Jeryd was only half-listening to Rayner, now. In his mind, a seed had been planted and was starting to sprout. It was great advice: pad out your fiction with just enough truth to make it believable. And stars know he needed all the help he could get, for he was, even by Rayner's admission, a poster boy Imperial. From someone like Rayner, such a term would be meant as a slight, but for Jeryd, being a perfect example of an Imperial man was all he strived to be. A model citizen, the favourite son, an heroic soldier. In his early teenage years, he fashioned himself after Baastian Cain, replicating the mannerisms, the tone of voice, even the hair style. As he grew, he became his own person - the hair style stayed - but he was still the quintessential Imperial Boy. Might as well have the gear emblem tattooed to his scalp. So it made perfect sense that, in his pursuit of a believable alias, he should lean into that rather than attempt to be something he simply was not. And that gave him some options to consider.

When he was kid, he had four close friends. First, there was Lex Rosco, a tough ginger-haired girl, who was raised with five brothers in a family very much like his own. Her father was an army general, and her mother, a notorious socialite who wrote sedate romance novels. Lex was argumentative, sceptical, and endlessly curious. She was the one who always found hidden places, and it wasn't a stretch to imagine her finding a place in some unsavoury underworld just to prove a stubborn point to her old man. But, it so happened that Jeryd knew that she was training to become a fighter pilot in the Imperial Navy. In fact, most of his friends were enlisted, which made their whereabouts a matter of public record.

This included Bashbie Quavering-Tosh, a fellow wegman, who was cursed with a bucket of untamed brown hair and a physique like a large sack of potatoes. Endlessly lazy, and utterly convinced of his own excellence. They shared a love of the game and had the same filthy sense of humour but that was where the similarities ended. Bash loved to grow plants, later graduating to plants he rolled into cigarillos. He was an only child to two low-ranking officers in the army, and followed in their footsteps.

Then there was Wyll, but he wasn't around anymore.

Which left Zep.

Zeppodor Bipplebix was once a sweet, sandy-haired boy with an unrivalled penchant for mischief. If something was off-limits, he'd find a way through, and if it was locked, he had to know what was inside. Contrarian to his core, the only way to guarantee he wouldn't do something, but was by ordering him to do it. A nightmare for his authoritarian father, no doubt, but he was quick to smile, and laugh, and was firmly loyal to his friends. But when Jeryd, Bashbie and Lex left for Manarai Military Prep, Zep changed. The drugs and the alcohol that were once a small act of rebellion against his father became a crutch, or so he'd heard. And after a string of minor misdemeanours, he ran away from home to become a dancer at the Starlight Empress casino. Six months later, he was jailed on two counts of larceny, one count of arson, and the attempted abduction of a preacher. The last he heard from Lex was that Zep served his time and had fallen entirely off the radar. It was perfect.

There was already the ghost of a smile on his face, as he recalled the eclectic cast of characters from his past, but when he realised what Rayner had said, the smile beamed broadly and bright.

"No-one would believe that. I'm way out of your league!" His mood lifted, he glanced out of the window again, and mused aloud while they descended between buildings, "You've got me well sussed out. The judgemental family, military pressure, the privileged kid who runs away... am I that obvious?"