Surit couldn’t look away from the small, rotating image of Tennal’s head. If this was real, then that was it.

“You need to move your own escape up,” Tennal said. “Once I’m gone, they might be more suspicious. You said you had plans to get our unit out.”

Surit nodded.

“I have to get through the link,” Tennal said, as if in answer to something Surit hadn’t said. “Forced sync on one side, shady remnants business on the other—I’m a conscripted reader, Surit. There is no good place for me in this whole Lights-lost sector.”

Surit was aware of that feeling again, like a tongue of flame licking at a cold piece of coal. What kind of sector was Orshan, if it couldn’t even hold someone like Tennal?

But Surit was a Cavalry officer, and he had a unit, and he had his orders. “I’ll get the rest of Retrieval Two out of here tonight.”

Tennal collapsed a little, as if his shoulders had been held up by tension and relief had cut the strings. Surit wondered if he’d expected an argument. “Great. Fine. Fantastic. I have to book a ship. I’ll leave on the next one I can get.”

“Tennal?” Surit said, as Tennal rose to his feet.

Tennal stopped. “Yes?”

“Come back to our room before you leave. Say goodbye.”

Tennal hesitated, then a flicker of a smile crossed his face. “I’ll try. But don’t wait for me, Lieutenant.”

Tennal was gone. Surit didn’t let himself pause, only went back to work and set the other dominoes in motion.

He’d planned Retrieval Two’s escape back to Cavalry like he planned any other operation. He listed it out in his head. Item: travel forms. A dozen of them submitted and approved, for individual soldiers, each at a different time and for a different purpose. Half the unit had already left on those flimsy excuses. Item: escape for the remaining soldiers. Surit couldn’t send away his whole unit without attracting attention, but he and the first-class rankers had a plan. Surit was almost certain the hull of the Fractal Note was empty, now, the officers moved to station detention or traded back to Cavalry. He still had the override codes that every officer serving on it had been given. If it was no longer locked down to keep in prisoners, those should work again. He had a plausible distraction: a leak of harmful radiation. He had a flight path, for emergency quarantine and maintenance in station orbit. The Fractal Note was their key to getting out.