"And, in the meantime, Kohl just took out ninety percent of our qualified Mickey crews," Jackson said. "Which means he was fed intel that they were all in one place for a short time during final quals."

"CIS hasn't done the full postmortem, but yeah," Pike said. "CENTCOM will issue a fleet-wide release later, then the politicians will announce it to the public. President Stark is expected to announce the Federation will respond to what he's calling a terrorist attack in kind, but we both know the war has already been met, and we're swinging off our back foot."

"Is Stark still in the capital?" Jackson asked.

"No choice." Pike shrugged. "He knows the Alliance fleet has moved into Federation space and is likely staging for a multi-pronged assault, but we don't know where they'll strike. He thinks evacuating would send the wrong signal."

"Pike, if the Alliance is moving against strategic Fed targets, then they could be targeting—"

"I'm flying hard for Arcadia as we speak," Pike said. "I've already made contact with Jillian and told her to have the kids ready for a fast pickup. They can stay aboard the Broadhead until we can determine a safe place for them. I'll get them out before any potential Alliance threat pops up." Jackson blew out a breath.

"I owe you big for this one, Pike," he said.

"No, you don't," Pike said. "This is what family does. I've already talked to Celesta, and she's on her Prowler with Pitt. I'm not sure what's coming, but I think it's going to be big…much bigger than some half-assed assault on a secret base in the middle of nowhere. The problem is I'm having a hard time trusting the reports coming out of my own agency."

"I'm going to try and extract the Bluebird hardware and personnel," Jackson said. "The problem after that is I don't have a good place to stash it. If my ships are carrying priceless strategic assets, I can hardly throw the taskforce into battle when called."

"Which reminds me, I have that trace log from the standard Bluebird terminal in your office you asked for." Pike moved off camera and could be heard talking to his ship's computer. "Sending it as a readable document. It will give you the times and the final address destination, but the data stream sent over it appears to be in a code we're not familiar with. I've got the code cracker software they loaded onto this ship working it."

"Anything stand out to you when you read it?" Jackson asked.

"The timestamps include ship-time from the point of origin, so it looks like most of the transmissions were done early during the Saber's first watch, a time I suspect you'd have been on the bridge. The destination addresses are listed as restricted, but that's not unusual if they're CIS addresses."

"It's unusual if my aide is sending coded messages to CIS addresses," Jackson said. "Did Barton talk to you?"

"I gave him a rundown on what to look for in Trapp's quarters if she'd been trained by either us or the Alliance," Pike said. "I also instructed him and the master at arms on how to scan your quarters for possible bugs. Looks like she didn't take the risk planting anything in a room you're barely in."