He heard snippets of the conversation coming from the end of the corridor, the last cell where the woman was being kept. From what he could tell, Evers was trying his very best to flirt with her after the orderly had retreated back up the corridor with the food cart. There were a few girlish giggles from the prisoner, a braying laugh from Evers, and then he came sauntering back past Xiao's cell, not even bothering to look in.

"Interesting," he mumbled to himself in his native tongue, stuffing the rest of the bread into his mouth.

* * *

Vadim Kohl looked out the porthole in his office towards a little prick of light that was the primary star of the Xinjia System. His taskforce had arrived on-station after a stop to refuel and top off consumables at a supply dump in the Warsaw Alliance, and now they were just sitting silently in space. Waiting.

All their forces had used the Bluebird's clock signal to synchronize their mission timers so the individual components of the plan would be executed exactly on schedule. He smiled at that. The Federation may have developed and deployed the miraculous superluminal radio, but it would be the Alliance that first exploited its true power as their multi-pronged attack spanning the breadth of human space would happen with precision that had never been seen before. By the time the enemy realized they were being hit on multiple fronts, it would be all over.

"Admiral, the taskforce reports full combat readiness," Captain Russo reported, entering the office without bothering to knock. "Our long range optics are tracking two-hundred and eleven ships in the system, but only sixty-two warships based on thermal imagers and accelerometer data."

Kohl smiled. His taskforce, minus the dozen support ships, was fifty fresh, advanced warships including a new starfighter carrier. She'd been rushed by Pak's shipyards after the unfortunate loss of her sister ship in the Odmena System. She wasn't carrying a full complement of fighters, but based on the post-battle analysis of how they performed against the Federation's best ships, Kohl was confident the aging defense force below him wouldn't know what hit it.

"Do we have any new intel on where Wolfe is, Vincent?" he asked.

"Negative, sir," Russo said. "His taskforce departed B-1171 before we would have arrived even if we'd stayed on course."

"Small consolation," Kohl said. He stood and clasped his hands behind his back, pacing the deck. "Knowing the man the way I do, I can only assume he'll try to position his force where he can maximize impact after losing sight of me."

"Our sources say he was tasked specifically with hunting you, sir," Russo said. "His next move will be to try and reacquire our taskforce."

"Precisely. By now, all the sporadic attacks and unusual ship movements will have been analyzed, and they'll know an attack is coming." Kohl smiled. "Wolfe will assume we'll be the tip of the spear, and he'll position himself to defend their most vulnerable target."