Location:Seven Peaks — Diplomatic Office, Command Center
Date/Time:TC1854.11.01
Colonel Harwick's response arrived through the personal courier network on the third day of Frost Season, which was either good timing or terrible timing, depending on how much you wanted the answer.
Kael read it in his office. Tianlei was on the floor behind him, conducting an architectural survey of a wooden block tower with the rigorous methodology of a 10-month-old engineer — stack three blocks, evaluate structural integrity by hitting the top block, observe gravitational consequences, begin again. The percussion of blocks against the floor provided a rhythmic backdrop that Kael had learned to process as ambient rather than distracting, the way he'd once processed the ambient noise of the Imperial Court.
