She didn’t work with them anymore, but her old work friends still invited Mitzi whenever they went for drinks or a meal. Sitting around the table with the four people she’d once fought alongside, slinging jokes and discussing work, was the happiest part of her week. Mitzi absorbed the defence workers’ gossip like a sponge. She knew who was getting promotions and who was retiring. She’d heard about the Helio-Korre merger before the media even had. And thanks to their meetings, she was also being kept abreast of the Cymic Parasite massacre.

Bolin had told her they were no longer receiving communications from any of the fringe stations, and recently, even some of the larger sectors had started going dark. Estimates had put the total loss of lives in the billions.

Despite that, the situation had only made it on the news when Central issued an official press release. “The news sites are being leaned on,” Marcus had said the night before as he swirled his beer and tried to avoid Mitzi’s accusing glare. “Central doesn’t want people to panic.”

“I dunno, this strikes me as the sort of thing that deserves a little panic.”

Pen laughed. She was lounging back in her seat, bordering on drunk, her half-eaten piece of lab-grown steak hanging limply from the fork she was brandishing. Her steel-grey hair fell over her face, but she couldn’t be bothered to push it back. “Oh, yeah, definitely. Except that panicking won’t help anything. If you tell people what’s really happening and why they haven’t heard from dear Uncle Harold in the last week, then what do you think will happen?”

“People will be prepared?” Mitzi hazarded, wishing it were true but already knowing the real answer.

“People will turn vigilantic,” Pen said, jabbing the steak in Mitzi’s direction. “It’ll be the Salem Witch Trials all over again. Friends will be accused, families will become estranged, and neighbours will be shot for no reason except someone had a gun and got jumpy. Central thinks it has better chances of fighting the Cymics if people stay ignorant, compared to, you know, constant rioting and murdering.”

Mitzi had grudgingly agreed. Even with the media suppression, rumours were flying through the community, and regular services that she’d taken for granted were breaking down. She’d been twenty minutes late to the dinner that night because some morons had staged a protest that had turned violent and interrupted the shuttle system.

Still, Mitzi was frustrated that she had to rely on her friends so heavily to remain in the loop. It was even more frustrating that the rest of the planet knew even less than she did. At the rate the Cymics were spreading, they could wipe out half of humanity within a week if Central didn’t do something drastic.

Mitzi reached above her head and picked up the communications block she’d discarded there. Zero new messages. She tossed it back with a frustrated groan.

As distressing as the Cymic massacre was, it had offered Mitzi a small spark of hope. On their first drink night after the threat had become known, Pen, intoxicated, had let slip that Central was panicking because it suspected it had lost most of its best fighters. It had been sending them to the thousands of assistance requests that had been flooding in, and Central was becoming increasingly concerned that the help requests were traps. Very few of the dispatched ships had actually returned.