‘He’ll do the job.’ Falco’s face is set. ‘He used to be the best mechanic from here to Prodor.’

‘So what happened to him?’ I ask, glancing back.

‘What do you think? Factus happened.’

We make our way towards what passes for a town, here in the U Zone. The air is so heavy and sullen a bullet could have sunk and crawled along the ground.

Buildings flank a rough dirt road. They look like most on Factus, built from century wood and old freight containers, sand blown in drifts against the walls. A series of them welded together announces itself to be the General Store. The doors are closed, a faded sign in the rough plastic window states: WITCHETTY GRUBS: FOUR FOR THREE. Beneath it, fat, pale grubs pulse their bodies over a piece of rotting wood in a tank.

The road ends in a larger building – the only two-storey affair in the settlement – made of breeze blocks painted weather-beaten blue.

‘What is this place?’ I ask.

‘Clearing port, from what I’ve heard,’ Silas murmurs. ‘Freighter crews stop here and get their planetfall stamp before going on to the depot in Otroville or the townships.’

‘Why not straight there?’ the General asks. ‘The Accord have their own clearing houses.’

‘The Accord tend to take issue with discrepancies on the manifests. But if the haulers come to Pec Esterházy for approval…’ Pegeen shrugs.

‘Banditry,’ the General sneers. ‘It’s what keeps these goddam moons so backward.’

‘It’s what keeps these goddam moons from rotting altogether, little miss.’ Falco narrows her eye at the General. ‘Or do you think folk get by on what scraps the Accord bother to send?’

The General raises her chin. ‘The provisions dispatched by the Bureau to useless moons like these would be more than enough, if smugglers stopped taking their cut at every rest stop along the way.’

‘“More than enough”,’ Falco mocks. ‘You need that Academy nonsense knocking out of you. If we had time, I’d take you to an Accord-run border town and leave you there for a week. Then you can tell me what is enough.’

‘Shh,’ Peg hisses, over the General’s spluttered reply. ‘What’s that?’

We stop dead in the middle of the street.

For a long time, there’s no sound beyond the distant metal groan of the port. Then, I hear it. Tap, tap, tap.

Falco reaches for her gun.

Tap, tap, tap.

‘Two snipers,’ the General murmurs, her eyes fixed on the curtained windows of the building. ‘At eleven and one o’clock.’ Her hand twitches towards her rifle Falco has lent her.

Tap, tap.

The front door of the blue building creaks open, and a woman steps out, leaning on a cane, shielding her eyes from the sun. I can’t help but stare. She’s old; possibly the oldest person I have ever seen on Factus. Her face is like the Barrens themselves, leached of moisture by the winds, scored by deep canyons and etched with fine lines, like abandoned mule trails. A faded tattoo of a crescent moon circles one eye.