He knew he’d pushed it too far when an exasperated captain tried to put a compulsion on him. Compulsions were lingering commands that could be reactivated by a trigger phrase until they wore off, which would have been a good way of stopping Tennal’s meddling. It was a shame you needed to be very strong to have any hope of laying one and that Tennal had never encountered anyone who could get one to stick.

All the officers had him pinned as a troublemaker by day three. The warrant officer started to assign rankers to cleaning chores wherever Tennal was, but Tennal had been working on the rankers, and had blown most of his allowance before he boarded on brandy that he’d shared on the first evening. It didn’t make him one of them, but it produced a derisory atmosphere on the subject of Tennal between the rankers and the officers, with the rankers ready to mock both sides. Tennal was satisfied with that.

A couple of them were more disposed to be friendly. Tennal hadn’t realized he’d been flirting with one of them—a male ranker with curly hair just outside the bounds of a regulation cut—until the ranker made a bad excuse to lean in and fix the lie of Tennal’s collar. Tennal almost accepted; it wasn’t as if Zin was going to call him the next morning this time. But something stopped him.

If the ranker had offered a couple of days later, he would have gotten a different answer. Tennal was aware he was getting worse as the days wore on. He’d never been very good at suspense. He’d poked at the new data they’d put on his wristband and there was a space for the details of his architect, a file he was supposed to have access to, but all it said was pending details. He didn’t know who the architect was. He couldn’t even remember if the legislator had said anything about them. He wouldn’t put it past her to withhold the details until Tennal could do nothing about it—she’d always preferred a fait accompli—but he should have those details. He was owed them.

On the ninth day, four hours out from the staging-post rendezvous, a notification pinged into his queue. Tennal stopped in the middle of a corridor and opened it.

The file was three lines long. Surit Yeni. Junior lieutenant, first rank. Graduation average: 96/100.

That was it. Not even a picture. That was it. Tennal leaned against the wall, a surge of rage sticking in his throat. They wanted him to sync to this architect for life, and they didn’t even have the common courtesy to give him a full file.