“Not all it’s cracked up to be in the ads, eh?” Kiyoka sat beneath the magical splatter of rain off her bug’s invisible screens and nodded at the foot sweepers as they disappeared into the latest façade. They were already drenched and the tense, flicker-eyed excitement of an hour ago was fading fast. “Opportunity and adventure in the fallow land of New Hok. Bring an umbrella.”

Seated behind her, Lazlo grinned and yawned. “Knock it off, Ki. Everyone’s got to start somewhere.”

Kiyoka leaned back in the seat, looking over her shoulder. “Hey, Sylvie. How much longer are we going to—”

Sylvie made a sign, one of the terse coded gestures I’d seen in action in the aftermath of the firefight with Yukio. Envoy focus gave me the quiver of one eyelid from Kiyoka as she ate up data from the command head.

Lazlo nodded contentedly to himself.

I tapped the comset they’d given me in lieu of a direct line into the command head’s skull.

“Something going on I should know about, Sylvie?”

“Nah.” Orr’s voice came back, dismissive. “We’ll cut you in when you need to know something. Right, Sylvie?”

I looked back at her. “Right, Sylvie?”

She smiled a little wearily. “Now isn’t the time, Micky.”

Watch the scans. Move along the rain-damp, damaged streets. The screens on the bugs made shimmering oval umbrellas of rainsplash over our heads, the foot sweepers cursed and got wet.

We found nothing.

By midday, we were a couple of kilometres into the city and operational tension had given way to boredom. The nearest crews were a half dozen streets away on either side. Their vehicles showed up on the mapping equipment in lazily slewed parking formations and if you tuned to the general channel, you could hear the foot sweepers grumbling their way up and down buildings, all trace of the earlier make-a-killing enthusiasm gone from their voices.

“Oh look,” rumbled Orr suddenly.

The thoroughfare we were working dog-legged right and then opened immediately onto a circular plaza lined with pagoda-style terracing and blocked at the far end by a multi-levelled temple supported on broadly spaced pillars. Across the open space, rain lay in broad pools where the paving had taken damage. Aside from the massive tilted wreckage of a burnt-out scorpion gun, there was no cover.

“Is that the one they killed last night?” I asked.

Lazlo shook his head. “Nah, been there for years. Besides, the way Oishii told it, last night’s never built beyond the chassis before it got fried. That one out there was a walking, talking self-prop mimint motherfucker before it died.”

Orr shot him a frowning glance.

“Better get the sprogs downstairs,” said Kiyoka.

Sylvie nodded. Over the local channel, she hurried the sweepers out of the last buildings and got them assembled behind the grav bugs. They wiped rain out of their faces and stared resentfully out across the plaza.