“Hey, baby.” An arm slipped around my waist and violent crimson hair tickled me under the jaw. Isa snuggling against me, stripped down to cutaway swimwear and some eye-opening embedded body jewellery. She glared balefully at the blonde woman. “Who’s your new friend?”

“Oh, we haven’t, ah…” I opened an inviting hand.

The blonde woman’s mouth tightened. Maybe it was a competitive thing, maybe it was Isa’s glittery, red-veined stare. Or maybe just healthy disgust at seeing a fifteen-year-old girl hanging off a man over twice her age. Re-sleeving can and does lead to some weird body options, but anyone with the money to run a boat like Boubin Islander doesn’t have to go through them if they don’t want to. If I was fucking someone who looked fifteen, either she was fifteen, or I wanted her to look like she was, which in the end comes to pretty much the same thing.

“I think I’d better get back,” she said, and turned unsteadily about.

Listing slightly every few steps, she made as dignified a retreat as was possible on heels that stupid.

“Yeah,” Isa called after her. “Enjoy the party. See you around, maybe.”

“Isa?” I muttered.

She grinned up at me. “Yeah, what?”

“Let go of me, and go put some fucking clothes back on.”

We cast off twenty minutes later, and cruised out of the harbour on a general guidance beam. Watching the fireworks from the Reach wasn’t a stunningly original idea, and we weren’t even close to the only yacht in Tadaimako harbour heading that way. For the time being, Isa kept watch from the belowdeck cockpit and let the marine traffic interface tug us along. There’d be time to break loose later, when the show started.

In the forward master cabin, Brasil and I broke out the gear. Stealth scuba suits, Anderson-rigged, courtesy of Sierra Tres and her haiduci friends, weaponry from the hundred personal arsenals on Vchira Beach.

Isa’s customised software for the raid patched into the suits’ general purpose processors, and overlaid with a scrambler-rigged comsystem she’d stolen fresh from the factory that afternoon. Like the Boubin Islander’s comatose owners, it wouldn’t be missed for a couple of days.

We stood and looked at the assembled hardware, the gleaming black of the powered-down suits, the variously scuffed and dented weapons. There was barely enough space on the mirrorwood floor for it all.

“Just like old times, huh?”

Brasil shrugged. “No such thing as an old wave, Tak. Every time, it’s different. Looking back’s the biggest mistake you can make.”

Sarah.

“Spare me the cheap fucking beach philosophy, Jack.”