“And why did the freighter have to swerve, Lieutenant?”

Surit continued to stare at the wall, wearing his best poker face. “That would be because we were in its way, sir.” That didn’t seem enough, so he added, “We were attending the scene of an accident. There was a pod in trouble.”

Surit’s unit—his first command, straight out of officer academy—crewed a tiny retrieval ship that patrolled up and down the edges of chaotic space, mapping the constant changes in the space-time disturbance and retrieving any salvage that the churning clouds spat out. This would be fine, except chaotic space tended to drift. A pod had run across some tendrils that had pulled it in like a riptide, and Surit’s retrieval unit had gone to help. It was unfortunate that it had caused the biggest traffic pileup this side of Orshan Three, but in Surit’s view, not really his problem. He had followed the regulations. Everything else was merely a side effect.

As his direct commanding officer, the district captain knew all this. It was in Surit’s written report. This was more in the nature of a dressing-down than a real debrief.

“The module with all the chickens was retrieved in an orderly manner,” Surit added. “No chicken casualties were sustained. We do have some egg damage to our sensors.”

The district captain looked down at her desk, apparently fighting strong emotion, and put her hand over her mouth.

Eventually she removed it and said, “And the bodywork damage sustained by the gunship…?”

“That was when we were attempting to rescue the goat crates from the freighter, sir.”

“You did extortionate damage to the navigation systems of a mind-bogglingly expensive gunship in order to rescue some goats?”

“It’s not fair for goats to be in space, sir,” Surit said. “They don’t know which way is up.”

There was a short silence. Surit maintained his poker face. The goats hadn’t seemed to appreciate being rescued much, but in Surit’s experience, livestock seldom did.

The district captain, a short, voluble type who probably didn’t deserve to be responsible for all the traffic snarls in one of Orshan’s most crowded space zones, sank further in her chair and put her head in her hands. “Produce all over space,” she said. “Thousands of chicken eggs—”

“They were in containers,” Surit said factually. “Five hundred to a crate, and only a few of them opened. It just gets a bit chaotic when they depressurize—”

“Yes! Thank you, Lieutenant!” She tapped a screen on the desk. “Needless to say, I have Command on my back about the gunship, and it turns out the freight company had links to Infantry Division, so I’m getting calls about that as well.”

Surit stared straight ahead. “I take full responsibility for the incident, sir.”