At least he tried. For that, Darling owed him and he wouldn’t forget it.

Syn slapped at his keyboard. “They’re determined that no one is going to find any Caronese prisoner. It looks like they’ve scrubbed that word from their vocabulary. I’ve never seen anything like this.”

And Syn had been professionally hacking files since he was a small child. If Syn couldn’t find an e-trace, no one could.

What are they doing to her? That thought was never far from his mind. If he hadn’t been insane before all of this, fear for her life was quickly stealing what little sanity he had left.

“She’s on Brinear.”

He started at Maris’s deep voice as his old friend stepped through the door of his office. “What?”

Maris hesitated before he spoke again. “My source came through. It took him a few thousand creds, but he finally got the information, and he verified it. She’s definitely there, under extremely heavy security.”

Gods bless Safir. If anyone ever learned that he’d helped them, he would be torn into pieces. “I’ll make sure he’s reimbursed.”

“He doesn’t want the money. He only wants to do the right thing.”

“Then he needs to surrender his commission,” Nykyrian said bitterly. “Trust me. It’s a dangerous game he’s playing. The bad thing about the League, every assassin is out for themselves and they’re real quick to throw you to the wolves if they think it’ll advance their rank even a single decimal of a point.”

Maris nodded. “I know. I was raised with the head asshole himself.”

Nykyrian clapped him on the back. “And for that I’m infinitely sorry.”

“Yeah, most days, me, too.”

Syn closed his laptop. “All right, then, folks. We have a location for attack. Give me an hour and I’ll have the facility mapped, then we can plan our next move.”

Darling nodded. “I’ll try to rally my troops.”

“And I’ll get the Sentella scrambling,” Nykyrian said.

Ryn finally stirred from the sofa he’d been lying on for so long that Darling had assumed he’d gone to sleep. “I’ll go motivate the Tavali.”

Grateful for that offer, Darling knew it took a little more than just the promise of a good deed to motivate the pirate brigade. “Tell them any who fly with us will get a full pardon from the Caronese Empire for any past crime, except murder, pedophilia, or rape. And I’ll give them a free pass to fly through our territories for the rest of their lives, so long as they don’t prey on our people or ships.”

Ryn gave him a cocky grin. “You are by far the better politician. That’ll motivate their sorry asses in a way I could only dream. Even without the Sentella and Caronese Armada, you’re about to have one hell of an army, ready to lay down their lives for you.”

“Let’s hope they don’t have to.” Darling gave them a short nod before he made a sharp military about-face and headed for the door.