Sanctioners were milling around up ahead, preventing any inquisitive citizens from getting too close. Most of them recognised him, and he didn’t have to flash his holo-seal to be admitted through the cordon. A brace of servo-skulls hovered over the site, their lens-eyes flashing. Verispex had been deployed, wheeling banks of clicking forensic auspexes over the asphalt. In closer, he saw the blood on the street – a thin spatter, then more bursts, as if someone had staggered some distance. Three Bastion medicae wagons stood idling, their rear doors open, their crews out and busy. As he rounded the cab of a parked Bulwark, he saw Vongella in her dark-red operational uniform, flanked by Adimir, the master sergeant of the Panthera, the tactical wing of the sanctioners, as well as a few dozen others. Whatever had taken place here looked to be over. The scene was electric, though – everyone was furious.

Vongella saw him approach, and strode out to meet him, her leather coat flapping around her calves. Adimir came with her, his tread heavy under all the flak armour he wore. He carried a squat autogun in both hands, cradling it like it was the only thing he cared much about at all, which might well have been the case.

‘Probator Zidarov!’ Vongella called out, her voice shimmering with anger. ‘It should not take a Code E to get you into my presence, should it?’

Zidarov felt his scar twinge. ‘I shouldn’t be getting a Code E at all. What happened?’

Vongella cocked her head over to the medicae wagons. Two were occupied. One held the body of a sanctioner in body armour. It wasn’t moving. The other held Borodina, who also wasn’t moving. She was dressed like they all dressed when on assignment, looking much like any other scruffy denizen of the barter-pens, only now she was covered in blood and hooked up to a spider’s web of tubes. Three orderlies were working hard over her, pumping and stitching. Zidarov felt the sickness come back quickly.