Chapter 24: Voss Moves the Pieces

The morning reports arrived in Voss's office at 0730 in the order he preferred: logistics first, personnel second, intelligence third. The logistics officer who had instituted this sequence eight years ago had been reassigned to a mining colony in the Cygnet system, but the sequence had outlasted her, the way useful structures outlasted the people who built them.

Voss read through the logistics summary while his tea cooled. Tribute collection from the Westside residential block was running four percent below projection — seasonal, consistent with prior years, requiring no action. The harbor maintenance contract had been renegotiated by the port administration at a cost seven percent below the previous cycle. Three checkpoint biometric scanners in the northern corridor required firmware updates and had been flagged for the monthly maintenance rotation.

He moved to personnel.