"Should have been." He lets the repetition carry the weight. "Father brought him in. Fast-tracked his clearance. Personally vouched for him, which meant nobody looked twice because nobody questioned the old man."
We turn a corner, passing a pair of station guards who stiffen at the sight of us. I nod. They relax fractionally, then don't, because Dexter's presence has never relaxed anyone in his life. He radiates controlled threat the way some people radiate body heat, constantly and without effort.
"I want a private room," I tell him. "Not the hub. Astra's running too many feeds in there."
He leads me to a conference chamber two levels up, a space we use for operational briefings that require need-to-know clearance. The door seals behind us with a pressurized hiss, and the room's countermeasures activate automatically, scrambling any signal that tries to enter or exit. The air goes dead and close, the hum of the station dropping to a subsonic pulse I feel more in my teeth than my ears.
Dexter doesn't sit. He stands with his back to the wall, arms crossed, which is both a tactical habit and a statement of position. He's not going to be comfortable with whatever I'm about to say, and he's letting me know that in advance.
"If he's a traitor," Dexter says before I can open my mouth, "kill him quietly. Tonight. Stage an accident, spacehim, whatever feels clean. If he's not, we've already shown our hand by investigating, and the damage to the alliance is done either way."
"We haven't shown anything. Astra's surveillance is passive. The data audit is running under a routine security protocol. Nothing points back to a targeted investigation."
"Yet."
"Yet." I concede the point because he's earned it. "But I'm not killing him on suspicion. If he's connected to whoever's been feeding intelligence to our competitors, if he's the breach we've been bleeding from, then he knows things. Names, methods, the scope of the compromise. Killing him solves the immediate problem and leaves us blind to everything else."
Dexter's expression doesn't change. It rarely does. "Then let me ask him. My way."
I know what his way looks like. I've seen the aftermath in the rooms Dexter works in, the ones with drains in the floor and sound dampening. He's effective. I've never questioned that. What I question is whether effectiveness is worth becoming the thing our father was, and I know Dexter hates when I frame it that way because it implies our father was something to be avoided rather than surpassed.
"No."
"Zane."
"No." I let the finality settle between us. "We need to be smarter than he was. If Ethan is compromised, I want to know by whom, and I want to know the full architecture of whatever network he's feeding. That means surveillance, not interrogation. That means patience."
Dexter's mouth thins. "Patience is what people with time can afford."
"Then we'd better hope we have time."
He uncrosses his arms. Not a concession, but a pause. "Your military contacts," I continue, because this is the other half of the conversation and the half that scares me more. "What's the latest on the Vex perimeter build-up?"
The shift in his posture is subtle, but I catch it. The loosening of his jaw means he's about to deliver something he's been carrying alone. "They're not testing anymore. The probes we've been intercepting at the outer boundary markers for the past six weeks were reconnaissance, not provocation. They've been mapping our defense grid."
"Successfully?"
"Enough. My contacts at the garrison fleet say the Vex Collective has consolidated three separate raiding fleets into a unified strike force. They've pulled warships from the Keth Expanse and the Sable Corridor. Force projection suggests they can field enough firepower to challenge our station defenses and hold a blockade while they do it."
The room feels smaller. The countermeasures hum against my skin like a warning.
"Timeline?"
"Days. Maybe less." Dexter meets my eyes and holds them. "We're running out of time to solve the Ethan problem, Zane. If the Vex hit us while we've got a compromised operative with access to our security architecture, it won't matter how smart we were about the investigation. We'll be fighting a siege while the enemy is already inside the walls."
He's right. I hate that he's right because it means patience is a luxury I'm spending currency I may not have.
"Double Astra's resources," I tell him. "Pull what she needs from the secondary security teams. If Ethan's sending burst transmissions, I want them captured andcracked before the Vex arrive. And Dexter." I wait until his attention is fully locked. "Keep this between us. No one outside this room and the hub knows what we're looking at."
"And Elissa?"
The question lands in the center of my chest like a fist. "What about her?"
"She's spending a lot of time with him. If he's what we think he is, she's exposed."
"I know."
"So pull her back."
