Jainan silently indicated the way to the right office, though even he had to guess at the last few turnings. “I’ve forgotten,” Jainan said apologetically. “I wasn’t here all that much.”

The junior of the two officers met them at the door. Major Aren Saffer turned out to be a sandy-haired, energetic officer with pale freckled skin and one hand stuck permanently in the pocket of his uniform. A casual wooden pendant on a chain around his neck marked his gender. Kiem liked him immediately. He’d expected Aren to be some medaled stick-in-the-mud like most of his mother’s military friends, but he was much younger than that crowd, and he seemed genuinely pleased when he saw Jainan.

“Oh, don’t stand on ceremony,” Aren said when Kiem shook his hand. The office was a high-ceilinged room with a polished wooden floor and a silver bird emblem mounted on the far wall. Apart from that, it barely looked like the headquarters of a major operation: only a handful of soldiers occupied the rows of empty desks. “We’re still recovering. Losing Taam was a body blow, if I’m honest. Really knocked us off course. But he would have wanted us to keep going—right, Jainan?”

Jainan didn’t respond. He hadn’t come fully into the room, but had stopped to stare at a picture on the wall adjacent to the door: a memorial image, surrounded by gray flowers, showing Taam in full military dress. Taam had the right kind of jawline for that photo. He looked like something out of a war documentary.

Aren tilted his head to one side, smiling quizzically. The small movement made Jainan start, and his attention came swiftly back to the other two. “Of course,” Jainan said. “I’m glad to see your memorial.”

“Hell with the memorial. I’m glad to see you, ” Aren said. He’d been smiling

—he had an easy, constant smile—but now he sobered up, and his gaze on

Jainan was intent. “You must be finding it hard; I thought you’d dropped off the face of the planet. You should have been in touch sooner.”

Even with his very limited experience of Jainan, Kiem suspected that wasn’t the best approach. Jainan closed up visibly and said, “Your concern is appreciated.”

“Is your boss around?” Kiem said cheerfully. “Understand this is top secret stuff, this crash data. My aide said you had to hand it over in person.”

This worked to smooth over the awkward moment. Aren showed them into an office where an officer with a colonel’s insignia was waiting, her hands clasped behind her back. Kiem had never met her before either: she was maybe in her late thirties, with an air of deliberateness and unusually straight hair scraped back into a severe plait.

The object of her attention was the screens covering one wall of the office. A string of text said OPERATION KINGFISHER—HVAREN BASE. They showed a bustling remote office with the same silver bird emblems mounted around the walls.