But he’ll break her in half if she gets in his way. He’ll go through her like angelfire.

Will he? If she reminds you of Mho, isn’t she going to remind him too? It’s the same sister for both of you. Isn’t that going to stop him?

Isn’t it?

I cast my mind back into the murk of operational days with the Corps, and didn’t know.

“Kovacs!”

It was a voice out of the sky. I blinked and looked up from the modelled streets of Millsport. Over our heads, Brasil hung in the air of the virtuality clad in garish orange surf shorts and tatters of low-level cloud. With his physique and long fair hair blown back by stratospheric winds, he looked like a disreputable minor god. I raised a hand in greeting.

“Jack, you’ve got to come and look at this northern approach. It isn’t going to—”

“Got no time for that, Tak. You need to bail out. Right now.”

I felt a tightening around my chest. “What is it?”

“Company,” he said cryptically, and vanished in a twist of white light.

The offices of Dzurinda Tudjman Sklep, marine architects and fluid dynamic engineers by appointment, were in north Sourcetown, where the Strip started to morph into resort complexes and beaches with safe surf. It wasn’t a part of town any of Brasil’s crew would have been seen dead in under normal circumstances, but they merged competently enough with the tourist hordes. Only someone who was looking for hardcore surfer poise would have spotted it beneath the violently mismatched high-colour branded beachwear they’d adopted like camouflage. In the sober surroundings of a nilvibe conference chamber ten floors up from the promenade, they looked like an outbreak of some exotic anti-corporate fungal infection.

“A priest, a fucking priest?”

“I’m afraid so.” Sierra Tres told me. “Apparently alone, which I understand is unusual for the New Revelation.”

“Unless they’re borrowing tricks from the Sharyan martyr brigades,” said Virginia Vidaura sombrely. “Sanctified solo assassins against targeted infidels. What have you been up to, Tak?”

“It’s personal,” I muttered.

“Isn’t it always.” Vidaura grimaced and looked around at the assembled company. Brasil shrugged, and Tres showed no more emotion than usual.

But Ado and Koi both looked angrily intent. “Tak, I think we have a right to know what’s going on. This could jeopardise everything we’re working for.”

“It’s got nothing to do with what we’re working for, Virginia. It’s irrelevant. These bearded fucks are too stupid incompetent to touch us. They’re strictly the bottom of the food chain.”

“Stupid or not,” Koi pointed out, “One of them has succeeded in following you here. And is now asking after you in Kem Point.”

“Fine. I’ll go and kill him.”

Mari Ado shook her head. “Not alone, you won’t.”

“Hey, this is my nicking problem, Mari.”

“Tak, calm down.”