Surit had projected a spiderweb of notes over the wall, stretching from one corner of the small room to another. Tennal glanced over them as Surit awkwardly stepped aside to give him space. Surit had noted down the name of everyone in Retrieval Two, plus a bunch of other people, and seemed to be linking them. “Is this what they teach you at officer school?”

“They’re just notes,” Surit said, as if someone had asked him to defend himself. Not an army-approved technique, then. “I know I’ll remember things if I write them down.”

“Hm.” When Tennal examined the notes closer, he saw the linked fragments were things like wiring specialist, wants promotion, and mysterious notes like Ext. Hull Qual Lvl 2. He looked thoughtfully at the blank spaces between them, thought back to the low chatter around him while he’d worked in the shuttle, and said, “Do you take input?”

Surit stopped where he had just jotted down claustrophobic next to a ranker’s name. He said, with some wariness, “Go on.”

With the hand that wasn’t holding his drink, Tennal tapped the projection on the wall and added a line between two points. “I’m almost sure these two just broke up and hate each other’s guts,” he said. “I heard one of them talk to Istara. Also, not our unit, but I’ve heard these two names: they’re rankers, and they’re both fucking the Retrieval One lieutenant. Which means Retrieval One is currently a toxic shit show. And no, I didn’t read that from anyone, I was too busy being flattened with gravitational equations. Does any of that help?”

He’d meant the last part sarcastically, but Surit gave him a startled look. “You’ve been around them less than a day.”

Tennal couldn’t see how eavesdropping on a couple of rumors was impressive, when Surit had apparently done a full exterior-hull shift and memorized everyone’s qualifications, but he wasn’t sure how to phrase it in a way that didn’t sound snide—sincerity was not one of his talents—so instead he dropped back to sit on his bed. “I’m good at picking up the worst side of human nature,” he said. “Or gossip. One of those.”