Chapter 3 · One Hour to Obey

The hum of the Lambda had learned Eli’s pulse and was now pretending to be it.

He lay on the narrow bunk and stared up at the ceiling where faint scuffs caught the blue-tinted cabin lights. He’d counted them on day three, re-counted on day six, and tried to lose the habit after that. The air always smelled a little metallic in here; the filtration unit wore a permanent purr like an old tooka that would never lift its head. A shuttle wasn’t meant to be a home, and it wasn’t pretending.

When the cabin lights shifted—from their usual dim amber standby to a steady, cold blue—Eli knew it wasn’t a systems cycle.

The Stillness Vector had been parked for weeks inside the Steadfast’s hangar, motionless except for the faint pulse of life-support. Nothing changed color here unless someone ordered it.

He sat up slowly. The light wasn’t the ship’s; it was the hangar’s. Someone had keyed access request from outside.

A heartbeat later came the sequence of sounds he hadn’t heard since landing: external seals unlocking, ramp hissing while being lowered after the faint tick of the inner hatch acknowledging a valid authorization. The whole series was so smooth it might have been a single breath.

He exhaled. “Well,” he murmured to the walls, “looks like the day’s finally decided to start.”

He sat up.

He had just enough time to smooth the front of his jacket and swipe the datapad blank before the hatch rolled back with a hush, and the doorway filled with a Chiss in black.

Commander Kres’ten’tarthi—Stent—looked like the shuttle had been designed to frame him: glossy black CEDF uniform without a crease, boots polished to the kind of mirror that never actually exists, posture that would have made any academy instructor weep with gratitude. The red eyes made the blue light seem colder. Two attendants in the same black stepped just behind his shoulders; they weren’t extensions of the Commander so much as proof that a system had moved.

Eli rose, both hands visible out of reflex he’d learned long ago in ports rougher than this. “Sir.”

Stent spoke Sy Bisti first, and Eli was aware of it as if someone had put a lens over the scene: the same language Thrawn had used with him when Basic would have been impossible, the same careful consonants—only Stent’s sounded as though they’d been ironed. Academic. Each vowel exact, each cadence set on rails.

“Lieutenant Ivant,” Stent said, the words placed with surgical calm. “Transition clearance is approved. You will prepare your personal effects.”

Eli’s mouth tilted. He couldn’t help it. “Y’mean I get to step off this sardine tin.”

The Sy Bisti that came out of him wasn’t schoolroom. It had the clipped corners of trade docks and spinward cantinas, a soft drop on unstressed syllables, the way people actually speak when they’re haggling over a bolt of cloth or a crate of ration bricks.

Stent’s eyelids lowered half a millimeter in what might, in some civilizations, be amusement. “You have one hour,” he continued, unbothered by Eli’s register, “to gather what is yours. Limit: two packs.”

“Two,” Eli echoed, fighting the reflex to ask why like a cadet who hadn’t read the rules board. He swallowed it. “Copy that.”

The attendants peeled off without a word—one to the compact locker, the other to the tiny galley—each sweeping with a handheld reader that chirped and pulsed. Not droids. Chiss didn’t seem to like machines doing the job of people. There was no whir of servos, no sensor stalks. Only humans—or human-shaped hands—doing human-shaped work.

The one at the locker paused at his folded uniforms and nodded to Stent. The gesture contained exactly as much opinion as a timestamp.

“Do not exceed the limit,” Stent said. The tone was so even it scythed any idea of negotiation. “Disposal and storage are provided for items you cannot carry.”

Eli lifted both palms. “Wasn’t planning to lug the bulkhead.”

He looked past Stent, past the black uniforms and their quiet, to the corridor beyond. There was nothing to see but another rectangle of blue-lit steel, but it was not the cabin, and that was enough to make his chest feel too big for his ribs.

He realized he was staring and turned away for the first time, not wanting to give Stent the satisfaction of registering relief as a metric.

“You will be escorted to the Starboard,” Stent continued—still in that polished Sy Bisti, each consonant standing to attention. “Accommodation is arranged. Two days. After which, surface transfer to Naporar for integration.”

“‘Integration’ is a nice word.”

“It is the correct one,” Stent said, in the tone of a man who preferred correct words to nice any day.

Eli nodded and moved toward the locker, fighting the urge to ramble, to fill the silence with irreverent air. The shuttle’s interior seemed smaller with them in it, as though the presence of regulation took up space.

He clicked open the locker and took inventory as though he hadn’t done that twice a week already: two folded uniforms—Imperial grey that looked almost sallow under the Chiss lights; three changes of underclothes; one soft civilian sweater that his mom had mailed to him once in a padded packet that had smelled like the Lysatran kitchen for a week after it arrived; a compact-slung field kit; the tin of caf his brother swore was the good kind; a stack of flimsi he wasn’t sure why he’d kept. On the shelf above, his datapad sat under a knotted length of cord and a pair of gloves he’d never loved.

He pictured the limit—two packs—and felt the old petty resentment of a cadet with a trunk and a rulebook. It amused him. It annoyed him. Mostly it reminded him of Thrawn, stepping into a life designed without him in mind and making it obey.

“Question,” Eli said, keeping his voice casual. “Is there any reason to keep the Imperial greys on? Or should I… I don’t know. Fold them inside-out and hope nobody’s eyes melt.”

He felt the air shift behind him, that subtle pressure that meant Stent had tilted his head.

“Retain what you require,” Stent said. “Clothing will be issued in due course.”

That was a yes without having to witness him in the wrong color for two more days. Eli had learned to read Chiss subtext in its absence.

He started sorting. The sweater went in first, deep in the bottom like it was something illicit. The caf tin he slipped into a side pocket—if Chiss caffeine was anything like Chiss air filters, it would taste like rules. The gloves could go; the cord could stay—cord was cord in any language.

The attendants finished their sweep. One placed a small seal on the galley unit with meticulous care; the other silently stacked a few items on the bunk. They didn’t look at him. Not unkindness. Not even indifference. Just the fact that whatever this was wasn’t about people.

When they reached the hatch, Stent flicked two fingers, the tiniest dismissal. They left. The hatch slid shut behind them with a sigh. The cabin went quieter.

Eli looked back over his shoulder. Stent hadn’t moved.

“You’ll—uh—wait?” Eli asked, gesturing half at the door, half at the universe.

“I will be outside,” Stent said. “One hour.” He shifted languages with a neat, audible click, dropping to Basic as if to mark the boundary: “Do not require a second.”

Eli’s mouth shaped a grin without checking with headquarters. “Yes, Commander.”

Stent stepped to the threshold and stopped. For a moment, he seemed to consider something. He looked at Eli’s duffel, at the locker, then back at Eli.

“In Sy Bisti,” Stent said, returning deliberately to the language, “you will restrain slang in formal exchange. Your register is… flexible.”

Eli heard street there, neatly folded in the academic paper. He cocked his head. “You want me to tighten it up.”

Stent’s lashes lowered again. “In official contexts.”

“And off the books?”

“The Ascendancy does not maintain off-the-books contexts,” Stent said, so evenly Eli almost laughed.

“Right,” Eli said. “All books, all the time.”

Stent did not roll his eyes. He didn’t need to. “One hour,” he repeated, then turned and was gone, leaving nothing behind but a clean rectangle of colder air.

The cabin seemed to exhale.

Eli looked at the bunk, at the small pile the attendant had arranged with mathematical care. He let out a breath. “All right,” he told the room that had kept him like a visiting relic, “let’s do this.”

He worked fast because the clock was suddenly made of teeth. Two packs seemed generous until they weren’t. The field kit was nonnegotiable; you didn’t abandon something that had fed you, patched you, held you up while it beeped.

He put the grey uniforms in next, folded sharply. They’d be replaced soon, he knew; still, he couldn’t shake the feeling he’d want them the way men want scars. The sweater went in first, deepest. The tin of caf he hesitated over—if Chiss rations were a thing, he might not want to offend by brewing his own—but he slipped it in anyway. Diplomacy had limits. So did headaches.

He picked up the flimsi stack. A few were old ration chits he’d never turned in. Two were tepid letters he’d never sent to Lysatra because you didn’t write hey, Mom, I’m living in a blue ghost story on flimsi. One was a sketch he’d made on a transport six months ago: the curve of a cheekbone and the line of a mouth and the space under it where a smile might have been if the owner had been anyone else. He stared at it one second too long, then slid it between the sweater and the uniforms where paper turns into insulation.

The datapad clipped to his belt with a satisfying click. He tugged on the zipper of the first pack, smoothed the bag with his palm like he was tucking in a child, and moved to the micro-galley.

He didn’t have much to say goodbye to there. Two cups, three spoons, one packet of spice he’d bought from a Pantoran woman with a knife-thin smile. He sniffed it; it smelled like citrus and heat and maybe the word regret. He put it in and told himself it wouldn’t be a crime to use it if the Ascendancy’s definition of edible proved philosophical.

He looked at the bunk and hesitated. He’d learned the exact angle where you could wedge your shoulder against the wall and pretend the padding had opinions. He had never named the shuttle—he wasn’t the kind—but for a second something in him reached toward the thin mattress as if it had witnessed something and might be asked to testify.

“Don’t get used to me,” he told it, because he had to say something to something.

He pulled open the small drawer under the bunk. In the back corner, where dust made its own rules, sat a little hardcase he’d almost forgotten: a translator bead, an old one; a ring with a chipped stone he didn’t wear; a coin from a port that probably no longer had a name. He let the ring lie. The coin he thumbed, then flicked into the bag. The bead he held up to the light and grimaced. He was speaking Sy Bisti as a matter of courtesy here, but the bead had been with him before he had any courtesy to spare.

He held it for a second and remembered Thrawn’s voice—careful, respectful—using his name in languages that never quite felt like paper in the mouth. He put the bead in the pocket of his jacket and told himself it was for emergencies.

He finished in thirty-eight minutes by the clock, did another pass for the kind of thing that only becomes visible when you leave, and still had twenty-one to spare. The cabin looked bigger now that it was empty. Everything does, right before it belongs to someone else.

He straightened, slung the first pack, and took the second in his hand. For a moment, he just stood with the weight of them making grooves in his shoulders and palm. Two bags. A life that had gone from one set of rules to another so often it could list them alphabetically.

The hatch was still blue. He palmed it and it whispered open.

The corridor beyond didn’t smell like the cabin. It smelled colder, clean without trying to prove anything. Stent stood exactly where Eli had imagined he would: offset from the hatch by one pace, facing down-corridor, hands clasped behind his back. He wasn’t an obstacle; he was a coordinate.

He didn’t turn when Eli stepped out. He didn’t have to. “Fifty-one minutes,” he said, barely more than air. “Acceptable.”

“Fifty-two,” Eli said, just because he had to be from somewhere. “I spent one saying goodbye to the bunk.”

Stent turned then. The corner of his mouth didn’t move, but his eyes sharpened, curious for half a breath. “You will not miss it.”

“I hope not,” Eli said. “I hear there’s real water in the world, somewhere.”

Stent’s gaze dropped to the packs. “Two.”

“Two,” Eli said, and lifted them slightly as if the number could be confirmed by weight.

Stent’s attention ticked to the cabin beyond. Not suspicion—just the kind of due diligence that, if made flesh, would wear a black uniform and perfect boots.

“Was the hour sufficient?” Stent asked.

“It was… generous,” Eli said, surprised at himself for meaning it. “I haven’t accumulated much in here. Hard to get attached to metal you can’t even dent with your breath.”

“Attachment is inefficient,” Stent said. It wasn’t a correction. It was a weather report.

“Sometimes it keeps you alive,” Eli said, lightly.

Stent didn’t argue. He only slid a half step back and angled himself corridor-ward, a gesture that was as close to after you as this civilization was going to get.

They moved; Eli matched Stent’s pace because not matching it would be like sitting down during a march. The corridor narrowed once and widened twice, not because of architecture but because space felt like an opinion around Stent.

They didn’t pass any droids. They didn’t pass any machines pretending to be people. Two Chiss officers went by in the other direction in black that matched Stent’s exactly, like the color had been minted that morning and they were the first to spend it. One flicked a glance at Eli, then looked away without staring, without flinching. Calm face. Polite neutrality. He was starting to learn the terms even before someone would teach them to him like gospel.

“Your Sy Bisti,” Stent said after twenty quiet steps, crisp vowels carving the air. “You learned it… where.”

“Trade routes,” Eli said, late-night ports and warm kitchens moving through him like he was a conduit. “My parents’ runs. Dockhands. Brokers who’d rather play dumb than pay fair. A Pantoran spice-dealer with teeth like a picket fence. You know. People.”

“Not academic,” Stent said. It was not an insult.

“Not academic,” Eli agreed. “Is that going to offend anyone?”

“In formal contexts,” Stent said, the cadence even, “you will use the elevated register. You are capable.”

Eli thought of Thrawn’s Sy Bisti: measured like a bridge, patient like a lesson, the vowels edged with something not quite like Stent’s, a softness that didn’t ask permission but got it anyway. “Yeah,” he said. “I can put on the good suit.”

The corridor turned and the floor changed under his boots—different plating, faintly more give. It made him think of a landing bay even before the doors at the far end parted with a sigh.

“Two days,” Eli said, because silence suddenly felt heavier than his bag. “On the Starboard.”

“Yes.” Stent didn’t slow. “Acclimation begins in transit. Irizi’ser’ali will supervise.”

The name wasn’t new; he’d seen it on the datapad brief that had flickered across his terminal two nights ago, a neat block of characters with no face attached. Irizi—family?—the second term must have been personal name or ranking syllable. He knew just enough to know he knew nothing.

“Right,” he said. “I’ll try not to break anything.”

“Do so,” Stent said, which was Chiss for you will not, and stepped through the doors.

The small docking vestibule on the other side was empty—a luxury of quiet if quiet could be luxury. Out past a second set of panes, Eli could see the Starboard proper as a line of broad hull and a slick of lights that made patterns he didn’t yet understand. Somewhere beyond that, a world hung in black like a coin inside a bank vault.

Stent keyed the inner control and the hatch slid. The air changed again: colder, cleaner, carrying faint traces of oil and ozone that smelled like function instead of effort.

“Lieutenant Ivant,” Stent said in Basic again, formal as a stamped seal. “Welcome to the Starboard.”

“Thanks,” Eli said, and stepped across the threshold.

It wasn’t freedom. It was different gravity.

He half expected Stent to march him immediately, but the Commander paused on the far side of the door as if the act of crossing had checked off a box only the two of them could see.

“Your quarters are prepared,” Stent said. “You will be collected in one hour for initial orientation.”

Eli blinked. “I get an hour on the other side, too? Feeling spoiled.”

Stent looked at him for a long second, and in that time Eli realized that spare time was not a concept that meant relaxation here. It meant no excuses left.

“Unpack,” Stent said. “Do not rearrange the fixtures.”

“Wouldn’t dream,” Eli said, and then, impulsively, because the urge to rub sandpaper across polished wood had kept him sane this long: “You know your Sy Bisti sounds exactly like a handbook, right?”

A pause. Then: “It is the correct accent.”

“I figured.” He tipped his head. “Thrawn’s was almost like that. Not quite.”

Something microscopic shifted in Stent’s face—wind across the surface of an iced-over lake. Eli felt a tang in the air like static, then it was gone. The red eyes didn’t soften, but they looked further, as if they’d momentarily pinned a constellation and then let it go.

“Mitth’raw’nuruodo,” Stent said, using the full name with no error, no warmth. “Had a talent for… adaptation.”

“Yeah,” Eli said. “He still does.”

Silence walked between them for three steps and then moved on.

“Your accommodation,” Stent said, and led.

They crossed another short corridor and stopped at a door marked in a glyph Eli couldn’t read. Stent palmed it. Inside was a cabin that made the Lambda look like a closet—and still, by most military standards, it was a box with furniture.

Bunk. Desk. Locker. A small door to the right with frosting on the pane that could only mean water on the other side. Eli’s heart tugged like it had seen a friend.

“Shower,” Stent said, because there was no point in pretending he hadn’t seen the way Eli’s eyes flicked. “Use ration guidelines. Notices are posted.”

“Real water,” Eli said softly, in Basic, because Sy Bisti suddenly felt like too many consonants for the size of his throat.

Stent said nothing to that. The silence wasn’t unkind. It wasn’t anything. It was the space where a different man might have said you’ve earned it. The Chiss didn’t say things they didn’t mean.

“You will be contacted,” Stent said. “One hour.”

“Commander,” Eli said, nodding.

Stent’s gaze swept the room not to approve but to confirm, then he stepped back into the corridor. “Do not be late,” he said, and the door took him away.

Eli stood alone.

He set the first pack on the bunk. The mattress pushed back without apology. He pressed his palm to it and laughed quietly to himself because somehow that made it better. You could curse a thing that didn’t try to be anything it wasn’t.

He walked to the small door and palmed it. Steam wasn’t waiting for him—just chrome and the promise of pressure. A printed notice on the wall laid out time limits and flow rates in clean, tidy glyphs. He couldn’t read them, but he knew the look of rules from any civilization.

He put his palm to the tile anyway, just to feel how cold it was.

“One hour,” he told the shower like it was a person. “We’re going to get to know each other later.”

He turned back to the bunk, unzipped the bag, and began making a shape of himself inside a room that didn’t know him yet.

Two uniforms in the locker, corners aligned. The sweater on the top shelf where it could look harmless. The tin of caf in the desk, back right corner—he’d measure the moment before he opened it; he’d know when.

He took the flimsi sketch out and held it up to the light. For one second the blue wash over the paper made the lines look almost like a different species. He slid it into the desk under the pad like a secret that didn’t know it was one.

He checked the time. Forty minutes. Time had acquired a taste here; it felt clean in his mouth and very hard to chew.

He sat on the bunk and let the too-firm mattress tell his bones that comfort wasn’t on the approved list. Across from him, the locker waited. Beside him, the shower did the same. On the other side of the door was a ship that ran like a metronome.

“Okay,” he said to the room. “Let’s learn your grammar.”

The wall did not reply. The air didn’t change. He leaned back on his hands and stared at the ceiling where there were no scuffs yet.

He thought of Stent waiting outside the Lambda, earlier, still as law. He thought of Thrawn, long ago, walking into an academy where he was a problem to be solved and deciding he would be the solution.

Eli smiled, small and private. “Integration,” he said, rolling the word in Sy Bisti, then in Basic, then in silence. “Let’s see what that means.”

The chime that wasn’t a chime—more a polite acknowledgement of time’s passage—sounded fifteen minutes later. He stood, straightened, and palmed the door without waiting to be told he could.

The chime that meant time’s up was soft, polite, and absolutely final.
Eli glanced at the clock strip above the door—right on the mark. The Ascendancy, it seemed, measured punctuality to the molecule.

He ran a hand over his hair, straightened his collar, and stepped out.

When the door opened, no one was there yet. The corridor lay like a sentence waiting for its verb. Eli shouldered the weight of his new nouns and stepped into it, the ship’s cold breath closing around him like the first line of a book.

The corridor curved into a circular space barely larger than a cargo bay lounge. Four identical doors ringed the room, each marked with the same clean glyphs that might as well have been warnings for all he could read of them. The fifth wall—if you could call it that—was a gentle slope of viewglass looking out towards the blackness of space.

A central table sat under the light, all gleaming metal and geometry. No chairs. Just benches, angular and exact. What looked like a dispenser unit hummed quietly against one wall, already aware of its schedule.

Eli’s first thought was that the place looked like a waiting room built by mathematicians. His second was that someone was about to come through one of those doors and tell him where to stand.

He didn’t have to wait long.

The first door hissed open behind him. Reflex made him straighten, the same instinct that had served him in every inspection since he was nineteen. He turned as Irizi’ser’ali stepped out.

She wore the black uniform like a natural element—no vanity, no effort. Just presence. The bronze hourglass patch on her shoulder caught the light and threw it back in two dull sparks. Her hair was pulled tight, her expression composed enough to make the air feel structured.

Eli caught himself staring and broke it by nodding. “Irizi’ser’ali.”

She inclined her head slightly. “Lieutenant Ivant.”
Her voice in Sy Bisti was calm and clipped, vowels sharpened by the kind of accent that turned precision into art.

He gestured vaguely at the room. “Is this… ours?”

“It is the designated common space for this section.” Her tone made ours sound dangerously informal. “You will use it for instruction, meals, and review.”

“Do all guest quarters come with company?”

She considered that for half a beat longer than comfort. “No. Your assignment is… particular.”

The pause was microscopic, but he caught it. There was no flattery in particular. It was a polite way of saying experimental.

Zisera moved to the wall console and keyed a sequence. The holo-surface lit with neat columns of Cheunh script that rearranged themselves into Sy Bisti characters a second later.

“This is your schedule for the next two cycles aboard the Starboard.” She gestured, not grandly but with the crisp efficiency of someone accustomed to being obeyed. “Wake at fourth hour. Physical conditioning at four fifteen. Hygiene compliance at five—”

“Hygiene compliance?” Eli asked before he could stop himself.

She looked at him as if he’d just asked whether gravity was optional. “Facial-hair management. The Ascendancy considers visible hair unhygienic.”

Eli rubbed at his jaw self-consciously. “Guess I’ll keep the razor charged.”

Zisera didn’t smile, but the silence that followed was just perceptibly warmer.

“Breakfast at five thirty,” she continued. “Language instruction begins at six. You will receive initial evaluation then. Commander Kres’ten’tarthi will attend.”

She closed the file with a motion of her wrist. The console dimmed.

Eli leaned a hip against the table, trying to appear at ease and failing. “Efficient setup.”

Her eyes flicked down, then back up. “That is the intent.”

The door opposite hers hissed open, and Stent entered—precisely when she had finished speaking. Of course.

He acknowledged neither of them beyond a curt, “Officer. Lieutenant.” Then he moved to the dispenser and keyed a command. Three trays slid out in perfect synchronization.

Eli blinked. “Dinner already?”

“Meal period,” Stent corrected. “The term ‘dinner’ implies irregularity.”

“Right,” Eli said, “can’t have that.”

The trays were practical to the point of poetry: deep bowls of steaming broth, side dishes of mixed grains and something green, and a set of narrow protein strips arranged in strict order. Beside each portion sat a tiny cup of red sauce that glowed faintly under the light.

Zisera gestured for him to sit. There were no words of grace, no toasts—just the quiet precision of a crew at work.

Eli followed their lead. When they began eating, he did too.

The broth was hot, thicker than he expected, faintly sweet. The grains tasted like a cross between lentils and barley, soaked in something smoky. The protein strips were… fine. Slightly fibrous. Could be fish, could be something he didn’t want to identify too closely.

He tried the sauce.

It hit his tongue like a plasma torch.

He coughed once, sharply, then twice more for good measure. Stent and Zisera continued eating, perfectly still, as if this were simply part of the auditory background of the meal.

When he could breathe again, he said hoarsely, “That’s got personality.”

Zisera looked up. “It is the standard accompaniment.”

“Of course it is.” He reached for the glass of water, only to find none provided. “You don’t—ah—serve drinks?”

“Hydration occurs post-meal,” Stent said. “Simultaneous consumption is inefficient.”

“Right. Can’t dilute the experience.”

Zisera’s eyes flickered. If it had been anyone else, he’d call it amusement.

They finished eating in silence broken only by the occasional soft clink of cutlery. When they were done, Zisera stood and cleared the trays, stacking them with geometric precision before returning them to the dispenser slot. The device hummed once and swallowed them whole.

Stent remained seated, eyes on Eli. “You will adapt,” he said simply.

“Working on it,” Eli said, voice still rough.

Zisera rejoined them, standing at the edge of the table. “Your schedule begins at fourth hour. Rest is recommended.”

He pushed back from the bench. “Guess that’s my cue.”

“Correct,” Stent said.

Eli turned toward his door, then paused. “One question.”

Both officers looked at him, identical patience in their posture.

“The patch,” he said, nodding to Zisera’s sleeve. “The bronze one. What does it mean?”

Her fingers brushed it unconsciously, the smallest break in her composure. “Identification,” she said. “Affiliation.”

“Like a division insignia?”

“Similar,” she replied after a beat. “It denotes Family.”

“Family?” He blinked. “As in—blood relatives?”

“Not necessarily.” Her tone cooled slightly, as if he’d wandered into restricted airspace. “It is sufficient that you recognize it.”

“Understood,” he said, though he didn’t.

Stent rose. “End of orientation. Proceed to rest cycle.”

Eli nodded, retreating to his door. The room behind him hissed closed, cutting off the sound of perfect order.

He leaned back against the wall for a moment, eyes on the faint reflection of his face in the metal. The taste of the sauce still burned on his tongue.

Back at the academy again, he thought. Only this time the lesson plan included how to exist.

He laughed once, quietly, then pushed away from the wall. The day’s schedule hovered in his mind like a chart full of blanks waiting for translation.

He’d fill them. One way or another.

Eli stood in the middle of his new cabin with nothing left to do. His bags were unpacked, his uniform folded sharp enough to cut, his datapad charging on the desk. He’d even lined up his boots by height because that’s what the room demanded.

For the first time since leaving the Empire, he had privacy.
No observers.
No translators humming in the air.
Just him and a ship full of people who had probably forgotten he existed until morning.

He stretched, rolling his shoulders until the stiffness cracked, and glanced toward the small door that led to the bathroom. The idea of real water still sounded decadent. He’d almost convinced himself it was a lie — some cultural test, the way you told new cadets that the officers’ mess had chandeliers.

He crossed the small space, palmed the control, and the door slid open with a soft hiss.

The bathroom was as plain as the rest of the room — metal, light, purpose. The shower alcove stood behind a transparent partition with a vertical control strip on one side. A small panel beside it pulsed faintly, waiting for input.

He frowned at the symbols. None of them looked remotely like temperature settings. He touched the top rune. A jet of freezing water shot from the side wall, hit him in the shoulder, and retreated with a smug hiss.

“Right,” he muttered. “That’s cold.”

He tried the next control down. Warm, but not hot. A third: too hot, immediate steam curling around his arm. The panel chirped once, offended, and reset to cold again.

“Okay,” he said, “we’ll call that progress.”

It took five minutes and a cautious cycle of trial and error before he found a temperature that didn’t feel like punishment.
When the water settled into a steady stream — not quite warm, but not the arctic slap of Chiss preference — he stepped under and closed his eyes.

It felt like washing off gravity.
The pressure was perfect, the smell faintly metallic but clean.
He leaned into it until the fatigue of travel finally eased out of his shoulders.

When he shut it off, the air chilled immediately, as if the room disapproved of lingering warmth. He reached for the towel on the wall rack — standard issue, coarse and efficient. The kind of fabric that meant business.

He dressed in the dark-blue pajamas provided in the room’s storage drawer: simple, thin, the same crisp material as the uniform. They fit perfectly, of course, which made them somehow less comfortable.

A neatly folded pair of socks came with the set. He ignored them at first —again, who needed socks in bed? — but as the chill of the room crept up from the deck plates and settled around his ankles, he reconsidered. A minute later he was sitting on the edge of the bunk, pulling them on with quiet resignation. The fabric was fine and tightly woven, practical warmth engineered by people who probably never used the word cozy.

The bed waited against the far wall, a recessed alcove rather than a free-standing frame. At the foot of the sleeping pad sat a neatly rolled cylinder of bedding material. He unrolled it and discovered it was both blanket and sheet, the same functional grey as everything else on the ship.

He climbed in, expecting at least some give. The mattress did not negotiate. It met him halfway and stopped.
He stared at the ceiling, hands folded behind his head, and muttered, “I’ve slept on softer permacrete.”

The room light dimmed further, sliding into the pale-blue twilight that passed for night aboard Chiss vessels. The air system adjusted itself with a sigh. The temperature dropped a few degrees.

Eli pulled the blanket higher. It didn’t help much. The cold crept up from the walls like an idea determined to be understood.
He lay there for a few minutes, breathing the sterile air, trying to convince himself he’d get used to it.

Eventually he gave up, swung his legs over the side, and padded to the locker. The floor was cold through his bare feet. He rummaged inside, pulled out the thick civilian sweater he’d packed from the Lambda, and dragged it on over the pajamas.

Better.
Not warm, exactly, but less existentially frosty.

Back in bed, he burrowed under the single blanket, still chilled enough to see his breath faintly in the air. He frowned, got up again, and found his socks. The simple act of pulling them on felt like the first victory he’d had all day.

When he finally lay down again, the cold had settled into something almost tolerable. The sweater scratched at his neck. The hum of the air vents blended into a low, even rhythm that might have been soothing if it hadn’t sounded so deliberate.

He thought briefly of Thrawn — not the Grand Admiral but the man who had once folded himself into Imperial quarters and called it comfort. Maybe he had done this too: learned how to sleep in a world that never quite matched his temperature.

The thought made him smile.

The ceiling lights faded one last degree, and the ship’s heartbeat slowed to the night cycle.
Eli pulled the blanket up to his chin, socks tucked firmly under the edge, and whispered to the room, “You win. Cold it is.”

The air didn’t answer, but it approved, humming softly as he drifted into the kind of uneasy sleep that only new worlds could offer.

The lights brightened before the ship spoke.
They didn’t flick on—they unfolded, blooming from blue to white in a deliberate gradient that reached the human retina exactly at 04:00, if the chronometer on the wall was telling the truth.

Eli had been dozing in that half-state between rest and resignation when it happened. The room went from arctic twilight to interrogation glow in the span of a sigh.

He groaned and covered his eyes with the blanket. It didn’t help. The light filtered through the fabric like guilt.

Then came the chime. Not a sound so much as an announcement: a pure, tonal note, perfectly pitched to bypass language and reach compliance directly.

He sat up. “Morning, I guess.”

The air was cold enough to make his breath visible again. He swung his legs over the side of the bunk and touched bare floor. Mistake. The chill went straight through his socks and climbed up his bones.

He muttered, “All right, Chiss, I get it—you like your discipline refrigerated.”

The door control flashed once—an external signal. He barely had time to straighten the blanket before it hissed open and Zisera stepped in.

She was immaculate, of course—hair bound back, black uniform smooth, the bronze hourglass patch on her sleeve catching the cold light. She carried a questis like a weapon.

“Lieutenant,” she said, her tone halfway between greeting and audit. “Wake cycle complete. Physical regimen begins in five minutes.”

Eli blinked. “You—uh—don’t knock?”

“Instructors are authorized entry during acclimation,” she said simply, consulting the datapad. “You will require proper footwear. And a towel.”

He found both where the storage unit had them folded with merciless precision. “Right. I’ll be ready in a minute.”

She watched him slip on his shoes, her expression perfectly neutral, then gestured toward the corridor. “Follow.”

The air outside was colder still. They moved through narrow corridors until the deck opened into a small compartment lined with matte panels. Floor grids indicated training lanes. The entire space hummed faintly with regulated gravity—one-tenth stronger than standard.

Eli glanced around. “You have a gym.”

“A conditioning chamber,” she corrected. “Exercise regulates focus.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” he said, rubbing his arms.

Zisera set the questis aside and began demonstrating movements. Chiss calisthenics weren’t designed for speed or muscle—they looked like a cross between combat drills and meditation. Every motion had an economy that suggested it was being observed by the universe itself.

Zisera activated the wall console, and a holo display flickered to life — silhouettes of figures in motion, the outline of what looked to him like slow, balanced stretches.

“Fleet-standard calisthenics,” she said. “Twenty positions, adapted for optimal gravity balance. You will observe and mirror.”

Eli watched the hologram cycle through the first form — a shift of weight, a long breath, the same flowing geometry he had watched Thrawn perform countless times in the quiet of their shared assignments. He didn’t wait for the second demonstration.

He moved.

Arms angled forward, spine straight, weight over the left leg. He sank into the position naturally, muscle memory catching the rhythm before his mind needed to. The next form followed seamlessly — a rotation of the torso, a shift of stance, breath control timed to precision.

He completed the sequence before the hologram had finished looping.

Zisera paused mid-observation. The display halted in mid-frame. “You are… familiar with the regimen?”

“Yes,” he said, straightening. “Admiral Thrawn practiced them daily. He taught me the forms years ago. Said they kept his perception trained.”

Her expression didn’t change, but something minute in her eyes sharpened — the kind of focus that, in a Chiss, was equivalent to surprise. “You studied under him in martial disciplines?”

“Not formally,” Eli said. “But when you share quarters with him for years, you start picking up things. I learned his training rhythm, and sometimes we sparred.”

Zisera tilted her head. “With weaponry?”

“Short sticks, long staff. He preferred the long reach style — more analysis than force.”

She deactivated the hologram. “Demonstrate the first defensive pattern.”

He hesitated only long enough to orient himself in the open space, then began the sequence: forward sweep, pivot, control step, block. The movements were clean, slower than Thrawn’s but unmistakably from the same school.

Zisera watched without interruption. Her stillness made the room feel even colder. When he finished, she spoke quietly. “Your coordination is disciplined. For a human, your balance is exceptional.”

“I had a patient teacher.”

That earned a small, almost imperceptible incline of her head — acknowledgment, and something else. “Noted. We will advance three levels in the training index. Perhaps four.”

Eli smiled faintly, not from pride but recognition. “That’s about where he left me.”

Zisera deactivated the console. “You will continue these forms daily at the same hour. Supplementary sparring will be scheduled once appropriate equipment is secured.”

He nodded, wiping his hands on the edge of his tunic. “Understood.”

She paused at the door, studying him for a moment longer. “The Admiral’s influence is evident,” she said finally. “His methods continue through you.”

Eli wasn’t sure if that was meant as praise or simple fact, but he inclined his head. “He’d be pleased to hear that.”

Back in his cabin, Eli stripped off the damp shirt and stumbled into the shower. The water took a moment to stabilize—first freezing, then scalding, before he found the elusive middle ground. He scrubbed until the chill left his fingers and then, remembering her phrasing, attacked his face with the razor like it owed him something.

When he finished, the mirror gave him back a red-eyed, freshly shaved man who looked halfway civilized and wholly exhausted.

He dressed in the standard dark undershirt and pants provided for him. No rank insignia, no color variation, just uniform anonymity. The material felt engineered to repel both wrinkles and individuality.

The chime sounded again—gentle but insistent. Breakfast time.

The common room was awake before he was.
Stent stood at the console, reviewing data that didn’t look like breakfast orders. Zisera waited by the dispenser, posture as still as a statue.

Eli entered, nodded. “Morning.”

They both inclined their heads in acknowledgment—synchronized, unnervingly so.

Zisera pressed the console. The dispenser produced three trays with a faint sigh. She set them on the table without comment.

The meal looked identical to the night before: a bowl of steaming broth, a dish of grains with vegetables, protein strips, and that sinister red sauce.

Eli sat, trying not to wince as the cold bench met his back.

Stent began eating with the mechanical elegance of a metronome. Zisera followed suit. Eli picked up his spoon and copied them.

The broth was thick and sweet again, almost cloying this early. His stomach, confused by Chiss circadian cycles, didn’t know whether to thank him or stage a protest.

He eyed the sauce with suspicion. “I remember you,” he muttered under his breath.

Zisera’s head tilted slightly. “You addressed the condiment?”

“Habit,” he said quickly. “I talk to dangerous things.”

She blinked once, perhaps the Chiss version of a smile. “A useful instinct.”

He risked a drop of the sauce this time, barely touching the tip of his spoon to it. Still burned. Still sweet underneath the heat. Some kind of chemical miracle.

When the meal ended, Zisera cleared her tray with silent precision, then glanced at him. “You consumed sixty percent of your portion. Insufficient for optimal acclimation.”

He stared. “You measured?”

“The Ascendancy values observation.”

“Of course it does,” he said.

Stent finished his last mouthful and stood. “Next phase begins at six hundred: language orientation.”

Eli saluted with his spoon. “Can’t wait.”

Neither acknowledged the sarcasm.

When they left, the common room fell into a different kind of silence—not the cold kind, but the efficient kind that made him want to whisper apologies to the walls.

He sat back for a moment, letting the rhythm of their world settle into his bones. Wake at four. Move at precision. Eat by numbers.

And yet, somewhere inside the chill and the rules, a faint warmth had started to stir. The kind that came from knowing what came next, even if he didn’t like it.

He stood, stretched his sore legs, and muttered, “One day down.”

The ship hummed in reply, impersonal but steady. It was as close to encouragement as he was likely to get.