Page 56 of Hunted By the Wraiths
“Deyric will be insufferable if we’re late.”
“He’s insufferable anyway.”
“True.” She traced patterns on my chest, absent and content. “But he did wait a week to analyze those data caches. Least we can do is show up.”
“The least we can do is nothing. We’re very good at nothing.”
“We’re terrible at nothing. You lasted thirty seconds of retirement before volunteering for a suicide mission.”
“That was different.”
“How?”
“You were in danger.”
She went quiet at that. Something shifted. Not bad, just... thoughtful.
“We’re really bad at safe,” she said finally.
“The worst.”
“But we could learn.”
“Could we?”
She sat up, looked down at me. “Let’s find out.”
The briefing room was crowded. Serak at the head of the table, stoic as always. Jessa beside him, managing to look maternal even in tactical gear. Ressh and Alix, joined at the hip as usual. Solren, who gave me a medical scan with his eyes the moment I walked in. Zevik, spinning in his chair because sitting still was against his religion. And Deyric, surrounded by multiple screens and looking like he’d discovered the meaning of life.
“Finally,” Deyric said when we entered. “Do you know how hard it’s been to sit on this for a week?”
“Devastating, I’m sure,” Maris said, taking a seat. I stood behind her, hand on her shoulder. Presenting as a unit.
“Your sarcasm is noted and ignored.” Deyric pulled up the first display. “These three data caches are, as Maris suggested, the Rosetta Stone. Individually, they’re just shipping manifests, financial records, and sensor logs. Together...”
He overlaid the data sets. Lines of connection appeared, forming a web of information.
“Together, they tell a story,” he continued. “The manifest shows what was shipped. The financials show who paid for it. And the sensor logs—the beautiful, damning sensor logs—show that the ‘cargo’ had life signs.”
The room went quiet.
“How many?” Serak asked.
“Based on the records Maris kept? Approximately three thousand sentient beings over a two-year period. Multiple species. All listed as ‘biological samples’ or ‘research materials.’”
I squeezed Maris’s shoulder. Not your fault, that squeeze said. She’d been lied to, used. We all had.
“This is it,” Ressh said, his voice tight as he recognized the cargo codes from his own mission. “This is the link. The Epsilon data told uswhatthey were doing. This tells us thescale.”
“It’s more than a link,” Deyric said, his excitement barely contained. “It’s the key. The Epsilon data gave us the ‘Synthesis Project,’ but these manifests show it’s been going on for years, across dozens of routes.” He overlaid the data, and the web of connections lit up. “And more importantly... it gives us thewhere.”
He pulled up the star chart. The Epsilon data had only given them a wide, unconfirmed search sector. Now, Maris’s shipping logs converged on a single, bright, undeniable point.
“Nexus Station,” Jessa breathed, seeing the coordinates lock in. “The logs are all heading to the same destination. It’s not a ghost story anymore. We have it.”
I watched the data stream, a cold certainty settling in me. This was what they had been hunting since before Alix and Ressh had even found that first data core. And Maris had been the one, unwittingly, who held the map.
“Exactly,” Deyric said. “The ‘cargo’ wasn’t just going to small labs. Those were feeder stations. According to these logs, the final destination for all of them was Nexus. Whatever they’re doing with kidnapped sentients, it’s happeningthere.”
