She Didn't Say Anything. That Was Worse.

Sergeant Derek Hayes was the kind of man who had built his authority on the expectation that nobody would check it. He was broad-shouldered and hard-faced in the way that comes from years of being right about things and being right about them publicly, and he led five other sergeants across the mess hall floor with the unhurried certainty of someone who had never walked into a room and found someone he couldn't move.

"Move," he said.

Avery raised her eyes.

Six soldiers. Hayes at the front. The unit patch on his arm was visible but not relevant to her current situation. She looked at the tables around them — three empty tables within fifteen feet, several partially occupied tables with adequate space. His claim that this table was his had no logistical basis and both of them understood that the logistical basis was not the point.

"There are plenty of other seats," she said.

Hayes leaned slightly forward. "You don't tell me where to sit. You're new here. You don't sit with us."

Around them, the mess hall had begun to perform the specific quieting that crowds perform when they have collectively decided to watch something without committing to participating in it. Forks paused. Eyes drifted. The background noise reorganized itself so that this corner of the room had become the acoustically dominant location.

"I'm only trying to eat," Avery said.

Hayes smiled with the particular expression of a man who had already decided how this ended.

He grabbed her tray and flipped it.

The sound was considerable. Mashed potatoes struck her uniform and the metal table and the floor around her chair. Gravy followed. The tray itself hit the linoleum with a crash that was briefly the loudest thing in the mess hall. Laughter arrived from the men behind Hayes and rippled outward through the audience that had been waiting for something to happen.

Avery did not move.

Her stillness lasted long enough to make the nearest soldiers uncomfortable. Not because it looked frightened — because it didn't look frightened. It had the quality of something that was not affected by what had just happened in the way that affected things are affected. Several watching soldiers who had been laughing stopped laughing without entirely understanding why they had stopped.