“Commandant?”
The view on a couple of the security monitors shifted, and in the flickering light I saw the gleam of steel along the arm.
“What is it, sergeant?”
The voice was slurred and dull, disinterested. I advanced into the cool gloom and the man behind the desk lifted his head slightly. I made out one blue photoreceptor eye and the patchwork of prosthetic alloy running down one side of the face and neck to a bulky left shoulder that looked like spacesuit armour but wasn’t. Most of the left side was gone, replaced with articulated servo units from hip to armpit. The arm was made of lean steel hydraulic systems that ended in a black claw. The wrist and forearm section was set with a half dozen shiny silver sockets, into one of which the cabling from the table was jacked. Next to the jacked socket, a small red light pulsed languorously on and off. Current flowing.
I stood in front of the desk and saluted.
“Lieutenant Takeshi Kovacs, Carrera’s Wedge,” I said softly.
“Well.” The commandant struggled upright in his chair. “Perhaps you’d like more light in here, lieutenant. I like the dark, but then,” he chuckled behind closed lips. “I have an eye for it. You, perhaps, have not.”
He groped across the keyboard and after a couple of attempts the main lights came up in the corners of the room. The photoreceptor seemed to dim, while beside it a bleary human eye focused on me. What remained of the face was fine featured and would have been handsome, but long exposure to the wire had robbed the small muscles of coherent electrical input and rendered the expression slack and stupid.