A small squad of local militia slouched up behind a sergeant who reminded me vaguely of my father on one of his better days. They saw the Wedge uniforms and pulled up short. The sergeant gave me a grudging salute.

“Lieutenant Takeshi Kovacs, Carrera’s Wedge,” I said briskly. “This is Corporal Schneider. We’re here to appropriate Tanya Wardani, one of your internees, for interrogation.”

The sergeant frowned. “I wasn’t informed of this.”

“I’m informing you now, sergeant.”

In situations like this, the uniform was usually enough. It was widely known on Sanction IV that the Wedge were the Protectorate’s unofficial hard men, and generally they got what they wanted. Even the other mercenary units tended to back down when it came tussles over requisitioning. But something seemed to be sticking in this sergeant’s throat. Some dimly remembered worship of regulations, instilled on parade grounds back when it all meant something, back before the war cut loose. That, or maybe just the sight of his own countrymen and women starving in their bubblefabs.

“I’ll have to see some authorisation.”

I snapped my fingers at Schneider and held out a hand for the hardcopy. It hadn’t been difficult to obtain. In a planet-wide conflict like this, Carrera gave his junior officers latitudes of initiative that a Protectorate divisional commander would kill for. No one had even asked me what I wanted Wardani for. No one cared. So far the toughest thing had been the shuttle; they had a use for that and IP transport was in short supply. In the end I’d had to take it at gunpoint from the regular-forces colonel in charge of a field hospital someone had told us about south-east of Suchinda. There was going to be some trouble about that eventually, but then, as Carrera himself was fond of saying, this was a war, not a popularity contest.