The Peers, Sula observed, seemed to act out of naked self-interest. But for some reason it was impolite to actually say so.

 Sula finished her flat food, then called a chronometer onto her sleeve display and wondered if she had enough time to look at her mail before suiting up to stand her watch.

 She decided she had enough time.

 Sula returned to her cabin, one that had originally belonged to a petty officer who had been killed at Magaria, and which still contained most of his belongings. She snapped on the video display with her right thumb, an action that caused a sudden sharp sting. She snatched her hand away, and as the display flashed on she inspected the thick scar tissue on the pad of her thumb. After the battle, in the course of conducting urgent repairs, her thumb had come into contact with a pipe of superheated coolant, and though the wound had healed, a wrong movement could still send pain shrieking along the length of her arm.

 She tucked the thumb carefully into her palm and paged through menus with her index finger until she found her mail.

 Only one message, from Lieutenant Captain Lord Gareth Martinez, three days in transit via powerful communications lasers. She opened the message.

 “Well,Corona managed to bungle another exercise,” he said wearily. His broad-shouldered figure was slumped in a chair—he, like Sula, had been suffering from many days of high gee, and his weariness showed it. His viridian uniform tunic was unbuttoned at the throat. He had a lantern jaw, thick brows, and olive skin; his provincial accent was heavy enough to send razor blades skating up Sula’s nerves.

 When they had first met, before the war, they had come together briefly, then came explosively apart. It was all Sula’s fault, she felt: she’d been too panicked, too paranoid, too far out of her depth. She’d spent the next several months hiding from him. A conceited son of privilege like Foote was someone she could cope with; Martinez was something else again.