Tavita Faleolo covers the far settlements — Meridian with its own charter and grievances, Ceres Reach and its ice-and-metal economy, and young New Kanem testing whether idealists can govern past their first decade. Descended from open-ocean navigators, he understands transfer windows the way his ancestors understood trade winds, and he writes the deep colonies as the great voyage of the age. He has ridden the slow transfers himself, months in transit, and returns to Earth's noise reluctantly. He believes a founding charter is a sacred and dangerous thing: a promise made to people not yet born. His romanticism is his gift and his liability, and his rival on the lunar beat needles him for it constantly. He files less often than anyone on the desk, because the mail from Ceres takes as long as it takes, and he refuses to pretend otherwise.
A single haul from the belt moved hull-alloy prices, and the Reach's officials say the secret was water, not metal.