“Yeah.” I drained my glass and shivered slightly. Got up. “Think I need to talk to my crew-mates. If you gentlemen will excuse me.”

I shouldered my way back through the crowd until I reached Jadwiga and Kiyoka’s corner again. They’d wrapped each other up in a passionate mouth-to-mouth embrace, oblivious to their surroundings. I slid into the seat next to them and tapped Jadwiga on the shoulder.

“Stop that, you two. We’ve got problems.”

“Well,” rumbled Orr. “I think you’re full of shit.”

“Really?” I kept a grip on my temper with an effort, and wished I’d just gone for full Envoy-effect persuasion, instead of trusting my deCom colleagues with the use of their own decision-making faculties. “This is the yakuza we’re talking about.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Do the math. Six weeks ago we were collectively responsible for the death of a high-ranking yakuza’s son and his two enforcers. And now there’s someone looking for us.”

“No. There’s someone looking for you. Whether he’s looking for the rest of us remains to be seen.”

“Listen. All of you.” Inclusive glance around the windowless billet they’d found for Sylvie. Spartan single berth, integral storage lockers in the walls, a chair in one corner. With the command head curled up on the bunk and her crew stood around, it was a tense, cramped space. “They know Sylvie, they’ve tied her to me. Oishii’s pal said as much.”

“Man, we wiped that room cleaner than—”

“I know, Jad, but it wasn’t enough. They got witnesses who saw the two of us, peripheral video maybe, maybe something else. The point is I know this Kovacs, and believe me, if we wait around for him to catch up with us, you’re going to find out that it doesn’t much matter whether he’s looking for me, or Sylvie, or both of us. The man is an ex-Envoy. He’ll take down everybody in this room, just to keep it simple.”

That old Envoy terror—Sylvie was asleep, out on recuperative chemicals and sheer exhaustion, and Orr was too fired up with confrontation, but the rest of them flinched. Beneath the armoured deCom cool, they’d grown up on the horror stories from Adoracion and Sharya, just like everybody else. The Envoys came and they tore your world apart. It wasn’t that simple, of course; the truth was far more complex, and ultimately far more scary. But who in this universe wants the truth?

“What about we spike this ahead of time?” wondered Jadwiga. “Find Kovacs’ holdout buddies in the beachhead and shut them down before they can transmit out.”

“Probably too late, Jad.” Lazlo shook his head. “We’ve been in a couple of hours. Anybody who wants to knows about it by now.”

Gathering momentum. I stayed silent and watched it roll the way I wanted. Kiyoka weighed in, frowning.