A detached deCom shrug. Or you’ll blank out again. At a minimum, you’ve got to go back to Tekitomura and get checked out for viral trace. You can’t stay out to play in this state.

The rest of the Slipins concurred. Sylvie’s sudden return to consciousness notwithstanding, we were going back.

Burn some of that stored credit, grinned Jadwiga. Party on down. Tek’to nightlife, here we come.

The beachhead gate juddered up for us and we passed through into the compound. In comparison to the last time I’d seen it, the place seemed almost deserted. A few figures wandered about between the bubblefabs, carting equipment. Too cold to be out for anything else. A couple of surveillance kites fluttered madly from the coms mast, knocked about by wind and snow. It looked as if the rest had been taken down in anticipation of the blizzards. Visible over the tops of the ‘fabs, the superstructure of a big hoverloader showed snow-coated at the dock, but the cranes that served it were stilled. There was a desolate sense of battening down across the encampment.

“Better go talk to Kurumaya right away,” Oishii said, dismounting from his own use-battered solo bug as the gate came back down. He glanced around at his crew and ours. “See about some bunks. My guess is there won’t be a lot of space. I can’t see any of today’s arrivals deploying until this weather clears. Sylvie?”

Sylvie drew her coat tighter around her. Her face was haggard. She didn’t want to talk to Kurumaya.

“I’ll go, skipper,” offered Lazlo. He leaned on my shoulder awkwardly with his undamaged arm and jumped down from the bug we were sharing.

Frosted snow crunched under his feet. “Rest of you go get some coffee or something.”

“Cool,” said Jadwiga. “And don’t let old Shig give you a hard time, Las. He doesn’t like our story, he can go fuck himself.”

“Yeah, I’ll tell him that.” Lazlo rolled his eyes. “Not. Hey, Micky, want to come along and give me some moral support?”

I blinked. “Uh, yeah. Sure. Ki, Jad? One of you want to take the bug?”

Kiyoka slid off her pillion seat and ambled over. Lazlo joined Oishii and looked back at me. He inclined his head towards the centre of the camp.

“Come on then. Let’s get this over with.”

Kurumaya, perhaps predictably, was less than happy to see members of Sylvie’s crew. He made the two of us wait in a poorly-heated outer chamber of the command ‘fab while he processed Oishii and allocated billets.

Cheap plastic seats were racked along the partition walls and a corner mounted screen gave out global news coverage at backdrop volume. A low table held an open-access datacoil for detail junkies, an ashtray for idiots.

Our breath clouded faintly in the air.