Lunch Break
Anlingdin Piloting Academy

In which everyone is talking about Theo Waitley.

Theo is the celebrity of the moment; there were news crews watching the air chase, and they caught her tricky landing too. She’s uncomfortable with all the attention, which, as Asu says, is better than if she were to start expecting it as her due.

We learn a thing or two more about Hap Harney, including that it was something of an understatement to say that Chelly knew him, and also that he’s been described as “public menace number one”. We still haven’t heard, though, what it was he actually did.

It’s maybe worth noting that this chapter has both a mention of Chelly having an ex-boyfriend and the fact that of the questions being fired at Theo by her temporary crowd of admirers, the sexually suggestive one comes from another girl. We’ve had enough such things happen in past books to get the idea that they’re not uncommon in the Liaden universe, but this is the first time we’ve seen them happen around Theo, so her reaction tells us something about her and perhaps by extension about Delgado. In the event, she doesn’t seem to find anything unusual about either thing, which I wouldn’t necessarily have expected given the way all the talk around First Pair in Fledgling seemed to take a heterosexual context for granted.