The Morreth Garrison Command Post was a monument to functional stagnation.
Commander Halsen sat behind a desk bolted to the floor. The dead man who sank those bolts had died seventy years before Halsen was even born. On the blotter's left side sat the daily reports. They were stacked in a precise, staggered formation. Perfectly aligned. On the far wall hung a tunnel map, its markers faded to uniform gray. Halsen drew in a breath. The sharp chill of deep granite filled his lungs, undercut by the dry, metallic dust of crumbling requisition forms.
"Daily seismic, Commander," Corporal Denn said.
Denn stood at exact attention. He held the clipboard at precisely arm's length. He always held it at arm's length. In the seven years Denn had manned the monitoring board, his uniform had never shown a wrinkle, and his hands had never trembled.
Halsen took the clipboard. He rubbed the bridge of his nose—a gesture that had started as a response to fatigue and calcified into a reflex.
