That was what Axl had heard anyway.

‘Feed her and rub her down.’ Axl told Tukten, tossing his reins to the boy. ‘Then get home and stay there, okay? If they want your jacket give it to them, the same goes for your sister or your arse. Don’t get into fights, don’t get riled and don’t waste time trying to be a hero. This lot slot kids like you for a hobby. Understand?’

The stable door had swung shut before the shocked boy even had time to answer. The corporal didn’t challenge Axl on his way up the street, in fact the man did his best to pretend he hadn’t seen Axl at all.

DanceSerious WarPosse announced a hand-printed screamer posted to Leon’s door. Suck On This, Samsara tour. Despite himself, Axl smiled. Some things didn’t change.

A wave of sour chang, sensimillia and stale sweat hit Axl as he stepped though the inn’s door into the crowded bar. The place was rammed to the rafters. Over at a table in the far corner, Ketzia was trying to stop a tray crammed to overflowing with bowls of chang from being pulled out of her hands.

Three teenage conscripts sat at the table, DanceSerious patches epoxied to their shirtsleeves. And the only boy not struggling to slide his hands up Ketzia’s skirt was alternating between sucking hits on a jade chillum and fumbling at Ketzia’s blouse. One full breast was almost loose, its dark nipple exposed, but for all the expression on Ketzia’s face the grinning stoner kid might have been transparent.

The woman’s eyes were blank, her wide mouth neither smiling nor frowning. Unlike the other girl serving, Ketzia didn’t even bother to swat away their groping hands. She’d been here before Axl knew, just from the deadness of her expression which reflected the utter powerlessness of an object with no reason to question the emptiness of those who did only what they were told.

If she expected any help from Axl she didn’t let it show, but then with his two new eyes and reworked face she probably didn’t recognise him anyway.

Just inside the door—and right in his way—six or seven spliffed-up Peruvian kids sat in a circle on the dirty floor. Off duty and killing time with bowls of Cocheforet’s thin beer. Spread out in the middle of them were foil packs of Mexican take-out. Someone had gone to the bother of yanking the heating tabs on the sides before ripping off the lids, but most of the packs were still full.

Axl wasn’t surprised. Reconstituted protein was no one’s first choice and the smell of vat-grown chilli still turned his gut.

‘Shite, isn’t it?’ Axl said, stepping carefully over them. One of the mind-blasted teenagers nodded long before she even thought to wonder who the newcomer was. Avoiding her boots, Axl stepped neatly round a boy on his knees trying to puke, dodged two conscripts kissing and finally reached the bar.

‘Evening, Leon. Did Ketzia find what she was looking for?’

It was worth the walk.

Leon’s face went slack with shock and then he was scrambling beneath the counter, hands feeling for some weapon. A hidden length of metal pipe, Axl decided, that would be about his level.

Axl shook his head slowly, locking his eyes onto those of the barman. Equally slowly, Leon dropped his hands from the bar and stood back, mouth opening and shutting silently…

‘Hey,’ said the heavy woman Leon had been serving. ‘You seen a fucking ghost or something?’

‘Yeah,’ said Axl, yanking a stool from beneath a drunken conscript, ‘or something.’ Leon glared angrily at Axl, glanced at the heavy woman and left, muttering under his breath.

‘Do I know you?’ defMoma asked. The sergeant was stripped to her combat trousers, stained T-shirt and steel-capped boots that buckled to the knee. Her biceps were thick as hams, her heavy breasts topped by nipples bullet-like enough to threaten the cloth of her T-shirt. It was an impressive sight.

Axl spread his hands slightly. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Do you?’ The long list of UN conflict zones he reeled off began with Azerbaijan and ended with Zaire, via Bessarabia and Montevideo. Actually, he’d only been to about three of them but defMoma didn’t know that. Didn’t know he’d fought mainly for the other side, either.

‘Chang,’ Axl ordered, while defMoma was still thinking over his list. The beer tasted no better than it had the last time Axl tried it, but at least Leon didn’t try to charge him.

‘And another.’

The revolver pressed hard in the small of his back. Other than that, Axl had the hunting knife stuck in his boot. Not much if putsch came to kill ... Of course he could always try to grab a better weapon, if he could just work out what defMoma was packing and where.

Back in San Salvador, when the IMF were running one of their interminable credit checks, the NCOs got issued with semiAI HiPowers, poor relations to the gun Axl used before logic went walkabout. No one knew what weapons senior officers in San Salvador carried because no one saw any.

Axl suddenly realised defMoma wasn’t listening to him anymore. She was displaying an unhealthy interest in a woman who’d just walked in, only to stop dead in the doorway, appalled by the stink of vomit and the blast of some kid’s Sony boombox.

Poor-boy’s soundtracks. Like his sergeant used to say, if it’s not fitted it’s not real. ‘Like to stay and chat,’ Axl shouted, slipping off the stool, ‘but you know how it is. Shit to do…’

Idiots to rescue.

The barefoot woman began to edge between the kids blocking the door, gazing too obviously round the crowded bar. Either she’d been to the stable but hadn’t found any more beads, and had come for help from Leon and Ketzia, or else Escondido had been occupied by PaxForce officers and she wanted Mai out of the house but needed help finding somewhere for the kid to stay.

Or both.

Axl could write the script in his head.

A ragged yellow jacket hid her upper body, while what looked like a horse blanket was tied tight around her waist, making a crude skirt. Her hair was scraped back under a blue scarf too old even to remember if it had ever had better days.

All she needed was a bottle of industrial alcohol to look like a pantomime beggar. On Samsara, of course, among the thousands of ‘fugees scrabbling to feed themselves from thin soil, she looked almost normal. Just another woman who’d lost her home, her job or her kids and been issued with two blankets and a refugee PIN number in reply.

She wasn’t.

That ash-grey blanket round her waist was cut from a shahtoosh, woven from wool combed from the stomach of an antelope. It took five animals to make each wrap. Pashmina and shahtoosh were two of the few luxury items Samsara produced for export. Cutting it up and dumping it into the mud must have really hurt Kate, which was fine with Axl. The last time he’d seen the bitch she’d just finished slapping Mai stupid.

Now the roles were reversed.

What gave Kate away was her feet. They were filthy enough, her soles and heels crusted with mud where she’d walked into Cocheforet from El Escondido. But the dirt that should have been ingrained under each toenail was missing and her ankles lacked the grey patina of those forced to live without shoes.

She was altogether too clean, as some conscript was bound to find out the moment he stuck a hand under her skirt to uncover legs that weren’t as filthy as they should be.

‘You.’ Axl pointed at Kate. ‘Over here.’ She could run or she could do what she was told. One of those wasn’t going to get her killed, if Kate got lucky.

‘Well done,’ said Axl coldly, watching her trying to work out where she recognised him from.

He slapped her. And then Kate knew.

Half a dozen of the conscripts cheered, cheers turning to crude encouragement as Axl twisted his right hand tight into the shocked woman’s hair and kissed her hard.

‘Hit any more children lately?’ Axl asked, coming up for air.