If at First

filthy denim trousers and a laddered chunky-knit sweater; neckcraning forwards, peering through the moonlit gloom. He’d aimed the shot-gun at the ramshackle stone shed at the bottom of the yard.
    The goat bleated, tugging at its leash.
    Edwards was somehow aware of the presence behind him. His back stiffened, mind betraying a hot burst of alarm and fear to Greg’s espersense. He tightened his grip on the shotgun, ready to spin round and blast away wildly.
    ‘Drop it,’ Greg said softly.
    Edwards sighed, his shoulders relaxing. He bent to put the shot-gun down, resting its barrel on a stone, saving it from the mud. A man who knew weapons.
    ‘OK, you can turn now.’
    His face was thin, bearded, hazel eyes yellowed. He looked at Greg, taking in the matt-black combat leathers, slim metallic-silver band bisecting his face, unwavering Walther. Edwards knew he was going to die, but the terrified acceptance was flecked with puzzlement. ‘Why?’ he asked.
    ‘Absolution.’
    He didn’t get it, they never did. His death was a duty, ordered by guilt.
    Greg had learnt all about duty from the Army, relying on his squad mates, their equal dependence on him. It was a bond closer than family, overriding everything – laws, conventions, morals. Civvies like Edwards never understood. When all other human values had gone, shattered by violence, there was still duty. The implicit trust of life. And Greg had failed Royan. Miserably.
    Greg fired. Edwards’ mouth gaped as the maser beam struck his temple, his eyes rolling up as he fell forwards. He splashed into the thin layer of mud. Dead before he hit.
    Greg holstered the Walther, breath hissing out between clenched teeth. He walked back down the hill to the Westland without giving the body another glance. Behind him, the goat’s bell began to clang.
    *
    He refused to think about the kill while the Westland cruised over the countryside, his mind an extension of the guido, iced silicon, confirming landmarks, telling his body when to shift balance. It would’ve been too easy to brood in the ghost wing’s isolated segment of the universe, guilt and depression inevitable.
    Rutland Water was in front of him, a Y-shaped reservoir six and a half kilometres long nestling in the snug dark valleys of the county’s turbulent rolling landscape. A pale oyster flame of jejune moonlight shone across the surface. Greg came in over the broad grass-slope dam at the western end. He kept low, skimming the water. Straight ahead was the floating village; thirty-odd log rafts, each supporting a plain wooden cabin, like something out of a Western frontier settlement. They were lashed together by a spiderweb of cables, forming a loose circle around the old limnological tower, a thick concrete shaft built before the reservoir was filled.
    He angled towards the biggest cabin, compensating for the light gusts with automatic skill. At five metres out he flared the wing sharply. Surging air plucked at his combat leathers; his feet touched the coarse overlapping planks which made up the roof, legs running, carrying him up towards the apex as the propeller blurred. He stopped with a metre to spare. The tan, scrumpylike odour of drying water-fruit permeated the air, reassuring in its familiarity.
    The Westland’s membrane folded.
    ‘Greg?’
    He watched Nicole’s bald head rise above the gable end. ‘Here.’ He shrugged out of the harness.
    She came up the ladder on to the roof, a black ex-Navy marine-adept dressed in a functional mauve diving bikini. He couldn’t remember her ever wearing anything else. Even in the moonlight her water-resilient skin glistened from head to toe; she looked tubby, but not overweight, her shape dictated by an all-over insulating layer of subcutaneous fat, protecting her from the cold of deep water.
    ‘How did it go?’
    ‘All sorted, no messing,’ he replied curtly.
    Nicole nodded.
    Two more marine-adepts swarmed briskly up the ladder and took charge of the Westland. Greg appreciated that, no fuss, no chatter. Most of the floating village’s marine-adepts were ex-Navy, they understood.
    They’d colonized the reservoir around the time Greg moved into his chalet on the shore, seeding and harvesting their gene-tailored water-fruit. Their only concession to the convulsions of the PSP years was to store Greg’s military gear for him, and, very occasionally, provide sanctuary for an activist on the run from the People’s Constables.
    ‘I’ll be back tomorrow,’