Oh well. Who could blame him.

“Yes, I think we’d better get you brushed off,” said Carrera. “I’m sorry for the shock, Lieutenant Kovacs, but there was no other comfortable way to detain this criminal.”

He was pointing at Sutjiadi.

Actually, Carrera, you could have just sedated everybody in the ward ‘fab. But that wouldn’t have been dramatic enough, and where transgressors against the Wedge are concerned, the men do like their stylised drama, don’t they?

I felt a brief chill run along my spine, chasing the thought.

And tamped it down quick, before it could become the fear or anger that would wake up the coat of spiders I wore.

I went for weary-laconic.

“What the fuck are you talking about, Isaac?”

“This man,” Carrera’s voice was pitched to carry. “May have misrepresented himself to you as Jiang Jianping. His real name is Markus Sutjiadi, and he is wanted for crimes against Wedge personnel.”

“Yeah.” Loemanako lost his grin. “Fucker wasted Lieutenant Veutin, and his platoon sergeant.”

“Veutin?” I looked back at Carrera. “Thought he was down around Bootkinaree.”

“Yes, he was.” The Wedge commander was staring down at Sutjiadi’s crumpled form. For a moment I thought he was going to shoot him there and then with the blaster. “Until this piece of shit cut insubordinate and finished up feeding Veutin his own Sunjet. Killed Veutin really dead. Stack gone. Sergeant Bradwell went the same way when she tried to stop it. And two more of my men got their sleeves carved apart before someone locked this motherfucker down.”

“No one gets away with that,” said Loemanako sombrely. “Right, lieutenant? No local yokel takes down Wedge personnel and walks away from it. Shithead’s for the anatomiser.”

“Is this true?” I asked Carrera, for appearances’ sake.

He met my gaze and nodded. “Eye-witnesses. It’s open and shut.”

Sutjiadi stirred at his feet like something stamped on.

They cleaned the spiders off me with a deactivator broom, and then dumped them into a storage canister. Carrera handed me a tag and the approaching tide of unoccupied inhibitors fell back as I snapped it on.

“About that debriefing,” he said, and gestured me aboard the ‘Chandra.

Behind me, my colleagues were led back to the bubblefab, stumbling as feeble adrenalin jags of resistance set off new ripples of bites from their new neural jailers. In the post-performance space we’d all left, the noncoms who’d fired the mortar went around with untamped canisters, gathering up the still crawling units that hadn’t managed to find a home.

Sutjiadi caught my eye again as he was leaving. Imperceptibly, he shook his head.

He needn’t have worried. I was barely up to climbing the entry ramp into the battlewagon’s belly, let alone taking on Carrera in empty-handed combat. I clung to the remaining fragments of the tetrameth lift and followed the Wedge commander along tight, equipment-racked corridors, up a hand rung-lined gravchute and into the confines of what appeared to be his personal quarters.

“Sit down, lieutenant. If you can find the space.”

The cabin was cramped but meticulously tidy. A powered-down grav bed rested on the floor in one corner, under a desk that hinged out from the bulkhead. The work surface held a compact datacoil, a neat stack of bookchips and a pot-bellied statue that looked like Hun Home art. A second table occupied the other end of the narrow space, studded with projector gear. Two holos floated near the ceiling at angles that allowed viewing from the bed. One showed a spectacular image of Adoracion from high orbit, sunrise just breaking across the green and orange rim. The other was a family group, Carrera and a handsome olive-skinned woman, arms possessively encompassing the shoulders of three variously aged children. The Wedge commander looked happy, but the sleeve in the holo was older than the one he was wearing now.

I found a spartan metal desk chair beside the projector table. Carrera watched me sit down and then leaned against the desk, arms folded.

“Been home recently?” I asked, nodding at the orbital holo.

His gaze stayed on my face. “It’s been a while. Kovacs, you knew damn well that Sutjiadi was wanted by the Wedge, didn’t you.”

“I still don’t know he is Sutjiadi. Hand sold him to me as Jiang. What makes you so sure?”

He almost smiled. “Nice try. My tower-dweller friends gave me gene codes for the combat sleeves. That plus the sleeving data from the Mandrake stack. They were quite keen for me to know that Hand had a war criminal working for him. Added incentive, I imagine they saw it as. Grist to the deal.”

“War criminal.” I looked elaborately around the cabin. “That’s an interesting choice of terminology. For someone who oversaw the Decatur Pacification, I mean.”

“Sutjiadi murdered one of my officers. An officer he was supposed to be taking orders from. Under any combat convention I know of, that’s a crime.”

“An officer? Veutin?” I couldn’t quite work out why I was arguing, unless it was out of a general sense of inertia. “Come on, would you take orders from Dog Veutin?”

“Happily, I don’t have to. But his platoon did, and they were fanatically loyal, all of them. Veutin was a good soldier.”

“They called him Dog for a reason, Isaac.”

“We are not engaged in a pop—”

“—ularity contest.” I sketched a smile of my own. “That line’s getting a little old. Veutin was a fucking asshole, and you know it. If this Sutjiadi torched him, he probably had a good reason.”

“Reasons do not make you right, Lieutenant Kovacs.” There was a sudden softness in Carrera’s tone that said I’d overstepped the line. “Every graft-wrapped pimp on Plaza de los Caidos has a reason for every whore’s face they carve up, but that doesn’t make it right. Joshua Kemp has reasons for what he does and from his point of view they might even be good ones. That doesn’t make him right.”

“You want to watch what you’re saying, Isaac. That sort of relativism could get you arrested.”

“I doubt it. You’ve seen Lamont.”

“Yeah.”

Silence ebbed and flowed around us.

“So,” I said finally. “You’re going to put Sutjiadi under the anatomiser.”

“Do I have a choice?”

I just looked at him.

“We are the Wedge, lieutenant. You know what that means.” There was the slightest tug of urgency in his tone now. I don’t know who he was trying to convince. “You were sworn in, just like everyone else. You know the codes. We stand for unity in the face of chaos, and everyone has to know that. Those we deal with have to know that we are not to be fucked with. We need that fear, if we’re going to operate effectively. And my soldiers have to know that that fear is an absolute. That it will be enforced. Without that, we fall apart.”

I closed my eyes. “Whatever.”

“I’m not requiring you to watch it.”

“I doubt there’ll be enough seats.”

Behind my closed eyelids, I heard him move. When I looked, he was leaning over me, hands braced on the edges of the projector table, face harsh with anger.

“You’re going to shut up now, Kovacs. You’re going to stand down that attitude.” If he was looking for resistance, he couldn’t have seen any in my face. He backed off a half metre, straightened up. “I won’t let you piss away your commission like this. You’re a capable officer, lieutenant. You inspire loyalty in the men you lead, and you understand combat.”

“Thanks.”

“You can laugh, but I know you. It’s a fact.”

“It’s the biotech, Isaac. Wolf gene pack dynamics, serotonin shutout and Envoy psychosis to pilot the whole fucking shambles. A dog could do what I’ve done for the Wedge. Dog fucking Veutin, for example.”

“Yes.” A shrug as he settled himself on the edge of the desk again. “You and Veutin are, were, very similar in profile. I have the psychosurgeon assessments on file here, if you don’t believe me. Same Kemmerich gradient, same IQ, same lack of generalisable empathy range. To the untutored eye, you could be the same man.”