Chapter 9: Serrath Requests a Consultation

The summons came through official channels, which meant Serrath had decided to be polite about it.

Karev read the message on his registered Compact comm unit while Thresh slept in the back of the depot, his breathing rough and even, the tremor stilled for the moment by whatever mechanism his body used to pace its own dissolution. The message was brief. Formal header, encrypted routing through Ark Solace's administrative relay, a request for consultative attendance at Karev's earliest convenience. Earliest convenience meant within thirty-six hours or the next message would not be phrased as a request. Karev had been receiving Compact correspondence long enough to read the grammar of urgency beneath the institutional politeness.

He sat with it for a moment. Then he folded Thresh's documents back into their sleeve, left them on the secondary bench where Thresh would find them, and began working out the transit math.