“Oh great, posh boy’s back,” Private Istara said, when Tennal slipped through the airlock into the shuttle’s operations room. Tennal threw them a rude gesture, unthinkingly, and was surprised when they laughed.

Istara returned the gesture. “Not running home to auntie, then?”

So word had gotten around the unit about exactly who he was. Tennal met their smile with one of his own. “No, I’m going to have a long and storied military career and retire loaded with medals at forty. Then they’ll make me legislator.”

He saw Basavi twitch, as if not quite sure they wouldn’t do that. Istara’s eyes narrowed as their friend edged away. “You’re not serious.”

“That’s step two of the plan, after I disband the army and replace all the supreme commanders with frogs.” Tennal threw himself into his seat. “What are we doing today? I was told army life was glamorous.”

“You’re still in baby pilot school,” Istara said, swiping another pile of exercises onto Tennal’s desk. Tennal groaned. “Have fun,” they added callously.

Tennal grumbled but bent his head to the screen and started working.

It wasn’t so bad. He started to pick up more about the unit as he worked and listened. It turned out that nervous, conscientious Basavi was the child of a teacher who lived on rural Orshan Three; Istara, loud and brash, was from a huge family of construction workers the next village over. They’d met at basic training and apparently managed to stay together through all their transfers since. Tennal didn’t understand people who made friends like that.

Tennal had thought Basavi didn’t like readers, but he tentatively concluded he might be wrong. When he read her, he got no hostility: only a slow, strong curiosity. She just seemed to take her time to work through things.

Eventually she asked, “Do you read people?”

It was the first remark she’d addressed directly to him. Tennal was willing to take any excuse to stop working. “Are you worried I’m looking at your deep, dark secrets? I’m not, I promise,” he said. “I can’t even tell what you had for breakfast, not without a deep reading. And you’d feel that.”

Basavi seemed to think about this. “So you do read people, just not deeply,” she said, displaying a concerning ability to see straight through Tennal’s wording. “How often?”