When Surit arrived at the shuttle without Tennal, Istara just said, “Typical! Sorry, sir, didn’t mean any insubordination. But it’s all right. It looks like conditions are clear at the moment. Basavi’s handling the navigation. I’m on tugs.”

Istara stood at one of the airlocks to the single-person tugs nestled in the shuttle like eggs under a bird’s wing, just as the shuttle itself nestled in the mothership. Basavi had another assistant at the pilot’s console. Istara and half a dozen other rankers were suited up; the life support in the tugs was flimsy, and the propulsion would only last a few hours.

“On your mark for launch,” Surit said to the comms desk. “Please listen for bridge order.” He glanced at their coordinates and regretted it. He wished he’d never traced the wreckage of Marit’s ship. He wished he were better at letting things go. He was a regular soldier with a regular job to do, and his mother’s history was a distraction.

“I’ll take a tug,” he added, standing down the ranker at the last airlock.

“Sir, are you sure?” Istara said.

Surit had been trained how to operate the little tug-pods, and he could command as well from one of them as from the main shuttle. It would be better than sitting inactive beside the pilots. You’re distracted, part of his brain said, but he ignored it. “I’m sure.”

“Shuttle launch!” the comms desk sang out.

There was a rumbling from the floor. Basavi pulled up a visualization of the ship and surrounding space: on it, Surit saw the Fractal Note disgorge all its ancillary shuttles. The tiny vessels flocked around the mothership like a school of fish, their own shuttle among them.

The screen also sketched a crude version of chaotic space’s currents. It looked like the Fractal Note was cruising through the eye of a hurricane. On the screen, Surit could see it turn ponderously, its flock of shuttles around it, and ease into a narrow passage that had opened between the currents.

Surit and the others scrambled to get into their single-person tugs. It was familiar in here: cramped and smelling of heavily recycled air. Once he was in his seat and had checked his suit, Surit opened comms to Basavi. “Tell me if you see any objects on the scan.”

Basavi confirmed there were none yet. No facilities, no ships. Surit sat in his docked pod as their shuttle dutifully kept position in the slow-moving flotilla. The pod’s rudimentary scanners showed tendrils of disturbed space creeping nearby. They didn’t have Tennal to give them the bigger picture of the landscape, and the bridge wasn’t sharing any information from the more powerful scanners.

As soldiers on the ground, Surit and his unit didn’t need to know, did they? They were just there to obey orders. Surit tapped both his feet impatiently.