Chapter 706: A two way problem

They walked back from the docking bay without saying anything for the first couple of minutes. The corridor was empty, just the two of them and the sound of the fleet doing what it always did, that low constant hum that you stopped hearing after a few days because it became the same as silence.

"Arthur," Kelvin said finally.

"Maybe," Noah said.

"His reach into the EDF isn’t new information," Kelvin said. "Lyra. Vice headmaster. Half the people we thought were just career soldiers turned out to be flying his flag the whole time." He paused. "Planting a tracking device on a ship belonging to two people drifting in space, one of whom is EDF, that’s not beyond him."

"No," Noah said.

"Or Kruel," Kelvin said. "Sirius Prime. Bruce Hilton. He used an S ranked telepath as a broadcast amplifier and controlled three planets simultaneously." He looked at Noah sideways. "A tracking device is actually simpler than that. That’s him being conservative."

"Which is worse," Noah said.

"Yes," Kelvin said. "Because conservative Kruel means Kruel with a plan. Kruel who knows we’re coming and has been sitting on that planet for two years preparing for exactly this." He paused. "Whereas Arthur is a different kind of problem because with Arthur we don’t know what he wants from this specific situation and not knowing what Arthur wants is genuinely terrifying."

"The Conclave," Noah said.

"I don’t think so," Kelvin said. "Their whole position is that humans are the problem. Using a human soldier as an instrument doesn’t fit that. They’d find another way." He paused. "Also Calder genuinely doesn’t know Eclipse exists and I cannot stress enough how much you’d have to work to keep someone that uninformed if you were running them as an asset."

"Unless that’s the point," Noah said.

Kelvin looked at him. "I hate when you do that."

"Do what."

"Poke holes in the reasoning right when the reasoning was getting comfortable."

Noah almost smiled. "We need to tell them."

"I know," Kelvin said. "All of them. Tonight." He paused. "And we keep our guests exactly where they are and exactly as comfortable as they’ve been. Because if whoever planted that device is watching, the last thing we want is for them to know we found it."

"Agreed," Noah said.

"Also," Kelvin said, "I want it noted that we could have died on that ship tonight. Gone aboard an unknown vessel to investigate a mysterious signal and we could have died. Saving two stranded people in space. How noble. How absolutely heroic of us."

"We didn’t die," Noah said.

"We didn’t die this time," Kelvin said.

---

Noah found them one by one over the next hour. No group message, no announcement over the ship’s system. Just Noah appearing at wherever each of them was and saying a version of the same thing quietly enough that nobody nearby caught it.

"Come to the secondary briefing room. Bring nothing. Tell nobody else"

Lucas was the only one who asked why with his eyes rather than his mouth and Noah gave him the look that said later and Lucas nodded and that was that.

By twenty hundred hours all seven of them were in the secondary briefing room with the door sealed and the ventilation system running at a level that made casual eavesdropping from outside functionally impossible, which was Kelvin’s doing and which nobody questioned.

Noah looked around the table. At the people who had been with him since before Eclipse was a name, since Pathfinder Team Seven, since the academy, since all of it.

"We found something on Le’anna’s ship," he said.

He told them.

The room was quiet for about four seconds after he finished. Which for this particular group of people was actually a long time.

Then everyone started talking at once.

"Arthur," Lucas said.

"Could be Kruel," Diana said, at the same moment.

"How long has it been broadcasting," Sophie said, over both of them.

"Since before we found them," Kelvin said. "My best estimate based on the power cell degradation is weeks. Maybe longer."

"Weeks," Lila said.

"Weeks," Kelvin confirmed.

"So whoever planted it," Sophie said, "knew where Le’anna’s ship was before we did. Knew it was going to drift into our path or made sure it would."

"Or just planted it and let physics do the rest," Lucas said. "If you know the fleet’s trajectory and you know the ship’s drift pattern you can calculate the intercept without engineering it directly."

"That’s very Arthur," Lila said.

"That’s also very Kruel," Diana said. "On Sirius Prime he was running three simultaneous operations across three planets through one amplified telepath. Calculating a ship drift intercept is nothing compared to that."

"I know," Lucas said.

"So it could be either of them," Seraleth said. She had been quiet since Noah finished explaining, sitting with her hands flat on the table, and the way she said it wasn’t really about either of them. It was about Le’anna. Everyone at the table knew that but nobody said it directly yet.

"Damn it," Seraleth said.

There it was.

"She was just starting to get the technique," Seraleth said. "She nearly had it by the end of the session."

"We don’t know it’s her," Sophie said.

"We don’t know it’s not," Lila said.

"Lila," Sophie said.

"I’m not saying she planted it," Lila said. "I’m saying she could have been used without knowing. Someone could have put that device on her ship before they ever left her planet and she’s been carrying it the whole time without knowing it’s there."

"That’s actually the more likely scenario," Kelvin said. "The placement was professional. Behind a wall panel, layered under the ship’s own energy signature. Whoever installed it knew what they were doing and knew the ship well enough to find a location that wouldn’t be casually discovered." He paused. "That’s not something you do in a hurry. That’s someone with access and time."

"So someone had access to her ship on her planet," Noah said.

"Before they left," Kelvin said. "Yes."

"The EDF team," Lucas said. "Calder’s squadron. They were on the surface. They had contact with her people. With her ship."

"Calder’s colleagues," Diana said.

"Not Calder specifically," Sophie said. "He was drifting in his suit by then."

"But someone from his squadron," Lucas said. "If Arthur has reach into the EDF, which we know he does, then someone on that team could have been his."

The room sat with that for a moment.

"Or," Diana said, and the way she said it made a couple of people look at her, "it’s Kruel. And if it’s Kruel then that signal is going directly back to him. Right now. As we sit here." She looked around the table. "Which means we know exactly where he is."

"Diana," Lucas said.

"No listen," she said. "We trace it. We follow the signal back to its source. If it’s Kruel, we just found our targeting solution."

"We have a targeting solution," Lucas said. "We know what planet he’s on. That was never the problem."

"The problem was surprise," Diana said. "The element of surprise is gone if he’s been tracking us. But if we can trace the signal back before he knows we’ve found the device, we get something better than surprise. We get the jump on him before he expects it."

"Jumping Kruel," Lila said flatly. "Without the plan. Without Diana’s displacement operation. Without the forward team. Without any of the preparation we’ve been doing for weeks." She looked at Diana. "You want to just go at him."

"I want to use what we have," Diana said.

"What we have," Lucas said, "is a fleet that’s still a month out. People who are still learning the VPT. Forge items that some of us are still figuring out. A plan that we’ve been workshopping that accounts for the four hundred million people on that planet who will be in the middle of whatever fight we walk into." He looked at her directly. "Throwing all of that away to chase a signal is how we get everyone killed."

"Sitting on the signal while Kruel adjusts his position is how we lose our only advantage," Diana said.

"We don’t have an advantage," Lucas said. "That’s the point. If that device has been broadcasting since before we found the ship then there is no advantage left to protect. He knows we’re coming. He’s known for weeks. Whatever he’s been doing on that planet for two years he’s had weeks on top of that to prepare specifically for us."

Diana’s jaw tightened.

She looked at the table.

"So what do we do," she said. "Just keep going. Same plan. Walk into something that’s been expecting us."

"We keep going," Noah said. "Same plan. Because the plan was never built on surprise. It was built on being strong enough that surprise didn’t matter."

Diana looked at him.

She didn’t say anything for a moment.

"The displacement operation still works," Sophie said. "Even if Kruel knows we’re coming, he doesn’t know the specifics of how. The forward team going in before the fleet, the evacuation corridors, the timing. None of that changes because he knows the fleet is on its way."

"It changes if he’s positioned for it," Diana said.

"Then we reposition," Sophie said. "That’s what the remaining transit time is for."

Diana looked at the table. The frustration on her face wasn’t directed at any of them specifically. It was the frustration of someone who had been carrying a plan for weeks and had just watched a significant piece of its foundation get complicated and didn’t have anywhere useful to put that feeling yet.

"The device," Noah said, looking at Kelvin. "Can we use it."

"Feed false information through it you mean," Kelvin said.

"Can we," Noah said.

Kelvin thought about it. "Possibly. If I can interface with it without triggering whatever detection protocol it might have built in, I could potentially manipulate the signal. Make us appear to be somewhere we’re not. Or make us appear to have changed course." He paused. "It’s delicate. If I get it wrong and it flags the interference, whoever is receiving it knows we found it."

"So we have one shot at it," Lucas said.

"We have one shot at it," Kelvin confirmed.

"Then we don’t touch it yet," Noah said. "We leave it running exactly as it is until we know more. Until we have a reason to use it that’s worth the risk of losing it."

The room was quiet for a moment.

"I nearly saved two people in space tonight," Kelvin said, to nobody in particular. "Nearly carried an injured soldier and his alien wife to safety and warmth and food. Nearly did the most heroic thing any of us have done on this entire trip." He looked at the table. "And now we might all die because of it." He paused. "How nice. How genuinely, profoundly nice."

Lila looked at him. "We’re not dying."

"I know," Kelvin said. "I’m just registering the irony for the record."

"Registered," Sophie said.

"Thank you," Kelvin said.

"Our guests," Lila said, looking at Noah. "What do we tell them."

"Nothing," Noah said. "Not yet. They stay comfortable. They stay exactly as they’ve been. If someone planted that device without their knowledge then they’re victims of this the same as anyone. If somehow they’re not, we don’t want them to know we found it."

"And if they ask questions," Sophie said.

"We answer them the same way we’ve been answering them," Noah said. "Honestly and without volunteering what we don’t need to volunteer."

Seraleth had been quiet for a while. She was looking at the table with the expression of someone running something through their head that they hadn’t fully finished yet. "She was just starting to trust us," she said. Not dramatically. Just plainly. "Le’anna. It took a while and she was just getting there."

"I know," Noah said.

"And now we have to treat her like a variable," Seraleth said.

"We treat her carefully," Noah said. "That’s different."

Seraleth looked at him for a moment. Then nodded once and looked back at the table.

The room settled into the particular quiet of people who had covered the ground they needed to cover and were sitting with the weight of it.

Then Noah’s system pinged at the edge of his vision.

He looked at it.

[Bond Complete: Seraleth]

[Item Ready For Manifestation]

[Manifest Now? YES / NO]

He looked up at Seraleth across the table.

She looked back at him with those luminous eyes and raised an eyebrow slightly.

"What," she said.