[SERA — POV]
Her uncle's quarters were in the building's residential wing—simple, functional, because Commander Voss had always lived by example. She knocked three times, waited, and knocked three more, which was the signal they'd established a decade ago for this is urgent and real.
He answered the door in six minutes, dressed and alert. He took one look at her face.
"Inside," he said.
Inside his quarters, she put the documentation on his table. She stood back and watched him read it, and she watched his face the way she had learned, over twelve years, to watch everything—for the truth in it.
He read for fifteen minutes. She watched him absorb the shape of the thing. She watched the moment he reached the Garrison documentation. She watched the moment he reached the communication reco
