He made his way back to his room and lay flat on his bed. He wished he’d kept a bottle of the brandy back, though he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to drink it or smash it against a wall. “Ninety-six percent,” he said to the ceiling. “What a model fucking soldier we have here. Found that one yourself, did you, Auntie dearest?” The room panel lit up, recognizing he was alone and speaking. Tennal flung out his arm to wave it off.

Yeni. That probably wasn’t the same as General Marit Yeni, the architect who had blown herself up in the Reader War around the time Tennal was born. There must be thousands of unrelated people called Yeni.

It sounded provincial. Provincials didn’t make officer very often. Maybe the legislator had picked Surit Yeni because there was no possibility he and Tennal had any friends in common. Or maybe the legislator just couldn’t be bothered to vet the architect at all. She wanted Tennal rewritten inside out, and it might as well be done by a martinet who knew the rule book, whatever their name was.

Tennal already hated them. It was an energizing kind of hatred, like warming his hands at a fire. It was one of the only distractions he had left.

He lay there with his eyes shut and considered the limited supply of soothers hidden inside the armchair. He’d been saving those since he wasn’t sure where he could replenish them. He shouldn’t take them now. He should be planning how he was going to play the first meeting with this architect—Surit Yeni. The perfect soldier.

He rolled over and flipped up the armchair cushion with his foot.

When the Fractal Note docked, Tennal was already feeling better. He slipped out with the shore-leave rankers. He’d thrown his military-issue identity pins in the back of the storage cupboard five minutes after he’d been handed them, but he got a commercial pass easily enough by just presenting his biometric details to immigration. It was a minor space station, with only a small population there to serve the passing ships, but there were three bars. Tennal picked one by instinct and was gratified when it got loud and anonymous at barely the beginning of the night cycle.

After his first drink, he started speculating about escape. After his third, he admitted it wasn’t going to work. He had no idea how you got hold of a fake identity, and his legal one would be flagged before he’d even made it on a ship. He had no allies and no plan.

The remainder of his allowance lasted him well into the night shift. He was still there, trying to persuade someone he’d never met that he was a famous regulator detective, when a handful of rankers from the Fractal Note rolled in. The curly-haired one met his eyes and grinned.