“What do you expect me to do with all these?” Tennal demanded, once his wristband started filling up.

Surit gave him a mildly surprised look and said, “Deal with them.”

Tennal scowled, skimmed them, and signed off on Surit’s decisions. Some of them seemed to need higher authority: Tennal spent an irritated afternoon hunting down Oma’s aides—Oma’s other aides—to find out who could do things like change minor laws and sign off on budgets.

This rapidly endeared Surit to the civilian supervisors. Tennal knew from experience that it was hard to withstand an onslaught of earnestness from Surit Yeni. When Tennal came back, there were ten people in his office all taking instructions from Surit, and three of the previously silent supervisors had gathered at Surit’s terminal for an animated discussion. Surit looked up and broke off all his conversations in order to rise to his feet and salute Tennal.

Tennal stopped at the door. He did not laugh. Instead he saluted back. “Carry on, Lieutenant.”

That night, as he fell into bed across the room from Surit, he said, “You don’t have to help me, you know. I feel like I should say.”

Surit was quiet for a moment. “You keep telling me this.”

Tennal stared at the ceiling, where the shadows of the hydroponic vines outside the window waved in the last of the faint evening light, and didn’t know what to add. He clearly hadn’t fixed whatever was wrong in Surit’s mind. He went to sleep unsatisfied.

Within days, they’d fallen into a double act. Surit, despite his quietness, did all the real work of keeping the district administration on track. Meanwhile Tennal faced off against Oma’s other aides, most of whom had the same accent as him and reminded him of the people he’d gone to school with. This wasn’t a point in their favor. After the past few weeks, Tennal had no problem smiling, insulting, flirting, and ruthlessly bad-mouthing them to their commanding officers when the situation called for it. It wasn’t as if any of this mattered. The military shouldn’t be in charge of this kind of civilian outfit anyway, and it couldn’t last forever. Tennal would be out soon.

That didn’t mean he could avoid all the work. On day three, Surit approached Tennal’s ridiculous executive desk and saluted. Tennal didn’t get up from where he was sprawled in his seat, but he waved a vague acknowledgment. Surit seemed more certain in his step. Until now Tennal hadn’t realized how much he’d been watching Surit out of the corner of his eye. There was no reason for him to do that anymore, except that it irritated him how Surit wasn’t taking up as much space in the room as Tennal knew he should. At least now he had an excuse to look him full in the face. “Yes, Lieutenant Yeni?”