CENTCOM had hopes that capturing Vadim and making him stand trial for his crimes might head off an all-out war the Federation couldn't afford, but Jackson knew the truth. The war had already started regardless of an official declaration on not.

Since they had no credible intel on where Vadim Kohl had fled to after being so thoroughly beaten in the Odmena System, Jackson had ordered the strike force stood down so the crews could enjoy the last little bit of peace they would likely have for a while. Those who had families were permitted to have them travel to the planet Arcadia where shore leave was authorized and the five ultra-secret destroyers sat in a high parking orbit. The Saber, Jackson's flagship, operated with a skeleton crew, and he'd had his wife and children brought up to stay with him until it was time for him to go to work.

Watching his twins play with their mother and cast shy, wary glances at him was like an icepick to the heart. He'd missed so much of their lives already, and here he was, signing up to do it again. Right after he had returned after defeating the Darshik, he and Gillian had been able to spend nearly a full year together with them at the home they had on Arcadia.

"You okay?" Pike asked, breaking him out of his thoughts. "You look like you're going to go kick someone's ass, and I'm the only one in here."

"Yeah…I'm fine," Jackson said. An irrational rage bubbled up in him as he thought about flying away from them once again. It wasn't fair. Hadn't he done enough? "Go on."

"So, despite Carson's little…psychotic break, I guess we can call it…the mission was a success," Pike said. "They grabbed a high value asset from ESA Intelligence who had been imbedded within the taskforce. She was definitely one of the ones we were hoping to nab."

"One of the party operatives?" Jackson asked.

"Correct. So far, she's playing ball. CIS is debriefing her, and we're getting a much better picture about what's happening behind the scenes within the Alliance Council," Pike said. "We can multi-source verify her info through other assets we've cultivated."

"And we can get a location for Vadim Kohl from these people?"

"Maybe not directly," Pike said slowly. "That's what I've been trying to explain in a roundabout way; Kohl's operation is being sponsored by a powerful splinter group within the Council so his movements are being kept under a tight lid. The Council didn't sanction his actions in Odmena—at least not directly—but nobody seated in that body is going to be willing to go against the people controlling him. They see it as burning an inordinate amount of political capital for something that might only delay a war most of them see as inevitable."

"You know, I remember when a strategic intelligence brief was filled with actionable items not a geopolitical dissertation," Jackson grumbled.

"There's a lot of padding in this report," Pike admitted, waving to the tile he'd tossed on the table. "The analysts tend to do that when they don't have more than a page of solid information. Still…there could be something in there you can use if you want to read through it."