The canteen was a large, low-ceilinged space divided by rows of tables. Tennal had avoided eating here up until now, instead just stalking into the officer side, daring anyone to comment, and taking a meal tray to eat in his room. Now his stomach grumbled at the smell of food—a really inconvenient time for his body to remind him he’d only had one meal in the past three days—but he was still coasting on adrenaline, so he ignored it.

The large screens set at intervals around the wall were all showing newslog broadcasts. In this area of space, local news was all about Archer Link Station: Tennal recognized Governor-General Oma, surrounded by a sea of golden Archer banners and talking into the camera. Oh yes, she ran Archer Link Station, didn’t she? Tennal had last spoken to her when he’d answered her call in the Legislator’s Residence. He hadn’t passed on her message. He hoped she was making life difficult for his aunt.

A bunch of rankers around Tennal’s age crowded around the meal dispensers, where a small, wiry ranker and a wrestler type were having a shoving match. A small crowd watched.

Tennal glanced over the onlookers, checking their rank tabs for the number that would indicate his unit, but he didn’t see it. He gave the onlookers his most unpleasant smile and didn’t stop walking. They parted to let him through.

His stomach growled again. He had to do something about that. He scanned the less crowded dispensers at the edge to see what was easiest to carry and grabbed some sort of wrapped cake, hard and square, and thought regretfully of the real, oven-baked pastries he’d left with Zin. It would have to do.

He remembered Private Basavi, abandoned to hold down the fort while everyone left to get breakfast, and the thought irritated him so much that he took another one. The dispenser beeped in protest when he used his military identity, so he gave it his civilian keys—it was hard to think of them as his old civilian keys—to make it disgorge the second cake.

The dispenser flashed up empty once he’d taken it. Someone tapped him on the elbow, not gently. “Hey, bozo, one each.”

Tennal turned to see the short, wiry ranker who had been in the fight when he’d entered. He put one of the cakes in his pocket. “I’m bad at counting.”

“Hand it over.” They didn’t recognize him. Tennal still hadn’t gotten used to his new invisibility.

“Think I won’t, actually,” Tennal said agreeably. He scanned for exit routes—it would look bad if he didn’t turn up at the muster on time—but the other rankers had started to notice.