“To?” Orr flipped her a rapid thumb and little finger gesture. His other hand traced tattooing across his face.

“Oh. And him?”

Sylvie did something with her face, gestured low. I missed it, guessed and grabbed.

“They were here for me.”

“Yeah, no shit.” Orr was looking at me with something that grazed open hostility. The vents in his back and chest had closed up, but looking at the massive muscled frame it wasn’t hard to imagine them ripping open for another blast. “Some nice friends you’ve got.”

“I don’t think they would have got violent if Jad hadn’t jumped the goon. It was a misunderstanding.”

“Misunder—fuck.” Orr’s eyes widened. “Jad is dead, you asshole.”

“She’s not really dead,” I said doggedly. “You can excise the stack and—”

“Excise?” The word came out lethally soft. He trod closer, looming. “You want me to cut up my friend?”

Playing back the position of the gunmetal discharge tubes from memory, I guessed most of his right side was prosthetic, charging the five vents from a powerpack buried somewhere in the lower half of his ribcage.

Given recent advances in nanotech, you could get large blotches of energy to go pretty much anywhere you wanted over a limited distance. The nanocon shepherd fragments just rode the blast like surfers, sucking power and tugging the containment field wherever the launch data had them headed.

I made a mental note, if I had to hit him, to go left.

“I’m sorry. I don’t see another solution right now.”

“You—”

“Orr.” Sylvie made a sideways chopping gesture. “Tats, this place, time.” She shook her head. Another sign, thumb and forefinger forced apart by the fingers of the other hand. From the look on her face I got the sense she was emitting data through the team net as well. “Cache, the same. Three days. Puppetry. Torch and wipe, now.”