“Yeah, except he’s dead. Even to the untutored eye, that’s got to stand out.”

“Well, maybe not quite the same lack of empathy, then. The Envoys gave you enough diplomatic training not to underestimate men like Sutjiadi. You would have handled him better.”

“So Sutjiadi’s crime was he got underestimated? Seems as good a reason as any to torture a man to death, I suppose.”

He stopped and stared at me. “Lieutenant Kovacs, I don’t think I’m making myself clear. Sutjiadi’s execution is not under discussion here. He murdered my soldiers, and at dawn tomorrow I will exact the penalty for that crime. I may not like it—”

“How gratifyingly humane of you.”

He ignored me. “—but it needs to be done, and I will do it. And you, if you know what’s good for you, will ratify it.”

“Or else?” It wasn’t as defiant as I’d have liked, and I spoilt it at the end with a coughing fit that racked me over in the narrow chair and brought up blood-streaked phlegm. Carrera handed me a wipe.

“You were saying?”

“I said, if I won’t ratify the ghoul show, what happens to me?”

“Then I’ll inform the men that you knowingly attempted to protect Sutjiadi from Wedge justice.”

I looked around for somewhere to toss the soiled wipe. “Is that an accusation?”

“Under the table. No, there. Next to your leg. Kovacs, it doesn’t matter whether you did it or not. I think you probably did, but I don’t really care one way or the other. I have to have order, and justice must be seen to be done. Fit in with that, and you can have your rank back, plus a new command. If you step out of line, you’ll be next on the slab.”

“Loemanako and Kwok won’t like that.”

“No, they won’t. But they are Wedge soldiers, and they will do as they are told for the good of the Wedge.”

“So much for inspiring loyalty.”

“Loyalty is a currency like any other. What you have earned, you can spend. And shielding a known murderer of Wedge personnel is more than you can afford. More than any of us can afford.” He leaned off the desk edge. Beneath the coveralls, Envoy scan read his stance at endgame. It was the way he always stood in the final round of sparring sessions that had gone down to the wire. The way I’d seen him stand when the government troops broke around us at Shalai Gap and Kemp’s airborne infantry swept down out of the storm-front sky like hail. There was no fallback from here. “I do not want to lose you, Kovacs, and I do not want to distress the soldiers who have followed you. But in the end, the Wedge is more than any one man within it. We cannot afford internal dissent.”

Outnumbered and outgunned and left for dead at Shalai, Carrera held position in the bombed-out streets and buildings for two hours, until the storm swept in and covered everything. Then he led a stalk-and-slaughter counteroffensive through the howling wind and street-level shreds of cloud until the airwaves crackled stiff with panicked airborne commanders ordering withdrawal. When the storm lifted, Shalai Gap was littered with the Kempist dead and the Wedge had taken less than two dozen casualties.

He leaned close again, no longer angry. His eyes searched my face.

“Am I—finally—making myself clear, lieutenant? A sacrifice is required. We may not like it, you and I, but that is the price of Wedge membership.”

I nodded.

“Then you are ready to move past this?”

“I’m dying, Isaac. About all I’m ready for right now is some sleep.”

“I understand. I won’t keep you much longer. Now.” He gestured through the datacoil and it awoke in swirls. I sighed and groped after fresh focus. “The penetration squad took an extrapolated line back from the Nagini’s angle of re-entry and fetched up pretty damn close to the same docking bay you breached. Loemanako says there were no apparent shut-out controls. So how did you get in?”

“Was already open.” I couldn’t be bothered to construct lies, guessed in any case that he’d interrogate the others soon enough. “For all we know, there are no shut-out controls.”

“On a warship?” His eyes narrowed. “I find that hard to believe.”

“Isaac, the whole ship mounts a spatial shield that stands at least two kilometres out from the hull. What the fuck would they need with individual docking station shut out?”

“You saw that?”

“Yeah. Very much in action.”

“Hmm.” He made a couple of minor adjustments in the coil. “The sniffer units found human traces a good three or four kilometres into the interior. But they found you in an observation bubble not much more than a kilometre and a half from your entry point.”

“Well, that couldn’t have been hard. We painted the way with big fucking illuminum arrows.”

He gave me a hard look. “Did you go walkabout in there?”

“Not me, no.” I shook my head, then regretted it as the little cabin pulsed unpleasantly in and out of focus around me. I waited it out. “Some of them did. I never found out how far they went.”

“Doesn’t sound very organised.”

“It wasn’t,” I said irritably. “I don’t know, Isaac. Try and incubate a sense of wonder, huh? Might help when you get over there.”

“So it, ah, appears.” He hesitated, and it took me a moment to realise he was embarrassed. “You, ah, you saw. Ghosts. Over there?”

I shrugged, suppressing an urge to cackle uncontrollably. “We saw something. I’m still not sure what it was. Been listening in to your guests, Isaac?”

He smiled and made an apologetic gesture. “Lamont’s habits, rubbing off on me. And since he’s lost the taste for snooping, seems a shame to let the equipment go to waste.” He prodded again at the datacoil. “The medical report says you all showed symptoms of a heavy stunblast, except you and Sun, obviously.”

“Yeah, Sun shot herself. We…” Abruptly, it seemed impossible to explain. Like trying to shoulder a massive weight unaided. The last moments in the Martian starship, wrapped in the brilliant pain and radiance of whatever her crew had left behind them. The certainty that this alien grief was going to crack us open. How did you convey that to the man who had led you behind raging gunfire to victory at Shalai Gap and a dozen other engagements? How did you get across the ice-aching diamond-bright reality of those moments?

Reality? The doubt jolted rudely.

Was it? Come to that, come to the gun barrel-and-grime reality that Isaac Carrera lived, was it real any more? Had it ever been? How much of what I remembered was hard fact?

No, look. I’ve got Envoy recall—

But had it been that bad? I looked into the datacoil, trying wearily to muster rational thought. Hand had called it, and I bought in with something not much short of panic. Hand, the hougan. Hand, the religious maniac. When else had I ever trusted him as far as I could throw him?

Why had I trusted him then?

Sun. I grabbed at the fact. Sun knew. She saw it coming and she blew her own brains out rather than face it.

Carrera was looking at me strangely.

“Yes?”

You and Sun…

“Wait a minute.” It dawned on me. “You said except Sun and me?”

“Yes. The others all show the standard electroneural trauma. Heavy blast, as I said.”

“But not me.”

“Well, no.” He looked puzzled. “You weren’t touched. Why, do you remember someone shooting you?”

When we were done, he flattened the datacoil display with one callused hand and walked me back through the empty corridors of the battlewagon and then across the night-time murmur of the camp. We didn’t talk much. He’d backed up in the face of my confusion, and let the debriefing slide. Probably he couldn’t believe he was seeing one of his pet Envoys in this state.

I was having a hard time believing it myself.

She shot you. You dropped the stunner and she shot you, then herself. She must have.