I truly didn’t know.
“Iris.”
I blinked, refocusing on Baleck. He’d straightened in his chair and was watching me with an expression I couldn’t quite read.
“Do you have a mate on Earth?” he asked.
The question caught me off guard, though it shouldn’t have. It was a natural follow-up to our conversation about Destran bonding. A reasonable thing to wonder about someone you were spending time with.
“No,” I said.
“Did you ever?”
I hesitated. This was personal territory. The kind of thing I didn’t discuss with anyone, let alone someone I’d known for only a few cycles. But something about the way he asked, direct and without judgment, made me answer honestly.
“Yes. But not for long.”
He didn’t push for details. Didn’t ask what happened or why it ended. Just nodded, accepting my answer with that easy grace that seemed to come so naturally to him.
“Would you like to get the evening meal with me?” he asked. “In the communal kitchen? You usually take your meals in yourquarters, but the food they make here is remarkable. I think you’d enjoy it.”
I opened my mouth to respond, though I wasn’t sure what I was going to say. Yes? No? Maybe? The uncertainty was maddening.
Before I could form words, the console behind me beeped. A channel was opening. Incoming transmission.
I turned to the monitor, grateful for the interruption even as I felt a strange twinge of disappointment. The screen flickered, resolved, and the face of Admiral Cillon appeared. My superior officer, calling from the relay station that served as humanity’s forward operating base in this sector.
“Agent Larivee,” she said crisply. “We performed an initial review of the data you transmitted. We need to discuss the implications.”
I straightened automatically, falling into the formal posture that years of training had made instinctive. “Yes, Admiral. I’m here with Baleck, the Destran liaison. He was present at the discovery and can provide additional context if needed.”
Admiral Cillon’s eyes flicked to something off-screen, presumably Baleck’s image in her display. “Good. His perspective will be valuable.”
Baleck moved his chair close beside me, positioning himself where the monitor’s camera could capture us both clearly. His skin had shifted to calmer blues, professional and composed.
“The Brakken symbols on the probe are confirmed,” Admiral Cillon continued. “Our linguistic analysis matches the designation patterns used by their military forces during the war. Serial number indicates it was manufactured approximately twelve years ago, though that doesn’t tell us when it was deployed.”
“Do we have any intelligence on current Brakken activities?” I asked. “Movements? Communications?”
“Some.” Admiral Cillon’s expression grew more serious. “After the war ended, the surviving Brakken split into three distinct groups. The first, and largest, settled on an otherwise uninhabited planet in the Outer Rim. They’ve been there for nearly eight years now, building a new society. Farming. Raising families. Deliberately distancing themselves from their military past.”
“Could they have launched the probe?” Baleck asked.
“Unlikely. They lack the technological infrastructure. When they left, they abandoned most of their advanced equipment. The settlement they’ve built is agrarian, focused on sustainability rather than expansion. Our monitoring suggests they want nothing to do with their former enemies.”
“The second group?” I prompted.
“Smaller. Perhaps two thousand individuals. They opted to work directly with scientists and researchers from several other advanced species, including humans. The focus is on understanding what the lami addiction did to their genetics. Whether the changes can be reversed. Whether future generations can be freed from the vulnerability entirely.”
Baleck shifted beside me. “Where are they based?”
“A research station in the Kallex system. Highly secure. The Brakken there are essentially subjects in an ongoing medical study, though they participate voluntarily. Their movements are tracked, their communications monitored. They couldn’t have sent a probe without our knowledge.”
“And the third group?” I asked, already suspecting the answer.
Admiral Cillon’s jaw tightened. “The third group disappeared. After the war’s end, they refused reconciliation. Refused assistance. Refused any contact with humans or Destrans. They expressed deep anger and resentment towardboth species, blamed us equally for the destruction of their civilization.”
“How many?”
