“Last time we were out,” she said slowly, “we turned up a government command bunker in the hills east of Sopron. The smart locks were too complex to crack in the time we had, we were way too far north anyway and it’s bad mimint territory, but I got in deep enough to run a basic inventory. There’s a full medlab facility, complete re-sleeving unit and cryocap clone banks. About two dozen sleeves, combat biotech by the signature traces.”

“Well, that’d make sense. That’s where you’re taking Jadwiga?”

She nodded.

I looked pensively at the chunk of spine in my hand, the ragged-lipped wound it had come out of. I thought about what the yakuza would do to me if they caught up with me in this sleeve.

“How long are you going over for?”

She shrugged. “Long as it takes. We’re provisioned for three months, but last time we filled our quota in half that time. You could come back sooner if you like. The ‘loaders run out of Drava all the time.”

“And you’re sure this stuff in the bunker is still functional.”

She grinned and shook her head.

“What?”

“It’s New Hok, Micky. Over there, everything’s still functional. That’s the whole problem with the fucking place.”

FIVE

The hoverloader Guns for Guevara was exactly what she sounded like—a low-profile, heavily armoured shark of a vessel, spiking weaponry along her back like dorsal spines. In marked contrast to the commercial ‘loaders that plied the routes between Millsport and the Saffron Archipelago, she had no external decks or towers. The bridge was a snubbed blister on the forward facings of the dull grey superstructure and her flanks swept back and out in smooth, featureless curves. The two loading hatches, open on either side of her nose, looked built to disgorge flights of missiles.

“You sure this is going to work?” I asked Sylvie as we reached the downward slope of the docking ramp.

“Relax,” growled Orr, behind me. “This isn’t the Saffron Line.”

He was right. For an operation that the government claimed was being run under stringent security guidelines, deCom embarkation struck me as sloppy in the extreme. At the side of each hatch, a steward in a soiled blue uniform was taking hardcopy documentation and running the authorisation flashes under a reader that wouldn’t have looked much out of place in a Settlement-Years experia flic. The ragged queues of embarking personnel snaked back and forth across the ramp, ankle deep in carry-on baggage.

Bottles and pipes passed back and forth in the cold, bright air. There was highly-strung hilarity and mock sparring up and down the lines, repeated jokes over the antique reader. The stewards smiled back repeatedly, wearily.

“And where the fuck is Las?” Kiyoka wanted to know.

Sylvie shrugged. “He’ll be here. He always is.”