“She’s not really dead,” I said doggedly. “You can excise the stack and—”

“Excise?” The word came out lethally soft. He trod closer, looming. “You want me to cut up my friend?”

Playing back the position of the gunmetal discharge tubes from memory, I guessed most of his right side was prosthetic, charging the five vents from a powerpack buried somewhere in the lower half of his ribcage.

Given recent advances in nanotech, you could get large blotches of energy to go pretty much anywhere you wanted over a limited distance. The nanocon shepherd fragments just rode the blast like surfers, sucking power and tugging the containment field wherever the launch data had them headed.

I made a mental note, if I had to hit him, to go left.

“I’m sorry. I don’t see another solution right now.”

“You—”

“Orr.” Sylvie made a sideways chopping gesture. “Tats, this place, time.” She shook her head. Another sign, thumb and forefinger forced apart by the fingers of the other hand. From the look on her face I got the sense she was emitting data through the team net as well. “Cache, the same. Three days. Puppetry. Torch and wipe, now.”

Kiyoka nodded. “Sense, Orr. Las? Oh.”

“Yeah, we can do that.” Orr wasn’t plugged all the way into this. He was still angry, speaking slowly. “Yeah, I mean. Okay.”

“ ‘ware?” Kiyoka again, some complex counting off from one hand, an inclination of her head. “Jet?”

“No, there’s time.” Sylvie made a flat-palmed motion. “Orr and Micky. Easy. You run blank. This, this, maybe this. Down.”

“Got it.” Kiyoka was checking out a retinal screen as she spoke, eyes up and left to skim the data Sylvie had shot her. “Las?”

“Not yet. I’ll flag you. Go.”

The Maori-sleeved woman disappeared back into her room, emerged a second later pulling on a bulky grey jacket and let herself out of the main door. She allowed herself a single backward look at Jadwiga’s corpse, then she was gone.

“Orr. Cutter.” A thumb at me. “Guevara.”

The giant gave me a final smouldering look and went to a case in the corner of the room, from which he took a heavy-bladed vibroknife. He came back and stood in front of me with the weapon, deliberately enough for me to tauten up. Only the obvious—that Orr didn’t need a knife to grease me—kept me from jumping him. My physical reaction must have been pretty obvious, because it got a derisive grunt out of the giant. Then he spun the knife in his hand and presented it to me grip first.

I took it. “You want me to do it?”

Sylvie moved across to Jadwiga’s corpse and stood looking down at the damage.

“I want you to dig out the stacks on your two friends there, yes. I think you’ve had the practice for it. Jad you can leave.”

I blinked.

“You’re leaving her?”