I left them to themselves. Bo and their lieutenant slept. In the corridors, Etrepas mopped and scrubbed, intermittently flashing silver as their armor flowed around them and back down again.

Even later, Tisarwat and I had tea in the decade room. Sedatives lessened further still, emotions rawer, closer to the surface, she said, when we were alone for a moment, “I know what you’re doing.” With a strange little skip of anger and wanting. “What you’re trying to do.” That was the want, I thought. To really be part of the crew, to secure Bo’s admiration and loyalty. Possibly even mine. Things the hapless former Tisarwat would have wanted. That I was offering her now.

But offering on my terms, not hers. “Lieutenant Tisarwat,” I said, after a calm drink of my tea, “is that an appropriate way to address me?”

“No, sir,” Tisarwat said. Defeated. And not. Even medicated she was a mass of contradictions, every emotion accompanied by something paradoxical. Tisarwat had never wanted to be Anaander Mianaai. Hadn’t been for very long, just a few days. And whoever she was now, however disastrous it was to Anaander Mianaai’s plans, she felt so much better.

I’d done that. She hated me for it. And didn’t. “Have supper with me, Lieutenant,” I said, as though the previous exchange hadn’t happened. As though I couldn’t see what she was feeling. “You and Ekalu both. You can boast about the progress your decades are making, and Kalr will make that pastry you like so much, with the sugar icing.” In my quarters, Ship spoke the request into Kalr Five’s ear as she looked over the walls, to be sure everything had been properly installed. Five rolled her eyes and sighed as though she was exasperated, muttered something about adolescent appetites, but secretly, where she thought only Ship could see, she was pleased.

The competition was tight. Both Etrepa and Bo had spent all their free time in the firing range, and their duty time raising and lowering their armor while they worked. Their numbers had improved markedly all around, nearly everyone had gone up a difficulty level in the firearms training routines and those who hadn’t soon would. And every Etrepa and every Bo could deploy their armor in less than half a second. Nowhere near what ancillaries could do, or what I wanted, but still a distinct improvement.