"I thought you gave them orders to stand down!" Lanto exploded, throwing all decorum to the rapids as he faced down Xanthus, his cheeks red, his body trembling with rage as he pointed back towards the door of the room. "Drown me! What is going on down there? Is anyone actually in charge, or has that fool Llewellyn just decided to start a civil war?!"

"Minister!" Xanthus snarled, rising out of her chair with anger in her eyes. "That is enough. You will keep a civil tongue-,"

"Damn civility," he interrupted. Normally the Commissary-General's presence would have kept him in check, but not today. Not now. Sheer fury was pumping through his veins, and it was all he could do not to reach across the space between them and throttle her.

"Lanto-,"

"Where in the bloody River is Nastassos? That warmongering lunatic might just have killed us all."

"You cannot make accusations like that without proof," Xanthus snapped, trying to regain some semblance of control over the encounter. "The situation is still evolving, but there is a large Scraegan force reportedly fighting alongside Brekkan units against Llewellyn's troops."

"I saw the transcripts," he roared back, slamming a fist down against her desk in fury. "The Marshal was acting on some different orders than yours, it seems! They were blockading Brekka before any Scraegans showed their faces on that plateau. Why in the Everflowing would they do that?"

"Marshall Llewellyn is a proven and experienced officer. The situation was volatile, at best, and he has command authority to act if circumstances demand it."

"They created that situation!"

A memory punched through his film of rage – a conversation with Lieutenant Almar. His account of his father's clandestine call to Brekka. A civilian ID supposedly. The sporadic reports he'd recieved from Aurelia had made it clear that she was closing her net on the saboteurs in Brekka – on the former general, Thiekvaal. Given what was happening, he had no idea how successful she had actually been.

But he knew in his bones – he knew – that was the link. Nastassos had to have been party to this, playing puppet master with the disgruntled agitators in Brekka to get his damned war. To try and paint himself into history as the man who finally ended the Scraegans.

Her eyes hardened then, and she gently sank back into the chair in her office. It was just the two of them now – no Committee to try and curry favour with. When he'd come barging in here he'd half expected to the guards to shoot him, but Xanthus had stayed their hands; dismissed them. She allowed him to speak his peace.

Lanto got the distinct impression that she was now regretting that decision.

"Minister Numitor, I have allowed you more leeway than most," Xanthus told him, her voice lowering to a tone of menace. "I have allowed you to pursue your hunches. I have given you resources. I have allowed you to be disrespectful and insubordinate because I respect your service to this city. You are about to cross that line."

He stood his ground. Some lines were made to be crossed.

"A threat, Commissary-General?" Lanto couldn't keep the smirk off his face. "I've nothing left to lose. What will you do now? I left your damned committee. I probably won't be in this city much longer, but I'll be drowned in the Rapids before I let that oaf tip this whole world into a civil war."

Leaning forward, he placed both his palms on her desk. "War with the Scraegans will be nothing. Nothing compared to what we'll do to each other."

Xanthus lips twitched. "I will say this one more time. You cannot accuse Minister Nastassos of what amounts to treason, without a proof. A lot of proof."

"You want proof, General?" He spread his hands "We can get it. I suggest you pull Minister Nastassos's private logs and we go through them inch by inch, line by line."

"Watching Lords, Lanto, on what grounds?"

"On the grounds that all of this is because of him." He made a sweeping gesture to their surroundings. "Who wanted Llewellyn at the head of that army? Who wanted us to take control of Brekka's commissariat? Who's been pushing you towards this since the Crawler queen died."

Xanthus's teeth showed in an indignant snarl. "I know Minister Nastassos just as well as you do. I know his uses, and his limits. If you are implying that I have been manipulated-,"

"That is exactly what I'm implying. Everything unfolding in Brekka, Nastassos made it happen." With a tremendous effort he lowered his voice, sucking a breath through his teeth. "Commissary-General, he has been using the subversive elements in Brekka to engender a situation where you and the others felt you had no choice but to act. He is in contact with the people who planted that bomb at the Liaison Post and started all of this. Everflowing, he might have been the one that planned it!"

"You are treading on very dangerous ground, Minister Numitor," she told him, though she had also dragged her tone down to something more level.

"I can prove it. We just need his logs."

"You and Nastassos have despised each other from the moment I brought you both into the committee," Xanthus told him icily. "It is the very reason I kept you both there – to provide balance. But you have a bias I cannot, and will not, ignore. It suits you for him to be the villain, just as it suits him to paint you as the pacifist appeaser. The truth, I find, is always somewhere in the middle."

Exhaling, she shook her head. "I will not violate the rights of both a citizen of Rubicon and one of our highest-ranking ministers. Not on your word alone. If you were to be wrong, it would be grounds for impeachment of my position. Then you'll have Nastassos to answer to."

"It's not just my word," Lanto replied, the words turning ashen in his mouth. He didn't like playing games, but right now he only had one more ace up his sleeve. It meant putting family against family. "Lieutenant Almar."

"His son?"

"Who do you think told me about Nastassos's messages?"

Her eyes widened. "What exactly are you suggesting? You want to bring Lieutenant Almar to testify against his own father?"

"You asked for proof." Lanto pointed to the door. "It's out there waiting for you."

*

"Minister! Sir, I can't!"

Lieutenant Ventes Laemen Almar Nastassos was not a happy man. The young officer's face was a picture of abject despair, and Lanto could hardly blame him, given the course of action he'd just proposed.

Taking a sip of his burning, smokey whisky, Lanto sucked a breath in through his teeth and nodded. Then he lowered himself into the chair opposite Almar, handing him a second glass. Despite his shock, the man took it.

Then he gulped it down in one before Lanto's backside had touched the seat.

"I understand what I am asking," he said as Almar tried to contain a coughing fit from the potent liquor. "Believe me, I understand."

"You want me to walk into the Commissariat and accuse my father of treason!"

"Yes."

"Sir, I cannot do that. I will not."

"I thought you might say that." Lanto nodded again, topping up Almar's glass with another measure of whisky. "Drink that one slowly, if you would. This is a rare bottling."

Almar scowled, but he approached the second glass with more reverence, taking a small tip as his big frame receded moodily back against his chair.

"If you think getting me drunk-,"

"You don't to be drunk to do the right thing, Lieutenant."

Sighing heavily, Lanto shoved the data slate across the table towards him, already pre-loaded with the latest report from the Brekkan front line. A report he was by no means supposed to be sharing with a lowly lieutenant, but right now regulations meant very little to Lanto Numitor.

"Read that," he ordered.

Almar took another sip, his glare remaining for a few mulish seconds until he eventually reached over and tugged the screen into full view. He scanned it, and Lanto saw the muscles in the young man's neck go tight as he read.

Read just what was happening. Brekka and Rubicon, brother and sister, killing each other.

Almar close his eyes and rubbing them slowly with his free hand.

"I'm sorry, lieutenant, but that's your father's work."

"You don't know that for certain."

"The Brekkan comms have been sabotaged, and it wasn't the Scraegans that did it. That's why people have started killing each other."

"But-,"

"I remember what you told me. I remember how much you didn't want to tell me, because you knew what it meant – deep down." Lanto placed his glass down gently on the table. "I will bet whatever years of my life I have left that if we pull those logs, we'll find that your father has been in contact with Theikvaal. And once we have that well dug, who knows how deep it may run."

Almar shook his head bleakly. "He wouldn't do this."

"You know better than that, son."

"Pissing Rivers." Draining the second glass dry, Almar dumped it down unceremoniously on the table, scrubbing his hands over his face with a weary sigh. "What if we're wrong?"

"We're not wrong."

"But-,"

"We're not wrong, Lieutenant. But if we don't act, being right won't mean a whole lot." Lanto jerked a finger at the sky. "We have to stop this, Ventes. Before that thing gets here. You were in the observatory. You saw it with your own eyes. That ship is coming, and it's coming soon. We have to be ready when it gets here."

He saw that blow land. Almar grimaced, the grimace of a man who was mentally preparing himself for a truly unpleasant task.

"What happens to my father, if we're right?"

"Honestly? I would advise you not to worry overmuch." Lanto smiled thinly. "I don't think the things up in that ship are friends, and I think we're going to need people like your father when it gets here."

"You hate my father."

"Perhaps I do," he admitted. "He is stubborn bastard, stuck in the past, and he's not alone; too concerned with an old enemy while a new one is knocking on our door. But when that ship gets here – when they land and he can see it all with his own two eyes – I believe he'll do what needs to be done."

The fingers of Almar's free hand flexed with discomfort. He sighed and scratched his stubble of hair. "I don't suppose there's any way to keep my name out of this?"

"I doubt it, unfortunately." Lanto leaned forward, clasping his hands together in front of him. "I don't relish asking this of you, Ventes. Putting father against son – family against family – it is not a decision I have taken lightly, but without this information, Xanthus will not budge, and the fighting in Brekka will continue until it's too late for us to stop it."

"I know. I understand." Almar gave an unhappy nod. Then in a swift motion he grabbed and drained the remaining whisky in his glass and huffed out a steadying breath. "Let's get this over with then, Lanto."

*

"This is an outrage," Nastassos thundered as the Commissariat technician set to work on his personal terminal. His face was purple with rage, and he turned a glare on Lanto so fierce it could have buckled metal. "I'll have your head for this, Numitor."

Lanto said nothing, letting the big man's threats slide off of him. He had enough to worry about in his own mind without listening to his rival's tirade. He was sure. He was. But there was still a little voice in the back of his head saying, 'what if?' What if they didn't find what they were looking for?

That would finish him. He'd be drummed out of the Commissariat in disgrace, stood down as a minister and dumped back on the streets. He'd probably have to leave Rubicon altogether. The ship would come, and the human race would be busy killing itself when it did. There would be nothing more than Lanto Numitor could do about any of it.

"Carry on," Xanthus todl the technicians flatly, shooting Nastassos in irate glance. "I understand your feelings, Minister, but this will put the matter to bed once and for all. You have my word, if these allegations prove... spurious, Minister Numitor will face severe consequences."

"I sincerely hope so," Nastassos rumbled. "I don't know what you did to my son, Numitor, but I will not forget this. He would not turn on me of his own accord."

Lanto twitched; finally spared Nastassos a glance. "Believe what you want."

The man's private office was quite crowed with himself, Xanthus, a technician and a pair of Commissariat security guards. They'd spared Almar the confrontation with his father for now – that would come later, one way or another.

"Nothing in the main logs," the technician announced after a few minutes. A stocky, round-faced woman, she had been picked out personally by Xanthus for the task, and looked less than enthused about the prospect. She licked her lips uneasily. "No outbound or inbound personal messages marked with Brekkan coordinates or identification codes."

Lanto nodded grimly. He'd expected this much. Even as Nastassos's smug grin started to form, he took a step forward and inclined his head to the screen.

"I advise you to dig a little deeper, specialist."

"Sir?"

"You understand what you've been asked to find?"

She nodded. "I do, sir."

"And in your opinion, would someone leave such messages – even in their private logs – lying out for anyone to see?"

The technician shook her head, her short tangle of curled hair shaking with it. "No, sir."

"Then, as I said, dig deeper."

She swallowed hard; glanced at Xanthus for confirmation.

"Do as he says." The commissary-general inclined her head minutely.

"General!"

"Minister Nastassos, please allow Specialist Ramsey to continue her work uninterrupted and this will be over quickly."

She was icy calm. Lanto marvelled at her ability to maintain it in the face of everything that was going on. Natassos, on the other hand, looked like he wanted to hurl her across the room. His fists clenched and unclenched, and fresh daggers of hatred shot towards Lanto.

The technician, sweat beading on her cheeks, carried on her work. He wondered if she really understood the consequences if she found what he wanted. Her fingers flickered across the holo-keys of Nastassos's terminal, and the screen flicked from directory to directory. Walls of code that meant nothing to Lanto spilled over the monitor.

"Ma'am," Ramsey said after a moment, sounding almost matter-of-fact about the whole thing. "I have something."

"Don't keep us in suspense, specialist."

Ramsey cleared her throat. "Message cache. Deleted from the local server but not from the Commissariat backups." She keyed in another command and a line of message logs emerged on the screen.

Dates, times and locations.

Lanto saw picked out the Brekkan coordinates on the messages instantly, and felt like someone had lifted an anvil off of his shoulders. It was here. It really was here.

"Interesting." Xanthus's tone somehow got even colder, and she turned her head slowly to look at Nastassos. "Minister?"

"I have contacts in Brekka. We all do," Nastassos grunted, trying to appear unconcerned.

"Most of us don't try to hide them."

"Last message was two days ago," Ramsey confirmed.

"Receiver?"

"The address is registered at the Calida-Terra loading yards."

"You cannot do this-,"

"That's Theikvaal," Lanto interrupted before Nastassos could try and derail things any further. "You've seen the reports from my contacts at Brekka. They were coordinating their movements out of that yard."

"Keep working," Xanthus told the technician, drawing herself up wrathfully. "I want to see everything – a full report on every communication from this terminal and any others used by Minister Nastassos and his staff."

"I will not allow this!" Nastassos erupted, and he started forward, but the two guards were in front of him before he could get more than two steps.

"Please escort the minister to a holding area," Xanthus told them, the hard edge of anger finally seeping into her voice. "He and I have much to discuss, but in the meantime, I have a war to stop."