‘Out on Spine Five,’ Onorova said, driving the Bulwark hard. There wasn’t much ground traffic yet, but one of the gunships thudded overhead, keeping low to the hab-towers. The clouds of black-mottled smoke from the refineries away east had just started up, turning the horizon a dirty brown where they met the retreating wall of mist. ‘Just a counting house. Won’t be long.’

Zidarov sat back. He wanted to close his eyes, just for a few moments, but the Bulwark was already bouncing on the uneven rockcrete, its interior rattling and jerking. Maybe knocking some heads would do him good. Maybe he needed the kind of stress relief he used to get when in uniform.

‘Let me know when we get there,’ he said, shifting his shoulders against the rubberised chair back, trying to zone out.

Onorova was right, though – it didn’t take long. They swooped around a wide intersection, forcing a tracked citizen-carrier to skid off its guide-rails, before accelerating straight for a high blockwork wall, painted dirty white and festooned with curling layers of old posters. A pair of steel gates had been lashed closed with lengths of chain, and curls of flaywire ran along the top of the security railing. Zidarov just about had time to grab a handhold before the Bulwark crashed straight into it, shearing the chains clean apart and sending the gates tumbling inwards. The wagon bounded on through, horns blaring, flood-lumens suddenly blazing, crunching its way across a narrow storage yard before slamming hard into a second pair of security gates.

The engine cut out, and the doors swung open. Zidarov jumped out, pulling the Tzarina from its holster. On the other side of the cab, Onorova did the same, and was quickly joined by her sanctioners, all leaping down from the open compartment and racing through the gap bludgeoned open by the wagon.

They carried assault-grade autoguns with short barrels and shoulder stocks, no silencers. They were crude things that threw bullets around like confetti at a Ministorum coupling ceremony. The first flash bangs went off, hurled into the chamber beyond the gates, before they all piled in after.

The sanctioners opened fire immediately, filling the interior with an echoing roar of automatic gunfire. You couldn’t even hear the screams over that noise, just the hard hammer of rounds gouging rockcrete. Zidarov didn’t fire, letting Onorova’s crew clear out the first room. He followed them in, unlocking his iris’ dampeners just in time to get half-blinded again by the confined muzzle flare. He saw a narrow space, filthy, bodies on the floor already, three exits leading inwards, sanctioners charging through them, firing all the time.

He went after Onorova, who had taken the leftmost of the inner doorways. A badly wounded figure on the floor reached out to her as she ran over him, and she kicked him hard in the face before carrying on.