Kaplan braced an arm above the porthole in the Fire Witch's galley and sipped a cup of synthetic coffee. A massive space station hung in the darkness outside. Around it, ships drifted in and out of long rows as local traffic control shuffled landing slots. Beyond, half lit by its home star, a blue planet shone.

Feuria.

A welcome sight and a sign his team's tense limbo was over. Things would start moving again—fast. Debriefings, action plans. The deployed Gate Keeper battleships, with their hyperspace drives and coms, had already started delivering reports from Tirus 7: complete carnage. Hundreds of disabled and destroyed ships in local space. Blackened ruins on the surface.

The Xykeree were long gone.

Kaplan washed that unwelcome knowledge down with bad coffee. Diplomatic talks had been initiated. The Xykeree Imperial Hive blamed rogue ships for the attack, a disturbing notion, but one preferable to other possibilities. While humanity and its coalition partners were better prepared to defend themselves than they had been decades ago, billions would still die in a war against the Xykeree.

"We're landing in fifty." Sun strode into the galley, her light armour and weapons pristine, her dark hair in a tight bun. Ready to report—as she had been for days.

Long hours of inactivity hadn't sat well with any of the surviving members of Helios Seven. Complying, if somewhat loosely, with Captain Tras' order that they be confined to quarters—out of his way and business—hadn't helped morale either. But it had kept the peace and avoided the need to mentally subjugate the crew, though, Kaplan was currently reviewing his stance on that.

We going to get any voluntary form of cooperation? he 'pathed.

Sun's lips thinned as she jammed a cup under the galley's antiquated drinks dispenser. The captain has agreed to present himself and his crew for formal debriefing on the condition we double what we're paying him. Don't ask what his plans are for the money.

Given those plans festered at the forefront of the trader's mind, Kaplan didn't need details. He does more lucrative business in other systems. There was only one reason to visit that backworld port so often.

And that reason is probably bio-paste now. Sun leaned back against the galley counter and sipped her drink. The man's got a messy past, Reid. Subpar childhood, dishonourable discharge from the Space Corps, a long list of criminal offenses since.

And Soha Wilkirk, unknown to her, was tangled up in that past. It'd become clear in the aftermath of the attack the wep-tech trader's interest in the engineer went beyond warp maintenance and bedroom fantasies. Tras, it seemed, had served in the corps with her father. There was a debt owed. The kind that left one man standing and the other in a flag-draped box.

Sun shook her head. Tras had a lot of regrets and self-loathing before this, but now? If he goes back, it'll be for blood, not to recover the remains of loved ones. We should probably hold him a few days until we're sure he won't instigate another interspecies incident.

He's not going anywhere until his ship's repaired. Kaplan located Tras: a point of dark energy on the bridge. A few days in detention wouldn't settle the man down. Only one thing might put the pin back in that particular grenade: finding Soha Wilkirk alive.

Sun scowled over her coffee. What about our other reluctant witness? We drugging or just gagging and restraining her?

Kaplan glanced down the corridor that ran past the galley, sensing his team in their berths and a familiar, erratic hum of life in one of the aft cabins. I've talked to her.

And?

And he was trying to forget the exchange. The latest in a series of fruitless battles. All verbal.

Even after days in Jinsin Koel's company, neither he nor Sun had been able to tune into her thoughts. But his empathic abilities caught more, time and familiarity sharpening his read. Tras wasn't the only one struggling to process what had happened. Frustration, guilt, and grief burned through Jinx's odd psionics. And on the raw end of a disastrous mission and a failure to protect the citizens of Tirus 7, those feelings resonated too well.

As did others.

Kaplan pulled in a long breath. A little hostility he could handle, but the friction the aberrant port officer provoked raised the wrong kind of sparks. Misfires in his brain. What warped part of his psyche found those 'screw you' smiles appealing? And why did the thought of her heading back into the void to hunt down trouble make his trigger finger itch? The woman could handle herself.

When she was thinking straight.

That hollow look in her eyes...

Kaplan shook his head. His threat to detain her had relit that gaze. She's considering cooperating. But was more likely to go get herself killed.

How have you not shot her yet? Sun grunted into her coffee. I'd have by now. Just to stop the migraine her psionics give me, and you've spent hours trying to tune into that mess.

Kaplan returned his gaze to the darkness outside. The background analysis he'd set off on Jinx's com files had brought up nothing useful related to her medical history. Just a few trivial records, the bio and tox screens her job required. No clues about what might be behind her aberrance. Nothing to help get a psionic bead on her mental patterns.

And because of that lack of success, they'd be going into the formal investigation with only her vetted version of events. A poor substitute for a psi read. Witnesses reported the information they thought was relevant, unwittingly filtering out useful details.

But Jinx had more than subconsciously vetted her intel.

His psi-tech had caught the changes in her pulse as she'd lied to his face. She was hiding something about her loss of consciousness on board the barge.

And if he sensed deception, others would.

Sun came to stand beside him. Her intel is probably not worth further follow-up, Reid. Whatever she saw on the Bullhead was under adverse conditions: low light, high degree of stress. Add in some kind of mental disorder... The only information we can rely on is the scanner records she backed up on her com.

Kaplan slid his cousin a wry glance. Whatever the port officer's problems were, a lack of intelligence and nerve weren't among them. She was able to provide a lot of detail about the andropod she liaised with and the scorp that came at her in the Bullhead's hold. And her recall of the medical inventory was uncanny, especially given she doesn't know Xykeree glyphs.

Do you really believe she remembered those symbols correctly? Sun frowned and tapped her cup with blunt nails. If she did, that's some curious data: heavy reordering of exskel parts and wound-sealing bio gels. Put that with the two exskel explosions she reported and it makes you wonder. The Imperial Hive's talk of rogue factions might not be a convenient lie. That Cetus raider outside Tirus 7's port obliterated its own scorpion infantry unit.

Kaplan looked back to the lines of vessels outside, thought of the images he'd received from Tirus 7. Drifting damaged hulks. That would be the best-case scenario.

But you think there's more to it. Like that ship that took us out.

Let's hope it's not connected. It had been well prepared to disable and destroy a Coalition military vessel.

A surge of turbulent energy.

Kaplan glanced to the corridor. Tras stalked past, his eyes shifting to Kaplan, giving him a glimpse into a bleak private hell. Then the trader was gone, disappearing aft.

Fero prowled into the galley, his feral stare aimed down the corridor, his hand on his sidearm. "That man smells like brimstone and expensive liquor."

"That's what death wishes smell like." Sun tossed the cat a cup, no doubt sensing his low-grade craving for caffeine.

The Atillian snagged the cup mid-air then arched a scar-cut brow. "They can't all smell the same then. The bite-size officer calls you 'Sun the Fun Assassin', and she smells like a hot night on Sann Glyth."

"Cheap liquor and sand?" Sun smiled tightly.

Fero turned to get a dose of the ship's caffeinated water. In lieu of a verbal response, he dredged up memories from his last visit to the beaches and casinos of StarSec One's popular holiday world. Sand featured. So did cheap liquor and...

Sun broke the team's non-interference protocols, overriding the cat's explicit memories with an image she'd seen in a veterinary textbook, detailing feline neutering.

Fero's stare gleamed as he swallowed a mouthful of coffee. "They can grow anything back these days, Lieutenant. Bigger, better, stronger."

"You have to be alive for restoration therapy." Nailing the cat with a look that could've snap frozen a class O star, Sun dropped her coffee into the recyce port and strode for the bridge. Rha Si avoided violent, sexually explicit, or highly emotional thoughts where possible. Fero was well aware of that, but being a cat, he had to test tolerances—especially when he wasn't in the mood for psi company. Sun's tolerance ran far higher than sand, fangs, and rough Atillian sex, but she'd learned to play along and allow the cat some semblance of control.

Kaplan leaned back against a bulkhead. "One of these days, she's going to fry your cerebral cortex."

Fero lifted a shoulder. "No risk. No fun." A typical Atillian attitude.

Kaplan didn't buy the excuse today. Fero had grown up in a Rha Si–controlled population. Highly intelligent and independent, he'd learned to manipulate perceptions and hide his thoughts from those who didn't know him well. An actor taking on a different mental skin. "If you want a private word, Fero, you can just ask."

The Atillian's tiger eyes narrowed. His thoughts snapped from playtime to business. "The port officer's asked to see the captain before landing. Apparently, she has a proposition for him." His awareness filled with the myriad scents and sounds of the ship. A hushed argument had started at the far end of the corridor.

Kaplan's fingers tightened on his cup. Jinx needed her head examined if she was considering dealing with Tras. In his current mood, the trader would walk over her corpse just to get a second's revenge. "Tras isn't likely to agree to help her."

A pulse of dark amusement—Fero's as his sharp ears picked up Tras' promise to dump Jinx out with the ship's biowaste if she wasn't off his ship within three minutes of landing. But the next instant, the cat's mood cooled. His thoughts came in a rush. The team knew how long memory reads took: minutes or hours, not days. They knew Rha Si didn't make unnecessary physical contact. Psionics were coldblooded, unsurprising given they were bred via gestation tanks or the conversion of adult human candidates. But the team had seen Kaplan use physical means to restrain or calm the feisty port officer: a hand on her shoulder or arm. He'd allowed her to argue—at length. And scent clues indicated an interest in the female that defied Rha Si's usual aversion to non-psi.

Fero met Kaplan's stare. "You're not in the bite-size officer's head."

Kaplan kept his heart rate even. The cat had lost his mind if he was asking for an explanation. The only non-psi cleared to discuss Rha Si abilities and limitations were specially vetted researchers. Anyone else...

Kaplan raised his cup, took a sip. "First and only warning, Fero."

Unease and aggression spiked in the Atillian's psionic aura. His thoughts cascaded hot and fast. He knew not to ask questions. But he smelled a threat. He just didn't know if it was to the team or to Kaplan personally or professionally. They were about to head into an investigation. There'd been rumours of Rha Si acting oddly then disappearing from active duty. If something was wrong with Kap—

"Petty Officer," Kaplan interrupted, triggering another jolt of apprehension—and determination. "Are you here for answers or to provoke me into removing the inconvenient doubts you have about my fitness for duty prior to an official investigation?"

The cat's eyes gleamed. "Take what you need. The team's in agreement on that."

The team. All idiots. Kaplan pushed down the temper his people didn't believe he had. They were brain damaged if they thought to put themselves between him and his superiors—to put him above their duty to the Coalition. Now, he was going to have to vet their thick heads. Not to save his career. To save theirs.

All because he'd allowed a level of suspicion within the team.

Because he had mixed feelings about the Rha Si hierarchy—about his creation.

A selfish and careless indulgence.

If he didn't curb his team's curiosity, straighten them out, someone else would. And they'd do it without a deep understanding of the minds they interfered with. Other Rha Si wouldn't embed aversions his team would recognise as orders. They'd block or alter memories.

And he'd let them.

Because, whether he liked it or not, he was exactly what he'd been created to be.

A cog in the political and social machine that kept everyone—not just the Rha Si—safe.

Kaplan swallowed an oath. Protecting that machine meant keeping its vulnerabilities and limitations need-to-know, even within trusted non-psi groups, and the general public stayed in the total dark. If his kind were ever exposed, there'd be graver consequences than mass panic and a cull of psionics. Multiple species would become vulnerable to the Xykeree. Interspecies diplomacy would flounder. The spectre of coercion would be raised over every past political decision. And without empathic interpreters, diverse groups would fail to understand each other's cultures and motivations.

The Coalition would fracture.

Kaplan eyed Fero. The cat knew of at least half a dozen Rha Si who'd been abruptly pulled from duty. He knew Kaplan, after a varied career working in the military and intelligence service in-population, had practically retreated into the void a year ago. He knew about the nosebleeds and headaches. He knew Kaplan hadn't reported them.

Withdrawing from all but the Atillian's surface thoughts, Kaplan resigned himself to the fact a deeper intervention than a few mental blocks would be needed to ensure the Atillian posed no threat to the Rha Si—or to the cat himself. But that would have to wait. "Get ready for landing, Petty Officer."

"Yes, Lieutenant Commander."

"And tell your co-conspirators that they can look forward to a comprehensive scan within the next twelve hours. They can also look forward to spending their first night of surface leave rereading the Coalition military's ethics manual."

Fero nodded, chaining down his instinct to fight the mental interventions he'd invited and to hunt down answers. His acquiescence grated on Kaplan's nerves. Atillians knew how to take orders, but didn't willingly bare their throats.

But it was necessary.

Kaplan stowed his misgivings and prepared to rejoin his people—to do his duty, just as Fero was. Rha Si might prefer to avoid personal or difficult thoughts, but that wasn't why they limited their relationships with non-psi.

They had to be able to deal with any threat. Even the well-intentioned ones.

Or the wounded.

The memory of dark defiant eyes rose up; a rebellion he couldn't afford to admire or envy.

Burying all sympathy, Kaplan headed aft. By approaching Tras, the aberrant had made her choice.