Ravi climbed into his single-seater hov at first light and punched in the address for the ziggurat. It was horribly early, but Archcom Pridian would already be in her office, and he needed to catch her before she left the ziggurat to tour every damn unit posting from the city to the coast.

The hov rumbled to life but didn't streak out onto the magnet lane the way he wanted. Instead, the upgrade reminder popped up again, overtaking his entire windshield. A gleaming female voice erupted through the morning quiet. "UPGRADE TO MASTALI NAVIGATOR SEVEN—"

"Fuck off." Ravi stabbed at the tiny disconnect button hidden in the corner of the advertisement. His nav system on the hovercruiser was old enough to be a family heirloom and only stored a handful of addresses but work and home were all he really needed. Not to mention, it was offensive seeing the legend of the Mastali reduced to selling hov upgrades that projected demonic cat ears on the craft while driving or some shit.

Upgrades thwarted, he leaned back in the seat as the hov finally got moving. It jerked out onto the mag lanes and sailed toward the hazy outline of the ziggurat overlooking the city.

He'd finished his coffee by the time he passed the ziggurat's main gate. Good thing too, because the hov jerked into traffic on the main lane, and Ravi sloshed back and forth in his seat as the cruiser tried to find its way through the crowds. So many hovs at the ziggurat first thing in the morning, sleek bullet cruisers and rattling rust buckets like his own. Registration day.

A few of the nervous recruits had their parents in tow, everyone milling around in front of the central entrance to the ziggurat, waiting for the appointments that would tell them which unit was their first assignment. Hummingbird drones buzzed from face to face, scanning retinas and issuing garbled instructions.

At this rate, it'd take him forever to get through to the Archcom's headquarters. Setting the hov to locate a charging bay, he hopped out and darted through the vehicles on foot. He cut across the lawn and through swarms of new recruits to the nearest entrance, a shining set of glass doors in the base of the ziggurat. The touchpad was ice-cold beneath his fingers, light flickering as it read his biometrics and scanned the double metal circles of his subal ripple.

The doors chimed at him and refused to open. "If you are lost, please find the nearest drone for directions. Appointments for specialty units are in their respective branch buildings—" Ravi muttered and waved his hand in front of the damn things, but the doors continued to list out the three service branches as if they were addressing kids on a school trip.

Might as well go through the Enforcers branch, even if it was the long way. He jogged away from the clusterfuck of confusion in front of the ziggurat, and around to a lesser known entrance, steering clear of the registrants filing in another door to receive their instructions. This time the doors scanned him and let him in, and he passed through familiar hallways. It was early enough that most of the office bubbles were sealed and empty, except for where the new Enforcer recruits were gathering.

Out of habit, he paused beside one of the screens announcing possible commendations and downloaded the list onto his holowatch. Scrolling through it kept his mind busy on the walk, even though it was a weak list. A commendation for tree planting in the city, a commendation for construction at a fish hatchery, a commendation for rocketry, none were promising. The first two were far too basic compared to the commendations he and Gadsen had already collected for their unit, and the rocketry one was clearly meant for an Enlightenment specialty unit. He and Gaden had positioned their crew as an Enforcer unit for years, and they were finally starting to gather some prestige. Their next commendation needed to be—not his problem. He flicked away the list. It was Gadsen's unit now, and Gadsen could figure it out without him.

The further he went into the ziggurat, the more activity he saw. Archcom Pridian set the standard, and if she was up at dawn, her administrators were right there with her. He skirted a busy snack cart, inhaling the smell of steaming coffee as he passed to get to the elevator.

He wasn't familiar with the uppermost level of the ziggurat, but the Archcom's base was easy to find. It looked like an enormous black marble settled in the sunken center of the floor, desks and offices spaced out around it in a spiral. He took a footpath that arched right to Pridian's secretary's desk. The man tapped away at several screens and did a better job of refusing to make eye contact than the bartenders in Ravi's favorite dives.

"I—" Ravi tried, but the secretary raised a finger. A long, neon-green nail wagged beneath Ravi's nose.

"Not yet," the man said. He touched the cuff on his ear, lit with an incoming call. The conversation that followed mostly consisted of him saying "No" in varying tones. A projected screen behind the secretary caught Ravi's attention, and he slipped past the desk. The screen displayed a map of Suzerain Aureli's territory, divvyed up among five Archcoms. His stomach coiled as he took in the sparkling dots scattered across the map. Command positions, all over the territory. He poked the coastal unit he'd applied for, and a pop up appeared. Position filled, pending announcement.

Ravi tapped his way through the dots for the units that rejected him. In a day or two, the formal announcements of new commanders would be made. Applicants with less experience and fewer qualifications leapfrogging over him. Even an unaffiliated unit, too low-ranking to specialize in any branch, had turned him down. Maybe Gadsen hadn't actually given him a good recommendation. If that were true, they were going to have to brig him for murder.

"Subal," called the secretary. "Do you have an appointment?"

Ravi started to turn, and then whipped back toward the map. A single blue dot glittered at the edge, in the grayed out region that represented a unit outside Archcom Pridian's jurisdiction.

"No, but..." He reached for it, and the text sprang up beneath his finger. Opalina Outpost, command position vacant. His pulse sputtered.

"You'll need to make an appointment."

He spun to the secretary. "Tell her it's Subal Endessen, here about the applications."

The man grumbled, but he pinged the Archcom, and a moment later a door retracted in the glassy black bubble, revealing an open entry. With a nod to the secretary and a last glance at the map, Ravi stepped inside.

From the interior, the black glass looked entirely clear. Daylight poured in from the ziggurat's translucent capstone, filtering among airy plants and plump, overstuffed couches that looked like they belonged in a grandmother's living room. The Archcom's desk was draped in a bright woven cloth, its geometric pattern as impeccably neat as the woman seated behind it. A jeweled hummingbird glittered in the nest of her bun.

"Ravi," she said, nodding at his salute. "I anticipated your arrival this morning." She waved him at the nearest chair, and he sank into it.

"You saw my applications," he said. It wasn't a question. Pridian had taken an interest in him since early days, even before she achieved the rank of Archcom. The success of what had been a modest, unaffiliated unit before he and Gadsen took it over reflected well on her jurisdiction.

"I did." She glared at him over the top of a pair of square lenses, and the mechanical hummingbird shifted its wings. He tried not to stare at it.

"You have a problem," the Archcom said.

He swallowed, hating that he needed to ask. "It's not...Gadsen's recommendation wasn't..."

"Gadsen provided a glowing rec, although I'm sure he'd prefer to keep you. However, a recommendation does not carry as much weight as the resume. That's your problem. You've been subal of a rising unit for years, Ravi. How did your resume end up so thin?"

His hands were sweating. He rubbed them over his kneecaps, trying to think of some explanation that didn't make him sound pathetic. There wasn't one.

Pridian angled one thread-thin eyebrow. "You gave Gadsen all the credits for the commendations, didn't you?"

"I thought...I figured that it was good for the unit to have high-ripple com. And I thought I'd be staying longer, but—" His voice rasped out, and he got no further.

She adjusted her glasses on the bridge of her narrow nose. "I understand you and Gadsen are close friends, but you've made things difficult for yourself there. Most of those commendations were your work. You should've split the credits, at the very least. On paper, you appear to be a subal who's been carried by your commander, instead of the other way around."

"How do I prove it to the Suzerain's Commissioners?"

"You need to build your resume. As many commendations as you can get your Enforcer unit to collect, and make sure Gadsen agrees the credits go to—"

"I can't stay with the unit." It escaped too quickly, interrupting her.

Pridian's eyebrows flicked higher, wrinkling her forehead. "You must. Unless you applied for subal somewhere else?"

"No," he said. "But I can't stay with Gadsen." Fuck, that was poor phrasing. He tried to hold her gaze, although it made him feel as though Pridian saw too much. Everyone knew that he and Gadsen were close, but they would have been separated to different units if their coms knew just how close. It didn't matter now anyway. Revealing it would do nothing but fuck up both their reputations. The ban on relationships between coms and the crews under their direct command was one of the first rules laid out at Registration.

"What happened?" She leaned across the desk, bony hands laced.

He shook his head furiously. "Nothing happened, I just...I'm stalled out. And I can't do another year of the same thing."

She didn't look convinced, and the silence that dragged in the wake of his words was uncomfortable. He cleared his throat and cast a prayer up to the Little Goddess. Let the Little be pleased by his mother's gallivanting. "I saw a vacant com position on the map outside. Where is it?"

Pridian snorted and waved the suggestion away. "That outpost is a trash heap in the desert. There's a reason no one applied for it."

The match smoking in his stomach caught fire. It took everything he had not to fling himself half across her desk and beg. "I'll take it."

"Ravi. Absolutely not."

"If it's performing that badly, turning it around would polish up my resume, wouldn't it?"

"No, it would ruin it completely. Even Gadsen would have a hard time taking you back. That outpost has had seven coms in the past four years. They don't even assign new recruits there anymore. It's just a dumping ground for crew who are gumming up the works in other units." She eyed him, her frown deepening. "If it were just up to you, perhaps I'd have more confidence. But they've created a disaster of a crew. A decent com isn't going to be enough to make up for that."

"I can be better than decent." Normally, he wouldn't have pressed so much, but this might be the only lifeline the Little or any of the sister goddesses would throw his way. And there was nowhere to go but up from rock bottom. Maybe he and Opalina needed each other. "What would I have to do in order to come out of it with a win?"

Muttering to herself, Pridian shifted and tapped something on her desk so that a keyboard and screen materialized. The reflection of Opalina's records caught in her glasses as she scanned the record. "Get them to pass their inspections for a start. Any commendation is a win for them. But this isn't in my jurisdiction. It's a Fennec Region outpost, and Archcom Huseda is tough as titanium. She won't go easy on you with the inspections."

"Will you put my name up for it?"

"You realize that this could end up being far worse than anything that's happening now?"

Not possible. He'd accept a trash heap if it meant Gadsen wasn't buzzing around it. "I'll take it. If you'll approve."

Pridian pursed her lips and smoothed the cloth on her desk. "I think you've got promise, Ravi. And I'm not sure if that means I should approve it or do something to stop you from slaughtering your career. You're sure this is what you want?"

He nodded before she even finished the question, his head jerking fast enough that he was sure he looked like a malfunctioning bot. "Yes."

A few clicks and several muted curses later, Pridian pulled his application up and paused with her fingers poised above the keyboard. She glanced at him and made a quick signal to the computer, adding a note at the top of whatever doc she was examining.

He shifted, squashing his hands between his thighs in an attempt to keep still. "Archcom...you're adding something?"

"Making sure Huseda knows she owes me a favor for sending you. There. It's away. My guess is they'll accept quickly, before you have a chance to recover your senses and withdraw."

Letting out a breath, he rose unsteadily and saluted her. "Thank you, Archcom."

"Now get out before I have to call Enforcers for someone making ridiculous decisions in my office." She touched another key on the desk, and the door sprang open again, noisy activity pouring into the quiet office bubble.

Ravi leashed his stride so he didn't break into a giddy run, and gave the unimpressed secretary a wide smile on his way out. He'd gone to the ziggurat for help, but he hadn't really expected to walk out of it with a command position nearly in his grasp. Archcom Huseda wasn't the only one who owed Pridian. She might think she'd saddled him with something terrible, but it felt like he was pumped full of helium and floating back to his hov.

He reached the vehicle in its port and set his hand to the door to unlock it just as his holowatch lit up. Perched half in and half out of the hov, pulse ripping through his limbs, he opened the latest missive.

It was a terse response, accompanied by a scroll of materials, lists, and info to download. But all he cared about was the first line. Application accepted, position approved. Start date was only five days away.

He was headed to the fringe, to an outpost clinging to the Suzerain's territory by its fingernails, staffed by a crew of castoffs. And it was the best news he'd had in a long time.