“It’s not important.” Surit sat heavily on the bed. He desperately didn’t want to talk about it. “Go on. What were you saying?”

“I’m recruiting you,” Tennal said. He didn’t sit. “Oma’s given me a whole district of the station to run. Peacekeeping, comms network, civilian complaints—it all ends up on my desk. I have a whole gaggle of civilian staff and rankers that I don’t know the first thing about ordering around. As it turns out, I urgently need someone competent. All I need to do is fake my way through being a captain for another eighteen days, and I need you to help. It will get you out of here,” he added temptingly.

Surit took a long, deep breath. “I have a condition.”

Tennal stopped in the middle of his pacing. “What is it?”

“I need to know where the rest of our unit is.”

“I knew you’d ask that. I bloody knew it.” Tennal spun again, in an explosion of energy, and threw up an array of vids and still pictures on the wall. Each of them showed a member of Retrieval Two on Archer Station. “I thought of that. Here.”

Surit’s eyes went from one vid to the other, checking each soldier against his mental list. Most of the rankers seemed to be on patrols; some of them were shown directing ship traffic at a dock; some of them had been assigned to plumbing or maintenance. Private Basavi was frowning at a list of prompts at a terminal. Istara was on a sanitation shift. “I’m trying to get some of them reassigned to me,” Tennal said. “But I have this horrible feeling that unless I have you on board, Istara is just going to tell me they prefer unblocking sewers. But Retrieval Two are all fine, even if they have been co-opted into dear Governor Oma’s power base. Hitch your wagon to the stars and all that. Happy?”

Surit turned over the phrase hitch your wagon to the stars in his head. Tennal, when he wasn’t high, afraid, or otherwise distracted, had an instinct for political currents that Surit couldn’t match. Tennal clearly thought it was important to keep on the right side of the Archer Station governor. “Yes. I think.”

“So does that mean you agree?” Tennal said. “I know I’m not an officer you respect, but if you can stand to pretend I am for two weeks, I think I can hold things stable. You’ll keep your lieutenant rank. All you’ll need to do is switch your registration to Archer—”

“No,” Surit said.

Tennal stopped. He said slowly, like someone on the edge of a cliff, “What do you mean, no?”

Surit looked at his hands, bunching them together. “My mother was in Cavalry. It’s my division.”