Tennal was shown in by a security guard he didn’t recognize and told to wait. He used to be on first-name terms with the entire guard rotation. It was just starting to sink in, like water creeping between rocks, that eight months was a long stretch of time.

He stood blinking in the dimness of the reception room. The legislator wasn’t here.

The walls of the reception room were covered with darkened screens. The only light came from the room’s centerpiece: a map disc set into the floor that projected astral bodies above itself. Orshan’s three precious planets shimmered in the air, magnified many times but still the size of marbles: Orshan Two, covered with sprawling megacities; Orshan Three, green and rural; and Orshan Central, where Tennal stood now in Exana’s spring evening. Not far beyond their orbit was the great bulk of the galactic link—disturbed space that funneled ships to unimaginably far destinations. Their gateway to the rest of the universe. The galactic link spun around itself slowly, like an enormous tangle of thread. Clouds of disturbed space drifted through the air of the room. Tennal ran his fingers through one just to see it flicker.

As he did, one of the screens lit up with an incoming call.

It might be Zin. Tennal instinctively waved a hand to answer it before he remembered he didn’t live here anymore.

A face flashed on the screen before he could cancel it. The caller was some military high-up: she had a close-shaved head, an air of serenity, and an emblem in the golden colors of Archer Division. A flint pin on her wrist cuff showed her gender reference. The text underneath the screen said GOVERNOR-GENERAL OMA, ARCHER LINK STATION.

She surveyed Tennal with some surprise. “The legislator has junior aides handling her calls, does she?”

“I’m a maintenance technician,” Tennal said blandly. “This comms point is broken, sorry.” He raised his hand to kill the connection.

“Wait,” the governor said. There was no architect spin under it—that would be impossible, over a comm—but something in her voice made Tennal pause. She gave him a surveying look. “You must be the nephew.”

“No relation,” Tennal said. “I’m here to steal the silver.”

The governor smiled. When she smiled, it was like taking the cover off a fusion reactor; an edge in her voice somehow reminded Tennal of the distant rumble of an alarm. “You can pass on a message to our darling legislator for me.”

Tennal had admittedly not tried that hard to be convincing. “Can I?”

“Tell her I’m up to my neck in mopping up rebels,” the governor said, “and Archer Link Station is only stable because of my troops. And if she sends me one more order to demobilize my soldiers, I’ll resign.”

“I’ll tell her,” Tennal said, since it seemed the only way to end the call.