“Another bit of control stripped from me.” Stacia hated the vague sense of powerlessness. The R going over her head, countermanding her suggested course of action. Yahya deciding on his own what was best for their son. That damn causal agent of Bek’s condition refusing to be discovered. Her bracelets slid down her wrists with a soft rattle.

Paki stared at her with uncertainty, not sure she was even talking to him. His next words stumbled out sounding more like a question.

“We have jump gate technology to navigate the wormholes now.”

“No, O.E. had the technology and loaned it to us.” Stacia circled the table. “Which, if you believe them, they’d been working on since the Mothership Incident.”

Paki made a noncommittal noise. “Gee, you don’t believe them?”

“We find out a wormhole is parked in our sovereign territory, and they manage to provide us tech to navigate it. Then we discover the wormhole is artificial? No, I don’t trust them.” Stacia rubbed the bridge of her nose as if fending off an impending headache. “Something else is in play, but that’s always been their way. O.E. is a contagion. Any contact with them and their old ways—I don’t care if we call them joint military exercises—has a way of corroding community. Dividing us. The HOVA have been isolated into their own community now, on the fringes, barely connected to the rest of Muungano. Using proprietary tech we don’t have access to. All of which is on the other side of the wormhole as we speak. Which we can no longer communicate with. Does that about sum up the state of things?”

“A joint operation you approved and cleared with the R long before either of you informed the full Ijo.” Paki scoured her with his unflinching scrupulousness. “What changed to make you read them in?”