He was right. For an operation that the government claimed was being run under stringent security guidelines, deCom embarkation struck me as sloppy in the extreme. At the side of each hatch, a steward in a soiled blue uniform was taking hardcopy documentation and running the authorisation flashes under a reader that wouldn’t have looked much out of place in a Settlement-Years experia flic. The ragged queues of embarking personnel snaked back and forth across the ramp, ankle deep in carry-on baggage.

Bottles and pipes passed back and forth in the cold, bright air. There was highly-strung hilarity and mock sparring up and down the lines, repeated jokes over the antique reader. The stewards smiled back repeatedly, wearily.

“And where the fuck is Las?” Kiyoka wanted to know.

Sylvie shrugged. “He’ll be here. He always is.”

We joined the back of the nearest queue. The little knot of deComs ahead of us glanced round briefly, spent a couple of measured looks on Sylvie’s hair, then went back to their bickering. She wasn’t unusual among this crowd. A tall, black sleeve a couple of groups down had a dreadlocked mane of similar proportions, and there were others less imposing here and there.

Jadwiga stood quiet beside me!

“This thing with Las is pathological,” Kiyoka told me, looking anywhere but at Jad. “He’s always fucking late.”

“It’s wired into him,” said Sylvie absently. “You don’t get to be a career wincefish without a tendency towards brinkmanship.”

“Hey, I’m a wincefish, and I turn up on time.”

“You’re not a lead wincefish,” said Orr.

“Oh, right. Listen we’re all—” she glanced at Jadwiga and bit her lip.

“Lead’s just a player position. Las is wired no different to me or—”

Looking at Jad, you’d never have guessed she was dead. We’d cleaned her up in the apartment—beam weapons cauterise, there’s not often much in the way of blood—rigged her in a tight marine surplus combat vest and jacket that covered the wounds, fitted heavy black EV lenses over her shocked open eyes.