‘Now we load up these crates. You will come in the dropbird with me, John. The rest of you go over in the transporter.’

Stanton nodded.

‘What about these?’ Corlackis asked, pointing his pulse-gun at Svent and Dusache.

‘Remove their augs,’ said Pelter.

‘Could be dangerous without shutdown.’

Pelter just stared at him. Corlackis shrugged, then pulled something from his pocket. There was a click, and chainglass glittered. He stooped over Svent and Dusache.

‘What about yours?’ Stanton asked.

Pelter closed his eyes. In that moment he looked as if he was about to throw up. He reached up and gripped his second aug. It seemed to be squirming in his grip.

‘This, you mean?’ he asked, his voice tight and vicious.

Stanton stepped back. No telling how Pelter might react. He gripped the handle of his stun gun and kept his face expressionless. Abruptly Pelter snarled and tore the aug from his head. He threw it hard against the floor and stared at it. After a moment he stamped on it, then again and again. Finally he ground the fleshy remnants to pulp under his heel.

‘That—about mine,’ he said.

* * *

The layer of cloud was breaking like a crust, to expose lemon cracks. Pelter eased forward on the controls and the dropbird slid away from the warehouse, then up into the air. All its lift came entirely from the AG transport plates, and all its forward motion from the tilting of those plates. Because there were no turbines and no thrust from any other quarter, and because of the bird’s aerodynamic shape, it was eerily silent. There was also something spooky, Stanton felt, about looking through the side of the screen and not immediately being able to make out the body and wings of the craft in which he was travelling.

As the bird picked up speed, there at last came sound: a high keening of the wind. Pelter eased off on the controls, tilting the plates to brake speed while engaging the airbrakes along the wings. Stanton gripped the back of the pilot’s seat with one hand and pressed his other hand against the roof of the cockpit. There was no co-pilot’s chair here, so it was necessary to stand up to obtain a good view. Ahead of them was the transporter that Corlackis was piloting. By comparison it was an ugly lump in the sky—if you could make a comparison with something practically invisible.