Chapter 27: Into the Voss Line, Without a Contract

The Maris Terr made Ark Penitent in thirty-eight minutes, with the starboard engine running three degrees hotter than Thresh's preferred ceiling and the Compact cutter matching their wake at a distance that never closed below four hundred meters. It did not board them. The legal architecture Ysolde had identified was doing its work — the cutter was present for the record, not for the confrontation, and whoever commanded it had apparently received instructions to document rather than act.

Sova met them at the stone pier with two of her people and an expression that had already done its processing. She'd had Pip's message for twenty-two minutes. She said very little. She took the copy of the archive documents that Ysolde handed her without ceremony, looked at Karev once with the specific attention of someone reading something in a face that the face itself hasn't acknowledged, and told them the settlement's western granary had a communications room with a working relay and no Compact registration.

That had been six days ago.