"Who do we tell first?" Pike asked. "I think the most secure way will be to get your husband on a channel and brief him. The Bluebird system he has connects directly to this ship and bypasses the com network."

"We'll need to be careful. Just knowing what they've been doing isn't especially helpful right now. If the wrong people get word we're on to them, we're as good as dead."

"Agreed. We'll talk to Wolfe first, then reach out to Celesta's ship and talk to Pitt."

"Not Director Perez?"

"I'm not one hundred percent sure he's not compromised." Pike raised his hand to stave off Jillian's protest. "I'm not questioning his loyalty, just his judgement in who he keeps around him. Some of these messages seem to indicate someone in Perez's office is at least feeding intel to someone involved with this cabal."

"I saw that, too," Jillian admitted. "So, the Saber, and then Celesta's Prowler?"

"Or maybe…" Pike trailed off as he entered instructions on the console. "It looks like we can use this ship as a network node. Since Celesta's ship has the same high-bandwidth Bluebird Wolfe has, we can open up channels to each and tie them together here. Then we'll all be able to talk to each other at the same time."

"Clever," Jillian said, looking up in the right-hand corner of the main display. They had ship's time clocks for the Saber, Nemesis, and Celesta's Prowler all displayed, and it looked like it was the middle of night watch on both ships they needed to talk to.

"This is important enough to try and wake them, I think," Pike said, following her gaze. "Your husband will probably still be up, anyway. The man rarely sleeps."

"No more than three or four hours at a time," Jillian agreed. "Should make retirement fun once he's around all the time and roaming the house at all hours."

* * *

"What the hell is this?" Jackson asked, bleary-eyed. He'd only climbed into his rack forty minutes ago when the Bluebird alert woke him up. When he'd accepted the channel request, he stared at a split-screen view from two other ships. One was the Broadhead with Pike and Jillian, the other was Celesta Wright's Prowler, with her and Pitt sitting close enough to be within the camera's field of view.

"Good morning, Sunshine," Pitt said irritably. "Apparently, your wife and this little CIS weasel have critical path intel for us that couldn't wait."

"You notice that admirals are like hibernating bears? If you wake them up early, they're grumpy and lash out at people for no reason at all," Pike said, speaking to Jillian.

"I'm in no mood, Pike," Pitt warned.

"Sorry," Pike said, sounding genuinely contrite. "We were able to analyze the contents of Lieutenant Trapp's tile, and that let us decode the messages the Alliance has been sending through our own Bluebird network."

"Start a little further back, please," Pitt said. Pike sighed and rolled his eyes so Jillian stepped in quickly.