They walked side by side and the station moved around them.
Not chaotically. The Vanguard station ran on military discipline and military discipline meant that even when something extraordinary was happening, the extraordinary thing got processed internally while the external kept its shape. Soldiers didn't stop walking. Technicians didn't drop tools. The station kept being a station.
But the eyes moved.
Every set of them. Following Noah and the General as they crossed the landing bay toward the main corridor entrance, the tracking instinctive, the kind of attention that happened before the brain decided to pay attention. A group of technicians working on a scout vessel's undercarriage kept their hands moving and their eyes up. Two soldiers coming the other way snapped salutes at the General and held them a beat longer than protocol required because the person beside the General was taking up space in their awareness that they hadn't allocated for him.
Noah felt it.
