“I don’t think they would have got violent if Jad hadn’t jumped the goon. It was a misunderstanding.”

“Misunder—fuck.” Orr’s eyes widened. “Jad is dead, you asshole.”

“She’s not really dead,” I said doggedly. “You can excise the stack and—”

“Excise?” The word came out lethally soft. He trod closer, looming. “You want me to cut up my friend?”

Playing back the position of the gunmetal discharge tubes from memory, I guessed most of his right side was prosthetic, charging the five vents from a powerpack buried somewhere in the lower half of his ribcage.

Given recent advances in nanotech, you could get large blotches of energy to go pretty much anywhere you wanted over a limited distance. The nanocon shepherd fragments just rode the blast like surfers, sucking power and tugging the containment field wherever the launch data had them headed.

I made a mental note, if I had to hit him, to go left.

“I’m sorry. I don’t see another solution right now.”

“You—”

“Orr.” Sylvie made a sideways chopping gesture. “Tats, this place, time.” She shook her head. Another sign, thumb and forefinger forced apart by the fingers of the other hand. From the look on her face I got the sense she was emitting data through the team net as well. “Cache, the same. Three days. Puppetry. Torch and wipe, now.”

Kiyoka nodded. “Sense, Orr. Las? Oh.”

“Yeah, we can do that.” Orr wasn’t plugged all the way into this. He was still angry, speaking slowly. “Yeah, I mean. Okay.”

“ ‘ware?” Kiyoka again, some complex counting off from one hand, an inclination of her head. “Jet?”

“No, there’s time.” Sylvie made a flat-palmed motion. “Orr and Micky. Easy. You run blank. This, this, maybe this. Down.”

“Got it.” Kiyoka was checking out a retinal screen as she spoke, eyes up and left to skim the data Sylvie had shot her. “Las?”

“Not yet. I’ll flag you. Go.”

The Maori-sleeved woman disappeared back into her room, emerged a second later pulling on a bulky grey jacket and let herself out of the main door. She allowed herself a single backward look at Jadwiga’s corpse, then she was gone.

“Orr. Cutter.” A thumb at me. “Guevara.”

The giant gave me a final smouldering look and went to a case in the corner of the room, from which he took a heavy-bladed vibroknife. He came back and stood in front of me with the weapon, deliberately enough for me to tauten up. Only the obvious—that Orr didn’t need a knife to grease me—kept me from jumping him. My physical reaction must have been pretty obvious, because it got a derisive grunt out of the giant. Then he spun the knife in his hand and presented it to me grip first.

I took it. “You want me to do it?”

Sylvie moved across to Jadwiga’s corpse and stood looking down at the damage.

“I want you to dig out the stacks on your two friends there, yes. I think you’ve had the practice for it. Jad you can leave.”

I blinked.

“You’re leaving her?”

Orr snorted again. The woman looked at him and made a spiralling gesture. He compressed a sigh and went to his room.

“Let me worry about Jad.” Her face was clouded with distance, engaged at levels I couldn’t sense. “Just get cutting. And while you’re at it, you want to tell me who exactly we’ve killed here?”

“Sure.” I went to Yukio’s corpse and manhandled it onto what was left of its front. “This is Yukio Hirayasu—local yak, but he’s someone important’s son apparently.”

The knife burred into life in my hand, vibrations backing up unpleasantly as far as the wound in my side. I shook off a teeth-on-edge shiver, placed one cupped palm on the back of Yukio’s skull to steady it and started cutting into the spine. The mingled stink of scorched flesh and shit didn’t help.

“And the other one?” she asked.

“Disposable thug. Never seen him before.”

“Is he worth taking with us?”

I shrugged. “Better than leaving him here, I guess. You can toss him over the side halfway to New Hok. This one I’d keep for ransom, if I were you.”

She nodded. “What I thought.”

The knife bit down through the last millimetres of spinal column and sliced rapidly into the neck below. I switched off, changed grip and started a new cut, a couple of vertebrae lower down.

“These are heavyweight yakuza, Sylvie.” My guts were chilling over as I recalled my phone conversation with Tanaseda. The sempai had cut a deal with me purely on the strength of Yukio’s value in one piece. And he’d been pretty explicit about what would happen if things didn’t stay that way. “Millsport-connected, probably with First Family links. They’re going to come after you with everything they’ve got.”

Her eyes were unreadable. “They’re going to come after you too.”

“Let me worry about that.”

“That’s very generous of you. However,” she paused as Orr came back out of his room fully dressed and headed out the door with a curt nod, “I think we have this handled. Ki is off wiping our electronic traces now. Orr can torchblast every room in this place in about half an hour. That leaves them with nothing but—”

“Sylvie, this is the yakuza we’re talking about.”

“Nothing but eye witnesses, peripheral video data, and besides which we’ll be on our way to Drava in about two hours’ time. And no one’s going to follow us there.” There was a sudden, stiff pride in her voice. “Not the yakuza, not the First Families, not even the fucking Envoys. No one wants to fuck with the mimints.”

Like most bravado, it was misplaced. For one thing, I’d had it from an old friend six months back that Envoy Command had tendered for the New Hokkaido contract—they just hadn’t been cheap enough to suit the Mecsek government’s freshly rediscovered faith in unfettered market forces. A sneer across Todor Murakami’s lean face as we shared a pipe on the ferry from Akan to New Kanagawa. Fragrant smoke on the winter air of the Reach, and the soft grind of the maelstrom as backdrop. Murakami was letting his cropped Corps haircut grow out, and it stirred a little in the breeze off the water. He wasn’t supposed to be here, talking to me, but it’s hard to tell Envoys what to do. They know what they’re worth.

Hey, fuck Leo Mecsek. We told him what it’d cost. He can’t afford it, whose problem is that supposed to be? We’re supposed to cut corners and endanger Envoy lives, so he can hand the First Families back some more of the tax they pay? Fuck that. We’re not fucking locals.

You’re a local, Tod, I felt driven to point out. Millsport born and bred.

You know what I mean.

I knew what he meant. Local government don’t get to punch keys on the Envoy Corps. The Envoys go where the Protectorate needs them, and most local governments pray to whatever gods they give house room that they’ll never be found wanting enough for that contingency to be invoked.

The aftermath of Envoy intervention can be very unpleasant for all concerned.

This whole tendering angle’s fucked anyway. Todor plumed fresh smoke out over the rail. No one can afford us, no one trusts us. Can’t see the point, can you?

I thought it was about offsetting non-operational costs while you guys were sitting on your arses undeployed.

Oh, yeah. Which is when?

Really? I heard it was all pretty quiet right now. Since Hun Home, I mean.

Going to tell me some covert insurgency tales?

Hey, sam. He passed me the pipe. You’re not on the team any more.

Remember?

I remembered.

Innenin!

It bursts on the edges of memory like a downed marauder bomb going up distant, but not far enough off to be safe. Red laser fire and the screams of men dying as the Rawling virus eats their minds alive.

I shivered a little and drew on the pipe. With Envoy-tuned sensitivity, Todor spotted it and shifted subject.

So what’s this scam about? Thought you were hanging out with Radul Segesvar these days. Hometown nostalgia and cheap organised crime.