On the day of the Capitol Summit, he figured out the moment Tom and Elliot joined him in the private car that he wasn’t the one who’d be fighting Medusa. “Oh. Great.” His delicate face twisted with disgust. “I guess this means I’m the token proxy here.” “Tom is here if you can’t take Medusa, Nigel,” Elliot said. “He’s very good for a plebe.” “He’s still a plebe,” Nigel railed. “He’s in first-year tactics. He is going to hook into an actual ship in space and face off against another actual ship in space—and he’s going to do it for the first time at Capitol Summit? How does this make sense to you, Elliot?” When Nigel put it that way, it suddenly didn’t make much sense to Tom, either. He felt a strange, dropping sensation. Marsh and Elliot had told him that, yes, he’d be flying actual ships in space. But they’d said it wasn’t a real battle, it was more like a game. Tom had been sure he could win a game. It only hit him now that this game was real.
