"Three of my team would have to disagree with you, there, Isaac. If they weren't already really f.u.c.king dead, that is."

A slight hesitation. "Your team?" team?"

I grimaced. "Jiang Jianping got turned into soup by an ultravibe blast, the nan.o.bes took Hansen and Cruicksha-"

"Your tea-" tea-"

"I heard what you f.u.c.king said the first time, Isaac."

"Oh. I'm sorry. I merely wonder-"

"Training's got f.u.c.king nothing to do with it, and you know it. You can go sell that f.u.c.king song to Lapinee. Machines and luck, that's what kills you or keeps you alive on Sanction IV."

Scan, search, find that motherf.u.c.ker that motherf.u.c.ker.

And calm down.

"Sanction IV and any other conflict," Carrera said quietly. "You of all people should know that. It's the nature of the game. If you didn't want to play, you shouldn't have dealt yourself in. The Wedge isn't a conscript army."

"Isaac, the whole f.u.c.king planet has been conscripted into this war. No one's got any choice any more. You're going to be involved, you might as well have the big guns You're going to be involved, you might as well have the big guns. That's a Quellism for you, in case you wondered."

He grunted. "Sounds like common sense to me. Didn't that b.i.t.c.h ever say anything original."

There. My 'methed-out nerves jumped with it. Right there Right there.

The slim edge of something built by human technology, stark angular outline caught by flarelight among the curves at the base of a bubble outcrop. One side of an impeller set frame. I settled the Sunjet into place and lined up on the target. Drawled response.

"She wasn't a philosopher, Isaac. She was a soldier."

"She was a terrorist."

"We quibble over terms."

I triggered the Sunjet. Fire lanced across the concave arena and splashed off the outline. Something exploded visibly off the hull, in fragments. I felt a smile tug at the corners of my mouth.

Breathing.

It was the only thing that warned me. The papery whisper of breath at the bottom of the suit receiver. The suppressed sound of effort.

Fu- Something invisible shattered and shed light over my head. Something no more visible spanged off my faceplate, leaving a tiny glowing V of chipped gla.s.s. I felt other tiny impacts off my suit.

Grenade!

Instinct had me already spinning to the right. Later, I realised why. It was the quickest route between Carrera's position and mine, working round the rim of hull architecture that ringed the docking bay. A single third of the circle, and Carrera had crept round it while he talked to me. Shed of the impellers that had decoyed me and would in any case telltale his movement, he'd dragged and shoved himself from handhold to boot purchase point, all the way round. He'd used anger to disguise the stress in his voice as he worked, held down his breathing elsewhere, and at some point he judged close enough, he'd lain still and waited for me to give myself away with the Sunjet. And with the experience of decades in vacuum combat, he'd hit me with the one weapon that wouldn't show up.

Exemplary, really.

He came at me across fifty metres of s.p.a.ce like a flying version of Semetaire on the beach, arms reaching. The Sunjet sprouted recognisably from his right fist, a Philips squeeze launcher from his left. Though there was no way to detect it, I knew the second electromag-accelerated grenade was already in flight between us.

I jammed the impellers to life and backflipped. The hull vanished from view, then hinged back in from the top as I spiralled away. The grenade, deflected by the wash from the impeller drives as I flipped, exploded and sewed s.p.a.ce with shrapnel. I felt shards of the stuff bang through one leg and foot, sudden numbing impacts and then traceries of pain through the flesh like biofilaments slicing. My ears popped painfully as suit pressure dropped. The polalloy socked inward at a dozen other points, but it held.

I tumbled up and over the bubble outcrop, a sprawling target in the flarelight, hull and bearings spinning around me. The pain in my ears eased as the polalloy congealed across the damage. No time to look for Carrera. I trimmed the impeller thrust, then dived once more for the globular landscape stretching below me. Sunjet fire flashed around me.

I hit the hull a glancing blow, used the impact to change trajectories and saw another Sunjet blast scythe past on the left. I caught a glimpse of Carrera as he adhered briefly to a rounded surface back up the slope of the dimple. I already knew the next move. From there, he'd push off with a single well-controlled kick and ride the simple linear velocity down towards me, firing as he came. At some point he'd get close enough to punch molten holes through the suit that the polalloy could not congeal over.

I bounced off another bubble. More idiot tumbling. More near-miss Sunjet fire. I trimmed the impellers again, tried for a line that would take me into the shadow of the outcrop, and cut off the thrust. My hands groped after something to hold and caught on one of the bas relief scroll effects I'd spotted earlier. I killed my motion and twisted round to look for Carrera.

No sign. I was out of line of sight.

I turned back and crept gratefully further around the bubble outcrop. Another curl of bas relief offered itself and I reached down- Oh, s.h.i.t.

I was holding the wing of a Martian.

Shock held me unstirring for a second. Time enough for me to think this was some kind of carving in the hull surface, time enough to know at some deep level that it wasn't.

The Martian had died screaming. The wings were flung back, sunk into the hull surface for most of their width, protruding only at the curled extremities and where their muscled webbing rose up under the arched spine of the creature. The head was twisted in agony, beak gaping open, eyes glaring like comet-tailed orbs of washed jet. One clawed limb lifted talons above the hull surface. The whole corpse was sheathed in the material of the hull it had flailed against, drowning there.

I shifted my gaze and looked out across the surface ahead of me, the scattered scrawl of raised detail, and knew finally what I was looking at. The hull around the docking-bay dimple-all of it, the whole bubbling expanse-was a ma.s.s grave, a spider's web trap for thousands upon thousands of Martians who had all died entombed in whatever substances had run and foamed and burst here when- When what what?

The shape of the catastrophe was outside anything I could envisage. I could not imagine the weapons that would do this, the circ.u.mstances of this conflict between two civilisations as far ahead of humanity's scavenger-built little empire as we were from the gulls whose bodies had clogged the water around Sauberville. I could not see how it could happen. I could only see the results. I could only see the dead.

Nothing ever changes. A hundred and fifty light years from home and the same s.h.i.t just keeps going down.

Got to be some kind of universal f.u.c.king constant.

The grenade bounced off another hull-drowned Martian ten metres away, careened up and exploded. I rolled away from the blast. A brief pummelling over my back and one searing penetration under my shoulder. Pressure drop like a knife through my eardrums. I screamed.

f.u.c.k this.

I fired the impellers and burst out of the cover of the bubble outcrop, not knowing what I was going to do until I did it. Carrera's gliding figure showed up less than fifty metres off. I saw Sunjet fire, turned on my back and dived directly at the docking-bay mouth. Carrera's voice trailed me, almost amused.

"Where do you think you're going, Kovacs?"

Something exploded at my back and the impeller thrust cut out. Scorching heat across my back. Carrera and his f.u.c.king VacCom skills. But with the residual velocity, and well, maybe a little spirit realm luck cadged off the vengeful ghost of Hand-he shot you after all, Matt, you did curse the f.u.c.ker-just to grease the palm of whatever fate...

I ploughed through the atmosphere baffles of the docking bay at a slewed angle, found gravity beneath me and battered into one of the stacked fat-snake containing walls, bounced off with the sudden shock of weight from the grav field and crashed to the deck, trailing wings of smoke and flame from the wrecked impeller frame.

For a long moment, I lay still in the cavernous quiet of the bay.

Then, from somewhere, I heard a curious bubbling sound in my helmet. It took me several seconds to realise I was laughing.

Get up, Takeshi.

Oh, come on...

He can kill you just as dead in here, Tak. Get UP.

I reached out and tried to prop myself up. Wrong arm-the broken elbow joint bent soggily inside the mob suit. Pain ran up and down the abused muscles and tendons. I rolled away, gasping and tried with the other arm. Better. The mob suit wheezed a little, something definitely awry in the works here, but it got me up. Now get rid of the wreckage on my back. The emergency release still worked, sort of. I hauled myself clear, the Sunjet caught in the frame and would not tug loose on the tether line. I yanked at it for a senseless moment, then unseamed the tether instead and bent to free the weapon from the other side.

"Alri...vacs." Carrera's voice, trampled out by the interference from the interior structure. "If... tha... ay...ant it."

He was coming in after me.

The Sunjet stuck.

Leave it!

And fight him with a pistol? In polalloy In polalloy?

Weapons are an extension screamed an exasperated Virginia Vidaura, in my head- screamed an exasperated Virginia Vidaura, in my head-you are the killer and destroyer. You are whole, with or without them. Leave it!

'kay, Virginia. I sn.i.g.g.e.red a little. Whatever you say Whatever you say.

I lurched away towards the lintel-braced exit from the bay, drawing the interface pistol from its pouch. Wedge equipment was crated and stacked across the bay. The locater beacon, dumped unceremoniously, still powered at standby, the way Carrera had presumably left it. A nearby crate cracked open, sections of a disa.s.sembled Philips launcher protruding. Haste written into the details of the scene, but it was a soldierly haste. Controlled speed. Combat competence, a man at his trade. Carrera was in his element.

Get the f.u.c.k out of here, Tak.

Into the next chamber. Martian machines stirred, bristled and then sloped sullenly away from me, muttering to themselves. I limped past them, following the painted arrows, no, don't f.u.c.king follow the arrows no, don't f.u.c.king follow the arrows. I ducked left at the next opportunity and plunged along a corridor the expedition had not taken before. A machine snuffled after me a few paces, then went back.

I thought I heard the sound of motion behind and above me. A jerked glance up into the shadowed s.p.a.ce overhead. Ludicrous.

Get a grip, Tak. It's the 'meth. You did too much and now you're hallucinating.

More chambers, intersecting curves one into another and always the s.p.a.ce above. I stopped myself rigidly from looking up. The pain from the grenade shards in my leg and shoulder was beginning to seep up through the chemical armour of the tetrameth, waking echoes in my ruined left hand and the shattered joint in my right elbow. The furious energy I'd felt earlier had decayed to a jumpy sense of speed and vibrating riffs of inexplicable amus.e.m.e.nt that threatened to emerge as giggling.

In that state, I backed through into a tight, closed chamber, turned about and came face to face with my last Martian.

This time, the mummified wing membranes were folded down around the skeletal frame, and the whole thing was crouched on a low roost bar. The long skull drooped forward over the chest, hiding the light gland. The eyes were closed.

It lifted its beak and looked up at me.

No. It f.u.c.king didn't.

I shook my head, crept closer to the corpse and stared at it. From somewhere, an impulse arose to caress the long bone ridge on the back of the skull.

"I'll just sit here for a while," I promised, stifling another giggle. "Quietly. Just a couple of hours, that's all I need."

I lowered myself to the floor on my uninjured arm, leaned against the sloping wall behind us, clutching the interface gun like a charm. My body was a warm twisting together of limp ropes inside the cage of the mob suit, a faintly quivering a.s.semblage of soft tissue with no more will to animate its exoskeleton. My gaze slipped up into the gloomy s.p.a.ce at the top of the chamber and for a while I thought I saw pale wings beating there, trying to escape the imprisoning curve. At some point, though, I spotted the fact that they were in my head, because I could feel their paper-thin texture brushing around the inner surface of my skull, sc.r.a.ping minutely but painfully at the insides of my eyeb.a.l.l.s and obscuring my vision by degrees, pale to dark, pale to dark, pale to dark, to dark, to dark- And a thin, rising whine like grief.

"Wake up, Kovacs."

The voice was gentle, and there was something nudging at my hand. My eyes seemed to be gummed shut. I lifted one arm and my hand b.u.mped off the smooth curve of the faceplate.

"Wake up." Less gentle now. A tiny jag of adrenalin went eeling along my nerves at the change in tone. I blinked hard and focused. The Martian was still there-no s.h.i.t, Tak-but my view of the corpse was blocked by the figure in the polalloy suit that stood a safe three or four metres out of reach, Sunjet carried at a wary angle.

The nudging at my hand recommenced. I tipped the helmet and looked down. One of the Martian machines was stroking at my glove with an array of delicate-looking receptors. I shoved it away, and it backed up chittering a couple of places, then came sniffing back undeterred.

Carrera laughed. It rang too loud in the helmet receiver. I felt as if the fluttering wings had somehow hollowed out my head so that my whole skull wasn't much less delicate than the mummified remains I was sharing the chamber with.

"That's right. f.u.c.king thing led me to you, can you believe that? Really helpful little beastie."

At that point, I laughed too. It seemed the only thing appropriate to the moment. The Wedge commander joined in. He held up the interface gun in his left hand, and laughed louder.

"Were you going to kill me with this?"

"Doubt it."

We both stopped laughing. His faceplate hinged up and he looked down at me out of a face gone slightly haggard around the eyes. I guessed even the short time he'd spent tracking me through the Martian architecture hadn't been a lot of fun.

I flexed my palm, once, on the off-chance that Loemanako's gun might not have been personally coded, that any Wedge palm plate might be able to call it. Carrera caught the move and shook his head. He tossed the weapon into my lap.

"Unloaded anyway. Hold on to it if you like-some men go better that way, holding a gun tight. Seems to help at the end. Subst.i.tute for something, I guess. Mother's hand. Your d.i.c.k. You want to stand up to die?"

"No," I said softly.

"Open your helmet?"

"What for?"

"Just giving you the option."

"Isaac-" I cleared my throat of what felt like a web of rusted wire. Words sc.r.a.ped through. It seemed suddenly very important to say them. "Isaac, I'm sorry."

You will be It flared through me like tears up behind my eyes. Like the wolf-weeping loss that Loemanako's and Kwok's deaths had brought up through my throat.

"Good," he said simply. "But a little late."

"Have you seen what's behind you, Isaac?"

"Yeah. Impressive, but very dead. No ghosts that I've seen." He waited. "Do you have anything else to say?"

I shook my head. He raised the Sunjet.

"This is for my murdered men," he said.

"Look at the f.u.c.king thing." I screamed, every increment of Envoy intonation pushed into it and for just a fraction of a second his head shifted. I came up off the floor, flexing in the mob suit, hurling the interface gun into the s.p.a.ce below his hinged-up faceplate and diving at him low. at the f.u.c.king thing." I screamed, every increment of Envoy intonation pushed into it and for just a fraction of a second his head shifted. I came up off the floor, flexing in the mob suit, hurling the interface gun into the s.p.a.ce below his hinged-up faceplate and diving at him low.

Miserly shavings of luck, a tetrameth crash and my fading grip on Envoy combat poise. It was all I had left and I took it all across the s.p.a.ce between us, teeth bared. When the Sunjet crackled, it hit where I'd been. Maybe it was the shouted distraction, shifting his focus, maybe the gun hurtling towards his face, maybe just this same tired general sense that it was all over.

He staggered backwards as I hit him, and I trapped the Sunjet between our bodies. He slid into a combat judo block that would have thrown an unarmoured man off his hip. I hung on with the stolen strength of Loemanako's suit. Another two stumbling backsteps and we both smashed into the mummified Martian corpse together. The frame tipped and collapsed. We tumbled over it like clowns, staggering to get up as we slipped. The corpse disintegrated. Powder burst of pale orange in the air around us.

I'm sorry.

You will be, if the skin crumbles.

Faceplate up, panting, Carrera must have sucked in a lungful of the stuff. More settled on his eyes and the exposed skin of his face.

The first yell as he felt it eating in.