The next week went by in a blur as the bridge crew and officers of the Icarus were run through what felt like a criminal interrogation. CENTCOM and CIS plainclothes operatives would ask questions, circle back and try to trip them up, and then present any inconsistencies with the triumph of having caught them in a lie. It was exhausting and enraging, and by the fifth day Celesta had had enough. She calmly asked if she, or any of her crew, were under arrest or under investigation for anything illegal, and when the CIS representative grudgingly answered that they weren’t, she marched out.

Once her officers learned she was refusing to play their games, they also opted out of any further hostile interrogations while ordering their subordinates to not cooperate. Celesta knew this was likely to have further ramifications as the people questioning them would surely complain to her superiors, but after all they’d been through she was more than a little offended at the treatment. Even at the height of the Phage war she couldn’t remember CENTCOM being so adversarial with Fleet personnel.

“I understand you’re no longer cooperating with the debriefing staff,” a voice said from the open door to her temporary office a full day after she’d called off any further sessions. Since the Icarus was now fully under control of the repair crews she’d been assigned a temporary block of generic offices so she could handle the administrative duties that didn’t stop just because a ship was in port.

“Are we calling it a debrief, or an inquiry, sir?” Celesta asked, rising to her feet to greet Admiral Marcum.

“It was necessary, but I do apologize.” Marcum walked in, closing the door behind him. “The CIS people in particular seem to forget we’re all on the same side.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, still standing.

“Sit down, Captain,” Marcum said, taking a seat in front of the desk. “I’d like to commend you for your performance in the Tango system. Between you and Admiral Wilton, we managed to save the bulk of the taskforce from that trap the Darshik had set.”

“So what’s the next step, sir?” she asked.

“We bring you fully up to speed on everything we’ve learned so far on the Darshik and the Ushin while the Icarus is repaired,” Marcum said. “And there’s a lot. I wouldn’t be overstating things if I said we may have bumbled into a horrifically bad situation here. We’re still unravelling the relationship between the two, but it looks like the Ushin and Darshik have a link to each other that predates even the Phage. One of our outside intelligence projects uncovered that their ships, while different in appearance, are unmistakably from the same source of engineering and materials. The fact the Ushin led us into a Darshik ambush further confirms that.”

“Offshoots of the same species?” she asked.