Chapter 14: Voss Hears a Name

The report came in at 0614.

Voss read it once, set it face-down on the desk, and went to make tea.

The small kitchen adjoining his office was a concession he had made to himself three years into the posting, when he determined that the distance between his desk and the facility's communal preparation area was long enough to cost him two minutes of processing time per interruption and that two minutes, multiplied across an administrative day, represented a non-trivial cognitive tax. The kettle was a Kree-manufactured unit, efficient and graceless. He filled it. He stood with his back to the door and listened to the element heat.