Isa appeared at the top of the stern companion way, just as we got there.

Wrapped up in my own sour thoughts, it took me a moment to look up at her face. And by then, it was too late.

“Kovacs, I’m sorry,” she pleaded.

The swoopcopter.

Faintly, the soft strop of rotors, rising out of the backdrop noise from the maelstrom. Death and fury approaching, on ninja wings.

“They’re down,” Isa cried. “First Family commandos tracked them. Ado’s hit, the rest of them are. Half of them are. They got Mitzi Harlan.”

“Who did?” Sierra Tres, eyes gone uncharacteristically wide. “Who’s got her now? Koi or—”

But I already knew the answer to that one.

“Incoming!”

I screamed it. Was already trying to get Sylvie Oshima to the deck without dropping her. Brasil had the same idea, but he was moving in the wrong direction. Sylvie’s body tugged between us. Sierra Tres yelled. We all seemed to be moving in mud, gracelessly slow.

Like a million furious watersprites let loose, the hail of machine-gun fire ripped out of the ocean on our stern, then up across Boubin Islander’s lovingly finished deck. Eerily, it was silent. Water splashed and splattered, harmlessly quiet and playful. Wood and plastic leapt out of everything in splinters around us. Isa screamed.

I got Sylvie down in the stern seats. Landed on top of her. Out of the darkened sky, hard on the heels of its own silenced machine-gun fire, the Dracul machine came hammering across the water at strafing height.

The guns started up again and I rolled off the seat, dragging Sylvie’s unresponsive form down with me. Something blunt smashed against my ribs as I hit the ground in the confined space. I felt the swoopcopter’s shadow pass across me and then it was gone, quietened motors muttering in its wake.

“Kovacs?” It was Brasil, from above on the deck.

“Still here. You?”

“He’s coming back.”

“Of course he fucking is.” I poked my head out of cover and saw the Dracul banking about in the mist-blurred air. The first run had been a stealth assault—he didn’t know we weren’t expecting him. Now it didn’t matter. He’d take his time, sit out at a distance and chew us to shreds.

Motherfucker.

It geysered out of me. All the stored-up fight that the stand-off with Aiura hadn’t allowed a discharge for. I flailed upright in the stern seats, got a grip on the companionway coating and hauled myself onto the deck.