“I WOULD HAVE A WORD,” Tallis said, shattering MacMaine’s carefully neutral train of thought. It was a standard opening for breaking the pause of adjustment, but it presaged good news rather than bad.
“I await your word,” MacMaine said. Even after all this time, he still felt vaguely proud of his ability to handle the subtle idioms of Kerothic.
“I think,” Tallis said carefully, “that you may be offered a commission in the Kerothi Space Forces.”
Sebastian MacMaine let out his breath slowly, and only then realized that he had been holding it. “I am grateful, my sibling-by-choice,” he said.
General Tallis tapped his cigarette ash into a large blue ceramic ashtray. MacMaine could smell the acrid smoke from the alien plant matter that burned in the Kerothi cigarette—a chopped-up inner bark
