As Tennal started to relax, his wristband beeped. Urgent. Tennal twitched before he realized it was probably just another traffic crisis. He shut the whole thing off. There was nobody in the sector he wanted to talk to now.

All right. Showtime.

When the scout had gone, Tennal walked briskly up to the border. A scanning wand shed a bright pool of white light. Tennal keyed up his wristband and presented the pass.

No noise. Tennal could barely keep himself breathing steadily. He had no fucking clue if this was a real pass or not. He shouldn’t have trusted it. Birimi could’ve been trying to get him in trouble, or playing a joke, or simply bad at this. If Oma found out Tennal was really trying to escape—

The light turned gold. An arrow pointed Tennal through the barrier.

Tennal breathed out and stepped through it.

Amber light filled his eyes and his mouth. It tasted like freezing fog, though it wasn’t cold. There was a buzzing in the back of Tennal’s head. He forced himself to keep walking.

When the fog cleared, he was in a clean white corridor with a small stream of people heading from the barrier.

The ship he was booked on was the only one boarding among the dozens of hatches. Tennal couldn’t see its size from the corridor, but the tunnel that extended from the hatch was sleek and black. The people boarding were all important-looking officials. Tennal looked down at the pass, and it occurred to him to wonder what documents, exactly, Birimi had wrangled for him.

A hand landed on Tennal’s shoulder.

Tennal jumped. He readied more defensive techniques as he turned, but he saw a round, smiling woman in rumpled civilian clothes, who said genially, “Captain Halkana?”

“Yes,” Tennal said, because there didn’t seem to be much point in denying it. “Excuse me, though, I can’t talk. I have a shuttle to catch.”

“Yes, of course,” the woman said. She tugged him politely to the side. “I’m the station manager; I won’t hold you up. The governor just asked me to pass on this.”

She opened a communications screen. It cleared to show Governor Oma frowning over the desk in her office. Oma turned at the faint chime and instantly dropped her work. “Ah, you found him.”

The station manager made an apologetic gesture. “I’m so sorry, I’m very busy. I’ll just leave you two…” She waved a hand to tether the signal to Tennal’s wristband. He let her. She wasn’t involved.

“Governor,” Tennal said, when it was just him, Oma, and the stream of passengers casting him curious glances. “What a delight.”

“I see I’ve caught you at an awkward moment,” Oma said. But the next thing wasn’t about Tennal’s escape at all. “The legislator has announced a surprise visit.”