A launch barge slid past in the moonlight, on its way out to a firing position further up the Reach. At the rear, the deck was piled high with tumbled packages, webbing and helium cylinders. The sawn-off forward superstructure thronged with figures at rails, waving and firing flares into the night. A sharp hooting lifted from the vessel as it passed, the Harlan birthday hymn picked out in harsh collision alert blasts.

Happy birthday, motherfucker.

“Kovacs?”

It was Sierra Tres. She’d reached the cockpit without me noticing, which said either a lot for her stealth skills or as much for my lack of focus. I hoped it was the former.

“You okay?”

I considered that for a moment. “Do I not look okay?”

She made a characteristically laconic gesture and seated herself in the other pilot chair. For quite a long time, she just looked at me.

“So what’s going on with the kid?” she asked finally. “You looking to recapture your long lost youth?”

“No.” I jerked a thumb southward. “My long lost fucking youth is out there somewhere, trying to kill me. There’s nothing going on with Isa. I’m not a fucking paedophile.”

Another long, quiet spell. The launch barge slipped away into the evening. Talking to Tres was always like this. Under normal circumstances, I’d have found it irritating, but now, caught in the calm before midnight, it was curiously restful.

“How long do you think they had that viral stuff tagged to Natsume?”

I shrugged. “Hard to tell. You mean, was it long-term shadowing or a trap set specifically for us?”

“If you like.”

I knocked ash off the cigar and stared at the ember beneath. “Natsume’s a legend. Granted a dimly remembered one, but I remember him. So will the copy of me the Harlans have hired. He probably also knows by now that I talked to people back in Tekitomura, and that I know they’re holding Sylvie at Rila. He knows what I’d do, given that information. A little Envoy intuition would do the rest. If he’s in tune, then yeah, maybe he had them clip some viral watchdogs to Natsume, waiting for me to show up. With the backing he’s got now, it wouldn’t be hard to write a couple of shell personalities, have them wired in with faked credentials from one of the other Renouncer monasteries.”

I drew on the cigar, felt the bite of the smoke and let it up again.

“Then again, maybe the Harlan family had Natsume tagged from way back anyway. They’re not a forgiving lot, and him climbing Rila like that made them look stupid, even if wasn’t much more than a Quellboy poster stunt.”

Sierra was silent, staring ahead through the cockpit windscreen.

“Comes to the same thing in the end,” she said at last.