I nodded and stood. The omnipresent guard unit made the inevitable corridor for me.

I turned in my seat as Nat entered the conference room. She rolled her eyes at me in a silent acknowledgment of our shared torture and threw herself into another chair. On the monitor, a reporter was providing commentary on the ongoing disassembly of Tate Industrial Park. A contingent of supposed CIA agents, in full view, were in the process of hauling away something unidentifiable. Security ringed the area, preventing media from hassling the workers.

The Gen systems didn’t monitor all the same TV networks that Sheldon had access to on Earth, but the overlap was enough that we weren’t missing anything important. And I was grateful that the Gen had been willing to share the feed.

“So what’s the score, now?” I asked Nat.

“According to Aggam, the last count was four hundred and twelve confirmed collaborationists, three hundred and eight of them politicians. There are probably a lot more, but I doubt anyone will ever identify them all. The Covenant can’t arrest them, of course, without alerting the whole human race to their presence. Instead, the Covenant has notified each of them quietly that the Loranna are no longer in a position to maintain any agreements they might have made.”

“Any more Loranna?”

“As Sheldon said, they tended to use humans instead of getting directly involved. So there were only three actual disguised Loranna operating as humans full-time. Not including the Harris management and Tate administration, of course. That’s another fifteen, but they mostly stayed in Dunnville and operated under the radar.” Nat watched the TV feed for a few seconds then continued, “Aggam gave me a piece of juicy info at the end of my interview. They’ve done some forensic data diving based on what they’ve learned here, and it looks like Sheldon was right and the Loranna have been working this scam on several other pre-FTL worlds. They aren’t sure yet if it’s just this particular clan or if other clans are also working the con. They think, in fact, that one clan might have had the idea, then started franchising it out in return for a percentage of the profits. That would explain how a small clan like Karen’s was able to set this up. In any case, the Covenant administration is looking stupid for not having noticed a pattern. Apparently, the Loranna were using Foundation surveillance projects to choose their targets and to prepare the covert teams to fit in.”

“How many systems had they been successful with?”

“Three. One local intelligent species wiped out, except for a couple hundred kept for breeding purposes. Two others down to a few percent of their top population count.”

I pantomimed a “wow,” then said, “So multiple counts of genocide.”

“Pretty much.”

“What do you think the Covenant will do?”