They'd spent three days meticulously checking and rechecking every reading, every calculation, and every inch of the observatory's systems. Three weeks was not a long time, but Lanto had no intention of putting what little of his reputation remained on the line until he was absolutely sure. After all, mashing the sensors of the Nautilus into the observatory system was not something that had been done before, and there had been plenty of misfires and shadow readings as they tuned the powerful arrays.

Seventy-two hours of rigorous repetition, however, proved that they hadn't imagined it.

Something was coming to find out what had happened to the Crawlers – it was the only logical inference. His head spun with the implications. Alien life had already been proven by the existence of the Scraegans on this sun-scorched world, but he'd never really considered what went on out there in the wider cosmos. War had made Rychter an insular, blind world.

He had a horrible feeling they were about to pay the price for that.

Lanto walked through the observatory, face grim and hands clasped behind his back. All around him the members of Thaniakas's team worked, continuing to track the massive object and trying to get a better look at it with the telescope. The slightly flattened prism of its shape sharpened the closer it got, far too sharp to be any kind of meteor. Intellectually he'd known it, but the new images chased away the last of his irrational hopes.

"All this time," Almar murmured, walking a few steps behind with his security detail. "We had no idea what was out there."

"Feeling a little smaller in the universe, Lieutenant?"

"You could say that."

"That makes two of us." Lanto spared the young man a sympathetic glance. "At least we know it's coming."

"What do you think it is, up there?"

"Whoever put the Crawlers under the Scraegar Labyrinth. Whoever built that facility." Lanto exhaled grimly. "I don't expect anyone who would breed those things to be particularly friendly."

They reached the comm station cleared for his purposes, where Thaniakas waited nervously. The woman kept glancing over at the scope, her right hand twiddling a stylus over and over. Her eyes flicked to him as he approached.

"Is everything ready?" he asked.

"The line to Commissariat central command is open." Thaniakas nodded. "Our report is ready. We have a full summary of our findings, along with all the supporting data attached, as well as the system star maps showing the position of the vessel, and Wink-,"

"Yes, yes. I'm sure it's suitably thorough." Lanto gave her a small smile. "Are you alright, Archivist?"

"I... yes, sir. It's just, this is a lot to take in."

"I'm well aware. You've done exemplary work, Karin. I'll take it from here."

She managed a smile of her own and gave him a grateful nod. "Thank you, sir."

Lanto stepped up to the prepared console, flexing his fingers for a moment until he felt something click. Then he nodded to the technician at the console.

"Do it."

"Channel is open, Minister."

"Commissariat Minister Lanto Numitor – Rubicon CC1," he began, keeping his language as stiff and formal as an official request would require. "Highest priority. I repeat, highest priority. I have urgent information that must be passed directly to Commissar-General Xanthus. All material attached to this transmission. Please confirm receipt and acknowledge that this request has been actioned."

"Rubicon CC1 – Minister Numitor," a terse-sounding man answered. "File received. Please clarify, what is the nature of your communication?"

"This is Commissariat business, classified under emergency articles 73b and 92c concerning informational security. These files must be passed directly to Xanthus. Please confirm."

"Sir, I'm afraid Commissar-General Xanthus is currently engaged," the comms officer replied flatly. "There is a Planetary Affair Subcommittee meeting in session. I will hold this data for you until the meeting is concluded, and then it will be added to her waiting message log to be dealt with in appropriate time."

"Appropriate time?!" Lanto exploded, his composure evaporating in the face of the man's sheer disinterest. "You understand what 'highest priority' means, do you not?"

"Sir, with all due respect, the Commissar-General receives many messages and reports that their senders believe to be urgent. She is the highest official in Rubicon. High priority is a relative term."

"Now, you listen to me-,"

"I'm afraid that's all I can do for you, sir. Rest assured I will ensure that the Commissar-General receives your report when she has the time."

Then the connection cut.

The technician cleared his throat nervously. "Sorry, sir. Terminated at their end."

Lanto's mouth dropped open in outrage, and the full depth of how far he'd fallen in stature crashed in on him. How dare that jumped up bastard cut him off! He was a one of the city's longest serving ministers, and the fool had dismissed him like a salesman hocking bad shiner.

"Pissing Rivers," Thaniakas swore. "Now what do we do?"

"I'm not about to be stopped by some bloody functionary with delusions of grandeur," Lanto snarled, rounding on them. "Lieutenant Almar, we'll will need your help."

Almar nodded. "You'll have it, Minister. I've seen all I need to see. Just tell me what needs to be done."

"Good man." Lanto clapped him on the shoulder then turned to Thaniakas. "Collate all the data you need – I said need, mind you – and load it onto a data slate."

"I... err, me?"

"Yes, you. You're the scientist here, Archivist, not me. Now go!"

Like she'd been hit with an electric shock, Thaniakas jumped and then scurried off to one of the data terminals, conversing quickly with one of her subordinates.

"We're going to the Commissariat?" Almar gave him a dubious glance. "Will they even see you?"
"I imagine they'll try not to, but I can be very persistent," he replied. "Besides, I know where they like to meet. A place most people don't." Lanto looked the soldier in the eye. "Much as you might dislike it, Lieutenant, I think today might be the day to throw around that family name of yours. Right now, it's a lot heavier than your gun."

*

"Minister Numitor, you're no longer cleared to attend-,"

"Watching Lords, man," Lanto shouted, waving a dismissive hand at the unfortunate administrative assistant. "Get out of my way."

They'd wasted no time. Once Thaniakas had scraped together a truncated version of the full report, Almar escorted them both from the observatory, took them on a bone shaking drive in a military buggy through the city streets, and marched them right through the Conclave's front door. Just being a well-known minister with a soldier by his side was enough to get Lanto through the first few layers of security and admin as they climbed towards Xanthus's eyrie, but now they'd run into a problem.

Now, they'd hit the layer of people who took their jobs very, very seriously.

The man moved to bar their path, though in his grey administration uniform he didn't look particularly threatening. Sweat beaded on his cheeks but he stood his ground, a hand falling to the sidearm at his hip. Lanto grudgingly found himself admiring the idiot's commitment to his work.

"Sir, I was given orders by Commissary-General Xanthus. She was very clear that they are not to be disturbed. I am sorry, but I can't let you pass. You are no longer a member of the committee."

"Well, I'm sorry to hear that, but this cannot wait." Lanto glanced at Almar; gave him a quick nod.

"Please stand aside," Almar told the administrator, taking a step forward. It might have been easy enough to bar the path of an old man, but, Lieutenant Almar was taller, broader, and he was armed. His tone remained pleasant, but the long rifle across his chest made the man squirm.

"I... I have orders-,"

"What's your name?"

"I... err, Sergeant Oberatt, sir. Commissariat Administration Officer, 1st Class."

"Sergeant Oberatt, I'm going to ask you again to stand aside," Almar said, his voice not losing its conversational feel. "My name is Lieutenant Ventes Laemen Almar Nastassos. If you don't get out of my way, I'd like you to call security and explain why you're trying to detain a senior minister of the Commissariat, along with the son of Minister Nastassos. The same Nastassos that is sitting in that meeting right now."

That punched through whatever sense of duty had kept the sergeant's stubbornness going. His face whitened and he swallowed hard, glancing from Almar, to Lanto, and back again. His hand drifted away from his pistol and he cleared his throat, edging back over to his console.

"Yes, sir," he bit out after a moment. "I'll inform them that you're-,"

"I'd rather you didn't," Lanto said, sweeping through the gap the man had left. In an instant Almar and Thaniakas followed him through, leaving the stunned administration officer rooted to the spot with indecision.

Once they'd cleared that checkpoint there were no guards – no armed soldiers to bar their way. The committee's secretive work necessitated a degree of paranoia which meant they didn't want to take anyone as lowly as a security guard into their confidence. Were it not for his prior knowledge, Lanto doubted he would have even been able to find them within the hive of the Commissariat.

Striding as fast as his legs would carry him, he swept into a suite of empty offices – notionally a defunct branch of the city's subterranean planning department – and led his two companions through to the rear of the section. There they round a closed door, innocuously labelled MAPPING SUITE 215.

"Alright," Lanto said quietly. "Brace yourselves. I don't think we'll be very welcome."

He swept his hand over the door control.

Judging by the looks of surprise and outrage that greeted him when he stepped into the room, the administration officer hadn't gathered his wits in time to warn the Planetary Affairs Sub-Committee they were coming. The members of the committee were arranged around the mapping unit, that right now had been tasked to show the southern reaches of the planet – specifically Brekka. His eyes snatched in the details; the blocks of red that sprawled out from the city's edge where the northern armies were currently encamped.

All heads snapped up towards him.

"Minister Numitor!" Xanthus erupted, her eyes opening wide. "What in the name of the Everflowing is the meaning of this?!"

"Apologies, ma'am," he said through gritted teeth as Almar and Thaniakas moved up to flank him. "But I very much needed to speak to you. Your staff were being a little ... obtuse."

"Call security," Nastassos rumbled. "Get him out of here." His expression morphed into a disbelieving glare when he spotted his son. "Ventes! By the Watching Lords, why didn't you stop him? He was supposed to be your responsibility!"

"Fortunately, your son can think for himself," Lanto shot back before Almar could respond, and turned his attention back to Xanthus. "Minister, I have data that you have to see. You allowed me use of the observatory. You let me pursue this, because on some level you knew I might be right. Well, I was, and I can prove it."

"Ma'am," Jungaat piped up, an expression of displeasure on his face. "I believe that Minister Numitor has become singly obsessed, to the detriment of his duties as a member of the Commissariat. We agreed to provide his requests, expressly on the condition he stood down from this committee."

"Hang your committee," Lanto snarled. "You can have me impeached. You can have me thrown from the bloody rooftops for all I care, but you will listen to what we have to tell you."

"And who is your other companion?" Xanthus said icily.

"This is Senior Archivist Karin Thaniakas, who has been assisting me." Lanto stepped forward, tugging Thaniakas along with him. "There is a data packet sitting in your damned inbox, ma'am, but we have the short version here."

"Which is?"

"There's a ship heading for our planet. A big one."

That cut through some of the indignant expressions and grumbling.

"A ship?" Minister Hadriana exclaimed, sitting up in her seat. "You mean, a space vessel? From another world?"

"Launched from Wink, as best we can tell. And launched almost six months ago to the day that our forces in the south killed the Crawler queen beneath the Scraegar Labyrinth."

"That's preposterous," Nastassos growled.

"It sounds like it," Xanthus agreed, fixing Lanto with a searching stare. "But I doubt Minister Numitor would have barged in here like this without some kind of proof. So, Minister, let's see it. Then I'll decide what should be done with you."

"Karin." He nudged her forward. The archivist could not have looked more uncomfortable, but she pressed gamely on, pulling out her data slate, and launching into an explanation of what they'd found.

There were some interruptions; objections, but Xanthus quickly quashed them, looking increasingly ill-at-ease. Eventually the room subsided into quiet, even Nastassos receding back into his seat with a face like a stormcloud.

"And you'll see here," Thaniakas continued, a nervously trembling finger indicating the screen of the data slate, "that our calculations show the ship – if it is a ship – will land in the southern hemisphere. We can't know exactly, but our best guesses put it only a few hundred kilometres south of Brekka."

"Taken together," Lanto said, stepping forward and placing a hand on Thaniakas's shoulder, "this is all far more than any coincidence. That ship is coming for us. It's coming to find out what happened to the creatures it left here."

"Conjecture," Hadriana said, though her heart didn't seem to be in it. "You can't know that for sure."

"Give it two weeks, Minister, then we will know for sure."

"You – Thaniakas is it?" Xanthus interjected.

"Yes, ma'am."

The Commissar-General beckoned. "Give me that data slate."

Thaniakas glanced at him uncertainly. Lanto gave her a nod of permission, and she handed the machine over.

He was gratified to find that, after a few minutes, Xanthus did not look happy, her hawkish features pinched into a grim expression as she examined the images. She said nothing for what felt like an eternity, her slender fingers gliding over the machine. He watched the screen flicker and change, pictures of star maps and still images grabbed from the telescope mixed in with dense calculations of velocity and course trajectory.

Xanthus drank it all in. He could see the raw facts punching through to her, no matter how much she disliked them.

Eventually, she laid the data slate down flat in front of her and brought her hands together in front of her, fingers steepled.

"Lanto," she said, giving him a pointed look. "Let us, for a moment, assume this is all you say it is. What exactly is it you're asking of us? What do you want us to do?"

"For a start, you can stop that army of yours from attacking the Scraegans!" Lanto pointed at the slate. "If that thing arrives while we're in the middle of an all out attack, and it is hostile, we'll be virtually defenceless."

"Enough of this!" Nastassos thundered unable to contain himself for a moment longer. He rose out of his seat with a speed Lanto didn't think the big man possessed. "We will not call off the most important military campaign in the history of our world because you've been playing astronomer!"

"Sir!" Almar shouted suddenly, stepping forward for the first time. "Father, you have to listen to him. This is real. Something is coming, and we are not ready for it. Please!"

"I expected more from you, Ventes. You've been around this old fool for too long and he's gotten his hooks in."

"I'm afraid the lieutenant is correct."

The words left Xanthus's mouth like hammer blows. Lanto could feel how reluctantly the words left her mouth, but that didn't make him any less glad to hear them. The room fell silent. Nastassos gaped at her in horror. She took a deep breath.

"Ma'am," Jungaat said quietly. "Are you sure about this?"

"Riverlords forgive me, but yes, I am." Xanthus looked at Nastassos's looming bulk. "Minister, please issue fresh orders to our forces outside Brekka to hold their positions and await further orders."

"General!" Nastassos blustered, his face reddening with fury. "You cannot-,"

"Careful, old friend," she hissed, and Lanto could have sworn that a gust of icy wind accompanied the words. "You have not risen so high as to dictate to me what I can and cannot do."

Nastassos clearly wanted to say more, but he wasn't stupid enough to miss the veiled threat in the woman's words.

Satisfied that she'd cowed his outbursts, Xanthus continued. "There will be an immediate suspension of the campaign against the Scraegans until we have had time to fully examine this data and prepare accordingly. Is that understood?"

Nastassos couldn't bring himself to speak. He gave her a curt nod and a salute, then stormed from the room.

"Thank you, ma'am," Lanto said as Nastassos's footsteps receded. "I assure you, you've made the right decision."

"Don't thank me just yet, Minister," she replied. "By all the Watching Lords and the Everflowing River, I hope you're wrong."