The independent company’s commander stopped Eli at the stockyard gate.
Behind her, hunters were unloading supplies for districts whose names appeared on their own dispatch sheets. A quartermaster stood on a cart bed checking each piece before it went inside. The alloy Juno needed lay in bundles protected from the weather, close enough to see and far enough beyond the gate to make ownership plain.
The commander looked at the specification, then at him.
“How many of my hunters have you counted as an acceptable cost?”
Eli had rehearsed a request for materials. He had brought the tunnel’s failed test, the repaired support’s limited result, and the release trial’s uncertainties. None had prepared a useful opening answer to that question.
“I haven’t made that count.”
“Then perhaps you’re about to.”
She did not raise her voice. The hunters nearest the gate could hear anyway. One kept working. Another set down his crate and waited.
