Page 90 of Alien Burn

Have you eaten since the reception?

Yes. Have you?

Not yet.

Across the table, his lead broke the seal under the examination recorder. Dhomhes set the comm aside.

The outer sheet was a request for temporary relocation arrangements. Roemary's name appeared beneath a paragraph offering assistance through her father's office.

Beneath that sat a second form asking for advance notice of any further changes to the volunteers' accommodation, including arrival times and the entrance through which their belongings would be taken.

Dhomhes stopped smiling.

“Who approved this?”

“No current approval attached.”

“There is a program mark.”

“Copied from the arrival paperwork. Look at the edge.”

His lead enlarged the image. Part of another word had been caught beneath the mark, a clipped fragment belonging to a different line.

Someone had taken an old acknowledgment and placed it beneath a new request.

Graecey's name was still on it. The organizer from the Galactic Alliance.

For a moment he remembered her in the landing crowd again, occupied, impatient with some small delay.

A living female with work to finish. Just before the first explosion.

Fiviel was there.

He caught her.

I thought he had her.

Dhomhes put his hand flat on the table.

“An acknowledgment isn't an authorization,” his lead said, drawing him back to the moment.

“Then the office can explain why it's being used as one. We won't supply the information.”

The addressee was Vessik, third window, east administrative annex. The requested reply would go to a private comm address rather than through the program's ordinary correspondence channel.

“Preserve the original. Send a copy to the security commander. No room assignments, movement times, or access instructions are to leave through this request.”

“And Vessik?”

“Find out what he actually does before we decide what he has done.”

His lead gathered the pages.

“One other thing,” Dhomhes said. “Sereya's name doesn't go on a delivery record. She didn't deliver it.”

“It will show collection from Roemary's suite.”

“Good.”