"Huh," Marcum grunted. "I suppose that would be an issue. Oh well, it was just a thought."

"Not a bad one," Jackson said. "God knows I wouldn't mind being aboard a more familiar ship. Have the navigational data for Arelius, and we'll get this show on the road. Once we're in warp, I'll get a hold of you over Bluebird and relay an odd message we just received from the base."

"Odd?"

"Odd enough I'm forwarding it to CIS so they can have someone come out to take a look."

"Can't wait. Is the other thing you picked up on Exeter safe?"

"Safe and stored in a secure hold right now. Thankfully, it's not as chatty as the Cube had been so it's not trying to make friends with the people guarding it."

Marcum pressed his lips together and blew out forcefully through his nose.

"I almost wish it had been lost in the fighting," he said finally.

"I understand the misgivings surrounding it," Jackson said. "I'd be lying if I said I didn't share them, but there are enough safeguards in place we shouldn't take the option off the table just because it reminds us of something scary."

"Scary and unethical," Marcum snapped. "Whatever. I'm not getting into this right now. I'll have the data sent over immediately. Nemesis out."

The screen went dark and was replaced with the stylized wolf head emblem the taskforce had adopted. Since the Wolfpack wasn't a part of the traditional command structure, they didn't fly under a numbered fleet flag.

25

"We need to talk to either Zhang again or this Agata Elin. Who is she, anyway?"

"Agata Elin is no more real than Aston Lynch," Pike said, leaning back and rubbing his bloodshot eyes. "I don't actually know her real name, but she's a major power player in ESA politics. She moves behind the scenes and brokers deals to make or break people, using the deep connections she developed in the intelligence community—hers and ours—to make sure people were compliant or ghosted after she blackmailed them."

"So, it's not likely she'll crack," Jillian Wolfe said, tossing the tile back onto the console of the Broadhead.

"After reading the report, I don't even think her getting caught was an accident," Pike said. "She's too good for that. Either she's getting ready to flip and cut a deal that benefits her, or she's working an angle I don't yet understand."

"So, we talk to Zhang," Jillian said.

Zhang was an asylum seeker Pike had pulled off the ESA capital after the Odmena Massacre. The man was a bureaucratic weasel and had once been in charge of the Asianic Union's illegal colonization program many blamed for the Phage finding them in the first place.

The AU had pushed too far beyond their borders and ran slam into a Phage hive. They'd retreated when they realized they'd flown into a system with actual aliens in it, something no human had ever seen before, but the damage was done. The Phage sent a scout to backtrack and sniff out this new primitive species that had come bumbling in. It found the planet Xian first, a populated AU world that it laid waste to, which was where Jackson Wolfe had stumbled across its path of destruction.