Ravi stared at the lumpy ceiling in his new room. He'd barely gotten a few hours of sleep, and he'd given up on getting any more. He was fucked.

No, he'd been fucked, which was why he was now more fucked, and Lio was an asshole, and Goddess, he'd done everything the man wanted that night— The downward spiral he'd been battling for hours started again.

He rolled out of his bed and staggered across the tiny room to bathroom. Cord lights buzzed on over the mirror as he locked eyes with his miserable expression. Stupid. So fucking stupid. Why couldn't he just have had an awkward, embarrassing night with a stranger he never saw again? Someone he never wanted to see again. Not some gorgeous creature who'd strung him out all night like he knew every half-hidden desire Ravi rarely risked explaining. A gorgeous creature who also turned out to be a lazy, lying, jackass.

Before he ventured out to Opalina, he'd considered what a bad start would look like. This was way, way worse than any of his nightmare scenarios. He'd slept with one of his recruits. Another guy he should never have touched in the first place. So much for not repeating old mistakes.

Trying to keep himself from vomiting up pure shame in the toilet, he paced back into the bedroom and found his slate for work. He finished drafting his checklists and the day's schedule just before dawn. In the morning quiet, he crept out of the room and posted the schedule on the only announcements screen in the tunnel.

Another hour, and his pulse had barely slowed, but it was time to put on a com's professional mask. Fuck Lio, he wasn't ruining this. He went to meet Jossen in the hall and transferred a copy of the checklists to his subal. Jossen looked bleary, but he did his best to stifle his yawns, and Ravi couldn't fault him for having a normal sleep schedule. He probably made better decisions in bars, too.

He cleared his throat and handed Jossen an air-amplifier. "Alright. Time to wake everyone up." In his frenzied planning, he had calculated every task the outpost needed to complete to prepare for an inspection. The crew was going to spend the next few days doing several months' worth of cleaning.

Amplifiers blasting, they started at opposite ends of the tunnel, slamming on doors and rousting the crew from their bunks. There was a lot of cursing, and Duhar plunged into the hallway wearing fuzzy slippers and swinging what looked like a crowbar. Ravi ripped it out of his hands before he hurt himself.

"We're not under attack. Basic uniform today, recruit," he said. "No need to get your dress uniform dirty."

Duhar rattled his head back and forth like he had water in his ears. "We have a dress uniform?"

"Just get changed and report to the subal for your assignments." Ravi looked over Duhar's bulky shoulder as more doors opened and the crew emerged. Most of them looked befuddled and dismayed, except for Aziri, who was livid. Unwillingly, Ravi found the figure he least wanted to see. Lio leaned against the door to his room, his hair messy from bed. Unbearably soft, dark waves slipped loose over his shoulders.

He spun blindly and retreated to his office. Jossen could ensure they would all get started. Safely out of sight behind the closed door of his office, Ravi leaned against the wall and took deep breaths of the musty air.

He had a plan. Stick to the plan. Since the day he'd found out about the position, he'd thought about how to present himself at the outpost. How to assume command. Opalina needed someone who was firm, uncompromising, and ready to rally the most unlikely team in all of Suzerain Aureli's territory. He was supposed to be radiating authority and surety, not hiding. How the fuck was he supposed to radiate authority to a guy who'd made him beg in bed the night before?

If Lio told the crew, he'd turn into a joke. Even that was best case scenario. He knew what would really happen if it got out. Assuming Lio's family was as influential as Jossen had implied, Ravi would take all the blame for a relationship between a com and a direct reporting recruit. He'd lose his only chance at command, and his resume wouldn't recover. Heartbeat echoing in his chest, he dragged a hand across half his face, kneading into his forehead.

They hadn't known anything about each other, and Lio danced them right past any talk of postings or ranks with his stupid bullshit about aliens. This never would've happened if Ravi had known. It wasn't his fault, and he was not going to let his chance slip through his fingers because he was cowering in humiliation. If he had to threaten Lio to make sure he never breathed a word, he would. He lunged away from the wall and attacked the waiting boxes.

The state of the office was a good distraction. He continued his project from the other day, unearthing a dust-choked snapshotter to convert the endless array of folders and documents to virtual files. With the snapshotter humming in the background as it chewed through stacks of paper, Ravi almost felt better. Part of the desk was finally visible, the surface partially cleared. Rows of crates dragged from the office lined the walls of the muster room, sorted by year. Progress.

He reached for an oddly lightweight box pinioned behind the desk and dragged it up onto the space he'd reclaimed. Most of the boxes contained a haphazard mix of daily logs left by former coms and supply inventories. This one was different, and contained only a few folders stained varying degrees of yellow with age. Ravi rummaged through them, reading the names printed on the exterior. He'd finally located the personnel files.

Folders in hand, he returned to the muster room and laid them out in a row, eyeing Lio's at the end. But he started with Jossen's, by far the largest file. It turned out to be mostly grievances that the subal had submitted against many of the crew members. Seemed like the longer Jossen stayed at Opalina, the more annoyed and affronted he'd become. The most recent grievance named Aziri and Lio for reckless endangerment of the outpost's security and inviting enemy attack because of a joke. It was unlikely that the forces of the Vashyan dominion were going to descend on Opalina because they mistook it for a valuable desert resort.

That said, it did seem as if Jossen was the unfortunate butt of too much unkind teasing. Ravi read through several pages of Jossen's outrage upon discovering that all of his uniforms had somehow gone missing in the laundry, only to reappear embroidered with the name Sucken MacDicken. The poor guy was clearly hounded. Ravi had heard of similar situations, and they usually stemmed from deep dislike among the crew. He set the file down and unfolded his slate from a pocket, adding a "rehabilitate the subal" note to his personal checklist.

Lio's file still winked in the corner of his eye, yanking at his attention just the way the man himself did. In defiance, Ravi reached for the file furthest from Lio's and cracked it open.

He worked his way through documents on the whole crew, reading with a furrowed brow. Most of them had little more than notes on allergies and a few records of dispensation requests granted or denied, but two in particular stood out.

Yorune's file was a mess of documents. She had taken and passed so many certification assessments Ravi lost count. Then there was a grant application for research into invasive featherweed, a proposal for an encyclopedia of weather patterns, a design for a deepwater submersion suit, and several other synopses for technical papers that were too advanced to follow. Everything sounded brilliant, except she hadn't finished a single project. He set her folder to one side, separate from the stack of the rest of the crew.

His second intriguing find was Orvaska's file. The crew simply referred to Orvaska and his sister as "the twins", and Ravi had already seen that the two kept themselves separate from the others. There was precious little information on either of the twins, except that they came from territories beyond Northbridge, near the tenuous border with the Vashyan dominion. A quick glance at the single-page assessment report in Orvaska's file made it clear that the man had serious Enforcer potential. His hand-to-hand combat scores were higher than Ravi had ever managed. Another one who never should've ended up at Opalina. But if Orvaska was half as good as his scores promised, Ravi had the first glimmer of real talent to work with. The Little Goddess had not abandoned him entirely.

Closing Orvaska's file and tucking it beside Yorune's, he looked at the last of the unread folders. Ravi flicked back Lio's file and spread out the reports inside. Except that there weren't any reports. It was just page after page of dispensation records. Jossen hadn't been kidding when he said Lio got more dispensations than anyone else. He appeared to have been granted more dispensations in eight months than Ravi had requested in three years. His gaze skimmed over the intelcoin signature inked on each of the dispensations. He snatched up the page for a closer look, and then peered at the rest of them, his jaw slack.

Every single one was granted by Archcom Huseda. Either Lio was forging this shit, or his family was wealthy enough to wield more than their fair share of the Archcom's favor. Ravi bit down on the tip of his tongue. Of course Lio walked around as though he always got everything he wanted. In the bar, it had looked like charming confidence. And now it looked a fuck-ton more like entitlement. He slapped the file shut and shoved it to the bottom of the pile. Lazy, lying, spoiled jackass. No wonder he'd been so good at ordering Ravi around.

Indignation gave him enough fuel to leave the muster room to check up on the crew. He stopped by the announcements screen, lips thinning as he examined the list. If Jossen's progress updates were accurate, they were far behind schedule. At this rate, they'd be ready for an inspection some time next year.

A burst of laughter echoed from the storage room, followed by Lio's voice. "It gets worse. I'm trying to get his hair out and he's shrieking and thrashing like a child, and we fell right over the hedge into a bunch of high ranking somebodies—"

"Why do these things happen to you?" Aziri asked. His voice was dry, but Ravi could hear a smile in it.

"Dearest, you have no idea how often I ask myself that. Anyway, there I was, me on my ass in front of half the guests at the party, trying to explain why the territory's premier violinist had his hair caught in the zipper of my pants. Needless to say—"

Ravi took a deep, desperate breath, squared his shoulders, and stepped into the storage room doorway. Lio's voice stopped like someone cut his power. The other occupants of the storage room caught sight of him almost in the same instant, and there was a frenzy of everyone scrambling up from wherever they were sitting or leaning or lounging.

"Hello, Com!" Duhar squeaked. "Just...uh, just taking a little break!"

Nearly the entire crew was in the storage room, which was ridiculous. And not part of the assignment plans he'd spent all night drafting. Ravi glanced toward where Lio, Teres and Aziri were skulking deeper among the shelves. That little trio needed to be split up.

"We don't need all hands on the storage room," he said. He divided them into new assignments, sending most scurrying out into the hallway in twos and threes. Lio avoided his gaze but went off to scrub the showers without a word.

When he crossed to the mess hall, he paused just across the threshold. The room was much better, appliances gleaming and a lemony scent in the air. At least something had gone right since his arrival. Yorune stood between Rosareen and Jossen, gesturing at the back wall.

"I really think Rosareen's onto something, Subal. If we strengthened the lights, we could grow plants on that back wall!"

Jossen waved his hand as if swatting away a fly. "Waste of time. We don't need to pretty up the mess hall just so you can take pictures, Rosareen."

Ravi moved closer to interrupt before Rosareen made whatever retort was clearly on the tip of her tongue. "Looks good in here," he said, and all three of them turned toward him. Rosareen looked wary, but Yorune beamed.

"I'll admit it's been a while since I saw it this clean," Jossen said. "Although I'm not sure I'd have set up the tables that way." He didn't seem to notice that Yorune's smile shrank in response.

"What's the idea you were talking about?" Ravi asked.

"It's hardly a priority, with all the other things we need to do to get ready for an inspection," Jossen said. "What we really should discuss—"

Rosareen sliced into his sentence, flipping long hair over her shoulder. "I was saying that if we pump up the luminescence of the cord lights, we could give this place an actual aesthetic. Vertical garden on the back wall, maybe a nice accent color there, and I think I could fit a space purifier in that corner."

Redecorating wasn't exactly high on his checklist, but it was the first time anyone on the crew had expressed interest in making Opalina something it wasn't. Ravi nodded slowly. "Get me a mock-up for your designs, a materials list, and a timeline, and we'll see what we can get started." He ignored Rosareen and Jossen's startled expressions and turned to Yorune. Her grin was revived. "Yorune, I need you for something. Come with me."

Every step she took had a little bounce in it. He led the way back to the muster room and moved a pile of decrepit office supplies so she had a chair opposite his own.

Ravi slid her file front and center on the table and opened it, shuffling the papers. "You have a really impressive file here. How long have you been at Opalina?"

She shook her head, the high puff of her hair wobbling. "I can hardly believe it, but nearly three years! I haven't thought about that in a minute."

"Three years. You're almost done with the mandatory service requirement."

"I'll probably request an extension." She shrugged. "I like it here."

The papers crinkled beneath his hand as he smoothed across title after title, row after row of assessment results. "Really? Because I'm looking at marks that are pretty phenomenal. I mean, you hit the highest scores in the territory on the specialized assessment for materials science and engineering? I don't even know what that is."

"It's delightful! Integrated chemistry, physics, mathematics, engineering, biology, it's the whole party, and all of it comes together to make new things! Truly new things. It's the mental frontier made physical." She laced her hands and leaned back in her chair with a dreamy smile, her gaze floating somewhere over Ravi's head.

"That sounds...very awesome and, uh, confusing. Why don't you apply for an Enlightenment unit? They have access to labs and funding, and you'd probably be put in charge of your own research team."

She gave him an uncertain smile. The enthusiasm brought on by describing materials science seemed to have deflated. "I know. But I don't want to lead a research team."

"Why not?"

"Leading a research team means dealing with paperwork, interpersonal kerfuffles, bossing people around, y'know." Her knuckles whitened where her hands were clasped too tightly. "Not that you're bossing people! Not in a bad way, I mean!"

"I'm not offended. Bossing people around is a skillset. And I'd bet you would be good at it. Opalina is probably a good place to test it out, too, if you want." He paused to see if she would take him up on it, but from the way her gaze was darting around the room, it didn't seem likely. Ravi closed the file gently. "Listen, there's one more thing I wanted to ask you, since you've been here the longest. What's the deal with Jossen and the crew?"

"Oh." She pursed her lips and stared at him for a long while, before letting out a great gust of air. "Alright. Jossen is just...he's trying to be a good subal, but I think he bothers people unintentionally. He's wants to get people to do well but, um, the way he tries doesn't really work." Her nose scrunched up as she spoke.

"I see." He had a feeling that Yorune's assessment of the subal was probably more generous than what he'd get from the remainder of the crew, but it was still plenty to go off. "Thank you, Yorune. You can head back to the mess hall."

She jumped up, fluttered her hand in front of her forehead and sprang out the door before he could figure out how to tell her that she'd made up her own version of a salute.

Ravi stood and shuffled her file back with the others awaiting upload. He needed to focus on people like Yorune, if he wanted to make something of this crew. No more messes or mistakes.