Cossont sat. She wore Etalde’s jacket over her shoulders; he’d been left in an antechamber several thick, closed doors back. He had charge of her jacket, the familiar and the elevenstring, all guarded by two troopers in full armour and a pair of combat arbites like frozen explosions of mercury and knife-blades. Cossont’s earbud, receiving and transmitting only on the asteroid’s own channels since she’d come aboard, had shut itself off entirely. She’d been asked to hand it over all the same and so had left that behind too.

“Are you well, Lieutenant Commander?” Reikl asked her.

“Thank you, yes, ma’am.”

“Sorry we couldn’t find you a uniform jacket with the requisite number of arms,” Reikl said, smiling again. “I imagine one is being prepared as we speak.”

“Thank you, ma’am.” Cossont sat with her upper hands clasped on the table, the other pair hanging down; it disturbed people less that way, were they of a disturbable nature.

“Now,” Reikl said. “To business. None of this is being recorded, minuted or monitored elsewhere—”

“Far as we know,” Marshal Boyuter said, smiling first at her, then Reikl, who nodded impatiently.

“As far as we know,” she agreed.

The marshal was thin, grey-looking, his pale face part-covered with a colourful tattoo that looked both fresh and unfinished. Cossont had the feeling she was looking at a life-task, still incomplete. She’d been out of the services for nearly twenty years and even now didn’t feel terribly military, despite being told her commission had been reactivated, but it was still slightly shocking to see somebody so senior exhibiting something so non-regulation as a facial tattoo. Oh well. As people were continually pointing out – strange times.

The marshal sat relaxed in his seat, almost slumped, playing continually with what looked like some sort of multi-tool and rarely looking directly at her after an initial, staring inspection when she’d first entered the room. He’d frowned at her twin sets of arms. General Gazan’tyo was rotund, ever-smiling and seemed to communicate solely by nods. He had a variety of small time-tos scattered about the chest of his uniform jacket, as though he didn’t entirely trust any of them and was looking for a consensus. If she hadn’t known – well, assumed – better, Cossont might have thought both men were on drugs.

Reikl was different: thin and bright-eyed, she sat upright and looked sharp, tense, almost predatory. “What you are going to hear has until now been restricted to the three of us in this cabin,” she told Cossont.

“And whoever it was originally meant for,” the marshal added quietly, staring at the multi-tool. He let it go and it floated into the air a little, making a low whirring noise.