“Las, old son.” Orr dropped a heavy arm around the lead wincefish’s shoulders. “If it’d been angelfire, there wouldn’t have been anything left to find. You know that. And you know damn well there’s a fucking hole in the coverage down around the equator big enough to drive a whole fleet of colony barges through if you do the math right. Now why don’t you give the conspiracy shit a rest and check out the scenery you dragged us all up here to see.”

It was an impressive enough sight. Drava, in its day, was both trade gateway and naval port for the whole New Hokkaido hinterland. The waterfront saw shipping from every major city on the planet and the sprawl of architecture behind the docks reached back a dozen kilometres into the foothills to provide homes for almost five million people. At the height of its commercial powers, Drava rivalled Millsport for wealth and sophistication, and the navy garrison was one of the strongest in the northern hemisphere.

Now we cruised past rows of smashed-in Settlement-Years warehouses, containers and cranes tumbled across the docks like children’s toys and merchant vessels sunk at anchor end to end. There were lurid chemical stains on the water around us, and the only living things in view were a miserable-looking clutch of ripwings flapping about on the canted, corrugated roof of a warehouse. One of them flung back its neck and uttered a clattering challenge as we went past, but you could tell its heart wasn’t in it.

“Want to watch out for those,” said Kiyoka grimly. “They don’t look like much but they’re smart. Most places on this coast they’ve already polished off the cormorants and the gulls, and they’ve been known to attack humans too.”

I shrugged. “Well, it’s their planet.”

The deCom beachhead fortifications came into view. Hundreds of metres of razor-edged livewire crawling restlessly about inside its patrol parameters, jagged rows of crouched spider blocks on the ground and robot sentries perched brooding on the surrounding rooftops. In the water, a couple of automated minisubs poked conning towers above the surface, bracketing the curve of the estuary. Surveillance kites flew at intervals, tethered to crane stacks and a communications mast in the heart of the beachhead.

Guns for Guevara cut power and drifted in broadside between the two subs. On the dockside, a few figures paused in what they were doing and voices floated across the closing gap to the new arrivals. Most of the work was done by machines, silently. Beachhead security interrogated the hoverloader’s navigational intelligence and gave clearance. The auto grapple system talked to the sockets on the dock, agreed trajectory and fired home. Cables cranked tight and pulled the vessel in. An articulated boarding corridor flexed itself awake and nuzzled up to the dockside loading hatch. Buoyancy antigrav kicked over to mooring levels with a shiver. Doors unlatched.