Ravi checked his holowatch as he stepped out of his trailer. It was hours before his appointment with Archcom Huseda, but the ride to the ziggurat was a long one, and he hated lateness. That and he was too fucking nervous about the whole thing, and his crew was starting to pick up on it. Might as well get out of the camp before everyone looked as anxious as he felt.

Jossen waited for him at the edge of the ring of trailers and gave him a sharp salute as he approached. "Best of luck, Com."

"Thanks. Keep them busy, Subal," he murmured, jerking his head back in the direction of the crew. He'd signed off on Yorune and Rosareen's overcomplicated plans for a garden as soon as he received the missive from Huseda asking for a meeting. The crew needed something to keep them well occupied during the wait for information.

Four days had passed since their meeting with the asshole inspector up the mountain. Four days, and the image of the lightship lingered in his mind. He still couldn't grasp that the shining hulk of Mastali metal had housed him for months. Grimy though it was, Opalina had been unpretentious and comfy in its own way. The lightship looked cold and kind of ominous by comparison.

With a quick farewell salute to Jossen, he sank into the hov. It peeled away down the mag lane, zipping through the red glow of the late afternoon, on a straight course back into town and the ziggurat. Ravi settled back with his slate, reading through commendation tasks. He'd combed through the ones in the area, so it was all things he'd already rejected, but he needed something to take his mind off whatever this conversation was about to be. Huseda had bypassed all his attempts to glean a sense of what was happening and insisted he come to the ziggurat. Only a little while longer, and he'd find out. He buried himself in the commendations list for the length of the ride.

The Fennec region ziggurat looked older and more traditional than the steel and glass structure he'd grown accustomed to in his old region. It was made of gigantic blocks of yellow stone, with dark slit windows spaced evenly across each level as if ready for siege. Which might be appropriate, because from what Ravi could see of the hovs and people descending on it, it was either under attack or suddenly very, very popular. Something clenched in his gut. Word of the lightship was spreading. Only a matter of time before this enterprising crowd started to follow the mag strip up the mountain to grab at their prize. Finding an empty hov port was going to be a tall order in the melee. He brushed his hand across the nav board and stopped the hov to climb out.

Indoors, it was as chaotic as expected. The Fennec region units were being inundated with applicants. Ravi inched through a crowd, trying to get to what looked like a reception desk. A harried assistant asked him twice to state his name and appointment time, all while fending off some insistent woman who was waving a slate with her resume on it. When he was finally permitted past Enforcer guarded doors, he stood in line for fifteen minutes waiting for an elevator to clang up and drag him upstairs. Good thing he left extra time for his arrival, because by the time he walked into Huseda's office, he was a minute late.

At first, he wasn't sure he was in the right place. It was big enough for an army, and heaped in layers of ornate rugs that made him feel as if his dusty boots had to be an offense. They were at the very top of the ziggurat, and the windows were larger here, filtering the harsh sunlight through treated glass. Archcom Huseda worked in the center of the room, seated on the rugs and positioned behind a low desk. He missed her at first, lost in staring around, and gave a belated salute.

She waved Ravi closer. "Endessen, glad you've arrived. Take a seat."

He folded himself down onto a round cushion, hands fiddling nervously on his knees. "Thanks for taking the time to meet, Archcom."

A screen materialized next to her, and her lips twisted in a frown as she tapped out a response. "You know," she grumbled, "managing the discovery of the age is a headache."

Losing an outpost and all his plans and hopes to the discovery of the age was worse. But he only nodded politely and waited for her to broach whatever she'd hauled him all the way out here to say. It didn't seem like it could possibly be good.

The screen winked away, and Huseda folded her hands on her desk. She was framed by the light sifting through the window behind her, and Ravi had to peer closer to make out her stern expression. "Alright. I know you've been waiting for answers for a while, and I'm going to be as forthright as I can be with you now. You spoke to Tarik, yes?"

"We did, but I'm not sure we were much use to him." Not that he wanted to be a great use to that dick. They'd gotten nowhere with his questions about a fuel tank or solar panels or whatever the fuck, and Tarik had made no effort to hide his contempt when he finally packed them off to the hov.

"Pity. A lightship that can't fly is not what Suzerain Aureli wants to hear. She's under pressure from the Emperor to show our territory's units can handle this, otherwise we'll lose the right to it. In order to try to lock the lightship down, her Commissioners want to assign a crew as soon as possible, whether the damn thing can fly or not."

There was a dull pain in his jaw from clenching his teeth too tightly, but he spoke through it. "New crew?" He'd never really thought that he and his team would remain attached to the lightship, but it still hurt to hear.

Huseda didn't shirk the uncomfortable. "Yes. Those are about to be the ten most elite positions in the territory. You saw downstairs. The demand is high. The Suzerain's Commissioners have decided to split the positions between the Enlightenment and Enforcer branches. The lightship will have two commanders, and they'll need to be able to work closely together while running their respective teams."

"Sounds unusual," Ravi said. He didn't see what he had to do with it, and he was too tired and tense to pretend to be interested. "Why are you telling me this?"

She smiled faintly, and continued as if he hadn't spoken. "The Enlightenment command position will be filled from a specialized pool of pre-flagged candidates. They've already been assessing for ages. But the Enforcer position...look, this isn't anything close to a guarantee, but there is some talk of that going to you."

His jaw went slack. He must've looked like a fucking joke, because Huseda's amusement grew.

"Endessen, you've done incredibly well with that ragtag bunch in a very short amount of time. Archcom Pridian is lobbying hard for you to get the position, and I'm inclined to agree with her. I don't think I need to explain what a privileged and high-profile job this would be."

"What would that mean for my crew?" he asked, voice gone hoarse.

"I'll do my best to reassign them to units in the region that'll suit their skills. Happy to take your input on where you think each of them might be a good fit."

If someone had told him a year ago that he'd have a chance at a com position on a Mastali lightship, he'd have told them to fuck off. He didn't know the first thing about running a lightship. Then again, nobody did. Little Goddess, she'd only said they were considering it for him, not offering yet, but then that bit about the crew—He sucked in a harsh breath.

"We'd have to split the crew up?"

"I'm afraid that's unavoidable."

He smeared his hand back and forth along his jaw, too distracted to hide his dismay. "If I were to..." He swallowed and had to unstick the words from the roof of his mouth. "If I declined the lightship position to stay in command of my current crew, will you keep them together and find another spot for us?"

"That right there"—Huseda pointed a blunt finger at him— "is exactly why I want you for the lightship command. That thinking is rare, Raviro. But the answer is no. I can't just establish a new unit in my region. You'll need approval from the Suzerain and her Commissioners, and there's a backlog of new unit petitions that'll take years to get through. But it's impressive that you'd even consider it. You're a good com."

Miserable as he was, he met her gaze. "I have a great crew. Which you're about to split up."

Huseda tapped her desk and shook her head. "That can't be helped. I know it's rough, and if you'd like the news to come from me directly, I'm happy to—"

"No. I'll tell them." His palms were sweating. "When will reassignment happen?"

"It'll kick in as soon as the command positions are filled. Which, what with the pressure the Suzerain's putting on the Commissioners to make progress, should be in a matter of days. Once the coms are announced, they'll start looking at applicants to fill their crew spots."

The window behind Huseda flooded with watery evening colors. Ravi tried not to think of his crew finishing up in the first scratches of a garden, trying to build some kind of terrace to Yorune's exact specifications. After so many dreary long days, they were suddenly out of time.

The Archcom didn't seem to want him to stick around and curry favor for the lightship position. He couldn't have done it even if that was her expectation. There was some discussion of how and when he needed to have his recommendations to her before she put the reassignments through, and then they were done. She dismissed him while the screens around her desk rose again, and Ravi escaped the enormous office.

Ravi stood with his head down in the elevator, ignoring people jostling around him. The thoughts raging in his head were louder than the noise of the crowd on the ziggurats first level, and he pushed through thickets of excited recruits without really seeing any of them. It wasn't until he was sequestered back in the quiet hov, puttering back toward camp, that it really hit him.

In a few days they wouldn't be a crew at all anymore. He'd have to gather them together and tell them as soon as he got back.

He flipped open his slate and listlessly tapped open a space to make a checklist. If Huseda was going to give him some say in reassignment, he needed to know as much as possible about the units where his people might end up. Maybe even meet with each person once he had their options narrowed down. And fuck, he was going to have to prep his own application again. Hopefully, what he'd managed to accomplish was enough of a boost for his resume that he'd land somewhere. Probably not the Fennec region, though. Unless...

The thought he'd been trying not to consider caught up to him. If Huseda and Pridian really did convince the Commissioners, and they offered him the lightship spot, it would be ridiculous to turn it down. He didn't want his crew split. But they'd lost their post, and there was nothing he could do to stop them from being divvyed up. If rejecting the lightship position was no help for the crew, then there wasn't really a reason to reject it.

The thought of taking it still made him sick. And he knew why, and he didn't want to admit it, but it was sitting on his chest like a fucking dumbbell.

He couldn't take the position if it was offered. Because if he ended up on a lightship and Lio didn't, that was probably the end of things for them. He would be stealing the exact opportunity Lio had spent his entire life coveting. It was one thing for them both to watch it be ripped away. Another thing for it to land in Ravi's lap and Lio to get nothing. Lio would try his best not to be angry with him for it, but this was far more complicated than the situation they faced before. It would be flung in Lio's face every day, at whatever unit he was stuck in, separated from his friends and watching Ravi from afar. Jealousy and resentment could brew like storm clouds on the horizon.

Ravi pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. This was bullshit. He was doing the exact same thing he'd done before. The thing he'd tortured himself with regretting. Promised he would never do again. He was passing up opportunities and advancement because he was falling way too hard for a guy.

Fucking clusterfuck. Maybe they wouldn't offer it to him at all, and he wouldn't have to choose. Choosing was impossible. Or it should be. Some part of him already knew what he would do.