Sakh'arran worked late. This was not unusual. The commander's late-night work was the work that the day's administrative responsibilities had deferred and that the night's silence permitted: the assessments that required the specific quality of uninterrupted attention that the day's meetings and dispatches and operational decisions continuously interrupted.
The current assessment had been in progress for eleven days. Not because the assessment was slow , Sakh'arran did not conduct assessments slowly , but because the assessment's subject required the accumulation of the intelligence that the Verakh network's dispatches provided on a schedule that the network's operational rhythm determined, and the dispatches' arrival rate was the rate that the network's coverage area and the courier intervals produced rather than the rate that the assessment's urgency demanded.
The assessment's subject was the next five years.
