On Irumclaw

In Ensign Flandry, Dominic Flandry is nineteen and on Starkad but about to return to Terra for training at the Intelligence academy. In A Circus Of Hells, he is twenty-one, has completed at least his first period at the academy and has begun a year of scouting duty on the Imperial border, thus gaining needed practice in planetary surveillance.

When the Merseian cruiser Brythioch visits the Terran Navy base on Irumclaw:

senior and junior officers receive their opposite numbers separately;

although this contradicts Merseian custom, the gatortails respect alien ceremonies and traditions;

chairs are removed from the mess halls in deference to the guests who sit on their tails;

those guests have removed pistols but not knuckleduster-handled war knives from their belts;

Flandry, the only Eriau speaker on Irumclaw, is needed as an interpreter in the junior mess hall which is not connected to the linguistic computer;

he meets Mei Tachwyr whom he had first met on Merseia;

the mess hall is a reminder both of Home and of the Irumclagian environment outside the base -

"An animation showed a park on Terra, trees nodding, in the background the skyward leap of a rich family's residential tower and airborne vehicles glittering like diamond dust; but it reminded [Flandry] too well of how far he was from those dear comforts. He preferred the darkness in the real window. It was open and a breeze gusted through, warm, laden with unearthly odors."
-A Circus Of Hells, CHAPTER ONE, p. 199.

Three senses: the view of Terra; the warm breeze; Irumclagian odors.

In our experience, an urban tower houses multiple apartments or offices, not a single family. The Empire is our society writ large: greater wealth and greater relative poverty.