Chapter 8: Borrus Makes His Introduction at Gunpoint

They were forty minutes from departure when the soldiers appeared in the docking corridor.

Farro saw them first on the Maren's external feed — four figures in slate-gray utility armor moving in the measured, unhurried formation of people who had done this before and found that urgency was rarely necessary when you had numbers. A fifth figure walked slightly ahead of the others, out of armor but no less precise for it: civilian clothes cut with military exactitude, a folded document held in one hand with the deliberate visibility of someone who had been taught that paperwork displayed openly was its own form of authority.

Farro was still watching the feed when Samwell appeared at his shoulder.