"He's heading to New Sierra," Russo said.

"Guessed it in one," Kohl said. "I can say with certainty he will assume we are being sent there, and even if he's wrong, he can mitigate his mistake by being in the capital system to shore up the defense."

"Won't Wolfe being in the DeLonges System complicate things, sir?" Russo frowned.

"Not at all." Now, Kohl's smile was so wide it looked painful. It was the smile of a smug man dying to tell a secret he'd been carrying but stopping himself just short.

"I'm…glad you're so confident in our forces, Admiral." Russo's frown deepened inversely to Kohl's smile. The man was clearly confused, and Kohl was delighted by his discomfort.

"The planners of this mission are men of vision and of willpower. They've been entrusted with a terrible burden. Do you understand what I'm saying, Captain?"

"Honestly? Not even a little bit, sir."

"You will. I need to speak with the group commanders. Keep monitoring the situation below us and inform me of any changes regardless of the hour."

"Of course, sir," Russo said, leaving the office so quickly it almost looked like he was fleeing.

* * *

Pike sat in his Broadhead, still docked to Celesta's Prowler, enjoying the peace and quiet now that the Wolfe-cubs had been relocated to the bigger ship. He leaned back in the pilot's seat as the computer chewed through the latest round of messages from the cabal, applying individual ciphers until it found the right one. He was just dozing off when his console chimed twice, alerting him he had an incoming Bluebird message on one of the two dozen or so transceivers the ship carried.

"Who the hell is this from?"

The message was short and confusing.

Agent Pike. Grave danger to Federation capital. Unspecified threat from Alliance forces, likely not a traditional attack.

Who the hell is this? Pike typed back. How did you get this address?

Not important. Have been deep cover for many years. Currently serving with Vadim Kohl. Tell New Sierra to plan for asymmetrical attack. Unknown if threats exist against other key worlds.

"I'm not telling anybody shit until you tell me who you are," Pike said aloud, then typed the same phrase into the console.

Captain Vincent Russo of the ESA warship, Implacable. Stop wasting time and do your job, Agent. Out.

"What an asshole," Pike grumbled before switching to another high-bandwidth Bluebird that would connect him to a mirror server farm of the CIS's archives that not many people knew about. He technically wasn't supposed to be one of them, but he'd been given a backdoor login by someone he did a favor for once.

The nice thing about the mirror site was it maintained legacy records. Things the CIS purged so the civilian oversight couldn’t find their dirty little secrets. Those were still kept on the backups almost nobody knew existed, sitting on an unassuming orbital installation in the DeLonges System. He ran a search string for Vincent Russo and included all the pertinent details, doubting he'd get a hit. When the computer chimed it had completed the search, he was shocked at what he saw.