“Different mechanism, but similar result,” Morgan replied, smiling a little too happily in Eric’s opinion.

“I want his notes,” Eric said, “though whether for future use or so I can burn them, I’m not sure yet.”

“I believe you may have to fight my Marine commander for them, sir.”

►►►

► Repairing the Auto to the point where it could be certified as ready to transition back to Sol took a few days, yet was a reasonably straightforward job. The long, tedious inspections could have been handled entirely by the Auto’s crew but went a lot faster with help from the Odysseus and other Heroics in the system.

Eric had watched the Auto during the last few minutes of its climb out of the system and as it vanished into transitional space, mostly as a distraction from the work he and Commander Heath had on their own plates. The data files from the WTF487 anomaly were potentially game changers. Just the list of old yet potentially still-active alien sites was worth the cost of Earth’s entire space program, all the way back to Apollo.

What he was interested in, however, was something that wasn’t actually listed but rather was implied by the data. The location of most of the facilities fell within a section of space closer to the galactic core than Earth and Priminae space, a section that also happened to correspond with the withdrawal vector the Odysseus had recorded during their earlier engagement.

That was both good news and very bad news.

The good news was that the Alliance now had something akin to a confirmation concerning the location of the Empire, which gave him a search vector to work with. The bad news was that, if the other precursor facilities were anywhere near as valuable as this one was, a terrifying percentage of them existed in what almost had to be Imperial territory.

Passer had best get back in the black as soon as possible, because I believe we’re officially playing catch-up when it comes to stealing this particular bit of fire from the gods. The Empire seems to have beaten us to it.

Of course, so far the only piece of the puzzle he could reasonably link to the Empire was the Drasin, but that was more than enough.

Eric looked at the ancient data crystal sitting on the reader across from him. He had the evidence the admiral wanted. He was fairly certain he could present this and the vector information from their earlier engagement and get at least a declaration of hostilities from the Alliance leadership. Combined with Bandit One opening fire first, that was enough for a state of war, he thought. That made his job all the easier, but as suggestive as the evidence was, he’d rather clinch the case if he could.

“Commander,” he said, looking over to where Miram was working, “do you have any projections on likely Imperial systems?”

“A few. Why?”