It’s just like those few minutes in the Bulldog with Paco, Bart, and Maria—all dead now—as we’re coming up on the Eighty-Eights’ warehouse by the docks. Like, but unlike, too. There’s the same level of tension, but it’s much more focused here and now. The quantity of chatter is a lot less, and and so is the forced bravado. All the slags sitting around me—most with their face-shields down, looking not quite human—have done this before, many times, and probably under worse conditions. Sure, there’s some degree of checking out weapons and sharpening knives, but it’s not for show like it was among the gangers. These slags—men and women, humans and other metatypes—have gone through enough drek that they’ve got nothing left to prove to anyone, even themselves. That’s the way I read it, at least.