“Better get on with it, I suppose.” Sylvie’s voice, at my shoulder. Orr had ridden the other bug up parallel and the command head was seated behind him, head weaving back and forth as if seeking a scent. “At least it’s not raining.”

She touched a control on the coms jacket she wore. Her voice leapt out in the quiet, reverberated off the deserted façades. The deComs turned at the sound, keyed up and expectant as a pack of hunting dogs.

“Alright, friends. Listen up. Without wishing to take unseemly command here—”

She cleared her throat. Whispered.

“But someone, if not I then—”

Another cough.

“Someone has to fucking do something. This is not another exercise in, in.” She shook her head slightly. Her voice gathered strength, echoed off the walls again. “This is not some fucking political masturbation fantasy we’re fighting for, these are facts. Those in power have formed their alliances, shown their allegiance or lack of it, made their choices. And our choices in turn have been taken from us. I don’t want, I don’t want—”

She choked off. Head lowered.

The deComs stood still, waiting. Jadwiga slumped against my back, then started to slide out of the pillion seat. I grabbed backwards with one arm and stopped her. Flinched as pain sparkled through the soft woollen grey of the painkillers.

“Sylvie.” I hissed it across the space between us. “Get a fucking grip, Sylvie. Pull out of there.”

She looked up at me through the tangled mess of her hair, and for a long moment it was as if I was a total stranger.

“Get a grip,” I repeated softly.

She shuddered. Sat up and cleared her throat again. Waved one arm airily.

“Politics,” she declaimed, and the waiting crowd of deComs laughed. She waited it out. “Not what we are here for, ladies and gentlemen. I’m aware that I’m not the only hairhead among us, but I think I probably rank the rest of you in terms of experience, so. For those of you who aren’t too sure how this works, here’s what I suggest. Radial search pattern, splitting off at every junction until each motorised crew has a street to itself. The rest of you can follow who you like but I’d advise no less than a half dozen in each search line. Motorised crews lead on each street, those of you unlucky enough to be on foot get to check the buildings. Long pause at each building search, motorised guys don’t get ahead of the pattern, indoor guys call in backup from the riders outside if you see anything that might be mimint activity. Anything at all.”

“Yeah, what about the bounty?” yelled someone.

A surging murmur of agreement.

“What I take down is mine, ain’t here for sharing it out,” agreed someone else loudly.

Sylvie nodded.

“You will find.” Her amplified voice trod down the dissent. “That successful deCom has three stages. First you take down your mimint. Then you register the claim for it. Then you have to live long enough to get back to the beachhead and pick up the money. The last two stages of that process are especially hard to do if you’re lying back there in the street with your guts spilled and your head gone. Which is more than likely what’ll happen if one of you tries to take down a karakuri nest without help. The word crew has connotations. Those of you who aspire to be in a crew at some stage, I suggest you meditate upon that.”

The noise fizzled out into muttering. Behind me, Jadwiga’s corpse straightened up and took the weight off my arm. Sylvie surveyed her audience.

“Right. Now the radial pattern is going to fan us out pretty fast, so keep your mapping gear online at all times. Tag every street when you’re done, stay in contact with each other and be prepared to double back to cover the gaps as the pattern opens up. Spatial analysis. Remember, the mimints are fifty times as good as us at this. If you leave a gap they’ll spot it and use it.”

“If they’re there at all,” came another voice from the crowd.

“If they’re there at all,” agreed Sylvie. “Which they may or may not be. Welcome to New Hok. Now.” She stood up on the grav bug’s running boards and looked around. “Does anyone have anything constructive to say?”

Quiet. Some shuffling.

Sylvie smiled. “Good. Then let’s get on with this sweep, shall we. Radial search, as agreed. Scan up.”

A ragged cheer went up and fists brandished hardware. Some moron fired a blaster bolt into the sky. Whoops followed, volcanic enthusiasm.

“…kick some motherfucking mimint ass …”

“Going to make a pile, man. A fucking pile.”

“Drava baby, here we come!”

Kiyoka cruised up on my other flank and winked at me.

“They’re going to need all of that,” she said. “And then some. You’ll see.”

An hour in, I knew what she meant.

It was slow, frustrating work. Move fifty metres down a street at webjelly pace, skirting fallen debris and dead ground cars. Watch the scans. Stop.

Wait for the foot sweepers to penetrate the buildings on either side and work their way up twenty-odd levels one creeping step at a time. Listen to their structure-skewed coms transmission. Watch the scans. Tag the building clear. Wait for the foot sweepers to come down. Watch the scans. Move on, another halting fifty-metre stretch. Watch the scans. Stop.

We found nothing.

The sun fought a losing battle against the cloud cover. After a while, it started to rain.

Watch the scans. Move on up the street. Stop.

“Not all it’s cracked up to be in the ads, eh?” Kiyoka sat beneath the magical splatter of rain off her bug’s invisible screens and nodded at the foot sweepers as they disappeared into the latest façade. They were already drenched and the tense, flicker-eyed excitement of an hour ago was fading fast. “Opportunity and adventure in the fallow land of New Hok. Bring an umbrella.”

Seated behind her, Lazlo grinned and yawned. “Knock it off, Ki. Everyone’s got to start somewhere.”

Kiyoka leaned back in the seat, looking over her shoulder. “Hey, Sylvie. How much longer are we going to—”

Sylvie made a sign, one of the terse coded gestures I’d seen in action in the aftermath of the firefight with Yukio. Envoy focus gave me the quiver of one eyelid from Kiyoka as she ate up data from the command head.

Lazlo nodded contentedly to himself.

I tapped the comset they’d given me in lieu of a direct line into the command head’s skull.

“Something going on I should know about, Sylvie?”

“Nah.” Orr’s voice came back, dismissive. “We’ll cut you in when you need to know something. Right, Sylvie?”

I looked back at her. “Right, Sylvie?”

She smiled a little wearily. “Now isn’t the time, Micky.”

Watch the scans. Move along the rain-damp, damaged streets. The screens on the bugs made shimmering oval umbrellas of rainsplash over our heads, the foot sweepers cursed and got wet.

We found nothing.

By midday, we were a couple of kilometres into the city and operational tension had given way to boredom. The nearest crews were a half dozen streets away on either side. Their vehicles showed up on the mapping equipment in lazily slewed parking formations and if you tuned to the general channel, you could hear the foot sweepers grumbling their way up and down buildings, all trace of the earlier make-a-killing enthusiasm gone from their voices.

“Oh look,” rumbled Orr suddenly.

The thoroughfare we were working dog-legged right and then opened immediately onto a circular plaza lined with pagoda-style terracing and blocked at the far end by a multi-levelled temple supported on broadly spaced pillars. Across the open space, rain lay in broad pools where the paving had taken damage. Aside from the massive tilted wreckage of a burnt-out scorpion gun, there was no cover.

“Is that the one they killed last night?” I asked.

Lazlo shook his head. “Nah, been there for years. Besides, the way Oishii told it, last night’s never built beyond the chassis before it got fried. That one out there was a walking, talking self-prop mimint motherfucker before it died.”