Squad E had already nabbed one of their favourite tables, the nearest to the coffee station, by the time he arrived for breakfast. Luo was noticeably absent—where was he? Should he track him down to check on him?
He scanned the faces of his squad. Dark circles and messy hair, but they all seemed in good spirits.
“Alright?” he asked, sliding in next to Meredith.
“Peachy.”
Splat was sitting in the opposite corner, as far away from Meredith as possible. He grimaced through his swollen lip as he sipped from his mug. “It was your mug duty, Noah. You owe us double later now.”
“How was Adeela?” Noah asked Habib. He envied how refreshed he looked.
“She’s great,” Habib said, pulling out his tablet to flash Noah a picture of her holding up a drawing.
“Is that supposed to be you?” said Vitt. “It looks more like a pizza.”
Noah eyed Zeke, sitting with Splat. They were talking in a low, hushed tone, their heads almost touching. Noah strained his ear to catch what they were saying, but Aoife was slurping water loudly next to him.
“Are Zeke and I with you this morning, Noah?” said Frankie, distracting him from his mission.
He twisted words around on his tongue before finally replying, “No. You’ll need all of your energy for day one tomorrow.”
“We seriously need to up our game,” Habib said, pointing at the leaderboard. “We only racked up forty kills on border duty over the last month. We’re now second to bottom.”
Noah resisted rolling his eyes. He hated that damn leaderboard. Although he couldn’t deny it was certainly motivational. “Murphy wants to see me in a moment. Where are you guys headed today?” he asked, pointedly avoiding looking at Zeke.
“Savannah’s going AWOL to run off with her dance crew, so Meredith and I are gonna show Frankie and Zeke the crack with the lake,” said Aoife.
“Are Splat and I not invited?” said Habib.
“If you carry the bags.” Meredith blew Habib a kiss. “Are you coming, Noah?”
“I guess so,” he said, relieved as the structure of his day formed in front of him. “You guys go ahead and hopefully I’ll be there by noon.”
Noah arrived at Command ten minutes early, after ordering Wolf to stay near the picnic benches to be collected on the way back. He wished the dog was there beside him—a sense of dread settled in his stomach as the guards nodded him through the front door to the building. When he reached Murphy’s office, the door was slightly ajar. Two raised voices floated out of it, so he knocked sharply.
“Enter.”
He recognised Murphy’s guest as a general from a southern regiment. His stony face nodded once at Noah as Noah saluted. The general glanced back at Murphy with a look that suggested their conversation was far from over as he stormed out of the room.
Noah sat down. “Everything okay, ma’am?” he asked, knowing he was crossing the line.
She must have been in a good mood, because she replied, “Just a friendly territory dispute—you know what the South are like. Sounds like they’re in trouble, though. They’ve lost even more personnel this year than we have. We’re going to have to take over some of their border next month.” Murphy sat up straighter, Noah’s cue that the current line of conversation was over. “How are you, Noah? I can’t believe it’s been two months since we last sat down. How are the two new officers?”
“They’re—” he searched for the words, “—trained.” That wastechnicallytrue.
“Go on,” Murphy prompted.
“We’ve done our best in the time allotted to us, ma’am. They’re not going to win any medals anytime soon, but they should manage not to shoot themselves in the face.”
To his surprise, she threw back her head and laughed. If she was in this good of a mood…
It killed him to do it. But he had to try.
“Ma’am, if I may, I have to make a suggestion.”
Murphy raised her eyebrows.
Before he could change his mind, he said, “Zeke Bates has done his very best, but his performance in every drill is subpar. He simply isn’t direct-combat material. But he’s very academic. I think he would do well on the surveillance team. Or even engineering.”
