"Alright," Kaiden said, when it finally let him talk. "Rook, can we answer all of it tonight? Annex, contract, case law, the whole stack certified. I want our answer on record before his report is."
"With pleasure."
Vespera came forward off the doorway, took the tablet out of Rook's hands, and worked down the citation stack once, top to bottom. She gave it back squared into Rook's palm and went inside, and the doorway got out of her way.
"He didn't close the file, though," Doug said, to his clipboard, mostly to himself. "There's no determination, so there's nothing for us to appeal. Hobbes read his out loud before he left the lot."
...
The ops floor at seven that evening still smelled like the day, coffee gone stale on three desks and somebody's cold dinner abandoned on a fourth.
Kaiden stood at the map table without doing anything useful, and the floor worked quietly around him and left him to it.
He had been reasonable since eight that morning.
