“Did he come alone?” I asked.

“Nah, whole squad of enforcer types with him. ”Bout four, five of them. Millsport accents.”

Oh good. So this wasn’t a local matter any more. Tanaseda was living up to his promise. A global writ for your capture. And from somewhere they’d dug up—

You don’t know that. Not yet.

Oh, come on. It has to be. Why use the name? Whose sense of humour does that sound like to you?

Unless—

“Simi, listen. He didn’t ask for me by name, did he?”

Simi blinked at me. “Dunno, what is your name?”

“Okay. Never mind.”

“Guy was asking after Sylvie,” explained Oishii. “Her name, he knew. Knew the Slipins, seems like. But he really seemed interested in some new recruit Sylvie might have had in her team. And that name, he didn’t know. Right, Simi?”

“ ‘S about it, yeah.” Simi peered into his empty glass. I signalled the barman and got refills all round.

“So. These Millsport types. Any of them still around, you reckon?”

Simi pursed his lips. “Could be. Don’t know, I didn’t see the Skull Gang go out, don’t know how much extra weight they were carrying.”

“But it’d make sense,” said Oishii softly. “If this Kovacs did his research, he’ll know how hard it is to track movement in the Uncleared. It’d make sense to leave a couple of guys behind in case you came back.” He paused, watching my face. “And to needlecast the news if you did.”

“Yeah.” I drained my glass and shivered slightly. Got up. “Think I need to talk to my crew-mates. If you gentlemen will excuse me.”

I shouldered my way back through the crowd until I reached Jadwiga and Kiyoka’s corner again. They’d wrapped each other up in a passionate mouth-to-mouth embrace, oblivious to their surroundings. I slid into the seat next to them and tapped Jadwiga on the shoulder.

“Stop that, you two. We’ve got problems.”

“Well,” rumbled Orr. “I think you’re full of shit.”

“Really?” I kept a grip on my temper with an effort, and wished I’d just gone for full Envoy-effect persuasion, instead of trusting my deCom colleagues with the use of their own decision-making faculties. “This is the yakuza we’re talking about.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Do the math. Six weeks ago we were collectively responsible for the death of a high-ranking yakuza’s son and his two enforcers. And now there’s someone looking for us.”

“No. There’s someone looking for you. Whether he’s looking for the rest of us remains to be seen.”

“Listen. All of you.” Inclusive glance around the windowless billet they’d found for Sylvie. Spartan single berth, integral storage lockers in the walls, a chair in one corner. With the command head curled up on the bunk and her crew stood around, it was a tense, cramped space. “They know Sylvie, they’ve tied her to me. Oishii’s pal said as much.”

“Man, we wiped that room cleaner than—”

“I know, Jad, but it wasn’t enough. They got witnesses who saw the two of us, peripheral video maybe, maybe something else. The point is I know this Kovacs, and believe me, if we wait around for him to catch up with us, you’re going to find out that it doesn’t much matter whether he’s looking for me, or Sylvie, or both of us. The man is an ex-Envoy. He’ll take down everybody in this room, just to keep it simple.”

That old Envoy terror—Sylvie was asleep, out on recuperative chemicals and sheer exhaustion, and Orr was too fired up with confrontation, but the rest of them flinched. Beneath the armoured deCom cool, they’d grown up on the horror stories from Adoracion and Sharya, just like everybody else. The Envoys came and they tore your world apart. It wasn’t that simple, of course; the truth was far more complex, and ultimately far more scary. But who in this universe wants the truth?

“What about we spike this ahead of time?” wondered Jadwiga. “Find Kovacs’ holdout buddies in the beachhead and shut them down before they can transmit out.”

“Probably too late, Jad.” Lazlo shook his head. “We’ve been in a couple of hours. Anybody who wants to knows about it by now.”

Gathering momentum. I stayed silent and watched it roll the way I wanted. Kiyoka weighed in, frowning.

“Anyway, we got no way to find these fuckers. Millsport accents and hard faces are plankton standard around here. At a minimum, we’d need to case the beachhead datastack and,” she indicated Sylvie’s foetal form, “we’re in no position to do that.”

“Even with Sylvie online, we’d be pushed,” said Lazlo gloomily. “Way Kurumaya feels about us right now, he’ll jump if we clean our teeth at the wrong voltage. I suppose that thing’s intrusion-proofed.”

He nodded at the personal space resonance scrambler perched on the chair. Kiyoka nodded back, slightly wearily I thought.

“State of the art, Las. Really. Picked it up in Reiko’s Straight-to-Street before we shipped out. Micky, the point is, we’re under virtual lockdown here. You say this Kovacs is coming for us, what do you suggest we do?”

Here we go.

“I suggest I get out of here tonight on the Daikoku Dawn, and I suggest I take Sylvie with me.”

Quiet rocked the room. I tracked glances, gauged emotion, estimated where this was going.

Orr rolled his head on his neck, like a freak fighter warming up.

“You,” he said deliberately, “can go fuck yourself.”

“Orr—” said Kiyoka.

“No fucking way, Ki. No fucking way does he take her anywhere. Not on my watch.”

Jadwiga looked at me narrowly. “What about the rest of us, Micky? What are we supposed to do when Kovacs turns up looking for blood?”

“Hide.” I told her. “Pull some favours, get yourselves out of sight either somewhere in the beachhead or out in the Uncleared with someone else’s crew if you can persuade them. Shit, you could even get Kurumaya to arrest you, if you trust him to keep you locked up safe.”

“Hey, fuckhead, we can do all of that without handing Sylvie over to y—”

“Can you, Orr?” I locked gazes with the giant. “Can you? Can you wade back out into the Uncleared with Sylvie the way she is now? Who’s going to carry her out there? What crew? What crew can afford the dead weight?”

“He’s right, Orr.” Lazlo shrugged. “Even Oishii isn’t going to go back out there with that on his back.”

Orr looked around him, eyes flickering cornered.

“We can hide her here, in the—”

“Orr, you’re not listening to me. Kovacs will tear this place apart to get to us. I know him.”

“Kurumaya—”

“Forget it. He’ll go through Kurumaya like angelfire, if that’s what it takes. Orr, there’s only one single thing that’ll stop him, and that’s knowing that Sylvie and I are gone. Because then he won’t have time to piss about looking for the rest of you. When we arrive in Tek’to, we make sure the news gets back to Kurumaya and by the time Kovacs is here, it’ll be common knowledge around the beachhead that we skipped. That’ll be enough to kick him out of here on the next loader.”

More quiet, this time like something counting down. I watched them buy in, one by one.

“Makes sense, Orr.” Kiyoka clapped the giant on the shoulder. “It isn’t pretty, but it scans.”

“At least this way, the skipper’s out of the firing line.”

Orr shook himself. “I don’t fucking believe you people. Can’t you see he’s trying to scare you all?”

“Yeah, he’s succeeding in scaring me,” snapped Lazlo. “Sylvie’s down. If the yakuza are hiring Envoy assassins, we’re severely outclassed.”

“We need to keep her safe, Orr.” Jadwiga was staring at the floor as if digging a tunnel might be a good next move. “And we can’t do it here.”

“Then I’m going too.”

“I’m afraid that isn’t going to be possible,” I said quietly. “I figure Lazlo can get us in one of the life-raft launchers, the way he came aboard in Tek’to. But with the hardware you’re carrying, the power source, penetrate the hull unauthorised, you’re going to set off every leakage alarm the Daikoku Dawn has.”