Satou looked at the map.
'Personal history,' he thought. 'Everyone in this engagement has it. Caldris has his. Cael has his. Sister Mira Vale apparently has hers. And the people defending this settlement have the five hundred fifty-nine markers in the field outside.'
That was the shape of it.
Not a clean tactical problem. A human problem dressed in tactical terms.
"Add it to the framework," he said to Freda. "The ECD operatives' personal histories as a variable in their decision-making."
"Already in the notes," she said.
He looked at the map for another moment.
Then he went to the morning's other work.
====
Day three of the new observer positions.
The settlement ran its construction schedule exactly as planned. The eastern fortification additions went up at the pace Kelvin had projected — not fast, not slow, the specific rate of people doing solid work without urgency. The residential quarter's framing continued. The supply storage expansion completed its second wall.
