Page 10 of Warrior’s Mate

"That's the bridge route."

Kaiven turned to her. "Your evacuation stream."

"Yes."

He didn't dismiss it as coincidence. That was becoming inconvenient.

Kaiven keyed his comm. "Daratu to regional command. Request diagnostic access for civilian routing irregularities in Wasaytu cluster. Priority readiness."

Static breathed softly through the connection. Then a voice answered, delayed enough to be noticeable.

"Regional acknowledges. Current network congestion under review. No security concern identified."

Kaiven's jaw tightened.

"Request raw routing audit."

"Denied at current priority."

"Upgrade to operational readiness."

A longer delay.

"State threat basis."

Kaiven looked at Maelis, and she understood the question in his expression: did they actually have a plan? Not really.

They had delayed produce confirmations, duplicate medical requests, an evacuation route connected to a school transport anomaly, and the uncomfortable feeling that several small irregularities were leaning in the same direction. Maelis shook her head once. Not enough. Kaiven exhaled through his nose.

"No confirmed threat basis. Maintain request at readiness priority."

"Logged."

The channel closed. Pel leaned back. "So we wait."

"We verify locally," Kaiven said.

"How?"

He looked at Maelis. She knew immediately what he wanted.

"You want to walk the emergency routes again."

"I want to test whether the failures correspond to specific infrastructure."

"That's several hours."

"You have somewhere better to be?"

"I have an exchange full of people who believe I work there."

"Do they need you personally for the next three hours?"

That irritated her precisely because it was the correct question. Maelis opened her work queue, scanned the afternoon schedule, and sent three delegation notices.

"I hate efficient officers."

"I thought you hated inefficient officers."