WHEN CARIAD HAD ASKED Cherry to come back for another interview, she refused and then didn’t answer any further comms. Cariad was forced to take a flitter and the two compliance enforcement officers appointed by Osias to bring in the headstrong Gen. Aubriot had insisted on coming along too.
The enforcement officer who flew the vehicle was a woman called Mariko. The other officer was a man called Arden. Cariad didn’t know the criteria Osias had set out that qualified the two of them for their new jobs. When the Manual had been written, it had been assumed that conflicts would be peaceably settled through discussion and consensus. No one had thought that the colony would require policing, at least not until the colonization was one or two generations down the line.
Cariad was sitting next
