A little while after Astercourt settled into the flow of work at Larkspur Haven, Elowen arrived as well.

She came in quietly as she took in everyone in the room and didn’t show much expression as she walked up to Aurelian.

There was always something strangely calming about her presence, not because of what kind of shipgirl she was, but because she carried herself in a way that made the area around her peaceful.

Aurelian looked up from the report spread in front of him and set one slate aside.

"It has been a while," he said.

Elowen inclined her head slightly, and there was a small warmth in her expression.

"It has," she said. "Though I suspect it has felt shorter for you than for anyone else."

"That depends on the day."

Lysara, who had been standing by one side of the room, going through a separate stack of archive extracts, glanced over with mild interest before returning to her own work.

Astercourt remained where she was, continuing to sort intake schedules and production summaries even as she listened to the conversation.

Aurelian looked at Elowen more closely.

"How have things been on the surface?"

"Well enough," she replied. "The Whiteheart’s influence has stabilized in the treated regions, and the cultivation work you wanted has begun to show results. The altered recovery zones are taking root properly. The first viable growth lines are holding, though they are still early."

That pulled his attention a little more fully.

"You already have results."

"Yes," Elowen said. "Not complete ones, but enough to conclude that the process is working. The first adapted strain has taken hold in the test sections. It is not yet what I would call ideal, and certainly not the final form I want, but it is alive, stable, and responding well to the environment."

Aurelian gave a short nod.

He had not forgotten the matter, but with everything else pressing in from all sides, it had shifted farther down his list than it should have.

Even so, hearing that something real had already begun to grow from it was useful. It meant that what Elowen wanted to do would work and could be used later when they have similar or somewhat similar situations.

"You should take a look when you have time," Elowen said, and there was the faintest hint of a smile in her voice now. "I think you will find it worth seeing."

"I will," Aurelian said. "Once the current mess becomes slightly less immediate."

Lysara looked over at that. "So not today."

"No."

That seemed to amuse her. 𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦

Aurelian let it pass and shifted his attention to Astercourt.

"And the administrative side?"

Astercourt had already anticipated the question. She raised one of the prepared slates and began without hesitation.

"Better than before, though not clean yet," she said. "Intake routes for the bastion transfers are being organized in stages. Labor assignment frameworks are mostly ready. The first wave can be absorbed without disruption if nothing changes in the next forty-eight hours. Reconstruction reporting on the Haven side is also improving now that the local chains understand they are no longer sending everything directly to you."

"That should have been fixed earlier," Aurelian said.

"Yes," Astercourt replied calmly. "But it is being fixed now."

He accepted that.

"How is the surface?" he asked.

This time Astercourt glanced briefly toward Elowen before answering, as if acknowledging where one domain ended and the other began.

"Stable," she said. "Caelan’s side has continued consolidating local authority in the stronger surviving regions. The first broader civic reorganization has already been pushed through in the cities that remained functional enough to support it, and reconstruction teams have begun working with something closer to an actual chain of command rather than emergency improvisation. There are still shortages, there are still damaged zones, and a great deal of the planet is far from recovered, but it no longer feels like a world waiting to collapse."

"That matches what I’ve seen," Elowen said quietly.

Aurelian leaned back a fraction in his chair.

"And the Crownspire site?"

"Progressing on schedule," Astercourt said. "No major delays. The current issue is not the construction itself. It is everything around it. The workers are moving faster than some of the attached supply requests, and if the production balance is not watched closely, smaller support sectors will begin draining resources from each other."

He gave a faint nod.

That was exactly the kind of problem he wanted caught early. A large project failure is easy to notice, but when problems are small yet still dangerous, they can cause much more serious problems than anyone would want.

"And the local defense fleet?" he asked next.

It was a more important question than many people would have assumed.

Larkspur Haven could not depend on shipgirls for every layer of its defense forever. That would be wasteful, and worse than wasteful, it would be strategically stupid.

His fleet was powerful because it was concentrated, high-grade, and able to strike where needed.

Using it as a substitute for every routine defense task would turn it into a glorified garrison force. The planet needed its own regular orbital structure, even if it started small and crude.

Astercourt shifted to the next report.

"The first training cycles are already underway," she said. "Some of the captured ships are being adapted for local use, and Caelan’s officers have started drills with the surviving personnel. There are problems, but none of them are surprising. Habitat limitations, crew fatigue, lack of proper station support, and the usual transition problems that come when people move too quickly from survival mode into formal structure."

"They started that early?" Aurelian asked.

He was not unhappy about it, only mildly surprised.

"I had expected them to wait until more of the orbital support was in place."

"They asked to begin," Astercourt said. "From their perspective, the sooner they start learning, the less helpless they remain if another attack comes before Haven is fully rebuilt."

Aurelian was quiet for a moment, then nodded.

"That is reasonable."

It was, in fact, better than reasonable. The people here had every excuse to become passive after what had happened to them, and yet many of them were doing the opposite.